LITMIR.BIZ

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for the verdict,” Guy finished for him. “Don’t worry about it, I like a drive at night.” A drive with Goldilocks, who had followed him down the lane to the Pontiac and jumped in as if she belonged there. All the better to get you to Jilly’s house. Shoot, that was the Wolf in Little Red Riding Hood.

      Cyrus sat at the end of the table and put down the wineglasses. “I stopped to see Jilly on my way home. I’m concerned about her.” He took the lid off the nuts, searched for a pecan, and put it in his mouth.

      Guy paused with a glass in midair. “Why?” She’d looked collected the last time he’d seen her—mussed, pink and tight-lipped, but in control. In fact, truth was she’d been the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

      His physical reaction was predictable. Everything constricted.

      “She never came back to answer any questions the deputy had,” Cyrus said. “Not that it matters as long as she called her insurance company.”

      Jilly had said she was going back to Cyrus and the deputy, and to tell Laura Preston to get lost. There had also been mention of nosy reporters.

      “You’re closer to her than anyone,” Cyrus said. “She and Joe have always stuck together, but his marriage had to change that some and he isn’t here, anyway.”

      Guy wanted to get up and go to her at once. “The accident shook her up, but she should have answered any questions the officer had.” This was his fault. Not because of what they’d done in the afternoon, although the circumstances should have been so different, but because he’d sent her mixed messages for the better part of a year. Right after Billie’s murder he hadn’t wanted anyone else, then he met Jilly and got scared spitless of falling for her on the rebound. He still wasn’t sure he was ready to be what she needed. But he’d driven her to act the way she had and now she would be embarrassed.

      “She didn’t answer her door until she figured I’d keep on ringing the bell. I saw her shadow move in the upstairs window.”

      Still nervous at the possibility that some goon had followed her home last night, Guy thought. “It’s good for a woman alone to be cautious, but I’m glad you didn’t give up,” he finished hurriedly.

      “Yes,” Cyrus said. He fell silent and drank some of his wine.

      A round clock ticked on one of the white walls. The room smelled of homemade bread and Guy saw loaves on a wood cutting board with a red-and-white cloth over them. He doubted there had been any changes made around this place for years, but he felt comfortable surrounded by the ceiling-high cabinets with thick glass fronts.

      On his own minute back porch, a turquoise refrigerator shaped like a capsule of some kind crowded most of the space. The refrigerator came from the same era as the mottled-gray appliances in the rectory kitchen, and they didn’t make their kind anymore.

      “I’ve never seen Jilly the way she was when I went to her house. First she tried to be all buttoned-up. She said she forgot to go back and talk to the deputy. Then she cried, and Jilly should never feel so badly she cries like that. She said she was all muddled up. Those were her words. I asked what she meant, but all she could say was that caring too much could mess you up.”

      Guy was well aware of Cyrus’s hard stare. He was watching for reactions. “I don’t like to think of Jilly being upset,” he said, and felt lame. Caring too much? Did she care more than he did? “What do you think she meant?” He knew the question could be dangerous.

      Cyrus didn’t hesitate to say, “You. What else could she be talkin’ about? There’s no one else she cares a lot about who treats her badly.”

      “Damn it.” Guy shot to his feet. “You may be a priest, but that doesn’t give you the right to make guesses like that. I wouldn’t treat Jilly badly.” But he hadn’t treated her as well as he should have.

      “I didn’t mean you abuse her.” Cyrus scooped out a handful of nuts and started popping them. “You asked a question. I gave my best answer.”

      Guy let out a long breath and sat down again. “Sure you did. Sorry I piled on like that, but don’t you see how dangerous it could be for Jilly and me to get more involved?” We already have, and look how much damage we’ve done.

      “I think I do,” Cyrus said. “You’re both worried one of you will decide this is a rebound thing and you’ll get badly hurt again. I think the difference between the two of you is that Jilly, bein’ a woman, needs the lovin’ enough to take the risk. Bein’ a man, you don’t think you do. Not that kind of lovin’, anyway.”

      Guy scowled at the priest. “You don’t know what I think.” He’d better make up his own mind about that. “And you’re out of line pinning Jilly’s behavior on me. How is it my fault she didn’t make sure and talk to the deputy?”

      “The two of you drove away in your car, arguin’, and she didn’t come back afterward. What would you think in my position?”

      No answer was expected. Guy stacked his hands behind his neck. His job was to go to her now.

      A rapid knock on the kitchen door startled both of them. L’Oiseau de Nuit burst into the room and Goldilocks shot in behind her.

      Guy pointed at the dog. “Dogs don’t belong—”

      “Not a word, you,” Wazoo, as the whirling, plan-a-minute woman was known locally, said. “Later, I tell you about dogs, N’awlins.”

      Gritting his teeth, Guy ignored the nickname Wazoo had adopted for him over the past months.

      The dog saw him and her tongue lolled from her mouth. She high stepped to flop down beside his chair and nuzzle a foot.

      Black-haired, flamboyant, shimmering with energy, Wazoo had blown into town a few years back according to Jilly, to attend the funeral of a friend—and stayed. She lived at Rosebank and helped out there to keep her rent low, worked many mornings at Jilly’s place and was currently filling in at Hungry Eyes, the bookstore and café owned by Jilly’s sister-in-law, Ellie Gable. Wazoo also insisted she dabbled in “the arts,” and considered herself a fine animal psychologist.

      “I come to see you, God Man,” she said to Cyrus. “And you knows I don’t do that so easy. But I’ll be talkin’ to you, too, N’awlins. So don’t you try sneakin’ away. I’ll take some of that wine, me.”

      Wazoo made great sport of pretending not to like Cyrus, to be afraid his Christianity would get her darker side all stirred up.

      Without complaint, Cyrus went and poured her a glass of wine, and put it on the table. Wazoo sat down facing Guy. She saw the nuts and helped herself.

      The wild mane of black hair that used to reach Wazoo’s waist remained a mane, but much shorter now and kind of pretty, Guy decided, all tight, springy curls that accentuated her white skin and dramatic features. There used to be long discussions about Wazoo’s age. Was she forty, fifty? Then she’d started making something of herself and the latest conjecture put her in her thirties.

      “You’re gonna know me if you see me again, N’awlins,” she said, raising her face and laughing her full-throated laugh.

      He grunted. “It’s not my fault you’re a fascinatin’ woman. You’d make any man stare.”

      She laughed some more and the look in her black eyes was actually one of liking. “God Man,” Wazoo said to Cyrus. “You know everything that goes on around here. They reckon you saw Jilly early this evenin’. She ain’t seein’ no one else. What’s up with her? And I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t love her.”

      “Jilly’s lovable,” Cyrus said. He looked at Guy, who looked away, unwilling to have more conversation with Wazoo than he had to.

      “You know Joe and Ellie Gable went off on some fool trip,” Wazoo said. She wore her usual black clothing, but today the dress was simple, with a belt, and it would be hard not to notice her nice figure. “I open up at Hungry Eyes. The café,

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