"Nothing we could take to court. Cullen lost his wife at a convenient time. He's in debt, and the insurance money will get him out. And we heard he has a girl friend. On top of that, nothing of value was stolen from the house." David reached over and put his hand on her shoulder. "I'm telling you this because I'm treating you as part of the investigation on this case. I want to know anything either one of you picks up. Okay?"

"Does that mean we can take a drive along the beach and look for the building?"

"After dinner. But only if you promise to talk about something else from now until then."

Mariana promised. So over dinner and wine at the small cafe on Thompson they had one of those conversations that people have when they are avoiding talking about anything important, complete with awkward silences.

She was glad when it was over.

And he kept his promise.

"Which way?" he asked, when he had steered the car to Harbor Boulevard. He hadn't driven past Eric Cullen's shop on the way to dinner, but he did then. The lights were out, and he didn't slow down.

"I don't know. Let's try right. I think it's toward Santa Barbara, not Oxnard."

"In that case, I should have stayed on Thompson. Do you want me to pick up the freeway?"

"Yes."

It would have been a pleasant drive under other circ.u.mstances, with a full moon and a clear sky and the gentle waves breaking against the sand. But this wasn't going to work, and Mariana knew it almost at once.

"You might as well take me home," she said, even before they reached the Seacliff exit.

"Okay."

She could feel his disappointment. Until then, she hadn't realized that he wanted her to be right. There was something comforting about him wanting her to be right.

"I'm not going to ask you in," she said when he stopped the car in front of her door. Even though they weren't in the black-and-white, David accepted it as his prerogative as a police detective to park in a no-parking zone.

"I know." He leaned over and kissed her cheek. "Goodnight."

Mariana was halfway up the stairs, and David had already driven away, when it hit her. Nothing about this was quite right. They should have turned left on Harbor Boulevard.

She wasn't certain what to do, whether to go in and try to call him back, or to look for the building herself. But then a wave of urgency hit her. She had to look for the building. Now.

She walked back down to the carport, got in her car, and headed back to Harbor Boulevard, this time turning left.

When she saw the building, she recognized it at once, and wondered why she hadn't known it in the dream. It was a small, exclusive hotel, with an equally small and exclusive restaurant, a low rectangular building, dimly lit, right on the beach. And a dark blue cla.s.sic Jaguar was parked in front of the restaurant.

The wave of urgency hit her again. It was quickly replaced by fear, the same fear that she had felt in the dream.

Mariana pulled over to the curb and jumped out of her car. She started running toward the restaurant, shouting as she ran.

"There's a bomb in the Jaguar! A bomb!"

She saw a door open, and a face appear.

"A bomb!" she cried again. "In the car! Run!"

People began streaming out of the restaurant, customers and staff, running away from the building.

But when the explosion came, it wasn't from the car. The entire restaurant turned into a fireball before her eyes.

Mariana stood, too stunned to say anything when a security guard appeared beside her and twisted her arm up behind her back.

"Let's sit down, right where we are, and wait for the police," he said.

Mariana nodded. That was exactly what she wanted to do.

The firefighters were the first to arrive, followed closely by three police cars. She sat locked in the back of a black-and-white until David arrived to take her home for the second time that evening.

Mariana didn't call Deirdre on Sunday. She spent much of the day recovering from the fear and the shock of the night before, a recovery made only a little easier by the sense that the spirit of Jeannie Cullen was hovering over her bed, wanting her to be all right.

Deirdre had been watching television news, though, and she left two messages that Mariana ignored. Deirdre knew she was all right. The details would have to wait until she felt like sharing them.

Only after David had called on Monday to fill in the missing pieces did Mariana pick up the phone and call Enchantment.

"The bomb target was Senator Fordham," Mariana said. "She and her husband occasionally use that particular hotel for a weekend getaway. Several people knew they would be there this weekend. And everybody knows they enjoy late dinners. n.o.body raised an eyebrow when a well-dressed blond man with a briefcase parked a Jaguar out front and asked for a table. n.o.body noticed when he went to the men's room and didn't come back."

"So they have Eric Cullen for the bombing, if not his wife's murder. Does David know who the co-conspirator is yet?" Deirdre asked.

"The FBI is swarming all over the case, but the rumor is that someone wanted to remove the one strong anti-war voice from the Armed Services Committee," Mariana told her. "It centers around the shop. I'm almost certain that one of Cullen's employees is the link. But I've been not-quite-right on so much, starting with my dream of an earthquake. It felt like an earthquake, but it was an explosion. I think I would have responded differently from the beginning if I had dreamed of an explosion."

"But you still succeeded in saving all those people. Is David ready to admit that he was wrong? That psychics can help solve a case?"

"He was even cheerful about it."

"So are you seeing him tonight?" Deirdre sounded like a teenager, and Mariana didn't feel like giggling with her. Not yet.

"Tonight I'm asking for a dream of Jeannie," Mariana said. "It's time to get it right, time to say thank you, and goodbye."

Too Many Cooks

A Freddie O'Neal Mystery

Freddie O'Neal and a story with a recipe? I wasn't sure how I was going to handle that combination when I received an invitation to write a story for Murder Most Delicious, but then I realized that it didn't have to be her recipe. Somebody else could be the cook.

"You're not what I expected, and I'm not sure this is going to work."

I could have said the same to her. The woman who had called to make an appointment, and who was now standing at the front door to my house-which doubles as my office door-was Belinda Blackburn, star of "Barbecue with Belinda," a Sat.u.r.day morning ratings. .h.i.t on the Public Access TV channel. I had never watched her show, since I limit my cooking to lifting the corner on a frozen dinner and sticking it in the microwave, but I had seen her picture on posters at the supermarket that sponsored the program. The photos had led me to expect a cheerful woman in her late thirties, with short, dark, flyaway hair, and maybe a little bit of a weight problem.

In person, Belinda Blackburn did have short, dark, flyaway hair, although a little gray showed. But she was closer to fifty than forty, and n.o.body that well-tailored would consider weight a problem. Her beige suit must have had some kind of designer label, or it would never have fit both the thin shoulders and the sloping b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Where the picture had clearly lied, however, was in the impression of cheer. Her round face, adorned with so much makeup that it seemed permanently camera-ready, was drawn with worry. A furrow between her eyes ran straight into a too-narrow nose. Red lipstick had crept into the lines above her lips, which were pressed tightly together.

"Do you want to come in or forget it?" I asked.

"Unfortunately, I don't think I have a choice," she replied. "I inquired, and you are the only woman in Reno licensed as a private investigator. So yes, thank you, I will come in."

I graciously ushered her to one of the two folding chairs sitting in front of my desk and took my spot in the big leather chair behind it. I had straightened up after she called, but I spied a glob of gray cat fur that I had missed, neatly swept it up, and dropped it in the wastebasket.

"Why do you need a private investigator?" We could get to the "woman" question later.

"Someone is sabotaging my show."

She waited for a reaction, but I couldn't come up with the appropriate outrage.

"What makes you think that?"

"Things happen. Once the refrigerator was set to defrost, so the molded salad didn't gel. Another time, the plug I use for the electric charcoal starter was shorted out, so the coals weren't ready. Two weeks ago, someone subst.i.tuted turpentine for the white vinegar. Fortunately, I sniffed before I poured." She thunked her handbag onto the desk for emphasis.

"You do your show live, right? Isn't that the kind of thing that always happens on live television?"

"I was ready to believe that. But last week I was doing a show featuring game, and when I lifted the lid off the marinade, on camera, a dead rabbit was lying there. And not the rabbit the supermarket had provided. This one had fur, ears, and a tail."

"That must have been upsetting," I admitted, "and it doesn't sound like an accident."

"No-o-o-o-o," she said, drawing it out as though I were a child. "And that's why I need a private investigator. I want to know who is doing this."

"The series of incidents, especially the dead rabbit, sounds like you could make a case for hara.s.sment. You could go to the police."

"I could." She nodded, pleased with me. "I could make a report. And the report would be filed, and they might send someone out to question the people who work with me, and they would add that report to the file. And I wouldn't know who was doing it, and they couldn't catch the person that way."

"So what do you want from me?"

"I want to hire you as my a.s.sistant. Undercover. That way you'll have a reason to be on the set. You can catch whoever it is in the act and make a citizen's arrest. That's why I needed a woman. I needed someone who could be a credible a.s.sistant, who knew her way around a kitchen." She smiled expectantly, looking for an instant almost like the "Barbecue with Belinda" ads.

"Would you like a cup of coffee?" I asked.

"Why, yes, thank you. If it's made-I don't want you to make a pot just for me."

"I don't own a pot."

The furrow reappeared.

"I make coffee by sticking a cup of tap water in the microwave and adding instant when bubbles appear," I continued.

Her jaw dropped, and she struggled to pull it back.

"I understand what you're telling me," she said. "So we have to think of another way to make this work. What skills do you have?"

My jaw dropped on that one.

"I'm good at what I do, but I'm not sure how to describe it in terms of skills," I said. "I've never thought of it that way."

She looked around the office. There wasn't much to see except desk, computer, bookcases, and my Union Pacific poster.

"Do you type?" she asked. "Can you use a word processor?"

I nodded warily.

"Fine," she said. "You're going to help me with a book. Come to my house tomorrow morning at nine, and we'll work out the details. The meeting to plan this week's show starts at eleven, and I can introduce you to everyone then."

"Is this a ritual?"

"Yes. We finalize the menu on Thursday, prepare everything on Friday, and tape on Sat.u.r.day. Every week." She appraised me one more time. "I don't suppose I could ask you to wear a skirt."

"I'll be there at eleven. In jeans. We can talk after the meeting."

She pondered that for a moment, then nodded.

"Do you want a check now?" she asked.

"Yes, thank you, I do."

Suddenly I found myself prepared to like her after all.

After the requisite piece of paper changed hands, she left. I sat there, trying to think of someone I could call to get information about the show, and decided I would have to go to the supermarket. That was as good a place to start as any. I was about to walk out the door when the phone rang.

"I thought you might want to come for dinner Sat.u.r.day night," Mom said. "It's Al's birthday, and I'm inviting a few friends."

"Al will be happier if I'm not one of them. I don't think he considers me a friend."

Mom had married Al when I was sixteen, and our relationship had never progressed beyond tense.

"But he does consider you family, and it is his birthday." She said it in her cooing tone, which meant she really did want me to come. "Besides, we just got a new barbecue, and Al is having such a good time with it. He really wants to try some of the recipes for a crowd."

"Barbecue? Al barbecues?"

"Yes. He decided that if Belinda Blackburn does it, anyone could."

"Do you watch her show?"

"Not really, but Al does. I've never been able to get interested in cooking."

"I know." I said it as flatly as I could.

"That's one of the mistakes I made with you, isn't it?" She was off and running. I could hear it in her voice. "I was exposed to cooking when I was young, and I decided it wasn't something I wanted to do. But I didn't expose you to it when you were a child, and so you weren't able to make an educated decision about it. Especially since by the time you reached seventh grade, girls weren't required to take Home Ec anymore, so you took woodworking instead."

"It's okay, Mom, I don't build bookshelves, either."

"No, but at least you had the opportunity. And it isn't too late, you know. You could still take a cooking cla.s.s. You might like it. An aversion to steam rising from a soup pot isn't in the genes."

"I'll think about it. What can you tell me about 'Barbecue with Belinda'?"