I laughed. "Sorry, but I already have a barbecue restaurant to run."

He grinned back at me.

Finn huffed. "Well, I don't know how the two of you can be so cheery this morning, considering the fact that my saloon in my theme park just burned down."

Ira arched his eyebrows. "Your theme park?"

My brother shrugged. "My name is the one that's on the deed."

"Good," Ira said, not missing a beat. "Then you can pay for all the repairs."

Finn blinked, then realizing that he'd been one-upped, gave the dwarf a sour look. Ira chuckled, and we all joined in with his light, teasing laughter. Finn sighed and slurped down some more coffee, which perked him right back up again.

"As much as I hate to admit it, Finn is partially right," Silvio chimed in. "After all, Tucker did escape."

Bria nodded. "And he got away with the gems too."

"Some guys have all the luck," Finn muttered.

Ira, Owen, Phillip, and Lorelei all nodded their agreement, but I laughed again, making them all look at me in surprise.

Lorelei's eyes narrowed. "What did you do, Gin?"

I got to my feet, walked across the cabin, and grabbed Sweet Sally Sue's dress from where it was hanging on the wall. I brought the dress over to the dining-room table and held it out to Ira. "Why don't you do the honors?"

He frowned, wondering what I was getting at, but then his face cleared, and I knew that he remembered what I'd told him yesterday. The dwarf took the dress from me, laid it out across his lap, and slipped his hand into first one pocket, then the other. He found it in the second one. Ira blinked in surprise and slowly drew out a black velvet bag.

Everyone gasped, got to their feet, and gathered around his chair.

With shaking hands, the dwarf slowly opened the drawstrings on the bag and carefully tipped the contents out onto the table.

Sweet Sally Sue's jewels glimmered under the lights.

For a moment, there was stunned silence.

Then Finn piped up first, the way he always did. "Those . . . those are the real jewels, right?"

I nodded. "Yep, those are the ones I found hidden in those snow globes in Deirdre's suite. Every last one that she'd tucked away in them."

Silvio frowned. "Then what was in that bag you gave Tucker? Because he opened it on Main Street last night, and I saw him pour the stones out into his hand."

"Oh, those were gems too, just mostly fake ones."

This time, Owen frowned. "But where did you get fake jewels on such short notice?"

I grinned. "Straight from Mama Dee herself."

We all sat back down in our chairs, and I told my friends how I'd grabbed a bunch of rings, necklaces, and bracelets, along with an extra black velvet bag, from that wall of jewelry in Deirdre's closet.

"Most of it was just costume jewelry," I said. "Very nice costume jewelry, but still fake. There were a few real gems in the mix, but they were small, poor-quality stones. So I pried them out of their settings and put them in a black velvet bag like they were the real thing. It was good enough to fool Tucker."

The vampire might be clever, but he wasn't a Stone elemental like I was, so he hadn't been able to hear the stones' soft, muted murmurs last night, and he hadn't realized that I'd been giving him a bag full of fakes. That's what I'd been counting on, and it had worked like a proverbial charm. Tucker might have escaped, but at least I'd kept him from getting his hands on the jewels. It was a small victory, but I'd take what I could get.

"I just wish that I could be there to see the look on Tucker's face when he realizes that you duped him and that all he has is a pile of pretty gla.s.s," Phillip said.

"Me too." I grinned. "Me too."

Everyone fell silent, sipping their coffee and orange juice. Ira was still staring down at all the colorful, sparkling stones spread across the table. After several seconds, he scooped them all up, poured them back into the bag, and held the whole thing over the table for Finn.

"Here," Ira said in a rough voice. "These belong to you now. After all, your name is on the deed, just like you said."

Finn grinned and started to reach across the table for the jewels, but I cleared my throat and raised my eyebrows. He looked at me, his face creasing into a pleading wince. But I kept staring at him, and he finally rolled his eyes.

"You know how much I hate being n.o.ble," he whined. "It makes me break out in hives."

"Finn . . ." I warned.

"All right, all right," he said, dropping his hand and sitting back in his chair. "Actually, Ira, I think that you should keep the jewels. After all, you were the one who loved Sweet Sally Sue."

Another thought occurred to Finn, and he brightened. "Besides, this is your home. I bet a couple of those diamonds would go a long way toward repairing the saloon and getting the theme park back up and running again."

Lorelei snorted. "And get you off the hook for actually having to pay for anything yourself. Nice logic, Lane."

Finn grinned and shot his thumb and forefinger at her. "Bingo."

We all groaned.

Ira set the bag down on the table and cleared his throat. "Actually, I have something for you too, Gin, Bria."

He got to his feet and disappeared into his bedroom. I looked at my sister, who shrugged back at me. She didn't know what he was up to any more than I did. Ira appeared a few seconds later carrying two framed photos. He handed the first one to Bria, and we all leaned over the table to look at it.

It was a picture of our mother.

The photo had been taken in the hotel lobby during the holidays, and Eira was standing in front of a Christmas tree, examining one of the snow globes nestled in the branches. She looked young in the photo, probably in her early twenties, and she was smiling with childish delight, her whole face shining even brighter than the lights on the tree. The lovely shot of her was much nicer than the photos I had that showed her with Deirdre Shaw and Mab Monroe. My chest tightened.

Ira nodded at Bria. "When I first saw you, I thought that you looked like somebody that I'd photographed at the resort, but I couldn't put my finger on exactly who it was or where her picture might be. Then, when I saw Gin wearing that blond wig, I realized that she looked like that same woman too."

Shock jolted through me. Bria was the spitting image of our mother, but I'd never considered that I might look anything like her. But Ira thought that I did. That pleased me. That I still carried part of her with me, even if I hadn't realized it until right now.

"You never forget a face," I rasped, my voice thick with emotion.

"No, I don't." Ira nodded at me. "You have her nose and cheekbones. Put that blond wig back on, and both you and Bria could be her twins."

"Thank you," I rasped again.

Ira nodded and handed me the second photo. "And I thought you might want to see this one too."

Once again, everyone leaned across the table to see the picture-of Hugh Tucker.

The vampire was sitting in the hotel lobby, also during the holidays, given the mistletoe strung up on the fireplace mantel behind him. Tucker was leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, talking to someone sitting in a high-backed chair that I couldn't see. I brought the picture up close to my face, examining every single detail, but there was nothing else to it. Tucker looked young in the photo too, in his twenties, although he had one of those ageless faces that made it hard to pinpoint how old he had been back then.

"I did a quick scan through all my photos here, and I'm afraid that's the only shot I have of Tucker," Ira said. "I'm sorry, Gin."

"The vampire's not important. Not today, anyway." I set the photo aside and looked at my friends, old and new. "Right now, I'm just happy to be here with all of you." I paused. "And that we all survived another so-called vacation."

Finn lifted his coffee mug. "I'll drink to that. Cheers, everyone!"

We all lifted our mugs back to him. "Cheers!"

29.

After finishing our late breakfast, we went to the hotel, grabbed our things, and met back down in the lobby, where Ira had another surprise, this time for Finn-that photo of Deirdre's ribbon cutting that I'd spotted in the dwarf's office yesterday.

"Thank you for this, but I don't really need it anymore," Finn said. "For better or worse, I've made my peace with Deirdre. She didn't care about me, so I'm not going to bother to think about her anymore. At least, I'm going to try not to think about her so much anymore."

"Take it," Ira said in a gruff voice. "She was still your mother. You might want it . . . later."

Finn hesitated, but he finally nodded and slipped the photo into his bag.

We said our good-byes to Ira, who promised to keep in touch and let us know how the theme-park renovations were coming along, and left the Bullet Pointe resort complex. Finn, Bria, Owen, and I got into Finn's Range Rover for the drive home, with Silvio, Phillip, and Lorelei following behind in another car.

"So," Finn chirped in a bright voice as we all buckled our seat belts, "who wants to sing some cowboy songs on the way home?"

Bria stabbed her finger at him. "If I hear so much as a single yippee-ki-yay, I will shoot you. No more cowboy songs. Ever."

Finn pouted for a minute, then brightened and started rooting around in the center console.

"Uh-oh," Owen muttered.

"Well, then," Finn said, coming up with a green CD case that he waggled at the three of us, "it's a good thing that I brought along my Christmas playlist as backup."

Bria pinched the bridge of her nose, while Owen sighed and slumped back against his seat.

I just laughed.

"Deck the halls," I said. "Deck the halls."

Three hours and several dozen off-key Christmas carols later, we made it back to Ashland. Our first stop was Jo-Jo's salon so the dwarf could fully heal the burns and bullet holes still decorating my body. She took care of my wounds, then fussed over me for an hour, including making me a mug of hot chocolate. So much better than cuc.u.mber slices and being pampered at a fancy spa.

After that, my friends and I went our separate ways, each of us getting back into the groove of our regular lives.

The next morning, I got up, took a shower, and went to the Pork Pit an hour early. Sophia and Catalina had done a great job in my absence, and everything was ready to rock 'n' roll, but I still whipped up a vat of Fletcher's secret barbecue sauce, enjoying the way it spiced up the air. The warm, comforting scent always made the restaurant feel like home.

By the time Silvio came in and took his usual stool at the counter, I'd moved on to one of my projects for the day. The vampire watched me use a hammer and a nail to carefully tack up a single sheet of paper on the wall close to the cash register, right next to a photo of Fletcher and his old friend Warren T. Fox that was already hanging there, along with a framed, b.l.o.o.d.y copy of Where the Red Fern Grows.

I stepped back, admiring my handiwork. "Well, what do you think?"

Silvio snorted. "Only you would be proud of a Wanted poster."

My grainy image stared back at me from the wall, along with my name and the info about the reward that Roxy and Brody had offered for me. Silvio was right. Maybe it was egotistical, but I loved being the star of my own Wanted poster.

I grinned. "I stuffed my suitcase full of posters before we left Bullet Pointe. I have enough of them to paper the entire restaurant if I want to."

He rolled his eyes. "That sounds like something Finn would do. Along with getting Wanted posters made up with all our pictures on them for Christmas presents."

"Why, Silvio," I drawled, "I think that's an excellent idea. I was going to get you a tie. Or maybe a really bad Christmas sweater. But personalized Wanted posters? That is pure genius."

His lips curled in disgust, and he actually shuddered.

I snapped my fingers. "Wait a second. I know. Why not combine the two? I'll get you a holiday sweater that looks like a Wanted poster, complete with your photo on it. What could be more heartwarming than that?"

He just groaned.

The rest of the day pa.s.sed by without incident, and I closed down the restaurant and went home, happy to be back in my familiar routine.

Late that night, I was in Fletcher's house, relaxing on the couch in the den, with my stockinged feet propped up on the coffee table in front of me, and an old James Bond movie on the TV. Even though it was almost midnight, I'd just taken some chocolate cranberry-apricot cookies out of the oven, and the house smelled rich and decadent. And the cookies themselves? A divine mix of warm, melting chocolate and sweet pops of fruity flavor from the dried cranberries and apricots. The perfect treat for the final bit of work I had to do on this cold winter's night.

Because I still had one more puzzle to solve-the paper from Fletcher's safety-deposit box.

I polished off my second cookie, took my feet off the coffee table, and leaned forward. I'd spread the sheet on the table when I'd first come in here, but it looked the same as it had that day in the bank when Finn and I had first found it. A large rectangle drawn on a single sheet of white paper.

I still didn't have a clue as to what it meant.

No, that wasn't quite true. I knew that it was a message from Fletcher, some cryptic way of telling me something important. The old man wouldn't have left the paper in the box otherwise. And the irony of the situation didn't escape me either. Fletcher had purposefully set up this little treasure hunt, one that was eerily similar to my search for Sweet Sally Sue's jewels.

The information in Deirdre's casket had led me to dig up my own mother's grave, which had led me to the key to that safety-deposit box at First Trust bank. Which had yielded a piece of paper that was going to lead me . . . somewhere else? But where? And to what?

More than that, I wondered why Fletcher had arranged things like this. Why make me jump through so many hoops for a plain piece of paper? There had to be something more to all of this. Or maybe Fletcher hadn't wanted me to find any information on the Circle. Maybe he'd never wanted me to know about my mother's connection to the evil group.

Or maybe he'd been trying to protect me from an even more horrific truth, whatever it might be.

I didn't know. I just didn't know. Even worse, I had this nagging feeling that I was missing something obvious, that this was an instance of Fletcher's hiding something in plain sight, just like Deirdre had put the gems in those snow globes as though they were ordinary rocks. But try as I might, I couldn't see the forest for the trees. Or the trees for the forest. Or however that stupid metaphor went.

I picked up the safety-deposit box key from the table and examined it from all angles, but it too was the same as before-just a key with a number on it. No runes, no marks, no symbols of any sort adorned the metal. Gin Blanco strikes out again.

That familiar frustration surged through me, but I couldn't be too melancholy. Not with freshly baked cookies spreading their chocolate perfume throughout the house. Even if I couldn't figure out Fletcher's riddle tonight, then I could at least have one more cookie-or three-before I went to bed.