Hannah held his gaze for a long beat ... and then blew out a heavy sigh. “Something feels really wrong here.”
“I’m assuming you mean other than the obvious, right?” He cracked a smile when her frown only deepened. “Hannah, clearly this isn’t right. A woman was stabbed to death on your property and even though the town was fairly busy at the time, nobody saw a thing. That’s ... all kinds of weird in my book.”
“Yeah.” She pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead. “I don’t understand how this happened. We were supposed to have an easy event, get back into the swing of things. Now, though ... what if this ruins business forever?”
His heart rolled at her earnest expression. “Baby, that’s not going to happen.” He strode directly to her, his hands gentle as he cupped her cheeks. He made it so she had no place to look but in his eyes. “I swear everything is going to be okay,” he promised her. “I won’t let anything bad happen. This is all going to work out.”
Hannah wanted to believe that more than anything. She just couldn’t force herself to ignore the warning siren screaming in the back of her brain. “This shouldn’t have happened. I mean ... how could someone kill a world-famous psychic in our backyard without anybody seeing it?”
Cooper hesitated and then shook his head. “I don’t know.” He rested his brow against hers, moving his hands from her face so he could hold her tight. “We’re going to figure this out, though. I don’t want you spending your time worrying about this. You’ll make yourself sick.”
“I can’t help it.” Hannah didn’t consider herself a weak woman. In fact, bad decisions when she was younger had her toughening up quite a bit prior to moving to Casper Creek. Now, though, she felt helpless. It wasn’t an emotion she wanted to embrace. “I keep running various scenarios through my head. How did this even happen?”
Cooper had been wondering the same thing. “I don’t know. We questioned everyone who was here, although some of those sessions were more cursory than others. Most of the other psychics weren’t even aware of who she was.”
Hannah’s frown was pronounced. “I thought she was supposed to be famous. I mean, I’m not an expert on psychics by any stretch of the imagination, but I thought she was supposed to be something special.”
Cooper shot her a rueful smile. “Let me rephrase that. The guests knew who she was. That doesn’t mean they knew what she looked like. Boone and I checked. The photo on the back of her most recent book was more than twenty years old.”
“Really?” Hannah’s eyebrows hopped, her mind busy. “That’s interesting.”
“I figured it was just vanity. Women don’t tend to like to admit they’re getting old. They like to pretend the wrinkles don’t exist.”
Hannah pinned him with a dark look. “Not old. Older. Old-er.” She bopped her finger up and down for emphasis. “She was in her fifties. She was hardly an old woman.”
Amused despite himself — and thrilled to see some of the fire return to her eyes — he held up his hands in mock surrender. “I didn’t mean that how it came out,” he reassured her. “I happen to love older women.” He realized how his words could be misconstrued when it was too late to pull them back. “I mean ... I love you. Young. Old. I love only you.”
Hannah fought hard to maintain a straight face ... and lost. “Nice save.”
“Thank you.” He swooped in and gave her a quick kiss. “I didn’t mean for that to come across as derogatory as it sounded. It was simply something Boone and I noticed when we happened to look at one of the books. Even if one of our psychics was familiar with that photo, it doesn’t mean they would’ve recognized her in real life.”
Hannah hadn’t even considered that. It made sense, though. “Huh. What did her daughter say?”
“Oddly enough, her daughter was pretty forthcoming.” He slid his hand to the small of her back and prodded her toward the table. “Let’s talk about this while the food is still warm, huh? It might take a bit.”
Hannah wordlessly agreed. Now that Cooper had managed to take the edge off her mood, she found she was hungrier than she imagined possible. He was a miracle worker that way.
It only took them a few minutes to get settled and dig in. Once she had her first bite of burger out of the way, Hannah turned her expectant eyes on him. “Well?”
He smirked at her impatience. “Apparently Velma was not well liked. Melanie — that’s her daughter — was open about that from the start. She seemed shocked about what happened, but she was pretty matter-of-fact where it counted. She said her mother was the sort who turned people into enemies ... whether it was warranted or not.”
“Meaning?” Hannah dipped a fry into ketchup and shoved it into her mouth, barely chewing before swallowing. She was suddenly ravenous. “Was she paranoid or something?”
Cooper grinned for a beat as he enjoyed the view of her inhaling her food and then returned to reality with a vengeance. “The way Melanie made it sound, Velma was loyal to those in her inner circle. If you were related to her you were in by virtue of blood and if she’d known you a long time she tended to overlook things. Anyone else, though, was fair game.”
“I still don’t understand what that means.”
“Basically it means that if anyone said a single thing about her, even in jest, Velma took it as a personal attack,” Cooper explained. “Apparently the psychic world is full of people competing with one another. Velma liked being on top ... and wasn’t afraid to step on others to keep them at the bottom.”
Intrigued, Hannah cocked her head. “Does
