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somethin’, but there ain’t a scratch or a dent no place.”
    Oops. “Pull the other leg,” Raven said. The light is poor, he thought to Jake. You’re mistaken. Just put the door in the car and forget about it.
    “I’ll show you when we git to the garage.” He rose with the door in his arms and laid it in the back seat. “Got anything you need in here, get it out while I winch it up.”
    While Jake swung the truck around and backed it up to the Corvette, Raven leaned into the back seat. With one hand he retrieved his bag, slipping the phone inside it, and his white lab coat. With the other he dented the door, near the hinges where it would look pried, and dragged scratches in the vivid red finish with his nails.
    “Yep,” Jake said, swinging out of the truck again to attach the winch. “I definitely think it was aliens.”
    “How about fairies?” Raven called over the whine of the cable as he opened the passenger door. “Or werewolves?”
    Jake laughed. Raven swung into the cab, ripe with the smell of cigar smoke, laid his bag on the floor and draped his lab coat over his knees.
    What’s the world coming to, he wondered as he peeled red paint out from under his fingernails, when aliens are more believable than vampires?
     

Chapter 4
     
    By eight-thirty Friday morning, when Willie finished her third cup of coffee, it was seventy-eight degrees and the humidity was 82 percent. She gave up, shut off her Macintosh computer and called Jim Eggleson at Eggleson Heating and Cooling.
    “You know Beaches as well as you know me, Jim,” she said. “Bring whatever you think’ will work best and hook it up.”
    “ I thought ahead when you bought the new furnace. Ductwork is already in. Me and the boys’ll be there directly.”
    “Terrific. I’ll give you lunch.”
    “Got any key lime pie left? Jake said y’baked one.”
    “When did Jake get to be clairvoyant?”
    “That Dr. Raven’s car quit on him after he left your place last night. Jake towed him in, a course.”
    A course. Willie thought briefly, but not wistfully, of Manhattan and its anonymity.
    “If it ain’t poisoned,” Eggleson went on, “me and the boys’ll be glad to polish off that pie.”
    “It’s not poisoned.” Willie laughed. “It’s yours.”
    She hung up, and the phone rang. She answered it and Whit said. “You forgot to call me.”
    “Your office doesn’t open for half an hour.”
    “I’ve been here since seven. What happened with Raven?”
    “Promise you won’t tell Dad?”
    “Did he make a pass?”
    She should be so lucky, Willie thought. “He offered me five million dollars for Beaches.”
    “Good God!” Whit exclaimed, and then groaned. “You said no, didn’t you?”
    “Of course I said no.”
    “Willie, Willie—”
    “Why do you suppose Beaches is worth that much to him?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe I should dig a little deeper into Dr. Raven. An offer that size means he knows as well as I do that his uncle’s will gives him a feeble at best claim to the house.”
    “So why investigate him?”
    “Beaches is pretty isolated and right on the water. Maybe he’s a drug dealer or something.”
    “He’s a doctor.”
    “That doesn’t mean he isn’t a crook. It just means he’s been to medical school. You wouldn’t happen to know where?”
    “Hardly. Jake Smith might. He’s the resident clairvoyant in Stonebridge.”
    “Good idea. Poke around town. See who knows what. I’ll run his social, but I’ll only get facts and dates. You can put flesh on the bones.”
    “So you can strip it off again?”
    “Do you want Raven to leave you alone?”
    “All right, all right. Hey, Whit. What’s the difference between a dead lawyer in the middle of the road and a dead snake in the middle of the road?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “There’s skid marks in front of the snake.”
    Whit laughed, said, “Call me later” and hung up.
    So did Willie. How odd that both Whit and Raven had had car trouble last night.