“Yeah.”

“But Rose.” She paused. “That doesn’t sound like Mason. He doesn’t ignore things. He takes them head on.”

“I know. We both know there are things he’s not telling me. He’s investigating J.R. and he won’t share all the details.”

“J.R.?” she asked in confusion. “J.R. Simmons?”

Crap. Crap. Crap.

I’d majorly screwed up. She didn’t know anything about J.R. and his blackmail against me. How was I gonna get out of this one? I didn’t want to lie to her, but I couldn’t tell her the truth either. Not now that Mason was risking his neck and his career to go head to head with the most powerful man in Arkansas. He’d told me that his trip to Little Rock had uncovered a lead on a possible bribery case up in Columbia County. With any luck, it might be the first in a series of dominoes that would topple J.R. Simmons. I knew he’d taken at least two afternoons to drive up to Magnolia to do a little more digging.

I had to keep what I knew to myself to protect Mason. But I had to tell her something. I scrambled to come up with a reasonable explanation, almost crying with relief when I landed on something she’d buy. “Yeah. Joe’s dad.”

“Why?” She was definitely suspicious.

“J.R. was behind the small business grant we got from the Arkansas SBA. Anything to do with the Simmons family makes Mason suspicious, so he’s checking it out to make sure it’s legit.” Between Mason and Neely Kate, I was weaving so many lies and half-truths, I was making one ginormous spider’s web of deceit. How in the world had I gotten here?

“Huh.”

“But like I said, we had a huge fight. He took Muffy for a walk to cool down, and when he came back he apologized for not telling me and I apologized for getting so mad at him. It didn’t seem like a good time to bring up Dora.”

“So are you gonna ask him tonight?”

I’d actually spent part of the morning thinking about it. “If Mason has a file on her, you and I both know he’s probably not gonna tell me what’s in it. Besides, he saw me take Dora’s journal out of my drawer and confessed that he was trying to gather information in his spare time, which is pretty nonexistent.”

“Did he give you any details?” When I shook my head, she pursed her lips. “That hardly seems fair. She’s your birth mother.”

“But Mason has certain responsibilities associated with his job and it’s not fair for me to ask him to break the rules to tell me.” I was already putting his job at risk, both with his off-the-clock J.R. investigation and my own moonlighting as the Lady in Black that I couldn’t ask him to break more rules. “Besides, the more I think about it, he would have put what he knew on his sheet of information.” I turned toward her for a second before looking out the windshield. “I suspect that’s the extent of what he knows.”

“So you’re really gonna just sit around and wait for him to tell you what’s goin’ on with his investigation and what he may or may not know?”

“Shoot, no.” He’d always told me that Dora’s cold case had to take a backseat to more current cases. But as far as I was concerned, that didn’t mean the investigation had to stop. It just needed new investigators.

I cast a side-long glance to my friend. Neely Kate needed something to pull her out of her doldrums and she was always cajoling me into snooping. She was usually the one who had to push me. I suddenly had the perfect solution to two problems. It wouldn’t make everything—or, heck, anything—better, but it was bound to give her something else to think about.

I turned to look at Neely Kate and lifted my eyebrows. “I want you to help me investigate.”

To my surprise, she merely gaped at me instead of responding. I pressed on. “I told you that he didn’t have much information in his file, and I can remember most of it. Plus, I have a resource full of juicy tidbits that I know he hasn’t used to help us with clues.”

“What?”

“Dora’s diary.”

There was still no response from Neely Kate and my heart sank a little. I’d really thought she’d go for my idea. She was always pressing me to use my visions to solve mysteries, and this was a mystery I’d been dying to untangle. And it had to be pretty safe. My birth mother had died twenty-five years ago. It wasn’t like it was a current investigation. Besides, part of me suspected the woman who’d raised me had killed Dora, and she wasn’t likely to hurt us from beyond that grave.

“You want the two of us to investigate your birth mother’s death?” she finally said.

“And if she was part of some extortion scheme.”

She shook her head. “You realize we’ve totally reversed roles, right? I’m always the one tryin’ to coerce you into solvin’ some mystery and you’re the one tellin’ me it’s a crazy idea.”

“So you’re telling me this is a crazy idea?”

A slow grin spread across her face. “All our ideas are crazy ideas, but when did that ever stop us? You’re sure you want to do this? I’m not sure Mason would approve since he’s obviously keeping things from you, and you know Joe won’t.”

I waved my hand. “Joe’s not an issue. And Mason… This isn’t dangerous, so I don’t see what the problem is.”

“But you’re still not gonna tell him?”