Read Online A Murder in Mohair by Anne Canadeo - Free Book Online

door, but turned to reply. “Unless we find out that Cassandra Waters is up to something illegal. Then we will have to tell the police.”
    â€œRight. I didn’t think of that.” Maggie looked at her a moment, then shrugged. “We’ll cross that Ouija board when we come to it.”
    â€œGood plan.”
    Out on the porch, she untangled Tink’s and Wally’s leads from the wooden rails, and wondered if they really would debunk Cassandra Waters. The psychic had been able to fool a lot of paying customers for a few months now in this town. Not to mentioned many other places she must have set up her crystal ball. Why would they be the ones to unmask her?
    The answer popped into her mind. “ ‘You can fool some of the people some of the time and all of the people some of the time. But you can’t fool all of the people all of the time,’ ” she said aloud. Lucy glanced down at the dogs as they headed home. “Remember that, the next time you decide to sleep on the sofa.”
    *  *  *
    Lucy was working on a project that was due on Wednesday, by five o’clock—a full-color brochure for a company that sold paving stones. It was not the most artistic project she’d ever taken on, but the client was easy to deal with, paid well, and didn’t expect a masterpiece. Just a well-designed, easy-to-read catalog that showed off the stones in pleasant settings, mostly set in paths around swimming pools, where smiling model moms and children frolicked. Or close shots of curving paths that cut through sumptuous green lawns. Proud homeowners, in designer sportswear, stood cheerfully admiring their property . . . and their choice of deluxe pavement.
    She’d once known a talented sculptor who earned the larger part of his living from carving excruciatingly cute bears from chunks of wood. He would sell these creations at a hefty profit to garden centers and landscapers. Hence his term, “lawn bears”—and his philosophy that most artists need to “carve the lawn bears” in order to make ends meet and no shame in it.
    Lucy knew that jobs like the paving stone brochure were her “lawn bears”—and a small price to pay for freedom from office cubicles. She’d spent her fair share of time enclosed in those padded walls, poking her head up from time to time, like an anxious gopher or meerkat. Those years seemed another lifetime ago now. Making a living outside the cubicle maze required scrambling at times, but she had a steady client list these days and would never return to a corporate job again.
    She’d moved out to Plum Harbor from Boston several summers ago, a few months after her divorce, and very soon after her aunt Claire died and left her cottage in the Marshes to Lucy and her older sister, Ellen. Ellen was married with two adorable girls and lived a short distance from Boston, in historic, upscale Lexington, her life much like one pictured in the paving stone brochure.
    Lucy’s sister didn’t care much for the cottage or Plum Harbor and was happy to have Lucy living there so the property wouldn’t get run down by renters.
    Lucy hadn’t made too many changes in the cottage since she’d moved in, except to paint some walls and rearrange the furniture to make room for Matt and his belongings when he moved in about a year ago. Including a collection of retro electric guitars, that had started out front and center, on a prominent wall in the living room . . . but had slowly worked its way into the TV room and then out to the enclosed porch.
    The frat house decorating touch was a small price to pay for living with the man she loved and had been amazed to find loved her. She liked to think of herself as a person who knew when to focus on the big picture and not the lint of life, things that didn’t really matter. Retro guitar collection? Lint. Matt’s love and