Mel put a hand on Mrs. O’Dell’s arm. “Please,” she murmured, then squatted down in front of Billy. “Did you see the car down there Billy, the dirty brown car?”

“Sure. When I came home from school it was there. Freddy’s mom had the pool.”

“Car pool,” Mrs. O’Dell said quietly.

“She let me off right behind it. I don’t like riding with Freddy, ’cause he pinches.”

“Did you play the license-plate game with the brown car?” Mel asked.

“I like it when they make words. Like cat.”

“You’re sure it was that brown car? Not some other car you saw on the drive home from school?”

“No, ’cause it was parked just out front the whole week Freddy’s mom drove me. Sometimes it was on the other side of the street. Then it wasn’t there anymore when Mom had the pool.”

“Do you remember the numbers, Billy?”

“I don’t like numbers. Letters are better. K-a-t,” he repeated. Then he looked up at his mother. “If it doesn’t spell cat, what does it spell?”

With a grin, Mel kissed him right on the chocolate-smeared mouth. “This time it spells thanks. Thanks a lot.”

*  *  *

Mel was practically singing when she walked back into Sutherland Investigations. She had something. Maybe it was only half of a license plate, and maybe the information had come from a six-year-old, but she had something.

She switched her answering machine to playback, then nipped into the kitchen for a soft drink. Her self-satisfied smile remained as she jotted down the messages.

Good solid investigative work, she told herself. That was the way you got things done. Persistence didn’t hurt. She didn’t imagine the police had managed to get anywhere near Billy O’Dell, or that they would have considered him a viable witness.

Solid investigative work, persistence—and hunches. Mel believed in hunches, just as she believed they were part of an investigator’s makeup. But that was a far cry from psychic visions.

Her smile tilted toward a smirk as she thought of Sebastian. Maybe he had gotten lucky with the sketch and the car. But maybe it was just as she’d thought before. A connection on the force could have given him that data.

She wouldn’t mind rubbing his nose in this new information.

Not that he was all bad, she thought, feeling charitable. He’d been okay when they’d shared a burger the evening before. No more come-ons—which she’d been positive she would have nipped in the bud. And he hadn’t gotten spooky on her, either.

Actually, she remembered, they’d talked. Mostly books and movies, those old conversational standbys. But he had been interesting. When he wasn’t irritating her, his voice was rather pleasant, with that whisper of a brogue.

A brogue that had deepened when he’d murmured to her, his lips sliding over hers.