Christmas Spirit (The Middle-aged Ghost Whisperer Book 1): (Ghost Cozy Mystery series) (11 page)

Chapter 21

I was sitting in the same dingy coffee shop in which I had met Amanda before. The smell of greasy, fried food permeated the air.

There was something in Amanda’s eyes this time, something I could easily read on her face. She seemed worried. I waited for her to speak, and finally she did, as if she had just noticed that I was there.

“The police told me that they no longer think it’s a suicide,” she said.

I was taken aback. I was expecting bad news by the way she looked and acted. Yet here she was, telling me something that should make her ecstatic, but she looked as if she had just found out that her pet goldfish had died.

“That’s great,” I said. Amanda nodded, so I thought perhaps I was simply reading her the wrong way. I pressed on. “What made them change their minds?” I asked. “Did they tell you?”

Amanda nodded. “He overdosed.”

I couldn’t hide my shock. “Overdosed? On what?”

Amanda ate the mint provided on her saucer before answering. “Cocaine. They’re pretty sure it was against his will, something about defensive bruising. I don’t know.” She shrugged. “They said he was tied up before he was injected with cocaine.”

I gasped. “Who would do something like that?”

“It’s obvious, isn’t it? It’s Jason Taylor and his gang. My brother obviously stumbled across something that could expose them. They must’ve tried to make it look like suicide.”

I nodded. It was rather ingenious in an evil sort of way. Not many people would suspect murder when a man was found overdosed on cocaine. And with Amanda’s brother it would seem to make sense, given that he was an actor. The tabloids always alleged that one actor or another had substance abuse problems. And even if he hadn’t had problems before, that role he had been digging into had led him to the right people to get him hooked.

“I know it’s upsetting, but it’s good news,” I said. “You said all along that it wasn’t suicide. Maybe now the police will find who killed your brother, and he can be at peace.
You
can be at peace. I know it isn’t easy, knowing your brother was killed, and knowing his killer still walks around, free.”

“They told me all of this yesterday,” Amanda said, “when they were questioning me again.”

“Questioning you?”

“It seems like the hundredth time since my brother died.” She sighed into her coffee cup.

I was puzzled. “Why would they question you?”

Amanda raised her hands. “No idea. They just can’t seem to leave me alone. What if they think I had something to do with all of it?”

I shook my head. “Why on earth would they think such a thing?” My heart went out to her. Not only had the poor woman’s brother been killed, but the police appeared to be harassing her over it.

“I don’t know, but these questions, Prudence, all the questions! It doesn’t seem to stop.” She turned her head, and looked out across the café. There weren’t many people in the place with us, but when she turned back to me and spoke again, her voice was low. She leaned forward, folding her arms on the table. “I wanted to meet with you today, because I need your help.”

“What do you need?” I asked.

“I need you to look into my future. Tell me what you see.”

I sighed. “Amanda, it doesn’t work like that. I’ve explained that to you before.”

Of course, I had been telling people that for years, and no one ever seemed to pay attention. When people found out what I did for a living, each one at once wanted me to be their personal fortuneteller. The problem was, it wasn’t like that. Most people seemed to think my ability was like a movie. I could just close my eyes, get a reading, and that was that. But it was nothing like that in real life.

“I need your help,” Amanda pleaded. “They suspect me.”

I shook my head. “No, Amanda, they can’t possibly suspect you. They would just think you might have something to hide about the gang.”

“I know they do!” she said, her voice verging on the hysterical. “I need you to see it! I need you to see if I’m in danger.”

“In danger?” I asked. “From the police?”

She shook her head. “I need to know if they will arrest me.”

“Amanda, they’re just being thorough. That’s all. You didn’t kill your brother, so you have nothing to be afraid of. They can’t just lock you up without proof, even if they did suspect you, which of course they don’t,” I added hastily.

“I need your help. Help me. Tell me you see all of that, what you just said. Tell me you see it in the future, or tell me that you see them coming for me. I need to know.”

The whole conversation was taking a turn for the strange. The way Amanda was speaking made me think that she was truly afraid. It was as if she really thought the police would arrest her without any sort of proof. I shook my head. “Amanda, I can’t tell you anything. I can’t see your future. I can only get impressions from the spirits of the deceased.”

“Fine,” she said tersely.

It was obvious she was angry with me. “I can’t see anyone’s future,” I said calmly. “I don’t see the future, and I don’t read minds, or any of that sort of stuff. I just receive impressions from the dead. That’s what I can sense. I can’t just look into a crystal ball and tell you your future.”

Amanda shook her head, as if I was lying to her. She was clearly frustrated, and it was starting to frustrate me. She looked as if she wanted to say something to me, but she set her jaw. She just looked at me, her eyes wide and unblinking. The longer she stared at me, the angrier I got.

“Listen,” I said, in a voice that came out a little more harshly than I had intended. “If I could help you, I truly would. But I cannot. And really, you have nothing to worry about.”

I watched the woman take a deep breath and calm herself. “I’m surprised you really don’t know anything. So you can’t see how this will all end?”

It was a strange question, but I shook my head. “No,” I said truthfully. “I don’t know how it will end, but I can guess. I think they’ll tie these criminals to your brother’s death, and you’ll be able to move on.”

“Are you sure you didn’t speak to my brother?”

I shook my head. I was trying not to be short with the woman, but answering all these questions did get tiring. It seemed like people always wanted to know the same things from me. Could I see their future? Could I tell them how they were going to die? So far Amanda had stayed clear of the last one, but I had to figure that it was only a matter of time.

“I didn’t speak to him,” I said. “I sensed him, but not clearly. I already told you that, and I don’t have any new information.”

Amanda seemed to study me for a moment. “And are you really sure my brother hasn’t talked to you?”

I sighed long and hard. “No, and the only impressions from him were the ones I’ve already told you,” I said firmly.

Amanda nodded. “Thank you,” she said. “I’m sorry I was like that just now. This is all just so stressful.”

“I can imagine.”

“Trust me,” she said, rubbing her forehead with both hands. “You have no idea just how stressed I am.”

I nodded in sympathy, and then made my excuses to leave. I was more than a little cross. She could have told me on the phone that the police had discovered that her brother was murdered. I had wasted my time driving out to meet her, when all she wanted was a free fortunetelling session. And I had guests at home. I paused. On second thought, perhaps she had done me a favor.

I had just pulled out onto the highway when a call came through my Bluetooth. The sun in my eyes was too bright to allow me to see the screen, so I had no idea of the identity of the caller. I figured it was Christina wanting me to buy her more wine, assuming she was awake by now.

I was wrong. It was Sarah Curtis.

Chapter 22

I was in Sarah Curtis’s living room, sitting on a pale pink loveseat while she poured me a cup of tea from her place in an elegant armchair across from me. I couldn’t help but think of how I had last seen her, distraught. Now she was just Sarah Curtis, not the wife of a man in the process of being arrested. She finished pouring my drink and stood, stepping forward to hand it to me. I took it and smiled.

“Did you find the place easily?” she asked me.

“Yes,” I said. “It’s a lovely house.” And it was true. The place was large and impressive. I figured Glenn and the people he worked with made a pretty decent living. There really wasn’t any truth in the old saying that crime didn’t pay. It did seem to pay, and it seemed to pay a lot. I wondered how it made Sarah feel. She didn’t seem like a bad person, and I was sure she knew what her husband did for a living. Did it bother her at all? Did it keep her up at night?

“We put a lot of work into it,” Sarah said.

I looked through the huge timber bi-fold doors to the garden beyond. The garden was a sight to see. If I had to guess, I would say that Sarah had been working in the garden in an attempt to keep her mind off her husband being in prison. I wondered if it was helping. I had seen on the news that bail had been denied.

There were rows and rows of colorful flowers, and next to the rows were patches of disturbed dirt ready for flowers yet to be planted. A stone bench was surrounded by red rose bushes with enormous blooms. It looked like a photo from a magazine.

“You’re probably wondering why I called you to come visit today,” Sarah said. “Unless you already know.”

I suppressed a sigh as I thought back to my earlier conversation with Amanda. Once again, someone was assuming I could see the future, or read their mind. “No, I don’t know,” I said with a forced smile.

“Oh,” Sarah said.

I was pretty sure she was disappointed. People usually thought my ability was going to be something like a fun magician’s trick. “Well, I wanted to ask a favor of you,” she said.

People were starting to ask too many favors of me, but I bit my tongue and waited for her to continue.

“My father passed away last year. It was sudden. He wasn’t that old, not for someone these days, you know, and he wasn’t sick or anything. He was here one moment and gone the next.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. I had in fact felt the soft echo of a presence when I first came into the home, but that wasn’t rare. There were lingering spirits everywhere. I felt them in most places. But now that we were talking about him, I could recognize the presence. It was indeed Sarah’s father.

I leaned forward. “I feel him.”

“You do?” Sarah asked me, her voice high pitched with excitement.

I nodded. “He’s here. I felt him when I first came in, but I didn’t know who it was. I didn’t want to say anything, because often it’s someone else, someone not related, such as an old homeowner, or something like that.”

Sarah was looking at me. “The woman at the party said she recognized you, and as soon as she said that, I realized I did, too. I’ve seen you on TV before. But…”

I smiled at her gently. “You didn’t believe me.”

“It’s not that. I’m not really religious or anything. It’s just that I’ve never believed in ghosts.”

“You aren’t the first person to tell me that,” I said. There were many times when people would confront me, insisting that I was a fake, yelling that I should be ashamed of myself, or that I was working for the devil. I reached out to the ghost with my consciousness. A name floated out from the pulsing spirit. I saw it in my mind’s eye.
Gerald
.

“Gerald,” I said. “Your father’s name is Gerald.”

Sarah clamped a hand over her mouth. “How did you know that?” she asked me.

I simply shrugged.

“Well, I didn’t believe in that sort of thing, but I do believe in fate. What if you gave me your number for a reason? Maybe you were supposed to. I thought of my father.”

Now her father had come through fully. He was a blazing presence in the room, at least to me. I felt a mix of emotions from him: sorrow, sadness, a flash of anger. I had to force myself to concentrate on Sarah.

“He’s here?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

“Can you tell him that I miss him?”

“He can hear you,” I said. And indeed the feelings I was getting from the dead man faded away, to be replaced by calm, a sense of peace.

“He’s at peace with his death,” I relayed to his daughter. “He wants you to know that. He doesn’t want you to be stuck thinking that he’s unhappy.”

Sarah nodded. Her eyes filled with tears. “I miss him,” she said again.

“He misses you, too,” I said.

“Dad,” she said, and then paused. I supposed she felt foolish, addressing a spirit in front of me. I nodded my encouragement, and she continued. “Did Jason Taylor’s men who sold out Glenn kill you?”

The change was instant. Gone was the sense of peace, replaced by an overwhelming feeling of fear. I understood what he was trying to say.

“He doesn’t want you to bother with those people,” I said.

“Why not? Did they kill him?”

Her father was pushing doubt out for me to feel, but I found myself not believing him. “He says they didn’t,” I said. I didn’t add that, even though he was indicating that they hadn’t, I was sure he was lying.

“Prudence, please, I don’t believe him. Did they kill him?”

The dead man seemed to be waiting to hear what I would say. I shook my head after just a brief pause. “No,” I said. “He says he is at peace.”

Sarah wrung her hands. “He can be at peace, but that doesn’t change the fact that I think they killed him.”

“He’s at peace. He wants you to be at peace,” I said. I was beginning to feel like a broken record.

I felt Gerald again. I closed my eyes for a moment, and saw what he wanted me to see. I opened my eyes to find Sarah staring at me.

“Is he talking to you?”

“He wants you to stay away from those men, and he wants you to tell your husband the same.”

“He’s worried about me? And Glenn?”

“He loves you, and he actually did like Glenn. I get a sense that he regrets not telling your husband that himself.”

Sarah sniffed, long and loud. “They didn’t get along,” she said. “Is Glenn in danger?”

“He doesn’t have to be,” I said, taking cues from her father. “Neither of you has to be, but if you don’t stay away from them, you could be.”

“Is Glenn a bad man?” Sarah asked. I knew she wasn’t asking me, but her father.

“Your father says that Glenn isn’t a bad man, but he’s not making the right choices.”

Sarah nodded. “That’s exactly what I always tell him. And now he’s in jail. I told him not to work with those men. They killed my father. Don’t lie to me—I know they did!”

We were quiet for a moment, and then I spoke. “Did you know Brady Wayland?”

Sarah nodded, but then she shrugged. “Yes. Sort of. I didn’t really know him; I only saw him a few times. I saw him on that show. You remember the one? He was on it for a couple of seasons. I forget the name. I knew him from that, so I recognized him when I saw him. Why do you ask?”

“No doubt you’ve heard that he was killed? At first they ruled it as a suicide.”

“Yes, it was terrible.”

“But the police have changed their minds,” I said. “They’re now ruling it as a murder.”

Sarah put a hand over her mouth. “Oh my gosh. Who would want to kill him?”

“They haven’t arrested anyone yet,” I said. “The cause of death was a forced overdose.”

Sarah shook her head. “A forced overdose? I don’t understand.”

“He was injected with cocaine,” I said. “It looks like he was tied up, and they put a lethal dosage into his body.”

“That’s insane.” Sarah’s face was a mask of surprise.

“I know,” I agreed. “I wanted to ask, though, if you think he did drugs?”

“I never saw anything like that. Like I said, I met him a few times. He spoke with my husband. He was getting to know all the guys because he was doing that movie about Martin Taylor.”

“Did you ever see him take drugs?” I pressed.

“No.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes,” Sarah said. “I never saw anything like that. But just because I never saw it, it doesn’t mean nothing like that happened. I know who these guys are, and I know what my husband’s mixed up in. I’m not dumb. I just don’t get involved. I never wanted to get involved.”

“I’m sorry about your husband.”

Sarah waved me off. “Not your fault,” she said simply. “You think they killed Brady Wayland?”

I shrugged, even though that is exactly what I did think. I didn’t want to act too interested in the subject. Sarah still had connections with Jason Taylor’s gang. The last thing I wanted was for them to know I was interested. “Someone killed him.”

Sarah nodded. “I hope they find out who did it. And if it’s one of these guys, I hope they put them in jail for a long, long time.”

“Well, we’re both in agreement about that,” I said.

“I want to thank you for coming and helping me with my father. I really didn’t believe, but I do now. It’s good that you help people.”

I smiled. “I try.” It was true. I had always used my ability to help people. Yet now, in such a short time, I had become determined to help in a way I never thought possible.

The day got crazier, because no sooner had I got back to my car and turned on the ignition, than the police called me to ask me to come down to the station for questioning.