The Witch and the Gentleman (9 page)

He didn’t laugh. At least, not yet. Instead, he studied me closely. “I see. And where do you generally employ your services?”

Detective Smithy had an uncanny ability to look directly into me. Meaning, I knew he was sizing me up far differently than I was used to being sized up. The man was literally absorbing everything about me in ways that I suspected only a homicide cop could. What those ways were, I wasn’t entirely sure, but judging from the way his eyes touched on every aspect of my face, my features, my clothing, there wasn’t a whole lot this guy missed. Also, I intuitively sensed he was a hell of a fine detective.

“
I work at the Psychic Hotline.”

“
The Psychic Hotline? Those guys I see on TV?”

“
I’m one of those guys, or girls. There’s a few of us, actually. I work out of my home, though. Callers get rerouted to me. They are, of course, in for a heck of a surprise when they get me.”

Detective Smithy’s smallish face with its slightly askew cop mustache didn’t move much. But when I mentioned the Psychic Hotline, the errant whiskers twitched a little. “Oh?” he said. “What’s the surprise?”

“I’m really good at what I do.”

“
I’m sure you are,” he said, and this time his mustache didn’t twitch. “May I ask who hired you?”

“
Peter Laurie.”

He stared at me. “Peter Laurie hired you?”

“Yes.”

“
The father of the victim?”

“
Yes.”

He continued staring at me long and hard and I sensed that something was amiss. Now he drummed his fingers and looked down at the file. He tilted his head a little and, there, his mustache actually looked straight.

“Is there something wrong?” I asked.

“
There are many things wrong about the case, except I’m not at liberty to discuss them with you, Ms. Lopez.”

“
Peter said he was going to call you and give you permission to talk to me.”

“
Did he now?” said the detective.

“
Yes. Didn’t he call you?”

Detective Smithy held my gaze again, and I sensed a small energy shift in him. From one of rigidness and professionalism, to openness. He took in a lot of air, then finally nodded. “Yes, he did.”

“And he said that you could speak to me.”

“
Yes, he did.”

I sensed some of the detective’s misgivings here. I said, “Except, of course, it’s not his place to tell you who you can and can’t talk to.”

“True enough.”

“
But I want you to know that he did hire me—or tried to hire me. I told him I wouldn’t take his money.”

“
How did you meet Mr. Laurie?”

“
He called the Psychic Hotline.”

“
Did he request you specifically?”

I thought of Conn’s efforts to reach me and nearly smiled. Instead, I shook my head and said, “You get who you get. It’s all very random.”

I thought of Millicent and wondered if she had something to do with my chance meeting with her son. I was betting that she had.

“
I see,” said the detective. “And you proceeded to meet with him later?”

“
Yes, at his home. He showed me his daughter’s room.”

“
Did he mention if any new evidence had come to light?”

“
No. He just wanted a new...perspective on the case. I think I can give him that.”

“
Of course,” said Detective Hill.

“
You don’t believe me,” I said.

“
I’m not sure what to believe, Ms. Lopez.”

“
Just give me a chance to help.”

He looked at me sideways, fingers still drumming the case file, mind turning over rapidly, no doubt. Finally, he nodded. I sensed him tuning out, and about to shut me out, so I plunged in:

“I assure you, Detective. I’m good at what I can do, and I think I can help. I think I was meant to help, too.”

He looked like a man who was certain he was about to make a very bad decision. Finally, reluctantly, painfully, he nodded. “Okay. Let’s see what you can do, kiddo.”

“Kiddo?”

“
It’s cop speak.”

I smiled, and so did he. When he smiled, a few of the errant whiskers literally pointed directly at me. He said, “I’ve never worked with a psychic on a murder investigation.”

“And I’ve never worked with a cop on one, either.”

“
I suppose I should give you access to this file, except that it’s against the law for me to do so.” He drummed his fingers on the file, thought about it. Then told me he would have his secretary sum up the file for me. I told him that was good enough.

“
Come by tomorrow and it will be ready for you.”

“
Thank you, detective.”

“
What can I say? I’ll do anything to catch this piece of shit. He destroyed a whole family. Perhaps many families.”

On that note, he got up and led me over to the door. Once there, he said, “How is Peter doing these days? I haven’t seen him since his wife died.”

“Not good,” I said. “Not good at all.”

Detective Smithy was one inch taller than me. He held my gaze. Somehow, his cop mustache held my gaze, too. “No,” he finally said, “I don’t suspect he is.”

Chapter Nineteen

“Hi, this is Allison. Thank you for calling The Psychic Hotline. How can I help
you
see into the future?”

“
Oh, thank the good lord in heaven,” said Conn, and he sounded truly relieved.

“
More than nine tries this time?” I asked. As I spoke, I immediately linked-up to him psychically. In a matter of moments, I saw him in my mind’s eye sitting on his outdoor deck, this time in a robe and slippers. His robe was mostly closed. Conn had a majestic view of the Pacific Ocean. His home was surely worth millions.

I wondered if he knew that I could see him. Or, at least, suspected that I could see him. We’d never discussed my particular psychic strengths. In fact, we rarely, if ever, talked about anything psychic.

“Try
twenty
times,” he said. He reached for a cup of coffee, sipped it. The coffee swirled with cream. Far below his house, along the beach, I heard people laughing and playing. What a life.

“
Boy, you must really like talking to me,” I said.

“
You have no idea,” he said.

“
But why?” I asked. “Why do you keep calling me? We’ve never met. You have no idea what I look like.”

“
Before I answer that, can I ask if we are alone on the line?”

Good question. I did a quick scan and I felt that we were indeed alone. “We’re good,” I said. “So what gives?”

“You have a nice voice,” he said.

“
And that was enough?”

“
That was a
start
,” he corrected. “Do you remember why I called you initially?”

“
It was about your mother,” I said. “She’d recently passed.”

“
Yes, I had asked if you could tell me if she was okay. And you told me something I’d never expected to hear from an online psychic.”

We were both silent. I remembered, of course, exactly what I had said. I waited for him, and as I did so, I felt a very, very loving energy wash over me.

“You said,” he continued, “and I quote: ‘I don’t know.’”

He was right, of course. I didn’t know. I’d never fancied myself a medium. I was primarily a remote viewer, with growing abilities in other areas. But, so far, no growth in medium-ship.

Unless, of course, one counted seeing a full-blown ghost in my living room medium-ship. Which I didn’t. I could almost hear Millicent’s words now:
Not a ghost, dear. Spirit. There is a difference.

I said to Conn now, “Well, I wasn’t going to lie to you or waste your money.”

“But you could have,” he said. “You could have told me anything, and I probably would have believed you.”

I heard it in his voice...he was still looking for answers, or some type of validation that his mother was okay. Poor guy.

I said, “Well, that would have been wrong, and I’m not like that.”

In my mind’s eye, I saw Conn cross his arms over his chest, still holding his cell phone to his ear. He was wearing Ray-Ban sunglasses. Flecks of gray at his temples. He was tan and fairly toned. Okay, a lot toned. I already knew that, of course...but...it certainly looked like he’d been hitting the gym a little harder these days.

“And that was when it continued,” said Conn.

“
When
what
continued?” I asked.

“
My, ah, interest in you.”

“
Lucky me,” I said, although I smiled.

He smiled, too, and we spent a few minutes smiling at each other on the phone, except, of course, he didn’t know I was smiling, and he didn’t know I was watching him smile. As we sat there, with him absorbing the sun and working on his tan, and with me contemplating my morning cigarette, I had another loving sensation spill over me, this time followed by some words. I saw them, in fact, on a polished black tombstone: “Our Loving Rose.”

Almost instantly, my heart picked up a beat or two. I sat forward, adjusting my headset, and nearly knocking my laptop off my lap. “Does the name Rose mean anything to you, Conn?”

The image of Conn had been replaced by the tombstone, but I sensed very strongly that Conn had sat up himself. “Rose is my mother’s name. How did you know that?”

“Does...does her tombstone say ‘Our Loving Rose’?”

There was a long pause. “How...How did you know that, Allison?”

“I just saw it.”

I also saw him remove his sunglasses and bury his face in his hands. As he wept, I felt a wave of unconditional love, and I knew what it was and who it was for.

“Your mother, I think, is sending me love for you. A lot of love. More love than I’ve ever felt in all my life.”

I had to stop because now the tears were coming and I couldn’t speak, and Conn and I spent the next few minutes weeping silently over the phone.

Chapter Twenty

It was late, and I’d been drinking.

I was sitting in the Spirit Chair with the police report summary, which I’d picked up earlier and had read a half-dozen times. There was something in there. Something that the police had either failed to see or had missed completely.

I let my subconscious work on that. Or my Higher Self, or whatever I wanted to call it. Some things couldn’t be rushed. Some things were presented to us with perfect timing and it was our job to wait patiently, yet expectantly.

And I was very, very expectant that I would find an answer hidden within this summary.

Mostly, as I sat in the Spirit Chair, I was troubled. Troubled in a good way, perhaps. I was thinking about my experience with Conn. I’d never before shown signs of medium-ship and this was new to me.

Also, her love for him had been overwhelmingly pure and beautiful, and made me, on some level, wish I had a child of my own, to love so completely.

Of course, I needed a man for that, and I hadn’t felt like dating since my last two disasters. And by
disasters
, I meant my last two relationships had ended horribly. Both men had been murdered.

One had been killed by a silver-tipped arrow. And my last boyfriend, a man I had been engaged to and still loved and was still having problems moving past, had been killed by what is known as a
dim-mak
, or in martial arts speak, a
death-blow
.

Crazy stuff, I know. But the pain was real. For both men. Well, one man and one vampire. Yes, my relationship with Victor had been pleasure-based, and we both sort of used each other, too, but I’d grown close to him quickly. Hell, instantly. And I missed him like crazy.

Caesar Marquez, my brave and sexy boxer, had been a different story. We had so much in common, and I had been certain he and I would grow old together, although I was always—
always
—nervous about boxing. Turned out, I had good reason to be. He and I had discussed kids, too. Building a family together, a life together.

Thinking of him now, especially after a few glasses of wine, wasn’t a smart thing to do. The booze was liable to reduce me to tears for many hours, and leave me curled in the fetal position at the foot of my bed, or on the phone with Samantha, sobbing like a teenager while she made sympathetic noises. Samantha was a good friend, although it had taken her a while to come around. Same with me, I guessed. I didn’t make friends easily, but when I did, well, I bonded with them forever.

So, I forced myself to think of something else...and ended up thinking of some
one
else.

Conn.

What was his deal? Who was he? I had resisted doing too much research on the man. Yes, I had made sure he wasn’t a creep, but beyond that, I didn’t know much about him, and I didn’t
want
to know much about him. And if I was honest with myself, I would admit to the reason why: because I wanted him to tell me himself.

Perhaps over wine.

I sighed and shook my head and wiped the tears that had pooled in that small space between my upper cheekbone and lower eyelid.

Too soon,
I thought. The pain of losing Caesar was still too raw. I needed more healing. A lot more healing. And with that thought, I was reminded about Conn’s mother coming through.