Welcome to Blissville

by Walker, Aimee Nicole

  Gabe’s words and touch eradicated the uneasy feelings I had once Emory showed up at my salon. It was so easy to forget that the real world even existed when I was in his arms, but reality often found a way to make her presence known and knocked me back down to earth. Not this night, I vowed. I didn’t know what Gabe found at Mr. Robertson’s house, but I knew it had to be awful.

  Gabe held me tight to him for so long that he drifted off to sleep. I didn’t want to move and wake him, but I was starving, and his after-sex snoozes could last a while. I pressed a final kiss to his neck and slowly maneuvered out of his arms until I stood next to the bed looking down at him. The deeply grooved worry lines in his forehead from earlier were gone, and his mouth looked relaxed instead of tight with tension. I just hoped they stayed gone when he woke from his little nap.

  I quietly pulled on a pair of sweats and a T-shirt before I tiptoed out of the room. “Don’t you dare leave off your mushrooms,” Gabe said drowsily just as I was about to pull the bedroom door closed.

  “Triple mushrooms it is,” I said saucily before shutting the door. Mushrooms were still a hotly contested issue between us. The truth was that I didn’t always want mushrooms on my pizza, but Gabe thought I left them off because of him anytime that I didn’t order them.

  I retrieved my cellphone from where I left it and called Marty’s Pizzeria to place my order. “Hello, Josh,” Marty said when he answered. “You want your usual?”

  “Not tonight, Marty,” I answered. “I’d like a large sausage and green pepper with extra cheese.”

  “No mushrooms, huh kid?” he asked.

  Damn, was he on Gabe’s payroll? “I’ll take an order of fried mushrooms and mozzarella sticks instead.”

  “Be there in about thirty minutes,” Marty said then hung up the phone.

  I let Jazzy out of his cage to play and run through his tunnels while I watched from the couch with Buddy. Diva—never one to be left out—jumped on the back of the couch and proceeded to bathe her paws loudly. I looked at her over my shoulder, and her pale blue eyes dared me to complain. That ornery cat wouldn’t hesitate to swat my ears with her paw.

  “Come give me some tongue!” Savage squawked from his cage.

  “Not right now, Dirty Bird!”

  “Dirty Bird!”

  I flipped the television on and started watching an episode of my favorite home improvement show while I waited for the pizza delivery guy to show up. The doorbell for the back door rang a little earlier than I expected, but I didn’t give it much thought. I grabbed my wallet and headed downstairs. I opened the door without looking to see who it was and regretted it immediately. Seriously, what kind of heinous act needed to be committed against me before I’d learn my lesson? Apparently attempted murder and stalking weren’t enough to do the trick.

  “Oh, it’s you,” I said flatly. No one would volunteer me for the neighborhood welcoming committee. What I really wanted to say was, “What the fuck do you want?”

  “Hello to you, too.” Emory “Fabio” Jackson wore a humorous smile plastered on his face. As if the dude commanded the wind, it kicked up as it had earlier in the day to send his hair floating artfully around his head. “I wanted to introduce myself formally,” he said, pushing the bottle of wine that sported a big red bow toward me.

  I looked at the bottle suspiciously then back at him. “I don’t drink,” I lied.

  “Oh.” His cheeks pinkened with embarrassment in the fading April sunlight. I almost felt bad for lying to him. The truth was, I irrationally didn’t want anything from him inside my house. “Your boyfriend perhaps?”

  “He’s not my boyfriend.”

  “Oh?” Was that hopefulness I heard in his voice?

  How did he even know about Gabe anyway? He’d only lived next to me for a day. I had closed the damn bedroom curtains, so I was sure he hadn’t seen us getting naked. I reasoned that he would’ve had several chances to see Gabe coming and going from our home and calmed myself. “That’s much too tame of a word for what Gabe is to me,” I told him. “He’s more of a beer man, anyway. Thank you for thinking of us, though. Mrs. Hastings across the way loves that kind of wine. She’s the beige house with burgundy shutters.” I pointed to her house just in case my message wasn’t clear.

  “Uh, okay,” he said slowly. I expected him to turn and walk back down the steps, but apparently, Emory was a glutton for punishment. “My name is Emory Jackson,” he said, extending his hand toward me.

  I wasn’t proud of the way I scrutinized his hand. I wanted to tell him I was a germaphobe, but one lie was bad enough. I hesitantly shook his hand and was pleased when nothing weird happened. “Josh Roman,” I replied. “My boyfriend,” for lack of a better word, “is Gabriel Wyatt. He’s a detective with the Blissville PD with a big gun. Real big.” I was blabbering at that point because I just wanted the guy to go away and didn’t know how to make it happen without coming right out and saying it.

  “Sunshine, are you touting my attributes to the pizza delivery guy again?” Gabe asked as he came down the stairs. I opened the door wider so Gabe could see who was on our back porch. “Oh, hey, you’re the new guy who moved in next door,” Gabe said with a friendly smile. “Gabriel Wyatt,” he said, extending his hand.

  “Emory Jackson,” I said for our new neighbor. Both men looked at me oddly when they heard the hint of irritation in my voice. I really needed to learn how to be subtle.

  “Look, Sunshine, he brought your favorite wine,” Gabe said, unknowingly betraying me.

  Emory narrowed his eyes in confusion over why I lied to him about not drinking. I had no explanations for why I didn’t like him; I just didn’t. “Sunshine, huh?”

  “Yep,” Gabe said, proud of the name he’d given me.

  “I just bet he’s a ball of fire,” Emory commented. His eyes widened when he realized how his statement sounded. “I-I didn’t mean sexually.”

  “Why the hell not?” I demanded. “You don’t think I can burn shit down?” Who was this guy who pushed himself in my space not once, but twice, and insulted me? “I burn hotter than you could possibly handle.”

  “Take it easy there, Stud Muffin,” Gabe said good-naturedly. “He wasn’t insulting your sexual prowess. I think our new neighbor just meant you’re a feisty guy.”

  I pinned Emory with a death glare and said, “I am feisty. All the time and everywhere.”

  “I think I made the wrong impression here,” Emory said. He pushed the bottle of wine toward Gabe, who graciously accepted his offering. “I’m hoping not to make an ass of myself the next time we run into each other.” Next time he’d be in my chair, so if he got out of line, I’d change him from Fabio to Justin Bieber so fast his head would spin.

  “You’re fine,” Gabe assured him. “We’re all good.”

  Emory looked at me for several awkward moments. “No, but we will be in time,” he said before he turned and walked down the steps of the back porch. “Nice shirt, by the way.”

  I looked down and saw I had put on one of the graphic tees that Gabe bought me. That one had a large blow dryer on the front and read: Want a blow job?

  “What the fuck did he mean by that?” I asked when he was at the end of our driveway. I clearly wasn’t referring to his comment about my shirt.

  “Why don’t you tell me,” Gabe said, watching the strange man across the alleyway that bisected our properties. The pizza delivery guy pulled in just as I opened my mouth to answer him. “Save that for when we’re back upstairs. I have a feeling it’s a long story.”

  “It’s not a long story,” I told Gabe once we were upstairs on the couch with a plate of pizza on our laps. I told Gabe about me lusting after the racing stripes on his car and trying to guess who was moving in based on the furniture that the movers carried inside the house. “The man looked up at my window like he knew to look for me. It was like he was looking inside my brain.”

  “Just how long were you watching the guy?” Gabe asked, pinning me with a narrowed ga
ze. “People know when they’re being watched. You know this from the time Billy slashed your tires. You once told me that you could feel him watching you.”

  “I could feel his malevolence,” I told Gabe. “That’s not what this was. I was just checking out the new neighbor and had no ill will toward him.”

  “Were you lusting after the guy?” Gabe actually sounded jealous.

  “You can’t seriously be worried about Fabio,” I said. “Babe, believe me when I say that I’m not attracted to him.”

  “Then what are you so worried about?” he wanted to know.

  “He turned up in my salon to schedule an appointment with me today. Chaz said he asked for me specifically. He’s been here for less than twenty-four hours and already knew who I was. Doesn’t that sound suspicious to you?”

  “Not in this town,” Gabe remarked. “All it took was him having a cup of coffee at The Brew this morning and asking for a good place to get his hair cut.”

  “Cut,” I snorted. “Do you think those highlights are natural?” I asked Gabe.

  “Uh, I didn’t notice his hair,” Gabe replied, a bit snidely.

  “What does that mean?” I asked Gabe, feeling my ire coming on.

  Gabe set his plate on the table and turned to me. I saw emotions I never wanted to see in his eyes: insecurity and dread. “What I noticed was that he only had eyes for you.” True, but it didn’t feel sexual to me. It was something far more unsettling to me, although I couldn’t quite name what it was.

  “It doesn’t matter, Gabe, because he can’t have me. I belong to you.” I picked his plate up off the coffee table and handed it to him. “Eat your dinner. Skipping meals is the last thing you need to do while under this much stress.” I shook my head in disbelief that Gabe could entertain that my heart would ever belong to someone else after he held it in his hand.

  “I don’t think I like him,” Gabe said.

  “I know that I don’t like him, which was why I told him I didn’t drink when he tried to hand me the bottle of wine. How’d he know my favorite wine, anyway? Who the fuck in town would’ve told him that?” I asked.

  “Good point since you drive into the next town to buy it.” Gabe narrowed his eyes. “It’s possible that it was a lucky guess, but I think I need to do a little digging in to our new neighbor.”

  “I agree,” I said. “I can’t shake the feeling that Fabio’s brought something bad to town with him.”

  “I’ll see what I can find out,” Gabe promised.

  I felt guilty that he would even waste a minute of his work day looking at that guy when the internet was a hotbed of information. After we had finished eating, I pulled up my internet browser on my tablet and typed his name in the search box.

  I didn’t go into the search with a lot of expectations, but what I found shocked the hell out of me. There was a wide variety of photos of the man along with articles about his psychic abilities. “I don’t believe it,” I said.

  “What?” Gabe asked when he returned after stacking our plates in the dishwasher. I turned my tablet around for him to see. Gabe took it out of my hands and began clicking things. “Well, what do we have here?” he asked.

  “I wouldn’t know because you took my tablet,” I reminded him.

  Gabe hooked his arm around my neck and pulled until my head rested against his chest and I could see what he was reading. “The guy has been on several of those cold case shows, and a few psychic investigation shows too. This article is from last year. ‘Psychic Emory Jackson led police to a location in the woods where he claimed Tira Strebor, age twenty-two, had been buried by her killer. After authorities had recovered Ms. Strebor’s remains, Mr. Jackson was investigated and later cleared of any wrongdoing. He was out of the country at the time of Ms. Strebor’s abduction.’ Here’s an article about how they solved her abduction and murder with his help,” Gabe said.

  “Do you believe in that stuff?” I asked Gabe.

  “There have been plenty of documented cases where psychics have provided clues that have helped solve cases,” he told me. “I think for every legitimate psychic there are fifty more that are frauds. It’s not an impressive ratio.” Gabe thumbed through the articles written about Emory’s involvement with police investigations. Some of them included photographs of the guy on the scene with law enforcement while others were clearly posed for effect.

  “I don’t think his appearance in our town is necessarily a good thing,” I told Gabe, convinced that my trepidation was warranted.

  Gabe had found an article that was titled: Psychic’s Abilities Started After Death of Husband. I’d nestled in closer and listened as Gabe read the article out loud. In January 2012, Emory and his husband, River Jackson, were involved in a single-car accident after coming home from celebrating River’s birthday with some friends. They were five miles from home when River hit a patch of black ice on a bridge and lost control of his car. Emory hadn’t been wearing a seatbelt and was ejected from the car before it went over the side of the bridge and plunged into the frigid water below. Emory came out of his coma a week later and learned of his husband’s death. He said his abilities began a few months later and it felt like his late husband was working through him to help people in need.

  “That’s really sad,” I said somberly. I couldn’t imagine waking up to find that Gabe was taken from me. Hell, just the thought had tears stinging the back of my eyes.

  “I can’t even imagine,” Gabe added. I knew he was thinking the same thing by the way he pulled me even tighter against his side. “Damn, how does a guy get up the next day after learning something like that?”

  “I guess he believes there’s something more he has left to accomplish or he wants to honor his husband’s memory,” I replied. “It sure as hell wouldn’t be easy.” That same ominous feeling I’d felt before permeated my body and left me cold, so much so that my teeth began to chatter in the warm comfort of my home. I closed my eyes and willed the fear away. Once I had myself together, I looked up at Gabe and asked, “What do you think it means that he’s in Blissville? We don’t have any unsolved cases, do we?” I asked.

  Gabe appeared to be contemplating his answer as he stretched his neck by moving his head from left to right. The wrinkled forehead and frown he wore on his mouth didn’t alleviate any of the uncertainty I felt. “I guess we’ll find out when he reveals his purpose to us,” he said. “I can tell you one motherfucking thing his visions didn’t reveal, and that was you in his bed. You’re my Sunshine.”

  “Damn straight,” I replied.

  “Not even close,” Gabe shot back, causing me to almost choke on my drink of beer.

  “Ass,” I said.

  “Pirate,” he replied like we were playing a word association game.

  “Ass Pirate! Ass Pirate!” Savage squawked.

  “Look what you did,” Gabe and I said at the same time.

  “Me?” I asked. “You’re the one teaching him horrible language.”

  “Oh, okay. Savage just happened to teach himself the word cumguzzler then,” Gabe said accusingly.

  “He came to me preprogrammed with that one,” I said defensively. “I refuse to take the blame for his salty language. Dirty Bird!”

  “Ass Pirate!” Savage shot back, not following the program at all.

  Gabe and I couldn’t help but bust out into laughter over the outrageousness of the situation. It was just what we needed to pull ourselves out of the somber mood we’d found ourselves in after reading about Emory’s situation. I turned on a new episode of our favorite couple fixing up houses for home buyers, and we enjoyed the rest of the evening. The world was filled with uncertainty, but there was no reason to waste precious moments on borrowing trouble before it arrived.

  I picked up Dorchester from the sheriff’s department the next morning because we needed Robertson’s house keys from the evidence locker. His house showed no signs of forced entry, so we locked the house up after we were through the day before and logged the keys in as eviden
ce. A house fire call came over the radio while we were en route to Robertson’s house to look for another notebook that might contain notes about recent meetings. A farmer on a different road saw the plumes of black smoke and called 911.

  “I don’t fucking believe it,” Dorchester exclaimed. “Did you recognize that address?”

  “Sure did.” I flipped on my lights and siren so we could get there quicker. “This can’t be a coincidence,” I told Dorchester.

  “Why’d the guy wait until after we discovered the body to torch the place? Why not torch the place with Robertson inside? There would’ve been a high probability that we ruled that the fire caused Robertson’s death,” Dorchester said.

  “Maybe he wanted us to know he killed Robertson,” I remarked. “The fire could be his attempt to make sure we don’t find anything else. Maybe word got around that we carted off a bunch of boxes and he didn’t want us coming back to find anything else.”

  When we arrived on the scene just a few minutes later, angry red and orange flames completely engulfed the old farmhouse. Acrid smoke filled the air and thick, black smoke billowed from the two-story structure. The firefighters had brought in water tankers, but nothing was going to save Robertson’s place. You could hear the fire roaring, wood splintering, and objects falling inside. The firemen battled the flames as best they could, but the old, somber house gave a loud, shuddering groan and collapsed in on itself.

  I approached the man shouting out orders to the men scrambling to prevent the fire from spreading to the nearby barns. “Lieutenant, I know this is premature to ask but do you have any idea if this fire was accidental?”

  “I can’t say which accelerant they specifically used right now, but I can promise you this was not an accidental fire. Sure, the house and the timber is dry, but it still burned too hot and too fast. The fire marshal and his arson dog will investigate once we put the fire out.” A call came over his radio about additional tankers on their way to assist from neighboring townships. “Excuse me, fellas,” he said then walked away to respond to dispatch.