by Bill Alive
“So you dated your employee?” I blurted.
“It’s a temp agency, ace. I wasn’t her boss. I got her hired, that’s it.”
“Of course,” Mark said, with a warning glare my way. “And you dated for awhile, right?”
“At least six months,” he said. He fell silent.
“And then?” Mark prompted.
Brett sighed. “Olivia was very … religious. I hadn’t noticed at first, but it got more and more intense. And then, all of a sudden, she was pushing for marriage.”
“Gotcha,” Mark said.
“We hadn’t been dating that long, you know?”
“Yeah,” Mark said. “But long enough to do more than hold hands, maybe?”
Brett snapped him an angry look. “I didn’t care about that.”
But I had a sudden feeling he did.
And that he’d realized Samantha might not be so uptight.
Then I thought, did Mark just vibe all that and then radiate it to me? Like, not even on purpose?
I scrutinized Mark, but he seemed to be focused on Brett with polite but intense concentration. If he’d been mind blasting me on purpose, he’d have definitely flicked me a glance.
Were we getting so connected that I might start vibing him? His normal thoughts? As if I were an empath?
Or … was I maybe super obsessing about my own random intuitions?
Either way, Brett seemed to sense our judgment. “I had plenty of legitimate reasons to take a break from that relationship,” he said. “I never told her we were definitely through. She was the one with the ultimatum.”
“No judgment, Brett,” Mark said. “We’re just trying to understand.”
Brett humphed.
“So did you keep in contact?”
Brett shrugged. “Not really.”
Mark waited.
“We didn’t!” Brett said.
Mark said gently, “It’s not your fault if Olivia was … suspicious.”
Brett startled. “How the hell do you know about that?”
“We are detectives,” Mark said.
Brett grimaced. “Olivia and I had barely talked in months,” he muttered. “Then, out of the blue, she texts me these accusations that were just … repulsive. So unlike her. Yes, she’d always been needy, but this was … jealous. Spiteful. Vicious.”
In a low voice, Mark said, “About you and Samantha?”
That was too far. Brett’s face flushed. His lean body tensed, and I thought he might lunge across the coffee table and punch Mark in he face. He didn’t, but he clenched his fist and his gaze burned.
“I don’t know who the hell you’ve been talking to,” he said, “but you get this straight. Sam would have died before she hurt Olivia. If she could’ve had her way, she’d have taken her daughter’s place on that damn rope. Whatever Olivia said to me, she was only upset about us breaking up.”
“And you responded by proposing?” Mark said, calm.
“I didn’t propose! I didn’t say anything! But after those crazy texts, I didn’t hear anything more, and the months went by, and eventually, I started to remember the good times and think, hell, maybe I miss her after all. So I texted her—”
“You proposed by text?” I said.
“I did. Not. Propose,” Brett said. “I texted I was open to getting back together. Maybe in her mind, that meant I was open to marriage.”
“Were you?” Mark said.
Brett’s face went hard.
“Understood,” Mark said.
“What?” Brett demanded. “Just say it.”
His eyes were glittering, not just angry, but expectant. Like he was vibing Mark, and he already knew what he’d hear.
I flinched, totally creeped out. I’d never thought about meeting another empath. Not to mention the sort that might use his superpowers to off his girlfriend.
Calm down, I told myself. Maybe he’s just really good at reading people. Isn’t that what he does all day long?
If Mark could sense any of this, he didn’t show it. He only said, with slow precision, “Brett. Can you give me your word that you don’t have feelings for Samantha?”
Brett sprang from his chair.
He lunged forward, and swept our untouched waters clean off the table. They smashed. He leaned both fists on the marble surface, looming over us.
“Get the fuck out of my house,” he said.
Without a word, Mark left.
He strode fast for the car, just slow enough to not be running away. Then he roared us the hell out of there.
“Oh my gosh, I thought he was going to strangle us!” I shouted. (I always have to shout over Thunder’s muffler issues.) “What did you vibe?”
“Everything you think I did,” growled Mark, who does not have to shout.
“But what did you vibe when we first walked in?”
“Make yourself useful. Pull up directions to Samantha’s.”
I realized that even though we’d made it back onto the main road, he was still flooring it. “We can’t go talk to Samantha now!” I wailed. “It’s past seven-thirty! My meeting’s at—”
“Yes, now,” Mark said. “Before Brett calls her.”
“So they are together!”
“Not sure. That’s why I’m speeding.”
“You didn’t vibe it?”
He just hit the gas harder.
The night was dark and sinking into fog. Not the best weather for speeding on country roads.
Samantha lived in a cruddy apartment complex in a cruddy part of town. The aging brick building had four floors and no elevator, and of course, she lived on top. The stairs smelled like cat urine.
We knocked at her scratched, worn door, but no one answered. Plus, a bagged newspaper lay on the stained carpet, dated from last Sunday.
Mark tried calling her. He got voicemail.
“Damn, I knew it,” he said. “She’s gone.”
“How’d you know?”
“That’s what Brett was vibing. He was obsessing about her before he even opened the door. But she left town right after the funeral, and she hasn’t said a word to him since.”
“Doesn’t he know where she is?”
“Nope,” Mark said. “And neither do we.”
Chapter 16
Mark drove home in a major funk. I didn’t feel so great myself.
Brett seemed a tad violent, his ex-girlfriend was dead, and Mark had just confirmed that the man was obsessed with his dead ex-girlfriend’s mother.
A mother who had left town so fast she hadn’t even canceled her newspaper. Not exactly the picture of innocence either.
“They can’t both be guilty!” I finally shouted, as Mark grumpily turned Thunder onto the last slow climb up our mountain.
“Who said they were?” Mark said.
“Oh! I thought that’s why you were frustrated!”
“I’m frustrated because Samantha skipped town,” he said. “Which means I have to do a fricking skip trace.”
“Skip trace?” I shouted. “Oh, like tracking someone down? That’s cool, investigators do that all the time!”
“Yes, they do. There is so much about skip traces in the stupid detective lessons,” Mark snapped. “So fricking tedious.”
I wondered why he was so irritated. It was like he was only finding out now that detective work wouldn’t be all hot clients and dashing rescues, and he was taking it personally.
And here I’d been thinking he was the mature one.
“We do need to find her, though, don’t we?” I shouted.
“Of course! Samantha can’t just skip town after her daughter dies. And I did vibe some serious guilt when she hugged Roger.”
“Roger! Oh my gosh!” I checked my phone. Quarter to eight. “Sweet! I can still make my meeting!”
Mark glowered. Oops.
Mark’s a great guy, but when he’s in a funk, he can be a bit allergic to enthusiasm. I tried to look stern and nonchalant, but it was too late. He scraped the car into our g
ravel drive, cut the engine, yanked the parking brake, and said, with dangerous calm, “Good move using this meeting thing to get to Roger.”
“Um,” I said. “I wasn’t really planning on investigating.”
“Are you kidding?” He eyed me. “Didn’t these people know Olivia? She was part of his little group!”
“I know, but … it’s just…”
“What?”
“It’s a spiritual discussion group! How am I supposed to get them to talk about Olivia?”
“You’re trying to impress this Roger guy?”
“I am not!”
“Pete, don’t even—”
“Just because you can see my secret thoughts doesn’t mean you know what I’m really thinking!”
Yes, I know, it wasn’t my best comeback. But it was true. Sort of. I hoped.
I crossed my arms. “Can I please go? I really don’t want to be late.”
Mark shrugged. “You know, the car’s been sounding a little sketchy. Maybe we’d better let it rest tonight…”
“No! Mark! Come on!”
Mark raised his eyebrows. The ultimatum was clear.
I groaned. “Fine.”
He smiled and gave me the keys.
I gunned Thunder back down the mountain as fast as I dared, fuming. How was I supposed to make a bunch of new super-spiritual friends if I was prying about their dead friend at the same time? Why was Mark making me do this? Why couldn’t he interview them?
The fog had rolled in for real now, so thick that the headlights almost made it worse. I tried my brights — this twisty stretch of highway back into town really needed brights at night — but they only made the fog a glaring wall. So I drove with meager headlights, barely able to see in the dark and very much alone.
I kept obsessing over Mark’s jab. Did I really just want to impress Roger? Why did I care about this stupid meeting so much?
Well, it’s not like I’d ever impressed my real dad. As far as Dad was concerned, my life was on indefinite pause until I got over this delusion that I could find work that actually meant something. He’d check back in when I became an accountant or something, and married a lawyer, so we could make piles of money and die of boredom.
He couldn’t seem to process that I wanted to live, I wanted to fall in love and stay there, and do something real every single day.
Like catch murderers, for instance. Mark and I had freaking saved people’s lives. And all Dad could do was bug me about getting my own health insurance.
Something terrible happens to grownups. They mummify. They crawl in the coffin by forty and just go through the motions till they officially stop breathing.
Did that have to happen? I didn’t know any grownups who’d escaped it. Vivian, maybe — that was probably why I worked for her.
But even Vivian felt like a seeker, like she hadn’t figured it out, but at least she was looking. She’d always be searching and twenty-two.
Roger, though … Roger was different. You could see it in his eyes. He felt like more than a seeker, like whatever it was, he’d found it, and he knew.
I’d never met anyone who had that certainty. And I wasn’t going to blow that just to ask a bunch of painful questions that might not even help the case.
If Mark wanted the info so bad, he could come out here himself.
Done. Decided. I hoped.
When I reached Roger’s neighborhood, the fog was still so thick that I could barely see the houses. They seemed smallish, but the lots were big, at least a few acres each. That’s how it is out here — just a turn or two off the country highway, you can have lots of land and privacy. I wondered if they had any gorgeous mountain views for meditation.
In the fog, I nearly missed his house. As I walked up to the old wooden porch, I could barely see the yard, but the grass seemed high, especially for late fall. I felt a flicker of judgy disdain, then realized I was channeling my Dad. What did I care how often they mowed the lawn?
Still, when I knocked, I couldn’t help a nervous chill.
When was the last time I’d gone out to see a bunch of total strangers? This was like going to your first birthday party at a new school. Oh yeah, like that time in sixth grade when I’d decided it would be a good idea to tell Madison I liked her, right in the middle of her own party, within earshot of the hired clown.
No wonder I hate clowns.
Anyway … I was all grown up now, and what had Roger said? Huge spiritual potential. This could open a whole new chapter of my life.
The door creaked open. A very tall and very skinny woman in a frumpy sweater and a long drapey skirt surveyed me with a cool, unfriendly stare.
She was like a scarecrow, easily over six feet, like the aunt in James and the Giant Peach who’s stretched too high. If Roger was youngish middle-aged, she was oldish middle-aged, with huge round glasses like an ancient, all-seeing librarian. Her short hair had been curled in a respectable matronly hairdo … except for one thing…
“Whoa!” I blurted. “Your hair’s the exact same shade of red as Roger’s!
Her lips pursed.
My initial theory had been that she was Roger’s much older sister, with an uncannily similar family hair shade. Now it hit me that maybe she was his wife. And dyeing. And maybe not super thrilled that I’d led with the latter factoid. I braced myself for a bitter comeback.
Instead, she said, with chilly cheer, “Red for the Sacred Heart.”
I still have no idea what she was talking about.
“Welcome,” she said, in a crisp conversational reboot, like none of that had happened. “You must be Pete. I’m Roger’s wife. Mrs. Turcot.” She stepped back and nodded me into the living room with a curt jerk. “Roger’s not ready yet, but you can meet—”
“Theodore?” I blurted. “What are you doing here?”
There he sat, Mark’s pasty ex-client, in the ample flesh, taking up space on a dumpy sofa. At the sight of me, Theodore’s perpetual frown soured into a scowl.
He cleared his throat. “Roger invited me,” he said stiffly.
“At the funeral?” I said. “That’s where he invited me.”
Theodore’s pudgy face flushed, and I could tell he was thinking the same thing I was. We felt like two girls who’d both been asked to the same prom by some dude hedging his bets.
Very, very awkward.
Mrs. Turcot could have risen to the occasion, done the whole hostess chit-chat routine. Instead, she didn’t say a word.
She just sat at the dining room table, which was crammed in a corner of the smallish living room / dining room / everything else room, and started crafting some necklace or something with plastic beads. The table was littered with bead jars in a rainbow of cheap colors, plus piles of necklaces she’d already made. Big necklace fan, it seemed.
The farthest I could sit from Theodore was a piano bench. I perched there, miserable and awkward, racking my brain for a conversation topic besides Olivia.
I tried to distract myself by taking in the room, like it was all just so fascinating it wasn’t even occurring to me that no one was talking.
Then I realized it kind of was fascinating.
It was totally crammed with religious artwork. Like, enough for a mid-sized church.
For starters, multiple crucifixes hung on the walls. I’d never seen a room need more than one.
Then, in one corner, a shelf had a statue of a boy that had this gigantic crown with, yes, a cross, but also, the boy was wearing this huge lacy pink dress. Okay. Was that like a doll kid Jesus? Or maybe the group was also into some sixteenth-century French prince?
The top of the piano had three separate statues of a woman in a veil. Pretty sure they were all Mary. Although one statue had three huge roses embedded on her chest, which honestly was kind of weird.
But then, who was I to talk? Valley Visions sold statues of elephant people with multiple arms.
Then it clicked what Mrs. Turcot was making. A rosary. Lots of rosaries.
My
gut quavered a bit. I was getting a distinct spidey sense that this group might be a little heavy into the whole Christian thing. Hadn’t Brett said that Olivia was super religious? I had a sudden urge to bolt.
Then I reminded myself again how nice Roger had been. Just because he bought statuary in bulk didn’t automatically make him narrow-minded. Wait and see, I thought.
Besides, maybe I was the one being narrow-minded. Take Theodore there. For all I knew, he might be totally devoted to his boring overweight wife. Maybe she had all kinds of super-spiritual beauty, and Theodore could see it. Theodore might have huge hidden potential too. Just like everyone in this awesome group.
I straightened, excitement renewed, ready to ask Theodore how Louise was doing and mean it.
Then another dude slunk in.
He crept in from the kitchen, a tall, stringy creep with a creepy stringy wisp of a goatee.
I’d thought Theodore’s pseudo-beard was bad, but at least it didn’t look like a medical problem. And before you get all judgy about me judging strangers by their attempts at facial hair, you’ve got to admit that with some guys, there has to be an element of serious self-delusion.
I wish they could make a selfie app that would give you an alert: “INSUFFICIENT CHIN HAIR.” And maybe keep bugging you till you shaved.
Oh, and maybe it could crop just the hair part of the photo and submit it anonymously for a crowdsourced verdict. “99.1% vote SHAVE URGENT, based on 518 reviews.”
At least this new dude did have nice, thick, naturally red hair in tight curls. Unlike the Turcots, his red was darkish, not a radioactive dyed glare.
I still needed to work out how I felt about a wife dyeing her hair to match her husband’s. Actually, was Roger dyeing his hair too? He still looked young enough to maybe pull it off, at least until you saw his wife … why would they ever use the same shade? It was all so confusing.