by Dete Meserve
“Actually,” Alex said, running his fingers through his hair. “Shondra in security says this woman is Bonnie’s psychic—the one she consults every week.”
Let me tell you what I think about psychics. They’re all frauds. Fakes. They guess bits of information about you and use it to tell you What You Already Know. Then they use that information to make up What You Want to Hear so you’ll come back again to learn What You Already Know.
I knew that. But clearly Bonnie Ungar didn’t. So for job security’s sake, I agreed to meet with the psychic. We set up the interview in one of the recording studios, but I told the tech guy not to record the session. The fastest way to wipe out my credibility would be to record an interview with a psychic.
Melanie Richards wasn’t what I’d expected. For one thing she was young. Maybe twenty-five. And pretty. With long, straight, dark hair and deep-set eyes. There were no crystals hanging from her neck or wrists, and she wasn’t wearing anything that could be described as psychic clothes—just simple slacks and a sweater I recognized from Banana Republic. The only obvious sign that she was a psychic was her pair of Birkenstocks. Mere mortals no longer wore them—certainly not in LA.
“You’re from the East Coast, are you?” she said, settling into the mesh chair.
“St. Louis,” I said. One wrong.
“But you’ve spent some time there. In school.”
“I went to Columbia in New York.” Okay, one right.
“Your father,” Melanie said. “He’s an important leader. A congressman or senator.” Another one right. But anyone who Googled me could easily find out that my father was Senator Hale Bradley. Besides, why was she telling me about myself when she was supposedly here to talk about Good Sam?
“And something else.” She fixed her gaze on a spot about two feet above my head. “Someone in your life wants your attention. But you keep pushing him away.”
That was a little close for comfort. Then again that statement could apply to a lot of people.
“You’ve also just met someone new. Someone you hadn’t expected. But you’re not sure if he’s into you or not.”
How could she have known about my meeting Eric Hayes? It was enough to cancel out the one wrong guess.
“Do you understand what I’m talking about?” She continued to look at the spot on the wall.
“Yes.” But is he interested in me?
Melanie fell silent for a long moment. Then she turned to look straight at me, her deep brown eyes bearing down hard on me. “I came here to tell you about Good Sam. He’s in the news everywhere, of course, and last night, I got a reading on him—you might call it a flash of insight—and I know Bonnie would want me to share it with you.” She flipped her hair back. “He’s in his thirties. He’s wealthy, successful. He’s doing this to prove something.”
“What is he trying to prove?”
She was silent for a long moment. With her eyes closed, I thought maybe she had fallen asleep. “He’s not bad. He’s done something. Something wrong. And he’s trying to undo it.”
“And why these people?” I asked.
Melanie scanned the space on the wall, moving her head back and forth slightly, as though she were reading words written right above my head.
Her voice was warm and gentle. “They mean something to someone he loves.”
“Why is the number eight stamped on the bags with the money?”
“It’s an important number for him. It has significance in his life.”
“What’s his name?”
She was silent for nearly a minute. “I can’t see that,” she said finally.
“How do I find him?”
“You must ask the universe to guide you in your quest.”
Okay, now she was talking like a psychic. I half expected her to bring out a Ouija board and summon some spirits.
She stood up. “That’s all.”
I stood up too, trying to produce an expression that looked like I believed her. At least a little.
“There’s something else,” Melanie said, fixing her eyes on a spot two feet above my head again. “There’s something I should’ve told you when we began. You will be the one who discovers who Good Sam is.”
I didn’t know what to make of Melanie Richards. I think she genuinely believed she had psychic powers, but her descriptions of Good Sam’s motives were too vague to be helpful. Even so, I had to admit the hairs on the back of my neck rose every time I thought about her prediction.
As much as I wanted to believe I’d be the one to discover Good Sam’s identity, I knew Melanie’s whole shtick was quackery. I could’ve made up the same gobbledygook, and I don’t have a psychic bone in my body.
By the time I returned to the newsroom, the assignment meeting was long over. There was a box of Godiva chocolates on my desk. I searched for a note or card, but there wasn’t one. I figured Jack had sent them, so I dumped them in the trash—which is a shame because I love Godiva chocolates. Just the smell of the crème-brûlée dessert chocolate with layers of butterscotch caramel and vanilla cream makes me feel like I’m eight years old again.
Josh came up to my desk. “I heard you had to interview a psychic. What’d she say?” His eye fell on the candy in my trash can, and the smile faded from his face. “Hey, why’d you throw those chocolates away?”
“I’m on a diet,” I lied.
He pulled the box from the trash. “Wish I'd known. They’re from me.”
“Why?”
“Um, Cathy in Human Resources said it was your birthday tomorrow?”
How could I have forgotten my own birthday? Especially this one. After tomorrow, I’d only have 364 days left in my twenties bank account. Three hundred and sixty-four days until I was no longer a “promising young reporter” and quietly, desperately slipped into “seasoned reporter” status. Another year until thirty.
“Okay, I’m not really on a diet,” I said, taking the box from him. “I thought they were from someone else.”
“I get it. You thought they were from him. The guy you won’t talk about.”
I nodded. Growing up in a political family had taught me one important lesson. Don’t talk about past or current loves, and keep the personal out of the spotlight, because someone might try to use it to gain something from you.
Josh grabbed a chocolate from the box and popped it into his mouth. “Alex says you were meeting with a psychic. What’d she say?”
“She said I’d be the one to discover Good Sam’s identity.”
“Nut case?”
“Surprisingly normal...for a psychic,” I admitted.
I looked over and saw Alex coming toward my desk, carrying a small box. “I finally reached Paul Henning, the man who bought Residential Realty from Eric Hayes,” he said.
“Any luck?”
He shook his head. “Dead end. He’s been out of the country, but he says there’s ‘no way’ Good Sam has anything to do with him or Residential Realty.”
I frowned. “Which means we have zero leads.”
“If it’s any consolation, apparently no one else does either.” He placed the box on my desk. “Oh, and this is for you. The front desk says it was ringing.”
“Ringing?”
“You know, like a phone?” Alex said.
“Maybe it’s another birthday present,” Josh said.
The plain brown box appeared to have been delivered by a local messenger service, but there was no return address. It was also silent. I started to open it, and just as I touched the bubble wrap inside, it chimed. I dug through the packing to find a brand-new iPhone.
I answered the call. “Hello?”
“Happy birthday.” Jack’s warm voice came on the line.
“I thought we agreed that you’d stop sending me things,” I snapped.
Hearing my sharp tone, Josh and Alex slunk away from my desk.
“It’s your birthday tomorrow, and this is the only way I figured I’d get you to talk to me,” Jack drawled.
&n
bsp; “We’ve already said everything that needs to be said.”
“What will it take to make you change your mind?”
“I appreciate the thought,” I said quietly. “Promise me, Jack. Promise me you won’t call me again.”
“I really hope you’ll change your mind about me. And when you do, I’ve programmed all my numbers in that phone.”
I hung up and dropped the phone into my desk drawer. I ran my fingers through my hair, still shaky from the call. Had I been too tough on him? His gift wasn’t inappropriately lavish, unlike his earlier ones. Days after the breakup, he’d sent me a Cartier watch, and for Christmas he’d given me a David Yurman necklace, which I’m pretty sure retailed for five thousand dollars. Maybe I should’ve viewed the phone as a kind of symbolic olive branch.
The phone on my desk rang, startling me. I grabbed the receiver. “I thought we agreed you’d stop calling.”
“We did?” I heard a man’s voice say. But it wasn’t Jack.
“I’m sorry. Who’s this?” I asked.
“Eric Hayes. Sounds like you get some pretty annoying calls.”
“More so lately.” I wasn’t sure what else to say. But I did know I should say something witty or charming so he wouldn’t know how happy I was to hear his voice, calm and steady, on the other end of the phone. “I just met with a psychic who says I’m going to figure out who Good Sam is. Are you calling to make this easy and confess to being him?” I hope I sounded casual, not like I was trying too hard.
A distorted voice came over a loudspeaker on his end, followed by a series of tones.
“Sorry, but I’ve got to run. Could we meet at Sam’s Bagels, the one around the corner from Channel Eleven? How about seven tomorrow morning?”
I felt the air back up in my lungs. Was this a kind of date? Or was he asking to meet me because I was a reporter at Channel Eleven? Was this about Good Sam?
“Sam’s Bagels at seven,” I repeated.
Chapter Six
The next morning I spent more time than usual getting ready. Putting my hair in rollers to give it extra volume. Applying a little more blush than usual. I tried on three outfits before settling on a raisin brown blazer with pencil skirt and delicate gold necklace. As I glanced one final time in the car mirror, I kicked myself for going overboard. This wasn’t a date. It was breakfast at a bagel shop.
It had been six months since I’d broken it off with Jack, and I hadn’t dated anyone since then. A while back, Teri had tried to set me up on a date with a guy she knew from the marketing department at Hallmark Channel, but even though he looked fun in his Facebook photo, I turned down the date. I wasn’t ready.
But I was attracted to Eric—more than I wanted to admit—and couldn’t deny the extra lift in my step as I made my way into Sam’s Bagels. Was I ready now?
Sam’s is a hole-in-the-wall shop with the best bagels in town. The secret recipe is known only by Sam and his two sons, Perry and Harold. Rumor has it, the secret is in the perfect pH and mineral content of the water used to boil the bagels, but I suspect the real secret is in the schmear—the pounds of cream cheese they pile on.
There was a line out the door for takeout and a shorter line for the handful of tables they had in the back of the restaurant. Eric had already secured one of the red vinyl booths that probably had been there since Watergate. He was dressed in a pressed blue fire department uniform, his hair slightly damp. Damn, he was good-looking. He smiled at me, and my heart did that same flip-flopping thing it had done the first time I met him.
“You made it,” he said warmly, and handed me a bagel wrapped in waxed paper. “Toasted bagel with everything. Plain cream cheese.”
I tilted my head. “How did you know how I like my—”
He pushed a cup across the table. “Coffee. Black. Definitely caffeinated. One sugar. No artificial sweetener.”
“How did you—”
“A guy wearing a Channel Eleven jacket—I think his name was Josh—was standing in front of me in line a few minutes ago. I asked him if he knew you, and he told me your life story.”
“My life story?”
“The parts he could tell in thirty seconds. He told me what you eat for breakfast, said your favorite snack is spicy almonds that you have shipped from Texas, and that you jog around Lake Hollywood Reservoir every morning.”
“Run,” I corrected. “Not jog.”
“I swim every morning at the pool by the reservoir. Ever go inside to swim, or are you strictly a runner?”
“Strictly a runner. I don’t swim.”
“Never?”
“Actually I almost drowned last month,” I said, then wished I hadn’t because, of course, he was going to ask for details. And we’d barely been there two minutes.
He leaned forward. “Drowned? Where?”
Three weeks later I still remembered every detail of that day. The summery smell of the fifty-five-SPF sunscreen. The warm, wet sand squishing between my toes. None of that foretold the danger to come.
“In Mexico,” I said, my voice wavering. “I’d gone there with a friend to celebrate her thirtieth birthday. She had overdone it on the celebrating part and slept in one morning, so I went to the beach alone. The hotel was on a stretch of beach lined with eco-resorts so there weren’t any lifeguards.” I took a gulp of coffee, for fortitude. “I’m not a good swimmer—I didn’t learn how to swim until late in high school—so I’m pretty cautious around water. But the water was warm, the sun was shining high in the sky, and I kind of lost track of things and ventured out farther than I’d meant to. Out of nowhere a huge wave rose up and knocked me over. In a flash it dragged me out to where I couldn’t touch the bottom anymore.”
“A rip current,” he said quietly.
I swallowed the lump in my throat. I hadn’t told anyone about this before. Not even Teri. Talking about it freshened the memories and made me feel strangely wobbly, as though it were all happening again. “Enough about my terror in Mexico,” I said, trying to lighten the mood.
“How long were you stuck in the riptide?”
I reached for my coffee and took another sip. “I’m not sure. It seemed like hours, but it was probably less than fifteen minutes. I lost track of time. The waves kept pulling me under. Then I’d come up for a few minutes and try to swim toward land. But I wasn’t getting anywhere. I was just pulled farther out to sea.”
“Did you know it was a riptide?”
“At first I didn’t. I screamed for help several times, but my voice sounded so strangled, so small, that it actually made me panic and confused about what to do.”
“Did anyone on the beach come to help?”
I didn’t want to say anything more. This was the part of the story that was still hard to fathom. I wanted to talk about something easier.
Eric seemed to read my mind. “They didn’t, did they?” He moved his hand an inch toward mine, but then seemed to think better of it and stopped. “Most people in situations like that don’t help. They don’t know what to do.”
I took a deep breath and tried to steady my nerves. “Each time I came up for air, I looked at the shore, and I saw people looking in my direction, but no one came toward me. Dozens of people were on shore, and no one did anything…” I trailed off. In the silence, I felt his eyes upon me.
“But you’re here today, so somehow you managed to get out. Even though you don’t know how to swim very well. How?”
The words came more easily now. “I began to swim—or my weak version of it—parallel to shore. I’d be able to move a foot or two before a wave would crest over me and bring me under again. Eventually one of the hotel’s security guards pulled me out. By the time he got to me, I was five hundred feet from shore and barely conscious.”
“Something like that can be very hard to shake,” he said. “It’s going to take time to get over it.” He said it as though he had been there. As though he understood. In that moment I felt oddly connected with him, as if I’d known him for a very long ti
me.
“So what’s your story?” I asked, trying to change the subject. “Captain of the Urban Search and Rescue Team and swift-water rescue expert. Were you the kid who always wanted to be a firefighter when he grew up?”
A waiter came by and refilled our coffee cups. “Actually I wanted to be a TV journalist when I grew up.”
“You’re joking, right?”
“Dead serious. I thought Peter Jennings’s job looked pretty exciting—traveling the world, covering big news events.”
“Good thing you got some sense and did something with your life,” I said with a smile. “What changed your mind?”
“Seventh grade. Sam Moretti,” he said without missing a beat. “There was a ditch beneath a concrete-lined drainage channel in front of our house. A bunch of us guys in the neighborhood played there all the time, using it as a kind of foxhole. One afternoon the drainage pipe collapsed and trapped Sam Moretti beneath it. The guys from the fire department came, and for two hours we watched these six guys risk their lives to pull him to safety. I knew then that I wanted to be a part of something like that.”
“It has to be hard,” I said, “putting your life on the line for other people.”
He shrugged. “I like knowing that every day I’m helping to make things better.”
Anyone else saying those words would’ve sounded pretentious or hopelessly naive. But the way Eric said it, straightforward and unrehearsed, left no doubt that he was neither.
He took a slug of his coffee. “I’m really glad you came today,” he said. “I wasn’t sure you’d show once you knew I wasn’t the Good Sam you’re looking for.”
I bit into my bagel. “We haven’t completely ruled you out as a suspect.”
“So I’m still a suspect?”
“Do you have an alibi, Captain Hayes?” I was flirting with him now, enjoying his gaze and the smile on his lips.
“Actually I do.” He pulled out an iPad and pointed to one of the headlines on the LA Times website.
It read, “Good Sam Still Giving.”
“‘Neither rain nor floods nor inclement weather kept Good Sam from his appointed rounds yesterday,’” he read aloud. “‘Just after 4 p.m. on Wednesday, Pacific Palisades resident Charles DeVault heard a rustling noise at his front door and was surprised to find a canvas bag containing $100,000 in cash on his front porch. The bag was stamped with a lopsided number 8.’ Where was I around four o’clock Wednesday afternoon when Charles DeVault got his money?” Eric asked.