A Medium Education (A Lost Souls Lane Mystery Book 6)

by Erin Huss

  Can spirits pass out? If they can, I think Connie is going down.

  “What happened?” I ask.

  Her thoughts are moving too fast, coming in as flashes of memories, and I can’t make sense of anything. There’s a couch. There’s a television. There’s a wall. There’s a refrigerator. There’s a bed. There’s a microwave.

  “Connie, relax, refocus, and steady your thoughts,” I say.

  Connie rolls upright and puffs her cheeks. I catch the source of her panic. In the kitchen on the wall above a round dinette table, are black and white photos of doctors. She recognizes a few of them as local gastroenterologists. Several of the pictures have a red X on the right corner, including Connie’s. Papers are scattered all over the floor, and the letter from the medical board, stating the investigation into Dr. Connie Batch has ended, is on the table beside a knife that is stabbed into the wood.

  Connie has such attention to detail that I can see the scene so vividly. It’s like I’m standing in the kitchen.

  “What was on the papers?” I ask.

  “Test results, CBC, biopsies, ultrasounds, and cultures that I didn’t order. He has been to at least five doctors before he came to me.”

  “From what I’m seeing in your thoughts,” I say, “it looks like Don has been going from gastro to gastro, looking for help with his stomach problem, and he puts the X on the doctors that he’s seen. Maybe he opened the letter today, got upset, threw his medical file on the floor, stabbed the table, and came looking for you.” It would explain the papers on the floor and the X’s on the doctors’ pictures. Unless he plans to kill all those doctors today. In which case we’ve got an even bigger problem on our hands.

  “When we met, he told me I was the first gastro he’d seen,” says Connie. “Doesn’t he know that I need a complete medical history in order to correctly diagnose a problem? Had I known he’d already had those tests done, I would have requested those results and gone in a different direction. He was so upset when I suggested he see psychiatrist, and he wouldn’t let me explain. The stomach is a second brain, which is why you feel nauseated when you’re stressed or nervous or you have butterflies when you fall in love. Going to a psychiatrist doesn’t mean his stomach problems aren’t real. Now that I’ve toured his apartment, I’m convinced I was right to give him the referral.” Connie sounds more self-assured when she talks medicine.

  I’ve never heard the stomach explained as a second brain before. It makes perfect sense. For example, I am suddenly very nauseated because I just realized Mike is gone.

  “Mike! Mike!” Oh, gosh. This is it. He’s been abducted! “Mike!”

  “I’m right here,” comes his voice from below.

  I peek over the railing. Mike is holding a rickety-looking wooden ladder steady while a man with a Santa Claus beard climbs to the top with a drill in his hand. I nearly pass out, I’m so relieved.

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  “I found the maintenance man. That railing is dangerous, and there are kids around here. Someone could get seriously hurt,” he says. “By the away, this is Paul.”

  “Hi, Paul,” I say.

  Paul nods and keeps climbing.

  I was so preoccupied with Connie that I didn’t even notice Mike had left. That’s not good. Not when he is supposed to die by sundown. I need to be more vigilant. Especially since I’ve been standing here talking to Connie without Mike nearby. Anyone around would think I was talking to myself.

  Typically, I have a Bluetooth in my ear when I’m alone and conversing with spirits. It gives the illusion that I’m not bonkers.

  I pull out my phone and slap it to my ear to use as a prop. “Connie, did you see anything else in there?”

  “No. I checked everywhere. There was nothing suspicious other than the knife in the kitchen table.”

  “If he was mad enough to stab furniture, I’m sure he was mad enough to come after you. We need to call the police.” I pat my back pocket before I remember my phone is already at my ear. Oh, geez.

  “Is everything okay over there?” Paul asks from atop the ladder. “You a friend of Don?”

  I crouch down and balance on the balls of my feet, not wanting to touch the grimy walkway. “We know Don,” I say. “When was the last time you saw him?”

  “He went storming out of here about an hour ago,” he says over the squeal of his power drill. “Looked madder than a three-legged dog trying to bury a turd on an icy pond.”

  “Oh, goodness me,” Connie gasps. “That’s really mad.”

  I’ll take her word for it. “Did he say where he was going?”

  “Nah, I don’t talk to that guy. He’s crazier than a soup sandwich.”

  Connie gasps again. “That’s not good.”

  I’ll take her word for it.

  Paul sets the drill on the top of the ladder and grabs hold of the railing and gives it a shake. “That’ll do it,” he decides.

  “Wait,” I say before he descends the ladder. “Why is Don crazier than a soup sandwich?”

  Paul heaves a telling sigh. “He thinks the sun comes up just to hear him crow.”

  “So he’s cocky?” I’ve never heard any of these expressions before. Paul must not be native to California.

  “Mmm-hmm. That boy loves himself, and he won't put up with nobody who thinks otherwise. He’s been a lot quieter over the past six months. I’ll give him that. He’s not working much. Word around the community is he got axed from the Olive Garden. That’ll humble a man.”

  “This ladder isn’t exactly easy to keep stable,” Mike grunts from down below.

  “Get off!” I scream.

  The sudden shift in my demeanor takes Paul by surprise, and he nearly falls off.

  Oops. I didn’t mean to scare him, but I can’t risk the ladder crushing Mike.

  Gah!

  Things were a lot less stressful when I was the one who died.

  Paul steps down the ladder and thanks Mike for the helping hand.

  I watch Mike’s every move as he walks across the courtyard, up the stairs, and back to where he belongs—right beside me where I can keep a close eye on him.

  “Okay.” I blow out a breath and roll my shoulders. “Now we can call the police. We’ll tell them what we know, and they’ll hopefully catch Don before he hurts anyone else.”

  “Zoe.” Mike places a hand on my shoulder and stares off into the distance.

  “Is he having a seizure?” Connie asks. “I don’t like his coloring.”

  “He’s fine.” I cup Mike’s face in my hands. “What is going on?”

  “The second spirit is now a woman who feels familiar, but not someone that I know well. I’m alive, and you’re not.”

  I won’t lie and say I’m not a little relieved.

  I’d be more relieved if no one were dead, but we still have time.

  “The vision is clearer,” says Mike. “Zoe, I’m worried.”

  “I’m worried, too.” Connie wrings her hands. “I don’t know what you two are talking about, and this is getting out of control. I want to wake up right now. I don’t like this. What a horrid dream!” She lets out an ear-piercing scream, and Don’s window shatters.

  I’ve never seen a spirit do that before.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  The three of us whirl around. Don is standing at the end of the hall near the stairwell, wearing shorts and a tank top, his chest glistening, and he has AirPods in his ears. He’s even more handsome in real life. Again, an odd thing to notice given the circumstances, but there you have it.

  “What’s happening, Don?” one of the sunbathing women hollers from poolside.

  “I just caught these two breaking into my apartment,” Don says.

  I eye the shattered window. Yes, I can see how one might draw that conclusion.

  “Run,” Mike mutters.

  “No,” I mutter back. “I want to get inside his head.”

  Mike grabs ahold of my hand and pulls, but I keep my feet f
irmly planted. I’m not about to run away when Don could lead us to Connie.

  On the flip side, this could be the moment I die, and running away will save my life. Or this is the moment when we catch the killer, and all lives will be saved.

  Knowing the future can be tormenting.

  Don storms down the hall, his arms swinging, his jaw jutted, his eyes fixed on Mike and me.

  As he draws closer, I’m overwhelmed by a tumult of his feelings—fear, anger, nausea, despair, frustration, and pain. It’s like a drench of arctic water, and my chest tightens with each breath. I’m drowning in Don’s thoughts, and while they’re foggy and strained and filled with misery and rage, he did not kill Connie. Of that I am sure. He is solely focused on two things.

  One: finding a lawyer to take his case against Dr. Batch. He wants to sue her, not kill her.

  Two: stopping the two intruders who tried to break into his apartment.

  Now is the time to run.

  The only problem with our exit strategy is that Don is currently blocking the only way to the stairwell. It’s either jump over the now-secured railing, go past him, or fly, which is what Connie is trying to do.

  “Fly. Fly. Fly.” Her eyes are squeezed shut, and she leaps into the air and returns to earth almost immediately.

  Don lunges toward us, and Mike pulls me back. We smash into the wall, and I cry out in pain as my skin brushes against the rough stucco. Don trips and falls into the railing and spins around to face us, his chest pumping.

  Holy crap. “You could have died!”

  Don tilts his head in slight confusion.

  “The railing is fixed.” I feel almost breathless with shock. Was Don the younger male spirit that was supposed to be with Connie, Mike, and me at sunset? Was he supposed to die just now? Mike’s vision changed as soon as he fixed the railing.

  How did saving Don’s life cause someone else to lose hers?

  Don’s confusion deepens, and he double taps the AirPod in his right ear. “Siri, call nine-one-one.”

  “Time to go,” Mike says in a desperate rush.

  We take off running. My heart is pounding in my ears, and I grab hold of a wooden pillar at the end of the hall and swing around, using the momentum to make a U-turn onto the stairwell. I’m going down the stairs so fast it feels as if I’m floating. I bypass the last three steps and jump onto the pavement.

  The two sunbathing women lower their sunglasses to the tips of their noses and glare in our direction but don’t make any attempt to stop us, despite Don screaming through the courtyard, “Stop them!”

  I jump over the gate now lying on the ground in a pile of rust and keep running. When we reach my car, Connie is already in the back seat curled into the fetal position, willing herself awake.

  I toss the keys to Mike, we get in, pull on our seat belts, he shoves my car into sport mode, and we take off down the street. Sirens wail in the distance, and I glance in the rearview mirror. Two cop cars come to a screeching halt in front of the apartment building.

  “Did you see inside Don’s head?” Mike’s arms are straight, and he has a white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel. “Did you? Did you?” He sounds about as freaked as I feel.

  “Yes. I don’t think he killed Connie. He wants to sue her, and you can’t sue a corpse.”

  “He was the third spirit who was supposed to be with us at sunset,” he says. “I could tell as soon as he got close to us.”

  “I think you saved his life when you fixed the railing. Now the question is who dies instead?”

  “I’m a horrible doctor,” Connie wails from the back seat. “I’ve felt inadequate in every aspect of my life but medicine. I thought I was good at my job. I thought I was good with my patients. I was wrong. Don is obviously suffering. I should have done more tests before I gave him the referral.”

  I turn in the seat to face Connie. “He didn’t give you his full medical history. And after you saw his apartment, you said that you made the right choice to give him a referral.”

  “I could have explained the referral better,” she says. “When I mentioned a psychiatrist, he got so mad that I backed down. There are thousands of reasons as to why someone is having nausea. I should have reassured him that I was eliminating possibilities.”

  Connie’s anguish is palpable, and I want nothing more than to give her a hug. “You’re a good doctor,” I reassure her.

  “No. I’m nothing but a Kentucky-raised daughter of a poor farmer who got a scholarship to the University of San Francisco School of Medicine thinking I was about to make a difference in this world. What a pipe dream that was.”

  “How about Elijah?” I say. “You’ve made a difference in his world.”

  “You don’t even know me,” she says with a sniffle.

  “I know you have a light and loving spirit and a pure heart. That’s not something everyone can say.”

  “And you have a good memory,” Mike adds. “I can’t believe you remembered me.”

  “Right,” I say enthusiastically. “And you have excellent attention to detail.”

  “I am very detailed-oriented,” she says with a sigh. “I’m also coordinated.”

  “See? Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

  My phone pings, and I shift back around in my seat. It’s a message from Mrs. Batch. She sent the picture of the flyer. I’d almost completely forgotten about the Jabba fiasco.

  When I enlarge the photo, I can instantly see the problem. To me, it says $200.00 reward. That’s only because I know what I wrote in my sloppy, desperate-to-find-my-cat handwriting. To the average person, I can see how they wouldn’t notice the itsy-bitsy decimal point, and now that I’m looking more closely, that fourth zero looks more like a heart.

  I sure hope the person who finds Jabba will be willing to take payments.

  That is, assuming I’m alive when this is all over.

  Seven

  Mike pulls into a shopping center and parks under a tree. With Don crossed off the suspect list, we need to come up with a different game plan.

  I dig my notebook out of my purse and click my pen, which is silver and engraved with Lane, a present my father gave me on my first day of work. “Let’s write down what we know.”

  Mike’s right leg is bouncing so hard the entire car is shaking. “We know that at sunset you and another woman will be dead.”

  “We know that Don did not kill Connie.” I click my pen against my temple. “Do you think Don kills this woman?”

  “I’m ready to call this whole thing off and take you home.”

  “Thank you.” Connie slumps down in the back seat. “That’s what I’ve been saying the entire time. Let’s go back to your house, Zoe, and wait until I wake up.”

  I fight the urge to scream, YOU ARE DEAD! DECEASED! DEPARTED! LIFELESS! But that wouldn’t be very sensitive. I try a different tactic instead. “What if this were real? What if a real man, wearing a real bandana, really came into your office and pointed a real gun at you? What if you really did receive an email from another woman saying your husband was sneaking around behind your back? What if the feeling that your family is in danger wasn’t a paranoia-induced bad dream but intuition? What would you do?”

  “My family isn’t in danger. My family is in trouble.”

  “You originally said danger,” I remind her.

  “Oh. Well, I meant trouble. I think they’re in trouble.”

  I’m not entirely sure what the difference is, but I go with it. “What would you do?”

  There’s a beat of silence before Connie says, “I would make sure no one touched my son.”

  That’s what I thought she’d say. “We have”—I check the time—“two hours before Elijah gets out of school. Let’s go to your house and wake Russell.”

  “I thought this was my mental quest,” she says.

  “It is.”

  “Then shouldn’t I be the one to make the decisions? I can’t possibly wake up and feel that I’ve accomplished anything if I’m all
owing you to direct what we do. This horrible dream will be for nothing. I’m going to make the decisions from here on out. We will find Arturo. I feel like that is of most significance.”

  She doesn’t sound confident at all, which is concerning. While I applaud her wanting to take control of her “quest,” I’m supposed to die, so it’s sort of my quest, too. And I want to find Russell.

  But she’s the spirit, so Arturo it is.

  I punch the Painting by Arturo address listed on the Better Business Bureau’s website into the GPS, and ten minutes later we roll to a stop in front of a two-story home with a minivan parked in the driveway.

  Mike peers over the steering wheel. “Are you sure this is right?”

  I check my phone. “This is the address listed. Makes sense he wouldn’t have a storefront if he solely works at other people’s homes.”

  “You can do this. You can do this,” Connie chants from the back seat. “You can do this.”

  “Yes, you can,” I agree, although I’m not sure what it is we’re supposed to do right now. Our last attempt at confronting a suspect didn’t go well. I find myself glancing up at the rearview mirror every few seconds to make sure cops aren’t behind us with their lights flashing and their sirens blaring. I’ve been in a high-speed chase with the police before. Neither my brain nor my “second brain” can handle another one.

  “Look.” Mike points out the window.

  The garage door rolls open, revealing the back of a big, white truck—and I’m talking big. The kind of big truck that sounds like a semi and has four massive back tires and could easily drive over my little sports car like you see on the Monster Jam commercials.

  Mike quickly makes a U-turn and parks on the other side of the street.

  The truck slowly backs out of the garage and down the driveway. At the helm is Arturo. I recognize him from his Facebook profile. He’s talking—to whom, I’m not sure. No one else in in the truck. He’s probably on his Bluetooth, unless he, too, speaks to ghosts, which would be an interesting plot twist.

  We follow the big white truck around town, through a Carl’s Jr. drive-thru (can’t pass up a vanilla shake and a Famous Star), to a gas station, past the courthouse and the medical center, down a familiar frontage road, and to the gate-guarded community of Lakeshore Estates.