by Theresa Weir
“Maybe.”
“Is it black?” he asked blandly. That was funny, but there was no way she would reward him with a smile. Instead, she looked up at him and said, “I see a man who feels trapped by circumstances he believes to be beyond his control.”
“You’ve been talking to Beau.”
“I’ve been keeping my eyes open.” She’d had enough arguing. She looked around, searching for a new subject. “The garden-it’s beautiful. It’s nice of you and Beau to take care of it until your mother comes back.”
Behind her hung a heavy silence. She turned. For the first time that evening, Daniel looked uncomfortable. “She’s not coming back.”
“Oh?” Did they feel they couldn’t take care of her?
Daniel cleared his throat. “She died two years ago.”
“But Beau told me-”
“I know what Beau told you. The same thing he tells everybody. For some reason, he won’t face the fact that she’s gone. He refused to go to her funeral. He said he was going to stay home and keep her company instead. Sometimes I hear him whispering to somebody, and when I ask him who he’s talking to, he says it’s Mom.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah, wow.”
She stared at him. It was on the tip of her tongue to say she was sorry, when Beau and Premonition returned with the Frisbee.
“I had trouble finding it,” Beau said, out of breath. He handed her the Frisbee, then stood there, expectant.
“Premonition. Here, boy. Go get it.” She tossed the Frisbee at an angle so it would get enough height for Premonition to track it with his eyes while at the same time gauging where it would descend. When it seemed he’d outrun it, he jumped, his body twisting. He caught the plastic Frisbee in his mouth, his teeth clamping down hard. Beau laughed and clapped, and even Daniel stopped messing around at the grill to look impressed. Premonition came running with the Frisbee in his mouth. He dropped it at Cleo’s feet, wanting her to give it another toss.
“Let me try!” Beau shouted.
Cleo handed the Frisbee to Beau. “You have to toss it high enough so he can have time to figure out where it’s going.”
Beau tossed it straight up. It came down like a rocket, almost hitting Cleo in the head. Premonition danced at their feet as if to say, Hurry, hurry.
This time Cleo stood behind Beau, her hand on his wrist, showing him how to toss.
It was a perfect throw.
And a perfect catch.
Cleo, Beau, and Premonition played and ran and laughed for ten full minutes before Daniel interrupted them. “Come on, kids. Time to eat.”
The meal was baked potatoes, steak, and iced tea. Cleo managed to slip her meat to Premonition, who sat patiently at her feet under the table.
Then came dessert.
Pumpkin pie.
“It’s cold pumpkin pie,” Beau said. “Made with ice cream.”
Cleo stared at the neatly cut piece of pie in front of her, topped with a baseball-sized glob of whipped topping. That was good, because underneath, the pie was the color of the motel rug and the color of the curtains.
The color of a broken, smashed pumpkin.
She spread the whipped cream over the pie, trying to cover every bit of orange. Then, with the edge of her fork, she sliced a bite-size piece and lifted it to her face. The orange of the pumpkin peeked out from under the white of the whipped topping. She closed her eyes and shoved the forkful in her mouth. She chewed as the pie took on the consistency of orange shag carpeting. She gagged a little, hoping nobody noticed. There was no way the piece of dirty carpet was going down. She jumped to her feet, fork clattering to the patio. She had a brief glimpse of two surprised faces before she turned and ran for the garden, throwing up next to an azalea bush.
As she stood there hunched over, waiting to make sure she was finished, she became aware of someone she assumed was Beau standing not far behind her. “It’s not your cooking,” she said, straightening, her stomach seeming to have settled. “My stomach’s been upset for a couple of days.”
“I guess you weren’t just trying to get out of a visit to our house.”
It wasn’t Beau behind her, but Daniel. He handed her a glass of water. She took a few cautious sips. When her stomach didn’t protest, she drank half the glass.
“I’ll take you to the motel.”
Thinking about the motel brought back the feeling of queasiness. Sweat broke out on her forehead. She wiped at it with a trembling hand. “I should probably rest up for tomorrow.” She looked across the yard to see Beau and Premonition playing together, and again she was struck by how well they got along. Premonition had been full-grown when Cleo got him from the animal shelter. He’d been long past the puppy stage and the all-important time when those strong loyalties were formed, so she’d always assumed he would never be able to really bond with anyone.
Beau and Premonition came running.
“Would you like Premonition to stay the night?” Cleo immediately wished she hadn’t offered. It would have been nice to have Premonition’s presence at the motel.
“Oh, yeah. Like a sleepover!” Beau laughed at his own silliness, then took off, dropping to his knees several yards away and rolling onto his back, with Premonition pouncing on top of him, tail wagging furiously.
“What’d you do that for?” Daniel asked angrily.
“What do you mean? I just thought-”
“I know you’re trying to suck up to us, but don’t use Beau to do it. He gets attached easily. I don’t want him getting hurt.”
She stared at him a long moment, then quickly said, “I’m ready to go.”
“I’m taking Cleo back to the motel,” Daniel shouted to Beau while still glaring at her.
“Get some dog food on your way home,” Beau said, not looking in their direction.
A fresh flicker of irritation crossed Daniel’s features.
Cleo smiled blatantly into that irritation. “He likes the soft kind, preferably beef.”
As they were leaving, Cleo spotted some magazines on an end table. “Can I take one of these?” She picked up the top magazine, not bothering to look through the stack. It didn’t matter what they were about.
“Suit yourself.”
“And a pair of scissors. Do you have a pair of scissors I can borrow?”
Chapter Five
Back in the motel room, Cleo began cutting out pictures, then remembered she didn’t have any glue. She ended up borrowing some from the sleaze at the front desk who smiled at her in a knowing way, as if she now owed him sex for the glue, or at least a performance in his next porno flick.
A short time later she showered, all the while trying not to touch anything, making a mental note to pick up flip-flops. Afterward, she sat cross-legged on the bed, cutting out pictures and gluing them to the yellowed motel stationery she’d found under the Bible in the drawer beside the bed. It was something her shrink had taught her to do whenever she couldn’t relax, when she couldn’t shut off her mind.
And for some inexplicable reason, she was finding herself drawn to pictures of barns.
Cleo didn’t fall asleep until dawn, not until reassuring sunlight began to filter its way around the outer door. When the alarm sounded at eight o’clock, she’d barely managed two fitful hours of sleep. Unfortunately, her inability to sleep was part of an old, familiar pattern, one she’d almost forgotten until the events of the previous day. First there had been the nightmare, then the little problem with Beau’s pumpkin pie, then being unable to sleep when she was exhausted.
It’s this room, she tried to convince herself. It’s not me. It’s this creepy room.
She got out of bed and slipped on her sandals. Without bothering to brush her hair or teeth, still wearing the knee-length gray tank top she’d slept in, she left the room and marched to the lobby, where she rang the bell until her buddy from the day before showed up, a jelly doughnut in his hand and in his teeth.
“I want another room.” He wasn’t the only one
with an attitude.
His eyebrows lifted in surprise. “You got the best room in the place.”
“I want a different room. There’s something wrong with the one I’m in.”
“What? What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s too orange.”
“They’re all orange.” Nevertheless, he checked the keys that hung on the pegboard behind the counter. “Lemme see…that’s storage. That’s storage. Ceiling fell in on that one. That room’s got a standing reservation. That leaves us with number three. It’s got a broken air conditioner. Number eight’s got a broken toilet.”
“What about nine or ten?”
“Remodeling them. Tearing out the wall between the two rooms to make one deluxe suite with a Jacuzzi. How’s that sound?”
“Like I’ll be staying in number six.” She didn’t even want to know about the room with the standing reservation. “Is there anyplace to get something to eat around here?” she asked, resigned to the fact that she wouldn’t be moving anytime soon.
“Gas station two blocks down the street. Got pop and juice. Here.” He shoved a box of doughnuts at her. “Knock yourself out.”
Amidst the jelly and powdered sugar, she found a plain doughnut. She took it. “Thanks.” And went back to room six.
She couldn’t remain there another night. She had to leave. She would tell the chief of police she couldn’t stay.
What excuse could she give? That the motel gave her the creeps? And how could she leave? She’d spent her last dime getting to Egypt, Missouri. Adrian had been right. She shouldn’t have come.
She found herself staring at the barn pictures she’d cut out the previous night. Perhaps it was slightly obsessive-compulsive, but she wanted the pictures out of her sight. And not only out of her sight, but hidden. She finally shoved them between the mattress and box-spring and immediately felt better. Not great, but better.
At 9:00 a.m. sharp a knock sounded on the motel room door, bringing Cleo back to her immediate problem-Police Chief Josephine Bennett and Cleo’s psychic commitment.
Chief Bennett pretty much fit the mental image Cleo had gotten while speaking to her over the phone. Her hair was short, gray, and tightly permed. She was large around the middle-not fat, but a shape that sometimes went with menopause. Unlike Daniel Sinclair and his civilian clothes, Josephine appeared to be regulation, from her tie to her holstered gun and her shiny black oxfords. On the pocket of her crisply pressed shirt was a silver badge that read Chief of Police.
For a moment, Cleo recalled when she and her brother, Adrian, had gotten badges like that out of a cereal box. They were shaped just like the one in front of her, and they could have been real if you didn’t look too closely.
Josephine stuck out her hand and introduced herself, insisting Cleo call her Jo. “Everybody calls me Jo.” She had one of those voices that fell somewhere between male and female. Not surprisingly, her grasp was warm and strong. “Have you eaten breakfast?” Jo asked.
Cleo nodded. She’d been able to get half the doughnut down before it began to taste like moldy grout. The last thing she wanted was for Jo to swing by some greasy spoon where they could both load up on bacon and undercooked eggs. “Stuffed,” she said, grabbing her bag and closing the door, the smell of the room following her.
“Ignore the mess,” Jo said as they got into the squad car.
That was a little hard when the floor under Cleo’s feet was littered with paper and unopened mail.
“Coke?” Jo flipped the lid on a small cooler that sat on the seat between them.
“No, thanks.” What was she doing here?
Tell her you have to leave. Tell her you got an emergency call and you have to leave, urged part of her mind. But another part of her countered, Don’t be a baby.
Cleo rolled down the window and took a deep breath. It seemed as if she couldn’t get away from the smell of the motel room. She sniffed her hair. It was in her hair. And on her hands. Even her hands smelled like some stranger’s body odor.
“So, what do you think of our little town?” Jo popped open the Coke, took a long swallow, then settled the container in the weighted cup holder on the dash. “I run on these things. If I don’t have my third Coke by nine-thirty I get a killer headache.”
“It’s nice,” Cleo said, answering Jo’s question.
“It was ranked one of the best places of its size to live and raise kids. Safest town in the country.”
Cleo wanted to believe that. But she didn’t. Small towns were never as innocuous as they appeared.
“Do you like calliope music?” Jo picked up a CD. “Come on. Be honest.”
Cleo felt too many things were being thrown at her at once. “I always thought there was something a little sinister about music that’s so perky.”
Jo let out a laugh and refrained from pushing the CD in the player.
On the way to the police station, she filled Cleo in on what she knew about the loss of the key, going into a little more depth than she had over the phone. “There’s only one master key, of course. It unlocks every public building in town-the schools, the courthouse, the police station, the fire station. The fire chief’s been after me to let him have the key. Says it’s more important for him to have it. And he has a point. But what if there’s a break-in in progress? The police department needs that master. So after two years of debating the issue, I decided to let Harvey have his way, but when I went to get the key, it wasn’t there.”
“Do you have any idea how long it’s been gone?” Cleo asked.
“Could have been weeks. Could have been months.” Jo smoothly executed a turn. “That’s the thing about a master key. It’s not something you use every day. We’ve never had a situation come up where we needed the master. But you never know. A town’s gotta have a master key.”
It had all seemed so easy in Portland. A missing key. What could be less threatening?
“I think that sneak fire chief took it and won’t admit it. He acted funny when I told him he could have it. Looked like a little kid with his hand caught in the cookie jar. ‘Don’t trouble yourself to get it now,’ he told me. And I said, ‘Better get it before I change my mind.’ And then, of course, it wasn’t even there.”
“Why wouldn’t he come forward if he had the key?” The whole thing was ridiculous. Cleo had landed herself in the middle of some petty little squabble. They needed a negotiator, not a psychic.
“Because Harvey Jamison is spineless and doesn’t want anybody to know he took it, that’s why. He’d rather the city pay a hundred thousand bucks to have all new locks put in than admit he took it in the first place. That’s the kind of person he is.”
“So you basically want me to prove that Harvey Jamison took the key?”
“That’s right. I tried myself. You know, clairvoyant stuff.” Jo waved her hand at the unseen. “But I couldn’t come up with anything. Guess I just don’t have it. I’ve been taking correspondence courses on reading runes and on telepathy. I know I can learn everything there is to learn, but if a person doesn’t have a sixth sense the way you do, it doesn’t mean anything.”
“Sometimes even with it you can’t find an answer.” Cleo needed to clarify that right away. “I’m not promising you anything.”
“Oh, I know. I may not have what it takes, but all the same I just had a feeling about you after I read what you did in California.” She took a long sip of Coke then settled the can back in the holder. “When did you first realize you were able to do things most people couldn’t do?”
A simple question. A straightforward question. One Cleo should have been able to answer. Should she tell her that she’d first studied psychic phenomena because she wanted to prove to herself that she had no ability? Because if she had that kind of power, then she should have been able to save Jordan.
For a while she’d been able to convince herself that she was nothing special. During her brief stint on a psychic hotline, she’d been wrong more often than right, garnering some u
nsatisfied customers. I’m a fraud, she’d thought gleefully. I don’t have a shred of power. But then there had been the child in California.
A dream. A horrible dream. A vision. Of a little girl bound to an iron bed in a dark, damp basement. There had been more. A house with plywood over the windows. A huge, misshapen tree.
She’d told the police about her dream. Using her descriptions, they were able to find the house, find the child.
Cleo had begged them not to mention her involvement to anyone, but when the little girl was found in the spot Cleo had described, somehow her name was leaked to the press. The police department scrambled, trying to honor Cleo’s request for anonymity, but somehow everything got turned around and soon her integrity was being questioned-which was better than being hailed as the next Jeane Dixon. Cleo so wanted to be the fraud Daniel Sinclair accused her of being.
Chief Bennett repeated her earlier question. Cleo sidestepped it the way she always sidestepped it. “I think everybody has psychic ability. They just haven’t learned how to tap into it.”
That seemed to be the answer Jo was looking for, because she immediately switched subjects-from psychics to Daniel Sinclair.
“He was the head of a hostage negotiation unit in California,” Jo explained, as if Cleo had asked about him. For some reason-maybe it was the small-town way-Jo seemed bent on filling Cleo in on things that had nothing to do with the missing key and were really none of Cleo’s business.
“He was good at what he did. One of the best, and I’m not just saying that because his mother was my friend. Not every hostage situation can go the way we want it to.” Jo slowed for a turn, waving to a group of kids waiting to cross the street. “Danny had a high success-to-failure ratio. One of the highest in the country, I believe. But then one time-I don’t know the details-two kids and their mother got killed.”
Jo turned down Main Street. They moved past barrels of red geraniums and park benches painted dark green to match the canvas awnings lining both sides of the street. Two young mothers stood talking in front of the post office, one with a baby on her hip, the other pushing a stroller.