What she did notice was that Maurice Poche’s eyes narrowed as one of his most wealthy clients—perhaps the client Maurice had soaked for the most money—Kurtus Welliam—stayed beside Mrs. Barbara Flinton. A woman who could probably buy and sell everyone in the room. A woman who looked at him with slightly flared nostrils and lifted lip, indicating disdain.
Those two proceeded regally, meeting and greeting others drawn to their charm, toward where Clare stood.
The charlatan sent her a probing, scathing look and she understood he’d decided that she had filched his best client from him. Oh, yes, he seethed with fury.
An awful feeling enveloped Clare. The situation of the poltergeist on Lookout Mountain messing with Buffalo Bill’s grave had been a golden opportunity for Maurice Poche to further gild an already golden career as Denver’s premier psychic. And as he’d poised to strike at the right time for the best publicity, an impatient Mr. Welliam had rushed into action. Then came the advent of Clare onto the scene, along with Zach Slade and the Denver Police Department presence of Officer Janice Schultz. Now Poche’s career, his very persona, was threatened.
He understood this, and that realization burst upon Clare.
The doors closed behind the last stragglers to the meeting, and Maurice Poche went on the attack. Surging toward her, moving faster than Mrs. Flinton on her walker, and Mr. Welliam, his hand in the crook of Mrs. Flinton’s elbow, Poche stopped a pace in front of Clare and announced loudly, “If it isn’t the fake medium, using her great-aunt’s reputation to social climb and pretend to talents she doesn’t have.”
Clare’s mouth dropped open and she snapped it shut.
Chapter 19
Everyone turned to stare at her, eyes harsh or weighing or avid. Barbara Flinton and Kurtus Welliam stopped in place.
Several people around her faded back, leaving her facing the large man, an adversary challenging her.
She flushed with heated humiliation and time seemed to freeze as her mind whizzed through options.
She could ignore the man, stalk out. This area of town was busy enough that she could walk to the light rail, a bus stop, a cab stand. Or call and wait for a car service. Or request Barbara and Mr. Welliam take her home, to hide. But she didn’t want to wait, to stand here and suffer embarrassment. She wanted to leave, or to act.
The door flew open and it looked like slow motion. So did Desiree Rickman moving through it straight toward Clare, holding a cell phone, and Clare just knew she’d called her husband or Zach, or both.
Clare didn’t need Desiree to defend her. Or Tony Rickman to bodyguard her. Or Zach to protect her. She could take care of everything on her own. So this wasn’t the career she wanted, the way she wished to reveal her historic ghost communication and transitioning business. All those considerations were moot.
She hadn’t been a coward in her previous accounting career. She’d been honorable and kept her word, both personally and professionally. That couldn’t be allowed to change.
So she took a discreet, deep breath before she spoke. How ironic, forced to publicly defend a psychic gift that all she’d wanted to do was to keep private.
“I am not a false medium.” Her words fell into a thick silence. “I am a ghost seer and communicator—”
“My partner,” wailed a woman, tears in her voice, weaving toward them. “Can you tell me of my partner? Poche has given me no relief. He didn’t even know George was female.”
Poche flinched.
Turning toward the woman, Clare held out her hands, grasped the woman’s cold ones. “I’m sorry, I can’t. My gift doesn’t work that way.” And how had Great-Aunt Sandra’s? Clare thought of the all-too-true words Barbara Flinton had engraved on her cards. “I can only communicate with ghosts of the Old West.”
“So she says.” More sneering from Poche, who also showed heightened color. “And what good is that?”
Clare stood straight, squeezed the openly weeping woman’s hands. “I’m sorry.”
“You aren’t very useful, are you?” some other woman in the crowd asked.
“I never claimed to be a medium. In fact, I have never had any clients nor charged any fee to communicate with spirits recently dead.”
“Dennis Laurentine, the billionaire, paid you a substantial sum.” Poche’s hard voice cut through the room now buzzing with talk, small groups turning to one another, discussing, judging. Three other women and a man led away the grief-stricken lady who’d beseeched Clare for help.
“Dennis Laurentine is a public figure,” Clare said, and he wasn’t a billionaire but a multimillionaire, a distinction only she seemed to think mattered. “Who has Dennis Laurentine lost recently who’s been in the news? But he does have a ghost town on his ranch in South Park and paid me to help the ghost of a prospector cross over.”
“Lies.” Poche opened his hands, shrugged his shoulders, his slick manner once again enveloping. “She’s nothing but a lying fake. Ms. Cermak made representations to me about her prowess as a medium. False representations.” Poche shook his head, his face set in sorrowful lines, though his gaze meeting Clare’s own seemed as cold and pitiless as a shark’s. “I’m afraid I cannot recommend you and I would have given you the benefit of professional courtesy had you not come here to drum up business. I cannot allow you to deceive others with your fraudulent claims,” he ended piously.
Then Mrs. Flinton, flanked by Kurtus Welliam and Desiree Rickman, marched up to Clare with her walker, gaze intent.
Clare nodded to her. “Mrs. Flinton.”
The older woman lifted her hands from her walker and pushed Clare hard.
Clare swayed off balance . . . and into the freezing body of a woman, a specter from Clare’s time period. She gasped, felt her lungs crisping with ice, her blood and heart slowing. She caught herself, stepped away from the woman, and turned to face her.
From her dress—or the lack of clothes—Clare deduced the woman had been a soiled dove, a woman who had to sell her body for money.
“So, Clare, dear,” Barbara Flinton said gently, “tell us about the spirit you see.”
“A lady—” Clare began.
“Lady?” Poche snorted.
“I have respect for women,” Clare said. “A lady who worked as a soiled dove.”
“A whore.” Poche’s lip curled. Some of his female coterie withdrew a step or two from him, observing him more coolly. “Cermak’s heard the story, is all.” He made a cutting gesture.
“No, she hasn’t.” Mrs. Flinton smiled. “I have, but Clare is new to her gift, as I know, since she’s only been my protégée for a month.”
“Twenty-six days,” Clare corrected.
Poche’s eyes flashed fury, then cooled. “Lies.”
I was a lady, the specter said in a soft voice with a southern accent. My name is Evie Harve and I ran a bordello once at this location. Her smile appeared distant and sad. I specialized in young Chinese girls and one of them cursed me.
“Evie Harve had a bordello here,” Clare said. Quiet spread. “She says one of her Chinese girls cursed her.”
I cannot go on until a waning gibbous moon does not rise during the day and hides its face in the night. This must occur in the Chinese year of the sheep. Her smile warmed and gave her face a hint of beauty, and her fog-like gray eyes trickled silver tears down her face. You have come to help me leave this hideous flat existence.
“Prove you speak to the whore,” Poche said.
Clare met his eyes, met the stares of others. “I am who I am, and I do what I do. Accept me and my gift or not.”
“You can afford to say that; you’re rich.”
“I inherited my great-aunt’s gift and the fortune she made from her own mediumship. I don’t charge.”
“My husband, Tony Rickman, has hired Clare on as a consultant,” Desiree stated. “He believes in her, and so do I, and Barbar
a Flinton, and”—Desiree sent a gorgeous smile to Mr. Welliam—“your erstwhile client, Mr. Kurtus Welliam.”
But the woman in the thin gown with the sheen of satin spoke at the same time and Clare paid attention to her. I have a scar. She held up her right palm that showed a long dark vertical line. And I hid my golden locket before I died. She paused, sighed. I remember being angry and sad and vindictive and resentful, but I have drifted in this gray nothingness and no emotions come to me now, bad or good. She moved to Clare and took her hand, and the world colored to the browns and blacks and beiges of sepia around her. She walked with Evie, noting the woman’s rotating hip stroll, through a doorway in a wall no longer present. Nor was the warehouse. Instead a house longer than wide occupied the space.
Evie sashayed to a wall, once a corner but now the middle of the warehouse. There she drew away from Clare, counted from the bottom and over several bricks. Tapped a brick. Tell those who doubt you that I hid the locket here, and it remains here. Clare did, and told them about the scar.
Mr. Welliam and Desiree Rickman went to work on the wall, along with others. Evie turned to Clare, held out her hands, her body bowed with weeping.
Help me. Help me move on. I no longer fear the judgment I may face as long as I can escape this gray existence!
“Of course,” Clare said, and sucked in a breath, took Evie’s hands, and stepped into her. Memories of the woman’s life flashed through her, and since Clare initiated the contact, she suffered the worst cold, moving from her fingers along her arms. She needed to help Evie before the frigidity encased Clare’s heart and froze it.
Chapter 20
The light faded and they stood on a featureless plain, no butte or mesa or mountain anywhere to be seen. Low in the beige gray twilight sky, the bottom round arc of a dark moon cleared the flat black line of the horizon.
Exultation shattered throughout Evie, through Clare. Evie shrieked wildly. It is NOT a full moon, a bloodred moon as I’ve so often seen! It is a waning gibbous moon and did not rise today and has hidden its face in the night and will not rise until after midnight! The words reverberated on and on, like a black tide that hit the horizon and demolished the moon. A ram stood before them, a big-horn sheep native to Colorado. It is the year of the sheep. TAKE ME! The hole where the moon had been sucked Evie away.
Clare faltered, feet blocks of ice, arms and shoulders numb. Her knees felt weak.
“You bitch.” Poche’s vituperative tone yanked her back to her shivering self and the present and shouts of discovery of gold. Clare tottered from foot to numb foot to look at him. Desiree joined them, and Clare saw the door flung open and Tony Rickman and Zach sped through.
Poche moved up close, far into her personal space. Desiree faded back, Clare thought she must sense the man’s infuriated aura, easy to see in the flush of his face, the throbbing of the vein in his temple. Muttering, sending spittle her way as well as words, he said, “I have built my reputation as the top medium in this hick town for eight years. How dare you come here to try and destroy my reputation, my clientele with your crazy tricks! God damn you.”
Her tongue unfroze first. “That’s what you get when you’re a fraud and deal in a non-rational, illogical career. A career that depends upon and manipulates people’s emotions,” said Clare.
“Bitch!” he repeated. His hands fisted. “You will pay.”
Pivoting on his heel, he turned his back on her and stalked away to the opposite side of the room, accompanied by sycophants who shot Clare filthy looks as they trailed after him. There were all sorts of true believers in this world.
She happened to have a real and inconvenient gift. Poche had only his wits and a belief that people were nothing but marks to be conned.
Zach’s narrow-eyed stare followed him. “Like other con men, he doesn’t have any history of violence.” Her lover angled his body to consider everyone in the room. After a moment, he rolled his shoulders. “But I’m thinking he may cut his losses here sooner or later.”
“His clientele will erode,” Clare said softly. Because Poche was a fake, unlike her and her great-aunt Sandra.
A quick surge of anger hit Clare that Poche betrayed what Sandra had cherished, her gift to help others. Yes, emotions were very messy, and people who’d just lost loved ones would be full of them.
Clare hadn’t figured out how Great-Aunt Sandra, whose slice of history encompassed depression-era gangsters, helped people with recent losses—yet. Clare would, and then she’d have to make decisions of her own.
No, she didn’t think she could become a medium in truth, not right now. And, for her, there remained a taint to promising newly devastated people that she could speak with their loved ones. As if she took advantage of their time of grief, when they weren’t in control and thinking clearly.
The woman who’d begged her for information earlier had left with her friends. Mrs. Flinton, Mr. Welliam, and Desiree Rickman stood with the crowd messing with the brick wall and the locket, discussing the disposition of the locket and the repair of the wall.
Poche worked the far end of the room, one of the television cameramen with him. One lingered too close to Clare for her comfort.
Zach had moved more to the middle of the room to keep an eye on everyone, watched Poche, room, but smiled at her when she met his eyes.
And Tony Rickman stood by her like a bodyguard. Rather intimidating. For some reason, she needed her first and oldest friend who’d begun this wild ride with her. Enzo, she whispered mentally.
He galloped back from greeting Mrs. Flinton and Mr. Welliam and poking around the room.
Hi, Clare. Lots of REALLY nice people here, Clare. People who believe in me!
“Yes, I’m sure.” She had seen a few narrowed gazes following him as if others with a hint of ghost seeing—or some other psychic talent that she didn’t know about—perceived him. Then she realized she’d spoken aloud to an invisible companion, and flushed.
Glancing around she found that she only met with smiles, and not just sympathetic ones, but supportive looks. That seemed a little too weird for her.
Rickman remained impassive, but he’d experienced her speaking with invisible folk before.
She moved back to the refreshment table and took a small paper cup of lemonade. Rickman kept pace with her. She drank a few too-sweet swallows, and continued her telepathic conversation with her ghost companion. Enzo, did you come into my life so that you could help me be a medium for people, and do you know how to do that?
The dog’s cheery aspect sobered. No, Clare. I came to help you with your gift. Your real gift of moving those ghosts in your time period on.
Okay, she said.
He yipped and they garnered a bit more attention. I am having fun, and I want to stay until you have fun all the time, too, Clare!
That may take some time to occur, she said. Because right here, with all these people who were supposed to be a lot like her, or thought they were a lot like her, and who believed in her gift, she felt supremely uncomfortable.
Zach joined her and Rickman and they observed Poche leave with his entourage . . . and the television channel people, which relieved Clare greatly.
“Bad tactical mistake,” Mr. Rickman said. “He retreated and left you the battleground.” Tony shook his head. “He’s going to like you even less when he realizes that.”
Zach shrugged. “What could he do? Clare proved she’s the real deal, and appeared too dazed to answer questions about him or accuse him of conning people, and didn’t follow up on any of his insults. Better to go when he could.”
Tony Rickman grunted in a sound of disagreement. “We’ll keep an eye on him.”
“That’s right,” Zach said.
* * *
Zach made early morning love to Clare and left her exhausted and satisfied when he’d finished. After showering and dressing, he walked out into the chill s
ummer-becoming-autumn air. According to the cooking calendar in the kitchen, the fall equinox was the day after tomorrow. Clare had to pay attention to such things because her new clients did. Zach thought he’d heard her say something about the moon and the year of the sheep yesterday as he got to her after she helped the madam move on.
Moon phases. Sunrise and set. Equinoxes and solstices, all might factor into her new vocation.
The lack of solid rules stymied her, but Zach was more of a go-with-the-flow guy. As he rolled Clare’s case to the front gate, a large black BMW pulled up. Zach’s hand went to his shoulder holster, then dropped as his boss exited, opened the front gate, and held it as Zach negotiated the steps and they both got into the back seat, along with the case.
The driver, one of Rickman’s operatives, nodded to Zach then accelerated smoothly.
“We’re heading to the airport?” Zach confirmed.
“That’s right,” Rickman said.
“I have to check in with security and get cleared to carry a weapon on the flight.”
“That’s the best way,” Rickman agreed. He handed over a card to Zach. Glancing down at it, Zach looked back at Rickman with raised brows. “I’m now a licensed private detective in Oklahoma?”
“That’s right,” Rickman replied gruffly. “As an ex–law enforcement officer and a current member of this agency, you qualify for a license as an armed investigator.”
Sticking the card into his wallet, Zach said, “I know that, but didn’t I, we, fill out those papers yesterday afternoon? Here in Denver?”
Rickman lifted and dropped a shoulder. “Couriered the package. Requested expeditious review. Got it. We have contacts in Oklahoma.”
Seemed like Rickman had high-level contacts everywhere. “Okay.”
“What’s your plan of action?”
“Checking out some news reports, then interviewing former employers, neighbors, and relatives of the man. I’ve tugged on my contacts and it looks like I won’t get access to the police report today, more like tomorrow. That will confirm date, time, and cause of death, but I’d like to get a good idea of the man’s character first.”
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