In the Dining Room
Beatrice Spencer, Charlie Moon, and Sarah Frank were looking over Assistant Director Gerald Sax’s shoulder. Though they uttered not a word, each of these four souls was occupied with a private thought.
Sister Bea, glancing at her wristwatch: I wonder what has happened to Andrew.
Charlie Moon: Don’t get nervous, Aunt Daisy—just be yourself. He grinned. On second thought…
Sarah Frank: Cassandra is so gorgeous! A sideways glance at the grinning Ute. I bet Charlie likes her. Men were pushovers for a pretty face.
Gerald Sax: Raise the ratings through the roof, Spider-
Woman.
Chief of Police Scott Parris, who was watching Cassandra Sees in the small but well-appointed living room of his girlfriend’s condo, had momentarily lost interest in said girlfriend (who was fifteen years his junior, and quite a looker). He used the remote to turn up the volume. Annoyed by the commercials and distracted by the warble of his cell phone, he pulled the thing from his pocket. “Parris here.”
The SUPD dispatcher said, “Hello, Chief,” into his ear.
“Hello yourself. Whatcha got, Clara?”
What she had was a Wye-Star report of a vehicle accident. Clara Tavishuts read the text. The gist of which was that Wye-Star Central had received an automated transmission of a motor vehicle’s onboard-accelerometer trip, which indicated possible collision. The alarm signal from the vehicle was lost almost immediately, which could indicate serious damage. An operator had attempted to contact the driver via the vehicle’s built-in cellular telephone. No response. GPS coordinates of the vehicle’s last known location were referenced to the intersection of two state routes and the National Guard armory. The telephone number of the nearest residence was registered to one Beatrice Spencer. The registered owner of vehicle was one Andrew Bedford Turner.
Bedford? Parris was scribbling this information on a pink paper napkin. I didn’t know Andy Turner had a middle name. “When did we get this alert?”
“About eight twenty-nine.” Expecting an outburst, Clara hurried along: “I know that’s a long time ago, Chief—but most of these reports turn out to be fender-benders, and both of our on-duty units have been occupied with serious business. Unit 240 is attending to a three-car accident out by the rodeo grounds, and car 260 has responded to a silent alarm at the Corner Drugstore. Corner Drug got hit last month by burglars who packed away a big haul of prescription painkillers.”
“Yeah, I remember.” Parris maintained an even tone. “When’ll we have a car rolling?”
“Can’t say, sir. But I’ll dispatch one just as soon as—”
“How about an ambulance and some EMTs?”
“Negative on that. One team is with car 240 and the other ambulance is broke down—”
“See if you can put a call through to Andrew Turner’s cell phone. If you can’t get him, try to get in touch with Bea.”
“I couldn’t get access to Mr. Turner’s cell number, but I should be able to contact his wife—she’s usually at her sister’s home for the TV show.”
“Thanks, Clara.” He hung up, pulled on his jacket, muttered an apology to his sweetheart.
Sweetheart was engrossed in the television program. “Cassandra looks really great tonight. And that little old Indian woman is so cute.” She tried to think of something to compare Daisy with, and did: “She reminds me of one of those little granny dolls that have dried-up apples for faces.”
Imagining how Daisy Perika would respond to that innocent observation, Parris grinned. That little dried-apple face might look cute, but it had a mouthful of teeth. Sharp ones.
When the telephone on the dining-room wall rang, Beatrice picked it up. “Cassandra Spencer residence, this is her sister speaking.” She listened to the police dispatcher’s terse report. What is she talking about? “Clara, dear—what, exactly is a Wye-Star alert?”
The dispatcher explained that this was an electromechanical sensing system installed in some automobiles. If the car bumped into something, a signal was transmitted via cell phone (or, if that link failed, via satellite) to the Wye-Star headquarters in Kansas City, where it would alert an operator to a potential accident and provide a GPS location of the automobile. The operator’s initial task was to contact the automobile and speak to the driver. If the driver did not respond, the next step was to contact the local police so that appropriate emergency vehicles could be dispatched to the scene.
Beatrice gripped the telephone tightly. “Clara, what’s the bottom line?”
“I’m sorry, Bea—but the automobile is your husband’s Corvette. And the GPS coordinates put the accident close to your home on the mountain.” The dispatcher advised that as soon as she had a unit available, she would send it to check on Mr. Turner, but that Bea should not be overly concerned. The Wye-Star alert was probably a false alarm, or at worst, Mr. Turner had bumped into something along the driveway that triggered the collision sensor. The reason he had not responded to the Wye-Star operator’s call was most likely because he had gotten out of the car to check the damage. By now he was probably walking back to the house. Miss Tavishuts would continue to ring the Spencer residence landline every few minutes.
“I’ve no doubt you’re right, Clara.” Beatrice’s heart pounded. “But just to be on the safe side, I’ll go home and find out what has happened.” She hung up, grabbed her small purse and sable coat, murmured an “Excuse me, but I must run” to Charlie Moon and Sarah Frank, and hurried out of her sister’s house.
The teenage girl turned big eyes on Moon. “What was that all about?”
“We’ll have to wait and see.” I hope no one’s hurt bad.
Andrew Turner’s distraught wife was behind the wheel of her Mercedes, rolling along the rain-slick streets of Granite Creek. On her way out of town, she ignored two Stop signs and three traffic lights and came very near to running down an elderly pedestrian, who shouted curses at the luxury automobile and the careless driver. The wobbly-legged citizen also threw a half-empty bottle of red wine at the rapidly receding taillights, watched it smash on the wet pavement, then wept and cursed himself for such a foolish waste of tasty hooch.
Twenty-Four
On the Tube
For the first few minutes, everything went according to plan. Cassandra began with the usual reading of selected e-mails and letters from those viewers who lavished her with praise and offered unsolicited testimony to the accuracy of her “readings.” Quite a few provided descriptions of their own otherworldly experiences, some of which were highly interesting, even riveting. When this segment was finished, Cassandra introduced her “mystery guest,” and by asking Daisy Perika a few simple questions about herself, managed to put the tense woman completely at ease.
Then, the psychic got down to the serious business of blatant flattery. “You have quite a reputation as a necromancer.”
Startled, the Ute elder jutted her chin. “What do you mean by that?”
She is just precious. “You are rather well known in southern Colorado as a practitioner of the arcane arts.” She laid it on thick: “Indeed, famous would be a more apt descriptor.”
Startled was instantly replaced with pleased. Me, famous? Feigning modesty, Daisy shrugged off the praise.
Reading the shaman’s self-centered thoughts required no paranormal powers. “It is said that you commonly talk to those who have passed.”
Pleased gave way to confused. “Passed what?” Kidney stones? But that didn’t make any sense.
Cassandra’s turn to be startled. “Uh…passed over.”
Daisy was getting downright annoyed. “Over what?”
The psychic’s face flushed a pretty pink. “Why—to the other side.”
The shaman cocked her head. “You talking about dead people?”
Relieved to have reestablished communication with her guest, the psychic nodded.
Unaware of the sensitivity of the tiny microphone pinned to her collar, Daisy muttered, not quite und
er her breath, “Well, why didn’t you just say so.”
Unlike the delighted audience (almost 9 percent of whom spat out their beverage of choice), the star of the show was unaware of this caustic suggestion. Cassandra flashed the engaging smile. “So, is it true that you commune with spirits of the departed?”
The Ute elder clarified: “I don’t so much talk to dead people as they talk to me.” This is making me thirsty. She reached for a water glass on the coffee table.
Cassandra waited with her rapt audience, who watched the old woman take a sip of atrociously expensive mineral water.
That sure hit the spot. The spot burped. “Like I was saying, the haunts are the ones who like to beat their gums.” The aged shaman set the glass aside, scowled at memories of troublesome encounters. “Week in, week out—it never stops. Some old bag of bones slips up beside me when I go outside, pulls at my sleeve or nudges me with a pointy elbow. Start’s telling me her life story. And if I stay inside for some peace and quiet, they’ll come around my house, peck-pecking on the window”—she rapped her knuckles on the table—“or knocking on my door. Day or night, it don’t make no difference.” She fixed her pretty host with a gimlet stare. “Them dead ones never sleep.”
The TV psychic had become one with the audience. “They don’t?”
The expert on ghostology shook her head. “And they don’t mind waking live people up in the middle of the night. And once they get to running off at the mouth—and all they want to talk about is themselves—you can bet your britches they have plenty to say!”
Cassandra had no britches to bet, but she had a question: “Do you actually hear the voices—or do you simply sense their words?”
“Oh, I hear ’em all right—just like I hear you right now.” Daisy leaned forward, lowered her voice as if she was about to share a secret with this kindred soul: “Some dead people just whisper in my ear, others talk right out loud.” The cranky old woman grimaced as she recalled one of her pet peeves. “And lots of ’em don’t even speak English, or Ute, or even Mexican—just some foreign jibber-jabber. How am I supposed to know what they’re saying?” From her sour expression, it was clear that Daisy generally found these uninvited guests to be a great nuisance. Which she did. Dead people—especially those who came prowling about at night—were a plague. “Sometimes,” the shaman muttered, “they make me so damn mad I’d like to get my 12-gauge out of the closet and give ’em both barrels!” After a sigh, her mouth curled into a crooked little grin. “But it don’t help to shoot somebody who’s already dead.”
According to carefully conducted scientific research on what draws and holds a TV audience, violence is right up there with sex. Low comedy occupies the third spot.
The delighted television-broadcast executives were giving the old Indian woman a solid two out of three, which wasn’t bad. If Daisy got just a tad badder, it would be time to break out the pink champagne and party hats.
The star of Cassandra Sees sensed that she was on a roll. But what Daisy Perika definitely did not have was sex appeal, so Cassandra rolled with what she did have. Reaching for a blue-roses-on-ivory china teacup, the psychic said, “My goodness—it sounds like there are quite a few spirits residing in your neighborhood.”
“They don’t call it Spirit Canyon for nothing.” Daisy watched the young woman take a sip of tea. “The place is practically crawling with dead folks.”
The conversation might have continued more or less along this line, with Daisy stressing what awful pests ghosts tended to make of themselves, but the lady in charge decided to focus her guest on a specific experience. “Is there a particular spirit that you would like to tell us about?”
Daisy Perika, whose mood had tilted decidedly toward the positive side of the scale, considered telling a story or two about Nahum Yaciiti, her favorite of the lot. But somehow, it didn’t seem right. Nahum was far too special to share with a bunch of strangers. And besides, he didn’t hang around the canyon waiting for that Last Day, like those less fortunate spirits: The kindly old shepherd (who had been whisked away in a whirlwind!) had gone directly to that far, happy shore. She settled instead on another haunt: “Well, when I was a little girl, Uncle Blue Hummingbird was my favorite relative.” She added, with perfect innocence, “Especially after he died.”
Among the audience, more beverages were expelled from between the lips.
By now a seasoned pro, Cassandra Spencer managed to suppress even a hint of a smile. “Please tell us about him.”
The aged woman obligingly described how, so many years ago (but it seemed like just last week), the spirit of recently deceased Uncle Blue Hummingbird had appeared with the dawn, riding through the morning mists on the finest pinto pony she had ever laid eyes on. The tribal elder surprised her host by raising the profound philosophical issue of whether Uncle’s mount was the equine ghost of a once-living four-legged creature, or—and this was an interesting notion—was it a spirit pony that had never experienced the fleshly state? Daisy was about to state a firm opinion on the matter (firm opinions were the only kind she had) when she was interrupted by Cassandra’s sudden yelp.
Yes, yelp.
This was not the sort of petite feminine squeak that might result from m’lady’s sitting on a pointy thumbtack, or (with thighs bare) on a metal lawn chair that was uncomfortably hot. Certainly not. But neither was it that spine-riveting sort of screech that causes a long-comatose patient to sit up in bed and inquire, “What was that noise, nurse?” followed by, “Is Mr. Reagan still in the White House?”
No. None of the above.
It was more like that delighted shriek a four-year-old makes when she opens a gaily wrapped Christmas box, finds a fuzzy little puppy inside, and gets licked on the nose.
Daisy Perika’s response fell somewhat short of delight (storytellers detest interruptions). But, audience-wise, Cassie’s yelp did the trick.
Tens of thousands of television-land devotees who had been hanging on Daisy’s every word were solidly jarred by Cassandra’s unexpected exclamation. The psychic’s head was half bowed, both hands clasping the teacup. “Oh—oh—one of the spirits is attempting to contact me!”
Far over the mountains and through the woods and down the east slope—in the city of Denver—the Cassandra Sees senior director muttered a colorful if sophomoric curse, grumbled, “Bet it’ll be another warehouse fire.” What he was hoping for was another cold-blooded murder. But not with some dope-pushing truck driver for a victim. Maybe she’ll see somebody take a pot shot at a blind nun who spends all her waking hours working with crippled children. If there had been a local chapter of the Grumpy Old Men’s Club, the TV executive would have been elected president by unanimous acclamation. But the old sourpuss was always pleased with the psychic’s impromptu performances, even when a mere arson was the subject of her visions.
Away to the west, across the lofty snowcapped peaks, another old sourpuss was not the least bit pleased.
Back in Cassandra Spencer’s Granite Creek home, within the dimly illuminated parlor that provided ample ambience for the spooky television broadcast, Daisy Perika observed her flighty host with a glare that could have curdled milk. Dairy-fresh, ice-cold, pasteurized, grade-A milk. What brought this on? Just this: When the tribal elder was retelling her favorite Uncle Blue Hummingbird ghost story for about the thousandth time—and to her largest audience ever—she did not appreciate a yelping female stepping on her lines. Daisy was way on the far side of irked. She was, to put it bluntly, chagrined. But sad to say, no one was particularly concerned about her feelings. Worse still, the Ute woman was no longer the center of attention; her flash-in-the-pan performance had been eclipsed by the star. A pathetic has-been, that’s what Daisy was.
Camera one had zoomed in on Cassandra’s face, which—if a viewer with modern high-resolution digital television had had the neurotic inclination—she (or he) could have counted every hair in the psychic’s neatly plucked eyebrows. Not to mention no small number of—No. In the
interests of good taste, we shall not dwell upon that. If one views the subject under sufficient magnification, there is no such thing as a physically attractive human being.
A boom microphone had been lowered, the better to pick up Cassandra’s barely audible mumblings. Aware of this, she repeated what she had said, and louder: “At this very moment, someone is about to die. Someone who is very close to me.” I wonder who it could be?
The only other person in the parlor did not wonder. Uh-oh—my time has come! Practically knee-to-knee with the visionary, Daisy withdrew, pressing her bent spine against the padded chair. Odd, what occurs to the doomed as they approach that final heartbeat. It dawned on the tribal elder that she was not prepared for her funeral. She had not purchased the new underwear and white cotton stockings. Or the pretty red shoes.
In the psychic’s dwelling, yea, in homes across the state and well beyond Colorado’s rectangular border, every viewer’s voice was hushed, every gaze locked upon the dark-haired visionary.
Cassandra appeared to be staring at the teacup in her trembling hands, but her devoted followers knew that she was looking into some unseen space beyond that mundane object. And they were quite right. “This is an extraordinarily talented, highly respected person—who is admired by everyone.”
Daisy’s face felt the heat of her self-conscious blush, which she countered with a humble thought: Well, not everybody. There are maybe two or three mean people I can think of who won’t miss me when I’m gone. For instance, there’s—
“Oooohhh!” Cassandra fleshed out this exclamation: “It is about to happen—Death has come to snatch the person’s life away!”
The tribal elder’s heart fluttered. She closed her eyes, tried to think of an appropriate prayer. Dear God—please let me stay here just a little while longer. This sounded selfish. So I can help Charlie find himself a good wife. Nice touch, but not enough. And teach Sarah how to cure the sick.
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