She walked over and grabbed a paper towel from behind the sink, wet it, and brought it back to Val, who was on her second bag.
“We’re gonna have some cleaning up,” Robin said quietly.
“She’s almost done.”
Robin knelt next to Val and rubbed her back.
“Have you ever thought about how many bodily fluids we’ve dealt with over the years?” Monica asked. “Between poop, puke, and blood, moms have to have the sturdiest stomachs in the world.”
Val spat and reached for the paper towel. “Speak for yourself.”
“Was it bad?”
“Yeah.” Val’s eyes were haunted. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Agreed.” Robin quickly grabbed more paper towels and managed to salvage a plastic bag from under the wastebasket. She and Monica quickly cleaned the floor, hid all the towels and puke bags in the bag, and hurried out of the morgue, dragging Val between them.
“Where should we throw this away?” Robin held Val around the waist, the plastic bag in the other hand.
They had made it through the twisting corridors and were starting to pass nurses and other hospital employees in the hallway.
“We’ll find a dumpster,” Monica said quietly. “Oh shit.”
“Wha—? Oh shit. Val, look sicker and keep walking.”
Sully Wescott was walking through the double glass doors and into the lobby just as the three of them were entering the lobby from the hallway. Robin could see the moment Sully caught sight of them. His eyes widened, then narrowed.
Robin kept her eyes forward. “Monica, wave. Don’t talk. Keep walking.”
“Got it.”
Robin’s hands were full of the plastic bag, and she had one hand around Val, who looked near to death. If they were lucky, Sully would assume Val had the flu and they’d had to rush her to the hospital or something.
“Is he coming over?”
“He’s debating.”
“Keep walking. Quick. But don’t look like you’re being quick.”
They made it through the lobby and out into the chilled night air. Val took a deep breath as if she were coming up for air, then straightened. “Where’s the car?”
“This way.” Monica steered the three of them through the parking lot and toward the minivan.
Robin threw the plastic bag in the back while Monica helped Val into the passenger seat, and then she started the car.
Within minutes, Robin, Val, and Monica were driving through the deserted streets of downtown Bridger City. They stopped at a filling station near the highway and dumped the plastic bag in the trash behind the dark store; then they got back in the minivan and turned toward home.
As soon as the van was pointed east, Monica turned to Val. “Okay, what did you see?”
“Him,” Val said, looking over her shoulder to Robin in the back seat. “Your ghost. The one in your visions, Monica. Mystery Man is the bones in that body bag.”
Chapter 10
“Tell us.” Monica kept her eyes on the road, but her voice was low and intense. “What did you see when you touched the chains?”
“He was someplace underground. Like… it looked like a cabin, but I knew it was underground. A cave maybe? Something like that? But there were lamps and there were books and I saw a bed—more like a cot, I guess. And I saw him. His feet were chained to a big post, and he was desperately trying to get out.”
Robin got her sketchbook out and tried to draw what Val was describing. “The chains were around his feet? What was he wearing?”
“Yes. He was sitting down, and they were around his feet. He was wearing… ordinary clothes. Jeans. A flannel shirt. Normal stuff.”
Jeans and a flannel shirt was the de facto uniform of eighty percent of the men they knew. Jeans and a flannel shirt would not narrow down when the man died.
“What about his hair?”
“It looked like what you drew in the picture. His forehead was bleeding. I could see that through his hair. Someone had hit him on the head.”
Monica said, “Probably so they could chain him up.”
Robin talked as she sketched. “Tell me more about the post.”
“It was wood. Thick. Square. You know what?” Val’s eyes went wide. “I think he was in a mine shaft. That’s what it looked like. It was in the middle of the room. It looked like one of those supports in a mine shaft.”
“Lots of old mine shafts around here,” Monica said. “Remember when we lived in that house on Cypress Loop? We had to warn the boys to stay out of them all the time.”
“Cypress Loop isn’t all that far from where we went into the lake,” Robin said. “Val, was he saying anything? Was he shouting for help?”
Val shook her head. “No. Not a word. He was alone.” Her voice got smaller. “He was so scared.”
“But he was trying to get free?”
“Yes. His hands were bleeding, but he didn’t have anything. Didn’t have any tools. He reached for something I think, but he couldn’t reach it. It was just a flash, but I got the feeling…”
“What?” The highway ended, and Monica took the turnoff toward Glimmer Lake.
“I heard a noise. There was a smell maybe. I’m not sure, but I think it was water.” Her eyes were haunted. “He was afraid of the water. The water was coming, and he knew he was going to drown.”
Robin tried to remain impassive as she finished her sketch. She’d pictured what Val was telling her and tried to translate it onto the page.
She passed the notebook up to Val. “How close am I?”
Val ran her fingers over the page. “Pretty close.”
“Could you see anything more of the room?” Robin asked. “Did I miss anything?”
“Do you think it matters?” Monica asked. “Isn’t it obvious what happened to Mystery Man?”
Robin knew in her gut, but she felt sick saying it. “Someone chained him up in an old mine shaft, and he drowned when they flooded the canyon. That’s why he was at the bottom of the lake.”
For years she’d had dreams about the old town of Grimmer lying under the serene waters of Glimmer Lake, rotting away as decades passed, a ghost town in the deep.
A ghost town with a real ghost.
“Maybe where he died isn’t far from where our car went in,” Val said. “Maybe that’s why all this is happening.”
“So if we find out what happened, do you think it’ll all go away?” Monica asked. “Do you think our lives will get back to normal?”
“Maybe?” Robin said it, but she didn’t believe it. “Either way, whoever that man was saved our lives. We owe it to him to find out who killed him.”
“How the heck are we supposed to do that?” Monica said. “We’re not detectives, Robin. We don’t know how any of that stuff works. Reading crime novels does not mean I’m a cop.”
Val looked over her shoulder and handed the sketchbook back. “Seriously, Robin, what do we know? We’re a homemaker, a coffee shop owner, and an antiques dealer. We don’t know how to solve a decades-old murder.”
“You can’t think of it that way.” Robin knew in her gut that they needed to do this. She felt more alive than she had in years. More confident. She had purpose. She had a goal. “We’re a medium, a touch telepath, and a seer. Or something like that. Also, we have Monica’s kick-ass minivan, and she already told us that’s what private detectives use a lot, so we’ll be fine.”
Monica snorted and Val cracked a smile. “You’ve already kicked into super-organized-mom mode, haven’t you?”
“Yes.”
Monica turned in to her driveway. “Super-organized Robin is a fearsome thing.”
“Think about it,” Robin said. “Between the three of us, we’ve handled three marriages, one divorce, one ex-husband, eight mostly great kids, and two successful businesses. Not to mention all the laundry and the Parent Club meetings.”
“And being a room mom.”
“And planning funerals,” Monica said quietly.
Robin continued, “We have stayed up to all hours nursing babies and finishing science projects on things we knew nothing about twelve hours before they were due. We know how to find information when we need it. Plus we have all the psychic stuff now.”
“Okay,” Val said. “But where do we even start with this? This isn’t a middle school science project.”
“No, but I think we can start the same place.” Robin got out her calendar. She knew most people kept everything on their phones now, but she liked the visual and tactile experience of keeping a paper calendar. “Monica, you’re really good at online research. Why don’t you start with finding out everything you can about why they decided to flood Grimmer Canyon? There’s got to be stuff online. When the café closes tomorrow, maybe you and Val can go to the library and see what they have there.”
Monica nodded. “I can do that.”
“Café closes at two,” Val said. “I’ll have a couple of hours before I have to pick up the boys. They both have practice after school right now.”
“And I’ll go talk to the only person I know who was alive when our mystery man was drowned.” Robin closed her calendar. “I’m about due for a visit to Grandma Helen anyway.”
* * *
It was nearly midnight when Robin walked through her door. Mark was sitting at the kitchen counter, drinking something steamy.
He looked up. “Hey.”
Robin glanced at the clock. “Hi. You’re not in bed?”
Mark frowned. “You were gone a long time. Everything okay with Monica?”
Robin scrambled. She had expected Mark to be in bed. He was usually an early riser, so he went to sleep by nine or ten at the latest. “Uh… she’s okay. Just haven’t had time to really catch up with her since the accident.”
“Val there too?”
“Yeah.” She swallowed. “It was just the three of us. Hanging out.”
“Huh.” He flipped his phone over and over. “I texted you and you never got back to me. I was kind of worried because you were out so late.”
Shit. She’d forgotten about his text. “I’m sorry. We were in the middle of something, and I forgot to text you back.”
To be fair, it was right after they’d tossed the bag of Val’s post-psychic-vision puke in the dumpster in Bridger City. Robin hadn’t been thinking about anything but how to get that smell out of the car.
Mark held up his phone. “When I got worried, I looked on the family locator app we got when Austin got his phone and… you weren’t at Monica’s. Why were you in Bridger City?”
Robin’s jaw dropped. “You were spying on me?”
“Spying?” Mark’s eyes went wide. “It was past ten thirty and you weren’t responding to texts. Your car went into a lake three weeks ago, Robin. I was worried. And now you’re lying to me about it.”
“I’m not lying to you! I was with Monica and Val. We were hanging out.”
“In Bridger City?”
“Yes.” Looking at gross old bones and touching rusted chains from murder victims.
Mark tossed his phone on the counter. “I don’t believe you.”
Robin didn’t blame him. It wasn’t exactly in character for her and her friends to randomly drive into Bridger City for no reason. If they wanted to go out for a drink, there were bars in Glimmer Lake. The only thing Bridger City had was more people, bigger grocery stores, and a hospital.
“Okay.” She thought quickly. How to lie without lying? She didn’t want to lie to Mark, but then she really didn’t want to have to explain being suddenly psychic with her two best friends. “It’s Val,” she blurted.
He frowned. “Val?”
“Val needed to go to the hospital in Bridger City. I can’t tell you why. It’s not my place to tell you.” None of those things were a lie. “Monica and I went with her.”
Mark’s face transformed from pissed off to worried. “Is she okay?”
“I think she’ll be fine. She was doing okay when Monica dropped me off.”
“Does she need help? Are the boys okay? Does she need help with anything around the house?”
Gil and Mark had stepped up for Val when Josh walked out. If there was anything she needed that her parents couldn’t help with, Gil and Mark were always happy to lend her a hand. More than one fall, they’d spent a day or a couple of days at Val’s, helping her and the boys get the house ready before snow came.
And with Gil gone, it was just Mark now.
“No.” She tried to soften her tone when she heard the worry. “It’s nothing with the boys. It’s personal. And… she’ll be fine.”
“Are you sure?”
Robin was suddenly reminded that—even though he might ignore her sometimes—Mark was a good guy. A solid guy who stepped up for his friends. He liked being the hero, and that wasn’t a bad thing. “She’ll be okay, but thanks.”
“Okay.” He wiped a hand over his face, looking exhausted. “I’m sorry if it seemed like I was spying. I wasn’t. I was just—”
“Worried.” Her tone softened more. “I get it.”
“We’re all on that app, by the way. You can always see where I am too.”
Oh technology, you double-edged sword. Robin would have to think up reasonable excuses for anywhere she went now. She hadn’t even thought about that.
“I’m not…” Mark looked up. Sighed. “We’ve been kind of distant lately. I feel like we’re both really busy, and I can’t even remember the last time we went for a night out.”
They hadn’t gone out for a date in… Robin couldn’t remember. Not since Gil had died, that was for sure. Before, the four of them would go out, but Robin and Mark rarely went out just on their own.
Robin shrugged. “It’s fine.”
“I don’t think it is. I think it’s… not fine.” His eyes stayed on her, and Robin felt like Mark was seeing more than she was comfortable with. Of all the times for her husband to start paying attention to her, right when she was trying to figure out weird psychic powers was not ideal.
She gave him a tired smile. “You ready for bed? I am.”
He looked surprised, but she could see he was tired too. “Yeah, I guess… Yeah, we should probably go to bed.”
Robin patted his shoulder as she walked by and wondered what Mark would say if she told him the truth. He’d probably think she was a lunatic. He’d probably roll his eyes. He’d probably tell her to call her mom and get her head straightened out.
He would definitely not support the idea of Robin baking cookies the next morning and running up to Russell House to interrogate her ninety-five-year-old grandmother. Maybe interrogate was the wrong word. Question? Coerce?
Whatever word she used, Grandma Helen was no pushover. Double-fudge brownies were definitely in order.
Chapter 11
Double-fudge in hand, Robin made her way up to Russell House after she’d dropped Emma off at school and whipped up a batch of brownies. As usual, Mark was in his office before she woke, so she hadn’t seen him that morning. She’d also swung by the shop and put a note on the door. It was the middle of the week. Glimmer Lake could wait to buy antiques until after lunch.
Gordon Russell had built his house on a wide sweep of lakefront property that overlooked what had been Grimmer Canyon. He’d built it three years after the dam had been completed and the lake was mostly full. He’d already moved his lumber mill up the hills and near the new road that led into the mountains and serviced the quickly growing town of Glimmer Lake.
Over the years, the Russells had built a library, a social hall at the Lutheran Church, purchased several stores, and built rental properties. By the time Gordon had passed away when Robin was a girl, the family was past comfortable and well into rich.
And yet, for her entire life, Helen Russell, Robin’s grandmother, had worn a serene sadness on her face. She’d taken joy from her children and tolerated her bombastic and domineering husband. She’d encouraged her daughter Grace toward independence and played referee between her son Raymond a
nd his father, who had never come to terms.
More than anything, she had enjoyed painting and her grandchildren. Helen came to life behind an easel and doted on both Robin and her older brother Jack, who lived near Lake Tahoe. She enjoyed being a great-grandmother even more.
Robin drove through the granite-decorated gates of Russell House and into a carefully managed forest that was Helen’s other passion. Thick pines dense with an undergrowth of delicate ferns gave way to sweeping meadows of wildflowers.
It was all natural but carefully managed, just like the land where Russell Lumber still logged. Jack ran the logging company statewide, and Robin was proud of her brother’s work. He’d taken Russell Lumber into the twenty-first century with sustainable practices. Conservation hadn’t been high on the list of Gordon Russell’s priorities, but Jack had made the company his own.
Because of Jack’s good business management, Grandma Helen was living—and would continue to live—very well. Robin parked in front of a house that could only be described as a luxury mountain estate.
Russell House was a combination of granite rock and cedar, three stories looking over Glimmer Lake with a sloping lawn leading down to the water’s edge where a boathouse and dock dominated the shore. If Robin hadn’t grown up visiting, she would have thought it was a small hotel.
Robin rang the doorbell before she walked in. “Grandma Helen?”
She looked right, but her grandma wasn’t in the front parlor where the light warmed the room, so Robin turned left from the grand entryway and walked through the dining room and into the kitchen.
Helen looked up from her cup of coffee. “Robin!” She held out a wrinkled hand. “I wasn’t expecting a visit today.”
“I know.” Robin set the brownies on the kitchen table. “But I baked these, so I thought I’d bring you some.”
Helen’s eyes lit up. “They smell like they have walnuts.”
Suddenly Psychic: Glimmer Lake Book One Page 9