Suddenly Psychic: Glimmer Lake Book One

by Hunter, Elizabeth

  “Saw Jack last August,” Raymond said. “Debby and I were up in Tahoe for our anniversary. He’s doing great things with that company.”

  “You think so?” Raymond had been left out of his father’s will, which had always struck Robin as horribly unfair. Her mother and grandmother had gotten everything, including Russell Lumber. “So there’re no hard feelings?”

  “Between me and Jack?” Raymond frowned. “Definitely not. I have no interest in timber. I’m surprised he didn’t mention seeing me.”

  Robin waved a hand. “He’s busy. We don’t talk much these days.”

  “That’s too bad.” A shadow fell over Raymond’s face. “You know, you shouldn’t lose touch with your family. I’ve always regretted that your mother and I didn’t get to reconnect after Gordon passed. But I know it’s complicated.”

  She didn’t miss the use of her grandfather’s first name. “Gordon?”

  Raymond raised one eyebrow, and he’d never looked more like the image of Billy Grimmer than he did in that moment. “Tell the truth, Robin. Why did you want to meet me after all these years?”

  She took a deep breath. “Because I’ve been doing some research into family history.”

  “Uh-huh.” Raymond didn’t look surprised.

  “It started out… It’s a long story. But I came across some things that didn’t make sense, and I’m hoping you can tell me what I’m missing.”

  “Like why Gordon Russell hated his only son so much? Or why I don’t look anything like the rest of the family?”

  He knew.

  “Yeah,” Robin said. “It’s definitely along those lines.”

  * * *

  “My real father’s name was Billy Grimmer.” Raymond was looking at the picture that Robin had copied, the one from the dam. “Of course, I had no idea until a few years ago. I never questioned that Gordon Russell was my father when I was growing up. After all, he was an ass to everyone, not just me. I don’t know how much you remember about him.”

  “Not much.”

  Raymond waved a hand. “Our mother, his employees, even his friends. Gordon was not a nice man. But he cast a big shadow. After I left home, I had to go far away. No one in the mountains would hire me to wash their windows, much less anything approaching a real job.”

  Robin’s eyes went wide. “He told people not to give you a job?”

  “Yep. He said Glimmer Lake was his town. He made it and he controlled it. If I wouldn’t work for him, I wouldn’t work for anyone.” Raymond shrugged. “And I was never going to work for Gordon Russell. So I made my way up to Sacramento, found odd jobs, and managed to finish school eventually.”

  “What did you do? Something with metal, right?”

  “I’ve done a few things. I ended up studying material sciences and made it out of school just in time to get drafted. Ended up back in California after the war and found my way into the Cal State system, working as a metallurgist.”

  “That’s interesting.”

  “It had its moments. By the time I got back from Vietnam, your mother was out of school and already dating your dad. I kept in touch with Mom, but Gordon made it clear I wasn’t welcome back. I don’t know if your mother knew how much he controlled that whole town. He told me not to come back for your mother’s wedding, and honestly, I don’t think she ever forgave me.”

  “Did you tell her?”

  Raymond smiled sadly. “I was young and proud. I should have, but I didn’t. I decided in my own head that Grace was on Gordon’s side, and I didn’t want to make life harder for Mom.”

  “Grandma Helen says you write every week.”

  “I started that when I was deployed,” he said. “Guess I never really stopped.”

  “Does she write back?”

  “Mostly. Not as much anymore, of course. Sometimes she’ll just send me little sketches she’s made.” He pulled a paper from his jacket pocket. “This is one she did of you when you were little.”

  Robin took the paper and saw a picture of a smiling, chubby-cheeked girl in a bright yellow swimsuit, playing along the edge of the lake. “I remember that bathing suit.”

  “She said you’re quite the artist yourself.”

  Robin’s smile fell. “I don’t know. I took over Mom’s shop.”

  “The antique store, right?”

  “Yeah.” She stared at the sketch. “I always think of Grandma Helen as a painter, but her sketching is a lot like mine.”

  “Or yours is like hers.” Raymond smiled. “I’d love to see some of your work.”

  Robin hesitated; then she pulled out her sketchbook from her purse and flipped to the picture of Billy Grimmer.

  Raymond blinked. “How about that? That’s a very good likeness.”

  “How did you find out?”

  “Because my wife thought it would be funny to do one of those DNA testing kits for a surprise on my birthday.” Raymond looked up from the sketch. “Surprise!”

  “Wow. But if you and Mom didn’t both do the testing—”

  “The Grimmer family contacted me,” he said. “One of my cousins on that side is really into family history and research. She has the whole family up there. I guess they ended up in the Sacramento area after the dam was built in the mountains.”

  “But not Billy?”

  Raymond shrugged. “According to the Grimmer family, I was part of the reason they went looking for their family tree. They knew that Billy was staying behind for a girl—that he had plans to marry her and follow them when he got the money together—but they moved, and year after year passed with no word. They figured something hadn’t worked out and Billy took off. They were looking for a lost branch, and they found me.”

  “But they had no idea that you existed before the DNA thing? They had no idea that Grandma Helen…?”

  “According to them, Billy was the quiet type. And he was young. He and Mom probably had plans to run away together, but I have no idea what happened and neither do the Grimmers. They all moved out and started new lives. They were curious what had happened to Billy, but they didn’t have many resources until DNA testing became more common.”

  “And they found you.”

  Raymond nodded. “You can imagine the shock, but when I saw the pictures they had…”

  “The resemblance is pretty obvious.”

  “It is. And the minute I met some of Billy’s brothers, I knew. I was definitely part of the Grimmer clan. I can’t even tell you why, but I knew.”

  “Do you think Gordon knew?”

  “I’m sure he knew eventually.” He tapped his finger on the coffee cup. “I was born early, according to Mom. But I’ve seen my birth certificate. I was pretty big for a premature baby, if you ask me.”

  “So you think she was pregnant when she married Gordon?”

  “Why else would she marry him? Mom and Gordon were never in love. I’m pretty sure she married Gordon because she was pregnant. Options for young single mothers were not the best in 1946.”

  “True.” It would certainly explain why Grandma Helen stayed in such an unhappy marriage.

  “Now,” Raymond continued, “I don’t know if Mom told him she was pregnant when they got married, but Gordon would have known Billy Grimmer. They lived in the same town. Once I got old enough, he could have easily put things together. Gordon and Mom were both blond, and I had dark brown hair before I went grey.”

  Robin leaned forward and said, “I was trying to talk with Grandma Helen about this last week before I called. She said something strange. She mentioned a couple of times that Grandpa Russell was kind to you. Her word. Kind. Which I thought was strange, because why would she mention that the man was kind to his own son? Plus, from what I’ve heard, he wasn’t all that kind.”

  “That’s interesting.” He tapped his fingers on the table. “Kind?”

  “Yeah. I thought it was strange.”

  “I suppose Gordon wasn’t horrible to me until I got to be a teenager,” Raymond said. “That’s probably when
it became more obvious that I wasn’t his. Before then, he was mostly indifferent. But if Mom thought Gordon was being kind, then I think we have to assume that Gordon knew from the beginning I wasn’t his son.”

  “He might have known she was pregnant when he married her,” Robin said. “Do you think Billy knew she was pregnant?”

  “There’s no way of knowing,” Raymond said. “We don’t even know what happened to Billy. He didn’t stay with Mom, that’s for sure. He must have run off, but according to the Grimmers, he never got in touch.”

  Robin knew. She knew exactly what had happened to Billy Grimmer. She just didn’t know how to tell Raymond without arousing suspicion. Of course, some information was public.

  “You know,” she said, “I had a bad car accident a couple of months ago. My car went into the lake.”

  “Robin.” Raymond reached for her hand. “Your car went in the lake? Thank God you’re okay. What happened?”

  “It’s a long story, but when they were raising my car, they unearthed a body that had been at the bottom of Glimmer Lake for a long time. They think… maybe even seventy or eighty years.”

  Raymond’s eyes went wide. “You don’t think—”

  “Maybe?” Robin took a sip of cold coffee. “I don’t know. Nobody knows what happened to Billy. Maybe he ran off, or maybe he never left Grimmer.”

  “There’s no way of knowing.” Raymond was frowning. “What happened to the man in the lake? Do they know how he died? It could have been a boating accident or something to do with the dam. Is it even a man?”

  “I’m pretty sure it was a man. The sheriff was sending the remains to the state crime lab in Sacramento,” Robin said. “But Uncle Raymond, it wasn’t an accident.”

  “How do you know?”

  “There were chains around his ankles,” Robin said quietly. “That’s how they determined the age of the remains. Whether he drowned in the lake or was dead when he went in, someone didn’t want his body to be found.”

  Chapter 18

  An hour after she’d left Raymond, Robin called Val. “Hey,” she said. “I think I’m out of my funk.”

  “You were in a funk?” Val asked. “By the way, you’re on speaker. Monica’s here.”

  “Hey, Robin.” Monica lowered her voice. “How are you so dense, Val? Yes, she was in a funk. The date with Mark did not go well.”

  Robin kept her eyes on the road. “The funk was not because of Mark.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Sure.”

  “Okay, maybe it’s kind of because of Mark, but it was also because I felt like we were accomplishing nothing important, and this was all in my head, and we were being stupid about our supposed supernatural powers.”

  “Supposed powers?” Val asked. “I nearly lost my head earlier today because that cheating cheater who likes my danishes told his side chick he loved her the same day he told his girlfriend, and I saw it when I accidentally touched his keys. Again! I want to kick him out of the café, but seriously, I have no valid basis for calling him an asshole. God, people are the worst.”

  Robin cringed. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Yeah,” Monica said. “I think you definitely got the worst power.”

  “Thanks?” Val said. “Maybe I just need to wear gloves all the time. And I mean all the time.”

  “Robin, have you thought about telling Mark what we’re doing?”

  Val yelped, “Wait, what?”

  Robin shook her head. “You know, Monica, you say these things in your cute little voice, and they sound so reasonable, but then I think about what you actually said and realize that you are, in fact, nuts.”

  “Mark might not think we’re crazy!” Monica said. “I decided not to tell Sylvia, but she’s my daughter. Mark is Robin’s husband. It’s different.”

  “How?” Val asked.

  Robin had the same thought. “Monica—”

  “Plus he and Robin are going through things, and he’s going to eventually realize that something is different. Let him help. He might want to help.”

  “Robin doesn’t even trust the man to pick out a car for her,” Val said. “She’s not going to tell him about seeing ghosts.”

  “I do not…” Robin glared at her phone. “You act like I’m a control freak.”

  “You kind of are,” Val said.

  “I can’t disagree,” Monica said. “But I want to add that you’re partly a control freak because you’re very good at managing things. I mean, it’s not all negative.”

  “Thank you?” Robin sighed. “This was not why I called.”

  “Oh?” Val sounded like she was eating something. “Why did you call?”

  “I got confirmation from my Uncle Raymond that he definitely is not Gordon Russell’s son. Guess who he’s related to.”

  Monica said, “Billy Grimmer?”

  “Yep.” Robin took the exit at Bridger City and turned east. “My grandma Helen and Billy Grimmer must have had an affair. Or a relationship of some kind. Raymond is pretty sure Grandma was pregnant with him when she married my grandfather.”

  “Wow! Grandma Helen, woman of mystery.”

  “That’s so sad,” Monica said. “Billy left her pregnant?”

  “Did he?” Robin asked. “Remember when I saw him at the lake the second time? He kept saying he was supposed to be somewhere, but he didn’t remember where. And according to Raymond, Billy’s family thought he was staying in Grimmer for a girl. Maybe he was trying to get to Helen when he was killed.”

  Val said, “Oh, that’s awful.”

  “If that’s true,” Monica said, “then your grandmother never knew what happened to him. She probably thought he abandoned her.”

  “That could definitely explain why Grandma barely acknowledges she knew him.”

  “…I suppose he went with them to Sacramento. I suppose he did. They went to Sacramento, and he was going to join them. I imagine he went there.”

  “Were you friends?”

  “No.”

  Helen and Billy weren’t friends. But they were lovers. And Helen thought he’d left her. Had he? Or had something or someone stood in the way?

  “We need to find out why Billy is still here,” Robin said. “What does he need? What does he want? Why hasn’t he moved on?”

  “Can we ask him?”

  “If I can find him, I can ask him. But so far I’m super crappy at actually summoning ghosts. I don’t seem to control it at all.”

  “Okay,” Monica said. “So maybe that’s job one. We need to figure out how you can summon ghosts. Then you can ask Billy questions.”

  “Do you think it has to do with solving his murder?” Val asked. “Do you think he needs to remember who killed him?”

  “He may not know,” Monica said. “Didn’t Robin say he doesn’t remember what happened before he ended up in the mine?”

  “If he doesn’t know, how do we find out?” Val asked. “It’s not like we’re police. We can’t exactly question people, especially when this murder happened seventy years ago.”

  “First things first,” Robin said. “We have to figure out how I’m supposed to summon ghosts.”

  * * *

  The next morning they were back at the shop, and Robin was sitting in the children’s area, thinking about the memory of the ghost she’d seen the week before. Robin sat on the ground, her eyes closed, facing the rocking chair and trying to meditate.

  Val and Monica watched her silently. Neither of them had been surprised to hear a ghost lived in the antique shop. Val said she was pretty sure one was living at the café too. Monica suspected two at the library. Apparently Glimmer Lake was chock-full of ghosts if you kept an open mind.

  Robin opened her eyes and sighed. “This is no use. Have you ever tried to empty your mind? It’s impossible.”

  Monica tapped a finger on her chin. “Maybe if you think about her really hard. Picture her in your mind. Maybe you can focus just on her?”

  “That’s impossible.”


  “Why not? Just try to focus—”

  “My brain is never that focused!” Robin nearly yelled. “I have to juggle too many things. Emma’s schedule. She still hasn’t decided where she wants to go next year, which means we haven’t even started on financial aid stuff. Work, running the house, dealing with my mom, visiting Grandma. I still need to find someone to live with her and also a new cleaning crew. I have to get inventory up and the store decorated for the holiday season. We need to update the insulation around our outside plumbing before the snow comes, and Mark keeps forgetting. There’s a leak upstairs at Russell House. Added to that, Austin has been trying to call me, and I’ve been putting it off because I know he wants to talk about switching majors and I just do not feel like I’m going to be able to have that conversation with him without yelling. And my knee is acting up again, and I’m sexually frustrated.”

  Val blinked. “Wow.”

  Monica’s shoulders drooped. “I’m exhausted just listening to that.”

  Val grimaced. “Is there anywhere—anything you do or place you go—where you actually feel like your mind is empty? That you feel like you focus on one thing?”

  Robin took a deep breath. “My morning walk when I can be outside. And drawing.”

  Val snapped her fingers. “Drawing.” She ran to the kitchen and came back in seconds. She tossed Robin’s sketchbook at her. “Draw her. Draw the ghost you saw.”

  Monica nodded. “That’s a good idea.”

  Robin was skeptical, but she started sketching out the face she saw in her memory. She drew the curve of her cheek first. The line of her back sitting in the rocking chair. The draped skirt.

  She heard the rocking chair begin to creak.

  Robin kept drawing. She drew the crisply curled hair and the zigzag edging on her dress. By the time she looked up, the woman in the rocking chair was staring straight at her.

  “You never bring the children anymore.” Her eyes were sad.

  Robin couldn’t tear her eyes away from the woman who was speaking to her. There could be no mistaking it. The ghost saw Robin just like Robin saw the ghost.