by Amber Foxx
Death Omen
Mae Martin Mysteries, Volume 6
Amber Foxx
Published by Amber Foxx, 2017.
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
DEATH OMEN
First edition. November 1, 2017.
Copyright © 2017 Amber Foxx.
ISBN: 978-1386311966
Written by Amber Foxx.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Author’s Notes
About the Author
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Chapter One
“This is gonna be the best three weeks of my whole summer.”
Mae Martin looked down at the twin girls’ tangled brown hair. Their skinny arms bobbed in rhythm with hers as they walked hand in hand to the baggage claim in the Albuquerque airport. Autumn Brook and Summer Stream, Mae’s seven-year-old stepdaughters from her second marriage, had traveled from North Carolina to visit her for the first time since March, while their father was on his honeymoon with his third wife.
“It’s gonna be our best three weeks, too,” Brook agreed, giving Stream a meaningful look.
Stream nodded emphatically. “For sure.”
Mae caught the subtext. “Aren’t you having a good summer?”
“Yeah.” Stream’s grip tightened on Mae’s hand. “But when we go back, Daddy will bring Jen home with him.”
Brook added with dramatic gloom, “She’ll live with us.”
Mae was stunned. “I thought you liked Jen.”
“As Daddy’s girlfriend.” Stream glanced at her sister.
Brook declared, “You’re our mama.”
A crowd of people interrupted them, flowing so fast on either side that the girls had to duck in closer to Mae. Tall and athletic with carrot-red hair, she was impossible to overlook, but her girls were like little wrens. Mae warned a woman with a swinging carry-on that almost clobbered Brook to watch where she was going and steered the twins to walk in front of her.
They took the escalator down to the baggage claim area. While the carousel crept past, Mae tried to sort out the situation. When she’d first separated from the girls’ father, she had worried she might lose her place as their mother, but she hadn’t. Hubert’s first marriage had been so short the twins had no memory of it. Though they understood that Mae was their stepmother, she was the only mother they’d ever known. According to Hubert, he’d asked for the girls’ approval of his third marriage. Their sudden objection might be their final struggle with the fact that Mae and Hubert would never get back together.
“You want to know something funny?” Mae said. “When I was thirteen, I was so mad at my mama for breaking up with my daddy that I didn’t like my stepfather at first. I thought she married him way too quick. But now I just love him to death. She left him and I kept him. It’s like I’ve got two daddies.”
Stream stared at the passing luggage. “It’s not the same. People should divorce her.”
At this, both girls burst into half-suppressed spitting giggles. Mae wanted to laugh with them but didn’t let herself. “Look at me.” She paused until they gave her their solemn attention. “You may not like my mama, but you have to respect her. The point is that it all worked out. It just took time. Y’all are going to be a good family together.”
The twins turned tense, thin, dark-eyed faces up to her, silently questioning.
Mae continued. “Jen likes living in Tylerton, and I’m better off where I am. Think of the good times you’ve already had with her. She doesn’t have to be your mama to love you.”
Stream looked away and dragged her pink suitcase covered with NASCAR stickers from the carousel. Brook grabbed a similarly decorated purple case. As Mae took their bags, the girls looked at each other in the way Mae thought of as twin-talk, a moment they shared in their minds without needing to speak. As usual, Brook was the spokesperson after such an exchange. “We don’t want Jen to act like she’s our mother. She’s not good at it.”
Stream added, suddenly pitiful, “She can’t move into your room with Daddy.”
Brook let loose her own flood of distress. “And what if Daddy and Jen get divorced? Everybody gets divorced.”
“Oh, my goodness.” Mae let go of the luggage and dropped to her knees to hug them. No wonder the upcoming marriage troubled them. “Not everybody gets divorced. Look at your daddy’s parents. They’ve been together forever.”
Another silent twin-talk exchange, after which Stream spoke. “But Jen still can’t move into your room. It’s not right.”
Mae smoothed their hair and kissed each girl on the forehead. “You didn’t want to tell Daddy, did you? But maybe Jen would like it better if she could move into a room that hadn’t been mine.” A stab of pain ambushed Mae, as she pictured the old bungalow where she had lived with the children and the room where she had slept with Hubert. She pushed the hurt back down to its hiding place. “And we’ll call your grandparents tonight and you can explain it to them. They can talk to Daddy after he has a few days of honeymoon. He might like the idea.”
The twins nodded. Brook said, “But Jen still won’t be our mama.”
“No. But maybe she’ll be your best friend.”
Stream frowned, glanced at Brook, and then sighed. “Maybe.”
Once the girls had settled in at Mae’s pea-soup green converted trailer in Truth or Consequences, they asked her to turn on her laptop so they could show her a surprise. Mae sat back in an armchair while they huddled at the coffee table, blocking the screen from her while they navigated.
“Okay,” Brook announced, grinning with excitement. “We’re ready.”
Stream bounced up and down. “It’s a song we really like. Jen helped us a little, but we made up most of the dance ourselves.”
Good. They’d enjoyed something with Jen.
Brook started a YouTube video with the volume all the way up. Mae was startled to hear her boyfriend, Jamie Ellerbee’s, clear light tenor and Australian accent, rambling in his usual drifty manner of introducing songs in live performances. He performed under the stage name Jangarrai, his Aboriginal skin name, and was known for his eclectic blend of world music styles, his dance improvisations, and his extraordinary voice. He wasn’t a big star, but he had a following, and it included Jen.
“Dunno where this came from,” he said. “Just get silly sometimes, y’know?” He wore a parrot-print Aloha shirt and a straw fedora, his collar-length ash-blond hair puffing out from under it, a striking contrast with his chocolate-brown skin. His wide smile flashed, a gold tooth gleaming. “If you ever make faces in the mirror, this song’s for you.”
T
hough delighted that Jen had shared Jamie’s music with the girls, Mae wondered if they would like him in person. Eccentric and moody, he was an acquired taste. Mae hadn’t known what to make of him at first, but his thoughtfulness and humor, even in the midst of his crises and neuroses, had turned her initial skepticism into tenderness and eventually love.
The girls rocked back and forth, making faces to the beat as Jamie played a hand drum and sang a fast-paced nonsense song.
“Nk-a-dada mp-a-wada hey wo ho
Climb a ladda whatsamatta I don’t know.
Nk-a-dada mp-a-wada hee nah hey
Looka betta eata lotta chocolay
Ump-a-lala woop-a walla
Don’t go way
Ahhhhh ... make that face!”
He put on a ludicrous expression, jutting out his chin and wagging his braided goatee, and gestured an invitation to the audience. “Every time we sing that line, give it your best face.”
No wonder the children liked this song. It had taken him a while to win Mae’s affection, but maybe he would charm the girls more quickly than she’d thought.
Once he had the audience singing the melody, he put his drum down, scuffed a rhythm on the stage with his feet, and cut loose with wild semi-operatic multi-octave wails that rolled up and down around the simple tune. A big man, close to six feet tall and two-hundred pounds, he moved with fluidity and power, hips and shoulders pulsing, his body as agile as his voice.
The twins, more energetic than graceful, twirled and hopped, dropped to the floor, spun on their bottoms, and jumped back up to sing along. They finished with a final set of silly faces that followed the rhythm. On the small screen, Jamie made more faces, encouraging the audience to do the same and cracking up at what he saw. He ended with an explosion of drumming and took a bow. Brook and Stream took their bows backwards, wiggling their little butts.
Mae applauded, wiped the tears of laughter from her cheeks, and thanked them. “That was the best show I’ve ever seen.”
Brook stamped her feet with delight, squeezing Stream’s hand. “Want us to do it again?”
“Not yet. I laughed so hard I can barely breathe.”
The twins scurried over and climbed onto her lap, one child per thigh, their legs dangling and kicking. Stream said, “We’ll do it for Jangarrai when we meet him.”
Brook said, “Jen told us to tell him to make a children’s album. When do we get to meet him?”
“Next week when we go to Santa Fe.” Mae stroked their backs. “I’m sure he’ll love your dance.”
“Next week? Jen said he’s your boyfriend. Y’all don’t see each other for a week?”
“We live in different cities. It’s a three-hour drive.”
Stream cuddled up, leaning her head on Mae’s shoulder. “Good. We get you to ourselves.”
Brook leaned on the other shoulder. “I like it when it’s just us and you. You won’t marry him, will you?”
“I don’t know. I love him, but it’s too soon to know if we should get married.”
Brook raised her head. “Then why isn’t it too soon for Daddy and Jen?”
“I just met Jamie last summer, but your daddy’s known Jen for years. We all went to high school together.”
After a moment, Stream asked, “Did you go to school with our ...” She paused and then pronounced carefully, “biological mother?”
“I did. She was a year ahead of me.” Mae watched the girls’ expressions, wondering what was brewing in their minds. They appeared to be deep in thought. So far, they’d shown little interest in their birth mother, resentfully dismissing Edie as the bad woman who didn’t want them. Mae and Hubert had tried to explain that Edie wasn’t a bad person, just not a good mother or wife, but it had been too complex an idea for the twins at the time, and still might be. “How come you want to know about her now?”
“Because ...” Stream fidgeted, playing with Mae’s hair. “Daddy keeps marrying people.”
“He’s a loving guy. He married your birth mother because he wanted you. She wasn’t ready to have babies, but he was. He wanted to be a father, even when he knew she wouldn’t stick around. And then I fell in love with all of you, your daddy and his baby girls. With me, he found someone who wanted to be your mama. He’s still my friend and I’m still your mama, so he got better at marrying the second time, right?”
“He didn’t get better at it the third time. We like you better than Jen.”
Mae felt ashamed of how much this pleased her. It was probably all normal, though, her feelings and the twins’ feelings, if anything about coping with her family’s marital patterns could be normal. “You don’t have to compare us or choose.” Seeing the girls’ confused looks, Mae said, “It’s complicated. Our family is complicated.”
“Like Grampa Marty having a boyfriend?”
“We call Niall his partner. They’ve lived together for fifteen years. It’s more like being married. Come on, let’s go see ’em. I bet Grampa Marty will take us fishing.”
Excitement erased the twins’ anxiety, at least for the time being. They jumped from Mae’s lap and scurried to the door. She was glad she’d planned the outing. She hadn’t been ready for much else.
After dinner that evening, Mae Skyped her former in-laws and let the girls talk to them for a long time. She made sure the children aired their worries after they told their grandparents about fishing on the Rio Grande and seeing lizards and a snake. Jim and Sallie took a moment with Mae afterwards and thanked her for getting the children to open up. “I know we had our problems,” Sallie said, “but you’re a good mother to Brook and Stream. We’re glad you’re in their lives.”
“Thank you. That means a lot.”
While the girls were supposed to be getting ready for bed, Mae heard them exclaiming over something and went to see what was inspiring all the wows. Brook was standing on a chair, taking things off the top shelf of the guest room closet and handing them down to Stream, who placed them on their bed. A chunk of rose quartz. An amethyst geode the size of a golf ball.
These were the crystals too large for Mae to carry with her, and too powerful to use much. Some of the smallest and easiest to lose were in the closet, too, chips of emerald and ruby that had been her grandmother’s.
“What are you two doing?” Mae asked. “If I put things up where you can’t reach them—”
“But it’s our room,” Stream replied. “We were exploring it.”
Mae nodded. She couldn’t fault their logic. When they visited, it was their room.
“Mama, these are such cool rocks.” Brook jumped down from the chair, her hands full of the small crystals. She sprinkled them on the bed, letting them trickle between her fingers. “Where did you get them? How come we never saw them before?”
Stream held up the geode. “I wish I was small enough to crawl in this little cave. What lives in it?”
“Slow down, sweeties. I can’t answer all your questions at once.” Mae sat on the bed. “I’ll start with the little cave. Nothing lives in it. When rocks like that are in the ground, the hole is like the inside of a ball. And crystals grow in the hole.”
The twins sat beside her, asking in unison, “They grow?”
Brook added, “How? I thought things had to be alive to grow.”
“I’m not sure. Something to do with water and minerals. We can look it up tomorrow. How about I answer your other questions?” Looking up the growth process of rocks might have been easier. Mae and Hubert had simplified the story of their divorce for the girls, leaving out their fights about her psychic gift. Though amicable, the breakup had been heartrending for all of them, and there had been no point in making it even harder for the girls to understand. Sooner or later, however, they were bound to find out she had the Sight. Better they should hear it from Mae than from some Tylerton gossip. “Some of these rocks belonged to your great-granma. They came out of the mountains in North Carolina where she lived, back where I grew up.”
Mae placed one of the un
polished gemstones in each girl’s hand. “They don’t look like jewels, but those are an emerald and a ruby. She used crystals to help her as a seer and a healer. She laid hands on people to make them feel better, and she could see what was happening in other places. Like, if some kid got lost in the woods, she could hold a crystal and a piece of his clothes and see where he was.”
“Mama. Are you making that up?” Stream sat up taller with her know-it all-look, the same look she and Brook had gotten when they’d figured out there was no Santa Claus. “That’s like a fairy story. She holds a magic rock and she can find him?”
“I know it sounds like magic, but scientists have studied this stuff. Not with crystals, but with people being able to see at a distance, even in another country. It’s called remote viewing. And shamans—they’re like Indian medicine people or like priests in old religions—a lot of them use crystals to have visions and to heal people. My granma on my mother’s side was like that. All the women in her family had that gift.”
Brook handled the rose quartz carefully. “All of them? Like forever?”
“Not every single one, but as far as I know, somebody in every generation was a seer.”
“How come you never told us?”
“A lot of people in Tylerton thought it was spooky.” And your daddy thinks it’s wrong, and your grandparents think it’s nonsense. “And some folks get mad at me for finding out stuff they’d rather hide.”
“But that would be so fun. Finding out secrets.” Stream gazed down at the stones in her hand. “Could we do it if we used your rocks?”
“I don’t know.” Would their “twintuition” make them natural psychics? “You’re kinda young to be messing around with it. Anyway, it’s not that easy, and it’s not something I do for fun.”
“But it would be fun.” Brook held a crystal to either side of her head and closed her eyes. “We could do stuff like ... We could Skype with our heads.”
Stream nodded. “Any time we wanted, we could just see Mama.”
“That’s why some people think the Sight is bad. I don’t use it to pop in on people. That would be like opening the bathroom door on ’em or listening in on their conversations. I have to have a really good reason, and then be careful what I’m looking for.”