“I hope she didn’t kill him. I like her.”
“You like her because she can see you. And, of course, because she’s an attractive woman. She could be holding a bloody knife and standing over a body, and you’d still like her because she’s pretty.”
“Teresa has a good soul. I can read people better now than I could before.”
“Really? Just a few weeks ago you thought Nick Farner was a murderer, yet you failed to recognize Scott Warner as the psycho who killed Dawson’s parents.”
Charley rose and Amanda thought at first he was going to walk away in an effort to avoid her accusation. “There’s Teresa.” He was being polite. Amazing.
Amanda turned to see her former classmate strolling toward them, wearing a white silk blouse, tight jeans with rhinestones down both legs, cowboy boots and a big smile. Several other heads turned to look as she walked by and not just because she was pretty. Teresa had a self-confident air about her that attracted attention and envy.
“Hi, Amanda, Charley.” She settled into the chair opposite Amanda, and Charley resumed his seat.
Amanda felt distinctly frumpy in her faded jeans, cotton blouse and sandals.
“I need one of those.” Teresa focused her smile on the waiter who had followed her in and pointed to Amanda’s margarita. “If you get it here in the next five minutes, you’ll save my life.”
He returned her smile. “I’ll do my best.”
High school all over again, Amanda thought, then berated herself for being childish. It wasn’t Teresa’s fault she was beautiful and charming and self-confident, and she couldn’t very well blame the woman for utilizing those assets.
The waiter left and Teresa picked up the menu. “I recommend the fajitas. They’re wonderful.”
“I used to like fajitas,” Charley said wistfully. “Could you maybe have them bring an extra plate for me so I can pretend like I’m joining you all for dinner?”
“Of course we can.” Teresa dipped a chip into the hot sauce.
“We can?” Amanda scanned the people sitting at tables near them. “Won’t that look a little strange?”
Teresa laughed. “Of course it will. But who cares? Since I’ve come out of the closet as a psychic, a lot of people think I’m strange.”
Amanda crunched another chip with hot sauce. The last few months of having Charley around had been a nightmare. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have spirits hanging around for years. “So you just recently started telling people about this gift, but you’ve done it all your life?”
Teresa shrugged. “I was five years old when my grandmother died and came back to visit with me. She was a gypsy, and she had the sight. I didn’t know because Mother worked really hard to keep her quiet about it while she was alive. After Grandmother died, Mother worked really hard to keep me quiet. What would people think?” She laughed and reached for another chip. “If I had a dollar for every time I heard that, I’d be on a Caribbean cruise with no worries instead of trying to make a living reading Tarot cards and passing on messages from the dearly departed.”
“I can totally relate to that. Not the part about talking to dead people, but the part about hearing your mother say, What would people think? When I’d ask why we cared what they thought, she’d get really upset.”
Teresa nodded. “My mother too. What would people think? was all the reason she needed.”
“Exactly! And although that wasn’t enough reason for me, fear of my mother’s wrath was, at least when I was young.”
“I know! My mother’s only five two, but she got her bluff in on me early.”
The warm evening settled around Amanda and she found herself unexpectedly comfortable with the woman she wouldn’t have dared speak to in high school.
The waiter returned and set a frozen margarita and a bowl of hot sauce in front of Teresa. Again she smiled up at him. “Thank you! We have a friend joining us. Would you please bring one of these for him too?” She waved a hand toward Charley.
He beamed. “Thank you, Teresa. That’s real nice of you. I always enjoyed a good margarita.”
The waiter left with Charley’s order.
“I think the margaritas here are the best. What do you think, Amanda? Charley?”
“Uh, yes, very good.” It had taken Amanda some time to get used to talking to Charley. It was going to take some more time to become accustomed to having a conversation with him and another person.
“Chili’s has great margaritas too,” Charley said.
“Agreed, and they have wonderful burgers. We should go there next time.”
Next time? Though she hadn’t given it a lot of thought, Amanda had sort of assumed the next time would be in a dark room with a crystal ball or a spirit mirror, something appropriate to encouraging Charley to go into the light.
Charley’s smile grew wider. “I’m ready any time. I miss going out with friends.”
Amanda refrained from reminding him that one of his evenings out with friends had resulted in the visit from Ronald Collins and the threat to her shop.
Teresa nodded. “You probably miss a lot of things of this world right now like eating and drinking and feeling the sun on your face.”
Charley leaned closer to her. “Yes! I do miss all those things. This isn’t what I thought the afterlife would be like.”
He had recently plunged into a fresh batch of fried chicken in an effort to taste it and had only succeeded in chilling the entire batch. Amanda suddenly felt a twinge of sympathy for him. But only a small twinge.
Teresa leaned over and patted his hand. Her fingers touched the table top, but Charley seemed pleased at the gesture. “You’re at a very low level. You’re actually stuck between the physical world and the spiritual world. Once you move on, you’ll be happy and peaceful and you won’t miss the material things of this world at all.”
“I won’t?”
“I know! I can’t imagine not missing margaritas and that first cup of coffee in the morning and the way the rain smells. But all the spirits I talk to assure me that’s the way it is. You’ll get there.”
“And you can help him get there?” Amanda asked. “Have you done this for other, um, people?”
“Not yet, but it’s a simple process.” She waved a hand through the air. “As I said, I’ve tried to hide my gift for most of my life so I’m just now starting to get experience.”
“Yeah, I don’t remember you talking to dead people in high school.”
Teresa smiled mischievously. “I did. I just didn’t tell anybody. Remember history class when I kept getting in trouble for laughing?”
Amanda nodded though she didn’t remember history class specifically. What she did recall was that Teresa had often been in trouble with all the teachers for laughing, talking, and being generally disruptive. While she drove the teachers crazy, the other students had loved her.
“We thought Mrs. Dawson had been there since dinosaurs roamed the earth, but before her, Walter Finfrock was the history teacher. He liked to hang around and make fun of her. You know how sometimes she’d get stuck on a subject and drone on and on in that monotone voice of hers? Well, Mr. Finfrock, looking sort of like Tim Conway in a 1940s suit and tie, would lie across her desk and pretend to snore. Sometimes he’d run his hands through that awful sprayed-in-place hair style of hers, and she’d reach up as if she could feel him.”
Amanda laughed. “I wish I could have seen him too. It would have made it easier to get through that class. Mrs. Dawson was incredibly boring.”
“I always wondered what kind of teacher he was. He might have been just as boring in his day, but he was quite entertaining from the other side. He knew I could see him, and I think he liked being acknowledged.”
“Yes!” Charley agreed. “It’s so awful when people ignore you.”
Teresa turned to him. “I understand. Nobody likes to be ignored.” She sighed. “But I have to confess, until Anthony and I broke up, I ignored a lot of the people who tried to t
alk to me. Dead people, I mean. I did my wifely duty and smiled and talked to the live ones who could help him make money and often pretended I didn’t see or hear the others.”
“Anthony also had a problem with your, uh, gift?”
“Big time. When I told him, he got very upset. Said it made me look crazy and he couldn’t afford to have a crazy wife. He ordered me never to mention it again, not even to him. We did a lot of entertaining for his business. I always played Teresa the Cheerleader instead of Teresa the Medium. Now, all bets are off.” She smiled, lifted her drink and took a sip directly from the glass rather than through the straw. “Love the salt. I can’t imagine people drinking these without salt.”
The waiter set a margarita in front of Charley. “Would you like to order now or wait for your friend?”
“I think we’re ready to order. Fajitas?” Teresa asked.
“Sure. Fajitas.”
Teresa handed her menu to the waiter. “Steak fajitas for two, extra guacamole.” She looked at Charley. “And a plate for our friend who’s running a little late, but we know he’ll be here. He’s on a diet so he’ll just share our food.”
The waiter left with their order.
Amanda was feeling much less antagonistic toward Teresa. In fact, she felt a sort of bonding with the former cheerleader. They’d both had to overcome backgrounds of propriety, and they’d both eventually succeeded in embracing the differences that got them in trouble when they were younger.
Or maybe that mellow feeling was just because she’d almost finished her first margarita. “So why did you come out of the closet? What happened to make you suddenly decide it was okay for people to think you’re strange?”
Teresa wrapped both hands around her glass and gave a rueful half smile. “I wish I could say it’s because I realize the world needs my gift or that my grandmother—who still talks to me sometimes, by the way, though not as often as she used to—convinced me I should be honest, but the truth is, money was the deciding factor. When Anthony kicked me out, I had to find a way to earn a living. I didn’t have a lot of choices. I wasn’t smart like you, Amanda. You have no idea how much I used to envy you.”
Amanda almost choked on her drink. “You envied me?” The most popular girl in high school had envied her, one of the least popular?
“You were smart and funny and you had so much self-confidence. You did and said whatever you pleased and didn’t let the latest fashions and hair styles rule your life. You just did your own thing and if the rest of the world didn’t like it, that was their problem.”
It wasn’t exactly the way Amanda remembered her painful passage through high school, but if Teresa saw it that way, she wasn’t going to argue with her. “I’m surprised. I just thought of myself as a geek.”
Teresa laughed. “A geek? Whatever you want to call yourself, I always wished I had your kind of confidence, and now I do. I don’t care who thinks I’m strange or different. There’s not a big job market for former cheerleaders or former business party organizers, so I did the only thing I knew how to do. I hung out my psychic sign.”
“You tell fortunes, read people’s minds?”
“Sort of. Mostly I talk to people on the other side and reassure their relatives when they come to me. But I thought I should diversify, appeal to the largest possible market, so I read Tarot cards too. Actually, I’m a medium, not really a psychic. I mean, I can’t predict the future or read your mind or anything. Except I kind of can because of all the years I spent trying to please everybody and make everybody like me. I’m actually pretty good with those Tarot cards, but I think a lot of it is just reading people.”
“So if you’re only embracing your strangeness for the sake of money, are you going to go back into the closet when you get the money from Anthony’s insurance policy?” Amanda wrapped her fingers around her margarita glass and tried to appear casual while watching Teresa carefully for signs of guilt.
Teresa sipped her drink and shook her head. “That’s not going to happen. He took me off all the insurance policies and bank accounts the day he filed for divorce. He was really smug and pleased with himself when he told me about it. Even though his death doesn’t help me any, I’m happy he’s not going to benefit from all his careful plans. When they catch his murderer, I’m going to give the guy a great big hug.”
At least Teresa wasn’t showing any phony sadness. “Apparently he missed something. There’s still a million dollar policy out there naming you as the beneficiary.”
Teresa set her glass down, blinked a couple of times, and her lips tilted upward in a wide smile. “No kidding? Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure.” As far as Amanda could discern, Teresa seemed genuinely surprised about the policy. But there were plenty of times she’d trusted Charley, believed him when he lied to her. Unlike Teresa, her ability to read people probably wasn’t the best.
“Well, I’ll be damned.” She laughed. “I’ll bet he’s spinning in the morgue right now at the thought that he left me some money in spite of his best efforts.”
Amanda glanced at her empty margarita glass and the full one in front of Charley. “Are you going to drink that?”
He shrugged. “I guess not. Would you like to have it?”
“Thanks.” She switched her empty glass for his full one. It was definitely a two-margarita evening. “Of course, if you killed your husband, you can’t benefit from your crime.”
Teresa cringed. “Not only could I not benefit, I couldn’t stay out of prison, and that would not be fun. But I swear I didn’t kill him.” She turned to Charley. “Have you had any success contacting him?”
Charley spread his hands. “I don’t know how. Everybody I see is alive. Tell me how to do it.”
Teresa pursed her lips and regarded Charley thoughtfully. “You really are on a very low level, probably the very bottom level. You must have been a really, really terrible husband.”
He dropped his gaze. “I was.”
“He was,” Amanda verified.
“Then you should have no problem talking to Anthony. You two have a lot in common.” Teresa lifted a large purple handbag, dug around for a couple of moments and produced a wallet. She took out a picture of a smiling dark-haired man and laid it in front of Charley. Amanda recognized the same smug, superior look on his face she’d seen on Charley’s many times.
“This is him,” Teresa said. “Look at his face. Focus on his name, Anthony Phillip Hocker. You can take the picture with you. Well, Amanda can take it. I certainly don’t want it. In the middle of the night when it’s quiet and dark, focus on the picture and his name, and you should be able contact him.”
The waiter arrived and spread the fajita feast on the table before them.
“I need another margarita,” Teresa said. “And another one for our friend.”
The waiter looked at the empty chair and the empty glass and nodded. His expression remained neutral as if he was accustomed to having invisible guests drink margaritas. “Two more margaritas coming up.”
Amanda unwrapped a flour tortilla and topped it with meat, salsa, cheese, sour cream and a large dollop of guacamole. “Delicious,” she mumbled around the food and looked up to see Teresa placing a small fajita on Charley’s plate then building a second for herself.
Charley leaned close as if smelling the food.
The whole thing was a little strange, but she had to admit Teresa was gaining Charley’s confidence. That would probably make it easier to send him on his way.
Amanda took a drink of the margarita she’d rescued from Charley. “So you can’t talk to your dead husband but you can talk to your dead grandmother and the dead history teacher. Have you ever before had trouble reaching anyone?”
“Sometimes, if the person’s already reincarnated. That’s only happened a couple of times. Mostly my clients want to speak to somebody who’s recently passed, somebody they knew—mother, father, husband—not their great great great grandfather who died a hundred years before they w
ere born and has since moved on to another incarnation.”
“You think maybe that’s why you can’t reach your husband? He’s already reincarnated?”
“Ex-husband.”
“You were still married to him when he was killed, weren’t you?”
Teresa grinned. “Yeah, but I’m certainly not now. Maybe the divorce wasn’t final, but his death was. He is definitely my ex.”
Charley dropped his gaze to the table.
Amanda smiled. She was really starting to like Teresa. “I totally get what you’re saying. Same thing happened to me.”
“Except Charley was decent enough to stay around and tell you who killed him. I think Anthony’s just avoiding me. I think he enjoys seeing me blamed for his death.”
“Really? I thought when people got on the other side, they were more—I don’t know—spiritual. They didn’t hold grudges and have evil thoughts.”
“Yeah,” Charley affirmed. “I’m a changed man. I can’t lie anymore.”
Teresa swallowed the last bite of her fajita, wiped her fingers and reached for another tortilla. “They are supposed to be free of earthly vices. But I can’t think of any other reason Anthony won’t talk to me.”
“Maybe he reincarnated really fast.”
“Lord knows, he didn’t get it right this time so he’ll have to try again, but I doubt it would happen so soon. He needs time to reflect on what he did wrong this time, and there’s a lot to reflect on.”
Amanda selected her second tortilla. She was forced to accept that Teresa could talk to dead people since she talked to Charley. However, she was still having a little trouble wrapping her mind around the concept that Teresa talked to strangers, to the mothers, fathers, husbands and grandmothers of her clients, yet was unable to talk to her own husband. Ex-husband.
Teresa piled more meat and salsa on her tortilla. “Your grandfather wants me to tell you he’s proud of you. He’s been nagging at me since we got here.”
Amanda stopped with a spoon full of guacamole in mid-air. “Really? That’s interesting since both my grandfathers are still alive.”
3 The Ex Who Conned a Psychic Page 4