by Nancy Bush
With that in mind she headed upstairs to her bedroom and the research books with their underlined passages.
The Laurelton airstrip was a narrow line of hard soil, mowed grass, and a Quonset hut terminal, if you could call it that, painted white. Flags snapped in a frisky breeze, and the sun glared down, a fierce, yellow eye.
The smell of burned flesh caught on the breeze as Will climbed from his patrol car and Barb got out of the other side. Burned, putrefying human flesh. Barb wrinkled her nose in distaste as they circled past a state patrol car and the Quonset hut, and headed in the direction of the group of vehicles clustered around the back of the airstrip.
A fire truck stood off to one side and several men and one woman were looking down at a black tarp, presumably the body. Around them was an area of burned field grass. The fire had luckily been extinguished before it could do greater damage.
“ME was on the other side of the county,” Barb said. “Don’t see him yet.”
They approached the group. The state patrolman’s name was Evans and he shook Will and Barb’s hands. He introduced the other man—gray-faced and looking about to faint—as Freddie Delray, an airplane mechanic, and the woman, middle-aged, heavy-set, and sharp-eyed, as Maggie Long-worth, the Laurelton Airport’s resident everything. She didn’t seem particularly moved by the burned body or the god-awful stench, but Freddie was having a hard time.
“Freddie found the body,” Patrolman Evans explained. “Called 911 and I was first available.” He pointed to the fire truck where one of the firemen was leaning against the front bumper. His partner was inside the truck, talking on a cell phone. “There wasn’t much of a fire. Freddie saw it immediately and ran out with water before it got going. Nothing really to put out.”
“Coulda been bad,” Barb observed.
“Real bad,” Evans agreed.
Will said, “Can we see the body?”
“Okay, but get ready.”
Freddie made a squeak of protest and looked away, swallowing hard, but Maggie leaned forward as if dying for another look.
The charred body was of a woman. It had been doused with water, undoubtedly by Freddie, who took the moment now to simply collapse onto the ground and retch up his lunch. The body had been set on fire but there were also two circular dots burned on the chest.
“Cigarette burns?” Barb asked.
“Maybe ritualistic,” Will said.
“What the hell does that mean?” Barb asked the question but looked reviled.
Maggie said, “He’s sending a message, maybe.”
Both Will and Barb looked at her, then at each other, then down at the body again.
“Looks like the fire was a diversion?” Evans guessed.
“From what? He left the body here for us to find.” Will turned to Freddie, whose head hung forward though he was on his feet again. “How long ago did you put this out?”
“An hour. Forty-five minutes? I don’t know.” He spat onto the dirt.
“She’s been dead awhile,” Barb observed.
Will leaned forward. “What would you say? A week, maybe?”
“Smells like it,” Evans murmured.
Will gazed around the fields, then over to the Quonset hut. There was no activity. The airstrip could have been abandoned and practically was. From where they stood, someone could easily have set the fire, walked back to a waiting vehicle and driven away without being seen by a soul.
“So, he killed her, marked her with a cigarette, kept her hidden for a week then brought her here to burn. He chose this place because there’s no one here.”
“We’re here,” Maggie protested.
“There are no windows in this direction.”
Maggie frowned at Freddie, as if it were somehow his fault.
Will glanced from the Quonset hut to the fields beyond. They gave way to heavy brush almost immediately from where they stood. It was the far western point of the airstrip. There was nothing for miles and miles behind them but untended brush and scraggly trees, giving way to timber in the far, far distance. “Coulda started a major fire.”
“Why draw attention to himself?” Barb asked. “If he’d just buried her, she might not have been found for a while.”
Will gazed down at the young woman’s body. “I think he likes to burn.”
It was three o’clock when Sally rang Gemma’s front doorbell. Gemma heard it from the den, where she was lost in thought, having read more passages in her books on borderline personalities, pedophiles, and various and sundry brain sicknesses, until she felt slightly ill. Gemma answered the door still lost in that world, but seeing Sally brought her back to earth with a bang.
Sally Van Kamp, a roundish, middle-aged woman with curly dark hair and an intense attitude, recoiled a bit upon viewing Gemma’s face. “Oh, my, my. You really did have an accident, now, didn’t you?”
And here she’d been thinking she was starting to look almost normal. “Well, yeah.” Belatedly, she invited, “Come on in.”
“I made this up special for you, honey.” She held out the casserole and the hot pad beneath. Gingerly, Gemma took it from her and headed into the kitchen, Sally at her heels.
“Looks the same,” Sally observed.
“I haven’t changed much around here since Mom died.”
Sally cricked her neck and eyed Gemma thoughtfully. “I never heard you call her Mom before. Sounds funny. You always called her Jean, like she was a stranger.” She laughed like it was a big joke.
Gemma let that go by. It had felt strange saying Mom. It was a relief to understand her relationship with her mother a little better, and she realized that maybe Sally Van Kamp wasn’t the only one who could gain some information out of their upcoming reading.
The reading itself made Gemma a little nervous. She could recall her mother’s hocus-pocus ways, but she would never be able to do that. Or, had she already? Sally acted like they’d not had a reading since Jean’s death, but maybe that was just Gemma’s hope.
“Er, when was the last time we met for a reading?” Gemma asked as they moved to the office and Sally sat in one of the club chairs while Gemma took a seat behind the desk.
“You’re kidding. You’ve been promising me and promising me, just like you have Allie Bolt and Davinia Noack. I thought it was never going to happen, I surely did.” She tilted her head again and peered hard at Gemma. “You still suffering from those spells? Jean worried herself sick over you, but she said you had a gift.”
Her words brought a sharp recollection back to Gemma: a tête-à-tête between Gemma and her mother. They’d been sitting in the kitchen and Jean was berating her for taking off with “that Dorrell boy.” Gemma had just returned from following Nate Dorrell to Fort Lewis, and in those years when Gemma had been away, Jean had been forced to rely on her own psychic ability—read that to mean her wits—to keep her business afloat. It hadn’t helped that brokenhearted Gemma had preferred to work at the diner with Macie rather than become her mother’s assistant.
“You’re selfish,” Jean had told her. “These people need our help.”
Engulfed in her own pain, Gemma had lashed back, for the first and last time. “I’m not going to help you lie to them. I’m through with all that. I’m going to the diner! Macie’s waiting for me.”
She’d tried to slam out the door, but Jean held it firm. “Macie, Macie, Macie. That’s all I hear. She doesn’t care about you! She’s got her own little girl. The only one who cares about you is me!”
“Dad cared about me,” Gemma snapped back.
“Peter’s gone.” Jean clamped her lips together. For all her ranting, she’d loved her husband. “We have each other, and that’s all that’s left.”
“I’m not going to swindle people out of hard-earned money.”
“Watch your tongue. You have a gift, dear. You know you do. Better than mine,” she admitted grudgingly, which wasn’t saying much since Jean’s psychic ability was the kind sent away for on the back of a matchbook cover. “You know things, G
emmy.” Her look was assessing and sly. “Don’t you? You know things.”
Gemma had wanted to deny it, but she’d seen pieces of the future on enough occasions that arguing the point would only escalate their argument. “Yes.”
“And you don’t want to use that to do good? I’ve told them, you know. That you came from those Indians and you’re like a witch doctor.”
“Shaman,” Gemma corrected, then could have kicked herself when Jean said delightedly, “Yes. Shaman! You see? That’s what you are.”
“I’m not a shaman. I’m not a seer. I’m not even Native American, as far as I can tell. I’m…intuitive and empathetic and I can read people, that’s all.”
“Keep telling yourself that if it helps you sleep.”
“I’m not doing the readings.”
“I’m not asking you to. I just need to consult with you sometimes, that’s all. Margerie Merrill wants to know if her son is in heaven. She’s worried his soul didn’t cross over. I want you to look into your brain and come up with an answer.”
Gemma had stared at her mother in exasperation and affront. “That’s not the way it works.”
“Well, how does it work, huh? Tell me that.”
There had been no way for Gemma to explain that she simply experienced feelings. A sensation that came off in waves from a person. And it wasn’t like whatever she felt had anything to do with any question someone might ask of a deceased loved one. It just came to her. Sometimes.
And besides, Jean knew all that anyway. She was just being querulous, trying to get her way.
Now Gemma suddenly realized that Dr. Avery had not told her about his son’s impending nuptials. She’d simply picked that up by her own internal radar, her mind-reading ability. It had taken her over a week to recover her lost memories, and at the hospital she hadn’t known enough about herself at that point to realize what she was doing. But while her face and body healed, she began remembering, maybe not completely, but enough that she understood herself a lot better now than directly after the accident.
But to her mother that day, she’d said, “It’s like radio signals. I pick up what’s being sent out. I can’t send something back. Your friends can’t ask me questions and expect answers from their deceased loved ones.”
“Gemma, don’t be dense. I can do that part. I just want you to say something nice about them. If you pick up a radio signal, let me know. More authentic.”
“What if I don’t get anything?”
“Just try.”
“Gemma!”
Sally Van Kamp’s voice brought her back to the present with a jolt and Gemma started as if stung.
“Where did you go, girl?” Sally asked.
“Nowhere.”
Sally’s small eyes were suspicious. “You having a vision of some kind?”
“I was thinking about you,” Gemma lied, “and it took me away.”
“I want to know about my Jerry. He’s not doing so well since he got back from Iraq. He and Bonnie are always fighting and I think she’s stepping out on him. She was whoring around while he was gone, and she’s still at it. They may not be married but Jerry thinks of Bonnie as his wife. He wants a family.”
Gemma gazed at the red chrysanthemum she’d plucked from a grouping around the front porch and put it in a vase on her desk. Its spiky petals reached toward her from a yellow center.
“He has a drug problem,” Gemma said.
Sally reared back in horror. “Well, now that’s a lie, girl. Those are trumped-up charges. She’s the addict!” She blinked several times. “Why would you say that? That’s not the kind of thing you see.”
But it was. Exactly the kind of thing Gemma saw but Jean would never let her tell. The unvarnished truth. And she’d picked up a thread of this particular thought straight out of Sally Van Kamp’s pea-brain, so clearly, despite her protests, Sally thought it was true, too.
“There are a lot of unresolved issues between your son and his girlfriend,” Gemma said. “The kind of issues that may require professional counseling.”
“Like Dr. Rainfield,” she sniffed.
“Yes,” Gemma told her, unfazed. “Dr. Bernard Rainfield would be a good choice.”
“Hah,” Sally humphed. “Old enough to be my father, and that’s saying something. I wouldn’t trust anything that man had to say.”
“He’s been my doctor for a lot of years,” Gemma reminded her mildly.
“That’s ’cause of your headaches. My Jerry is fine.”
“Well, that’s what I see,” she said.
“What else do you see?”
Gemma thought a moment and shook her head. “That’s it.”
“Well, that ain’t much, is it?”
Jean LaPorte had always given her clients a panacea of rosy futures and expectations, but Gemma wasn’t interested. She hoped Sally and her ilk would stop bothering her. She didn’t want this legacy and if Sally got the picture today, that would go a long way to discouraging the lot of them.
Sally’s sharp eyes stared at Gemma. When Gemma didn’t go any further, Sally finally sensed that their session was over. With great reluctance, she reached for her purse, but Gemma stopped her.
“No payment.” She waved her off.
“No payment?” Sally’s hand hovered over her purse. She looked happy for a brief moment, then yanked out two twenties and slapped them on Gemma’s desk. “You just don’t want to help me, do you? Trying to cull out some of us. Well, it won’t be me! You take this!” She shoved the money toward her, ignoring Gemma’s protests. “I don’t care if you see Allie and Davinia, but don’t you dare get all high and mighty with me!” With that she sailed out of the room and slammed out of the house.
“Lord,” Gemma said to the empty room.
A knock on her front door a few minutes later had her thinking that Sally was back to apologize. Gemma drew a breath, then headed for the door.
But it was someone else on the opposite side: a man about her age with a round head and a mouth that dipped down on one side.
Tim Weatherford. A classmate of Gemma’s whose mental slowness had made him the butt of many Quarry High jokes. Tim, whom Gemma had defended when they were young. Tim, who was giant-size and dubbed Little Tim by the whole town. He’d had a crush on Gemma for as long as she could remember and as she’d grown older she’d treated him with careful respect, very aware that he was someone who didn’t understand boundaries.
Little Tim, whose mind she could read easily.
Another piece of her past she’d forgotten until now.
“Hi, ya,” he said as she opened the door. He was over six feet and hunched forward, his head in front of his body.
“Hey, Tim. How are you?”
“I’m real good. Real good. I’m glad you’re back. I want to go to the quarry with you.”
“Uh…” She turned toward the west for a moment, where the quarry lay, thinking. The quarry the town was named after, was behind her property, bordering both hers and the Dunleavys. There was a ridge above it where enterprising high school kids liked to park and fool around, a makeshift lover’s lane. This was what Tim meant. “Tim, I have a boyfriend,” she said. “I can’t go with you.”
“Who, who is he?” His moon face looked crestfallen.
A mental image of Will Tanninger came to her—his dark eyes with their lines of humor, his thick brown hair, the quirk of his lips. “He’s a detective. A policeman,” she clarified. “I love him very much.”
“You said you’d go with me.”
“No, I didn’t,” she reminded gently.
“Can I come in?”
“Not now,” she said. “But I’m going to be working at LuLu’s, starting next week. Come and visit. Bring your mom.”
“I don’t want to bring her.” He slid a sly look Gemma’s way.
“You like Macie’s peach cobbler.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll get you a piece next week at LuLu’s.”
Tim nodded but she could
feel him trying to come up with another reason to stay. His brain, however, couldn’t hold the thought. When she closed the door, he reluctantly retraced his footsteps, hunching back down the long drive. His mother lived in a house at the edge of town and it was a long walk home, but Tim walked everywhere. He’d never had a father that Gemma knew of, and there were no siblings.
As she watched him become a smaller and smaller figure in her line of vision, she realized she was back in her old life with most of her memories still able to be accessed, some more easily than others.
The urgency she’d felt at the hospital to get on with whatever had been driving her seemed to have taken a backseat. Was it because Letton had been incapacitated? Still in the hospital, as far as she knew? Or, was it something she still didn’t understand fully?
“Maybe a little of both,” Gemma said aloud, running a hand along the ridge of her cheekbone, still feeling a surprisingly jarring ache from the remnants of her injuries.
Chapter Seven
Gemma was in the kitchen preparing a cheese sandwich—the extent of her groceries being bread, cheese, and a head of iceberg lettuce—when her land line rang, startling her. The phone hadn’t rung five times since she’d been home from the hospital. Half expecting it to be Allie Bolt or Davinia Noack, she picked up the receiver on the wall phone and answered with trepidation, “Hello?”
“Ms. LaPorte? It’s Detective Tanninger.”
Her heart rate zoomed. She wasn’t sure what she thought about that. Was he planning on arresting her? Did he have enough evidence? “Yeah?”
“Has your car ever turned up?” he asked.
Her pulse slowed down gradually. Of course. The car. That would be the evidence that would convict her or set her free. It made her hesitate a bit. She’d been anxious to find her mother’s vehicle but was almost afraid to learn what she’d done with it.
“Uh, no. Haven’t found it yet. I guess you haven’t either.”
“No.”
“Is Edward Letton still alive? I’m assuming he is, since I haven’t seen a report of his death.”
“He’s still alive.”