An Unhappy Medium

by Dawn Eastman

  “But she doesn’t want to because her boyfriend lives here?” Sophie asked.

  “Sort of. She and Elwood fell in love, but her family didn’t approve and they had to move here to start their own settlement.”

  “Yeah, Seth told me.” Sophie flapped her hand in dismissal. “I hope there isn’t any kissing.”

  “Usually the kissing gets interrupted by the shooting of the cannon,” Vi said.

  “Ooh, a cannon?” Seth said. “I didn’t know about that.”

  Grace tugged on my sleeve and tilted her head toward the living room.

  I followed her out of the room just as Vi launched into the Founder’s Day story.

  Grace went to the window and looked outside. She hugged herself and sighed.

  “What’s up?” I asked. I glanced outside as well, but the neighborhood was quiet at this hour.

  “I’m sorry to push you on this, but I really need to know if you’ve had a chance to talk to Mac about the kids.”

  “Well, he’s been a little busy.” I crossed my arms. “What with the murder and all.”

  “I know, of course he has,” Grace said. Her eyes filled with tears. “I can’t believe Derek is dead. I feel like it’s my fault. I never should have come back here.”

  “Grace, we have no proof that Derek’s murder has anything to do with you or Paul. It may not have anything to do with the zombie run at all,” I said. “Mac is looking into things, but Derek has been gone for a long time, just like you. There have been rumors that things weren’t always great for him in Chicago.”

  Grace turned from the window to look at me more closely. “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t really know much, just that there were rumors about gambling and I know that Theo and Aaron have been partners in the jewelry business for years. Didn’t Derek always say that’s what he was going to do?”

  Grace nodded. “He planned to stay here and work for his father’s company. It’s one of the reasons I was so relieved when you had that dream about New York. It gave me an excuse to leave.”

  “What?” I said. “What do you mean, an excuse?”

  She held my gaze for a moment. “You didn’t think I left Crystal Haven just because of your dream, did you?”

  “Well, yeah. I did.” And blamed myself for it for years.

  “Oh, Clyde. Come on,” Grace said. “Do you really think I would uproot myself, break up with my perfect fiancé, and flee to New York because of a dream?”

  “Well, you certainly managed to lose all of Mom and Dad’s money by ignoring your own dream,” I said.

  She narrowed her eyes and crossed her arms. “I don’t have dreams. I see numbers. All the time.”

  “So why didn’t you see them in time to save their money?”

  “I did.” Grace turned away from me. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Try me.”

  Grace sighed. “You have no idea what it was like when you started showing signs of psychic insight practically before you could walk. Mom and Vi and Grandma Agnes watched me for years and never saw any sign of ‘the gift.’” She made quotation marks in the air. “Then you start talking about dreams and feelings . . .”

  “You were jealous of me?” I had often suspected this, but Grace had never admitted it. “But you were the one . . .”

  Grace held her hand up, interrupting me. “When they let me handle the money, I was so thrilled that they trusted me, and they were so excited that it was doing well, I didn’t want to mess it up.” She turned away from me and leaned her head against the window frame. “I didn’t listen to my instincts when I felt I should pull the money out. I didn’t know enough about how my . . . talent . . . worked.”

  I sat on the edge of Mom’s couch, knocking a pillow to the floor. I remembered that time—I was only Sophie’s age and we were living in what is now my house. Mom and Grace didn’t speak for two weeks. Dad and even Vi got involved, but it was finally Grandma who called for a truce. She went for a walk with Mom, and when they returned it had all been decided. We moved in with Grandma, and Grace and Mom went back to their usual, somewhat distant relationship.

  “I always thought you did it because you were mad at them,” I said.

  She turned and came to sit on the chair near me. “I feel like I was mad at everyone back then. I guess my teen years were not as smooth as they could have been.” She leaned back in the chair and pulled her hair into a ponytail, then let it drop. “But I didn’t do it on purpose. In fact, I’ve tried to pay them back over the years, but they always refuse.”

  “I wonder if Mom feels guilty for giving you so much control over the money.”

  “Maybe.”

  I stayed silent.

  “That’s why I say it wasn’t just your dream that sent me to New York. You were only fourteen. Seth’s age. Would you uproot your whole life based on something Seth thought would happen?”

  I couldn’t tell her that I probably would do just that. Seth’s abilities were uncanny, but usually centered on animals, so it wasn’t likely he’d ever see anything that would cause me to run away to another state. Either way, Grace didn’t know that Seth had any abilities.

  I shook my head.

  “In the end, you were right.” She shrugged. “I did meet Paul within a month of moving there. But I left in the first place to get away from Crystal Haven and . . . all of this.” She waved her hand to encompass the room and the world outside. “Thank goodness my kids haven’t shown any abilities. Maybe they can be normal.”

  I couldn’t really blame her. I had left Crystal Haven at about the same age, for similar reasons, but I could blame her for letting me think it was my fault for all those years.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I said. My voice had jumped up an octave and I struggled to bring it back into a calm range. “I thought it was my fault you left.” I turned away from her. I hadn’t intended to have this conversation with her. I certainly didn’t want her to know how much I had missed her. She’d see it as a weakness.

  “Oh, please,” she said. “I’m sure you really hated all the attention as the only useful child.”

  Many responses came to mind, but all of them would only escalate this argument. I decided to change the subject, a patented Rose Fortune technique.

  “What about Derek?”

  “Yeah, I had to get away from him as well.”

  I felt my eyebrows twitch upward at that remark. I opened my mouth to ask what she meant.

  “Mom!” Seth came into the room. “Papa thinks we could be reenactors! Can we go?”

  I saw her shoulders relax at his interruption. “What? All of us?” Grace asked.

  “Well, I think he meant me and Sophie, but I’m sure you and Dad could find a spot, too.”

  “No. That’s okay,” she said. “You guys go ahead. Will you be in the parade, then?”

  “I think so. That’s why Sophie wants to do it.” Seth came closer and lowered his voice. “She thinks it’s going to be like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade or something. I didn’t know how to tell her it’s not even close. Maybe if she’s in the parade she won’t notice. Or at least not as much.”

  13

  We pulled into the gravel drive of the animal rescue league at nine thirty and easily found a spot in the nearly empty lot.

  Seth led Sophie inside in full tour-guide mode.

  “Are there kittens?” Sophie asked.

  “Almost always,” Seth said.

  I hung back to let them have some time together. When I swung the door open, I saw Seth already talking to his friend Logan Vaughn. Yet again, his dark hair reminded me of the swoop of an ice cream cone.

  Theo Lancaster nodded at Seth and pushed away from the wall to come talk to me. I was struck again at how much he had changed from the gawky young man I had known.

  There was a c
onfidence in the way he carried himself that I didn’t remember from when we were younger. I had mostly seen him as Derek’s shadow—never doing anything without Derek’s approval, always just following him around. But a lot of people paled when exposed to the glitter of Derek’s personality.

  “Hi, Clyde,” he said.

  “Theo. How are you?”

  He glanced at Logan, who had joined the tour to show Sophie all of the animals.

  “Been better, I guess. This . . . situation . . . with Derek has the whole family upside down.”

  He spoke as if it was his own family that was dealing with Derek’s death.

  “I feel terrible for his parents,” I said.

  Theo nodded. “Aaron and Derek never got along that great, but it’s still a shock. I told Logan I’d bring him over here to get away from the house and let his parents and grandparents make arrangements.”

  “Did Logan know Derek very well?”

  Theo watched the kids moving from kennel to kennel. “I don’t think so. Derek didn’t come back home all that often, but you know how he was. He always charmed the kids, always sent the biggest presents at Christmas and birthdays—when he remembered at all . . .”

  Theo caught my eye and looked away.

  “Have you seen much of him lately? You were close back when Grace and Derek dated.”

  Theo shook his head. “Not really. He had his life and I had mine.” He looked away from me to study Seth and Sophie. “How is your sister? Her kids look just like her. The girl is going to be just as stunning as her mother.”

  I tilted my head at him but he continued to watch the kids. “She’s fine. I think shocked, like everyone else who knew Derek.”

  “We were really close once,” he said. “I was sorry to see her leave Crystal Haven.”

  “I remember. It was always Grace, Derek, and you.”

  “I actually introduced them.” He looked past me, remembering. “Tell her . . . well, tell her I’m sorry about Derek.”

  Francine, the shelter manager, came through the back door carrying a large bag of dog food over her shoulder. Theo hurried to help her and I got the sense he was just as happy to conclude our conversation as I was.

  Francine nodded hello to me and turned to look for Seth.

  “Hey, Seth, who’s your friend?” she asked.

  Seth introduced Sophie to Francine.

  “Do you like cats, Sophie?”

  Sophie nodded, eyes large.

  “Let’s let Seth and Logan do their work and I’ll show you a new litter of kittens that just came in.”

  Within minutes Sophie was on the floor with five kittens climbing all over her. Seth and Logan shifted dogs from one kennel to another to clean the empty ones. They filled water and food bowls, and let the dogs out into the exercise run.

  Francine roped Theo and me into bathing a couple of new arrivals, and the next two hours flew by in a rush of shared activity.

  We got back to the house just in time for the kids to change into their early-townspeople costumes and head off to the parade starting point with Dad. The rest of us were supposed to get a spot in front of Diana’s store to cheer them on.

  After the strange conversation with Grace that morning, I was hoping to get her alone again to pursue her issues with Derek. I couldn’t tell whether she meant she had to get away from Derek for her own reasons, or because she felt she had to actually escape him. If there was more to Derek than I had realized at fourteen—and how could there not be?—I wondered if that something more led to his murder. But Grace avoided me as if she knew that I was now on the hunt for more information about her private life.

  Mom smiled warmly at her when she offered to do the dishes with Paul after lunch. Then Grace, the avowed anti-crafter, engaged Vi in a knitting conversation, promising to finally let Vi teach her how to knit. Paul seemed just as surprised as I was and we found ourselves outside with the dogs, tossing a slimy tennis ball for Baxter and a squeaky stuffed toy for Tuffy.

  After a few stilted questions on both sides we lapsed into silence.

  Never comfortable with Paul anyway, I decided to dial back the politeness. He had asked me to take his children for him, after all.

  “Paul, do you really think you and Grace are in danger? I mean, she does have a tendency to dramatize . . .”

  Paul threw the toy for Tuffy and it landed on top of the shed where my father kept his tools. Paul sighed and trudged out to the shed to pull it off the top. Tuffy followed, bouncing along at Paul’s heels, barking.

  When he returned, he stood quietly next to me for a few moments and I thought he had either forgotten my question or, more likely, hoped I wouldn’t have the nerve to ask again. I took a breath.

  “I think she can be a bit dramatic at times,” he said quietly. “But I don’t think she’s overselling it this time.”

  Baxter loped up to me and spit his tennis ball at my feet. I picked it up with the tips of my thumb and forefinger and tossed it back into the yard.

  Paul turned and looked into my eyes. “We really appreciate what you’ve done for Seth this year and I think Sophie would be very happy here as well.”

  “Paul, you’re talking like it’s a certainty that these men will come after you.”

  “When I heard it was Derek lying there under the tree, my first thought was that he deserved what he got. I only knew him for a couple of days, but Grace has told me stories.” He took a deep breath. “I didn’t like him. But then I shifted to the realization that he probably saved me by wearing that costume. No matter how I felt about him, I owe him a debt.”

  “Mac is still investigating. There are just as many reasons to suspect that Derek had enemies as there are to suspect it was a mistake.”

  Paul grunted. “Perfect Derek? You must be kidding. Your whole family worshipped him. Didn’t you? Grace says you’ve had a crush on him since you were twelve.”

  I felt my face growing hot. “Grace doesn’t know everything,” I said. Great, now I sounded like I was twelve. “I did think he was wonderful, then. But I’m not harboring any girlhood crush.” Plus, I had gotten that feeling when he shook my hand. Not bad, just a warning to stay away.

  “Well, I’m glad to hear it. Mac seems like a great guy—”

  “Paul?” Grace called through the screen door. “We should go or we’ll miss Sophie’s big moment.”

  Both dogs turned at the sound of Grace’s voice.

  I whistled for them and gestured at the door.

  Ears drooped and they walked slowly back to the house.

  14

  I was surprised to see the sidewalks packed with people. Usually Lloyd had to cajole, threaten, and bribe any straggler to attend, since he’d already done the same to all the participants. I thought that maybe it was leftover zombie run enthusiasts, but there were plenty of new faces in the crowd. The parade only ran along five blocks down the center of town, but the streets were lined four or five deep for the entire length. I had given in to the sad faces and brought the dogs along, and now I was glad for Baxter’s large presence. If people didn’t move quickly enough, a wet nose went a long way toward convincing them to step aside.

  “Oh, my, this is a busy one,” Mom said. She stopped every few feet to say hello to a friend or a client. Vi had wisely brought Mom’s cards along and she passed them out in her wake to anyone who didn’t already know how to find our house and the resident tarot reader. Grace and Paul strolled slowly behind, probably not wanting to be drawn into drumming up business.

  I spotted Lucan’s red hair as he towered above the crowd and then saw Diana’s orange curls next to him. The dogs and I made our way toward them.

  Mom, Vi, Grace, and Paul had all fallen behind while the dogs and I wended our way through the crowd and I turned back to look for them. As they drew closer, I realized Vi wasn’t just passing out Mom’s card,
which was printed in a restful sage color. The other card was a violent orange. If my ears could droop, they would have. I knew what those cards were. With slumped shoulders I continued toward Diana and Lucan.

  Vi had been talking up our new business all spring. Ever since she had almost been severely injured in the winter while Mac and I investigated a murder—while we were on vacation—she had decided that I owed her. I had gone from reluctant to recalcitrant to obstructive as the months progressed. Vi had started up a psychic lost and found business, with me as the main attraction. Much of her pet psychic business relied on finding lost pets and dealing with behavior issues, and she continued to perform those tasks. Everything else fell to me. She had set up a fee schedule for everything from lost keys to lost love.

  I wish I were kidding.

  After the initial flurry of curious townspeople, we hadn’t had a huge influx of clients and I had begun to think that it would die a natural death. However, a crowd this size would certainly have a few clients hidden in its depths. I finally reached Lucan and Diana and stood back for the canine greeting. Baxter jumped up and put his paws on Lucan’s shoulders—Lucan being the only person who would allow such poor manners—but this always set Tuffy off on a jumping and yipping rampage. A small circle of empty space grew around us.

  “What’s wrong?” Diana asked, her eyes on me.

  “Nothing. Vi is just passing out our business card and I had been hoping that business would taper off.”

  Diana stood on tiptoe to try to spot Vi. She dropped back onto her heels and shook her head. “I can’t see her. But I did see a small clump of people all facing away from the street.”

  I nodded and turned to control Baxter. If Baxter would get down, Tuffy would stop barking.

  “That’s her,” I said.

  “Oh, sorry.” Diana shielded her eyes and turned toward the knot of people. “It looks like she’s got quite a crowd.”

  Finished with his Baxter greeting, Lucan followed our gaze up the street. “Maybe she’ll drum up something interesting.”