Page 13 of The Psychic

“Hi, Dad.”

Ronnie kept her tone neutral. The less said the better when dealing with Jonas because otherwise they’d end up in a scrap.

She would rather live in her one-bedroom apartment with faulty heating, a sensitive toilet and noisy neighbors than let him coax her into moving home.

He’d never gotten over the need to direct her every decision.

Didn’t matter that she was an adult. Didn’t matter that she was married.

Didn’t matter that as soon as he started in, she grew deaf.

“What did Marian Langdorf want?” he demanded.

“I think you can guess.”

“She’s still going on about you saving her life?”

“More or less.”

“And she offered you money to ‘predict’ for her?”

“Again, more or less.”

“You’re not taking her seriously, are you?”

She could picture Jonas, gray hair neatly cut around his ears.

Piercing hazel eyes surrounded by wire-rim glasses.

Strong chin. Stony expression. Though she’d seen him loosen up, he always seemed particularly tense and uptight around her.

Like he was afraid she would make one wrong step too many and …

what? Bring everything crashing down around her? That felt like it had already happened.

“Carlton Langdorf is definitely taking me seriously. I think he’d like it if I disappeared from the planet.”

He harrumphed. “That’s because you threaten him.”

“He’s wrong about me. A lot wrong.”

“Be careful, that’s all I’m saying. Try to minimize Marian’s obsession with your supposed skills.”

“I always do.”

“Okay.”

Ronnie tried, and failed, once again to imagine how her tightly wound father and her apparently free-form mother, if you could believe Aunt Kat’s description, ever got together. “Combustion,” Aunt Kat would say and make the sound of an explosion. “It couldn’t last. Winnie just burned out.”

“Anything else?” Ronnie asked her father.

“Are you and Martin meeting with the Bentons this afternoon?”

“I’m about to check with him.”

“Fine.”

He clicked off then, apparently satisfied with her unsatisfactory answers. At least for the moment. Ronnie returned to Martin Calgheny’s office and rapped lightly on the door.

“Come on in,” he called.

She pushed in, then hung on the knob, poking her head inside. “We heading to the Bentons?”

“Actually, no. That’s been postponed till next week.” Calgheny, in a tailored suit and tie, didn’t look up from his work, just waved a hand across the papers stacked on his desk. “It’ll give more time for them to work their problems out.”

“You think it’ll help?”

He gave a little sarcastic laugh and Ronnie smiled.

The Bentons were another family where the majority of the wealth came from the previous generations and now there were descendants, close and distant, along with dubious friends and acquaintances all lining up for a piece of the pie, especially now that matriarch Dolores “Dolly” Benton was dying …

though the woman had been on her death bed enough times that her current cries of “wolf” were being questioned.

“What happened to you?” he asked, finally glancing up and seeing her for the first time.

“Got caught in the rain. I was going to go home and change before we left.”

He lifted his brows. “You might still want to do that …”

She remembered how her hair looked in the bathroom mirror.

Good point. She had a few more calls to make and contracts to read over and then she would knock off early.

She needed to decide what to do about the woman in the clearing.

Did she dare go back to the police and talk to Detective Verbena again?

Dear God, that sounded bad.

She’d have to think about it.

Cooper switched off the ignition and waited in his SUV till the interior lights turned off.

He was parked in the driveway, behind the garage where Jamie’s car now sat.

He watched rain drizzle down the windshield that was beginning to fog, then steeled himself.

“Now or never,” he whispered to himself as he got out of the SUV and walked toward the back steps.

He heard Duchess barking inside, and from the frenzied sound of it was pretty sure the dog was trying to get Twinkletoes, the tuxedo cat, into playing with her.

Both animals were basically Jamie’s sister Emma’s, though the menagerie was all part of their household now.

Emma had insisted on taking care of Jamie in these last months of pregnancy, but Emma’s help was …

hard to define. Since the accident in her teens that had mentally compromised her, Emma had required extra care herself.

A few years earlier, upon the death of their mother, Jamie had become responsible for Emma’s care.

Jamie and her teenaged daughter, Harley, had relocated from Los Angeles back to River Glen and into the house where Jamie and Emma had grown up, the very house where they all lived now.

Emma had recently moved in. Before that she had resided in Ridge Pointe Independent and Assisted Living.

That’s where Emma had first encountered Twink, the “death cat,” an animal that seemed to sense when someone was about to die and curled up with them in bed.

Twink’s ability to predict when a resident would pass had not gone over well with the facility’s administration and Twink was chased out of the building enough times that Emma feared for the cat’s life.

So, Emma had moved back in the house with Cooper and Jamie, dog, cat and all. At least temporarily.

Emma joined Harley, who was attending Portland State University; Harley’s boyfriend, Greer, a constant fixture; and Marissa, Cooper’s own stepdaughter, currently back from out-of-state college but staying at her mother’s.

Then there was Jamie’s prescribed bed rest added to the mix.

Things were a little on the chaotic side.

What would happen when the two babies arrived?

With that he thought about pregnant Mary Jo’s disappearance again and his jaw tightened. He’d find her. He would.

As he opened the back door, Cooper heard the skidding of Duchess’s claws as the dog wheeled around at his entry. Which is when he remembered it was pizza night and he was in charge of bringing home dinner. Which he’d forgotten.

Great.

“Hey, Duch,” he said to the dog, petting her head and absently scratching her ears before he headed down the hallway toward the kitchen.

Everything was quiet, which put his nerves on edge.

Where was everyone? The dog was here and yes, there was Twink standing on the front window sill, her back still up from dealing with Duchess, the Christmas tree standing in the corner, lights glowing and reflecting on the array of ornaments collected over the years.

Looking through the window he spied Harley and her boyfriend saying goodbye to each other by Greer’s car, which was parked across the street.

Turning around, he started, his muscles tightening for a second.

Emma was standing silently at the bottom of the stairs, her gaze on him.

“Emma,” he said in surprise.

She put her finger to her lips and said in her toneless way, “Shh. Jamie’s sleeping.”

Their bedroom was on the second floor, down the hall and the door was solid core, so he thought Emma might be overreacting a little, but the point was well-taken anyway.

“How’s she doing?” he asked.

Emma’s eyes were big and blue, her dark blond hair tossed over one shoulder in its ubiquitous single braid.

She’d been one of the most popular girls in his high school class before the accident.

Afterwards, things like popularity ceased to matter very much.

Now her eyes rarely focused on faces; she mostly looked past people when she spoke with them.

Her expression rarely changed as well, but it didn’t mean she wasn’t listening.

“She said it was driving her batshit crazy,” Emma revealed in that same flat tone.

Cooper smiled to himself. He could well imagine just how much the confinement bothered his irrepressible wife, though “batshit crazy” sounded rather mild as a description, based on the look on Jamie’s face when she’d realized she had at least six more weeks in bed.

“I still gotta pick up the pizza, but I think I’ll go see her now.”

Duchess followed him up the stairs and stood anxiously outside the bedroom door, toes clicking on hardwood, as Cooper leaned down and warned the dog that she wasn’t needed in the room.

He then tapped lightly on the door and entered, fighting to keep the dog out while he squeezed in, keeping Duchess’s nose just beyond the closing door.

Jamie gave him a “look” as she picked up the remote and switched off the TV.

“Wait, which house did they pick?” Cooper asked, staring at the TV in dismay.

“Ha-ha. That was a cake decorating competition, not HGTV.” But she did manage a smile, then sobered immediately. “Were you at the station?”

He knew she was worried about how he was taking his forced leave. “I’ll check in tomorrow.”

“What were you doing?”

“Oh … I don’t know …” You’re putting off the inevitable , he chided himself as he lay down on the bed beside her.

“What is it?” she asked in a voice threaded with alarm.

He was no good at lying to his wife. He never wanted to, and he never could. “Nothing bad.” He sent up a prayer that he was right. “I have something to tell you, but I don’t want to upset you.” He heard her suck in a breath. “It’s normal, according to Stephen Kirshner.”

“Oh, no …” she whispered, eyes wide.

“Baby’s fine. It’s not that. It’s that Mary Jo … left … about a week ago, and is on her own … he called it a vision quest.”

“A vision quest? What’s that supposed to mean?” she said, a little edge of panic in her voice.

“I don’t know but—”

“And don’t they last just a few days? What is this?” Jamie’s hazel eyes searched his and before he could answer, she asked, “What does ‘about a week ago’ mean? Over a week?”

“Kirshner says she’s done this before.”