Page 14 of The Psychic

“Really? While she was pregnant? This is, what? Her normal behavior?” She was getting upset, her voice rising, her body growing stiff.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, where is she?”

“She hasn’t told anyone, but she’s called in.”

“She ‘called in’? Oh, that’s just … awesome,” she said sarcastically, obviously agitated. “We need to know where she is! That’s our baby she’s carrying! We’re the parents! For the love of God, Cooper. She can’t just take off and not tell us!”

“I know. I know. You’re right. Of course. We need to know,” Cooper agreed. He stood up again. Forced himself not to pace. “I went to see Paula Prescott today. She’s an attorney with Tormelle and Quick.”

“An attorney … ? Oh. God.” Jamie sank back against the pillows, some of the fight draining from her, replaced, he thought, by a deep fear. “What? Why? Tell me.”

“Okay, just stay calm and—”

“I will not!” she said. “Our baby is—Oh, God, we don’t know where it is?”

“Jamie.”

She held up a hand. Drew in a trembling breath and blinked back tears as she struggled to stay in control. “Damned pregnancy hormones,” she said, sniffing and clearing her throat as she pulled herself together.

“Okay,” she finally said. “Tell me what the hell’s going on.”

He did. Cooper quickly and concisely gave her the rundown of his meeting with the lawyer and the uncomfortable conclusion that there wasn’t much to do at this point.

“We have rights,” he said gently, trying not to upset her or upset her any further than she was already.

“You bet we have rights!”

“But it’s a gray area.”

“How gray?” Jamie shot back.

“If Mary Jo claims this is for her health and the health of the baby, and, if she feels she needs it for her own mental health, then she probably does.”

“But we don’t know where she is.” She pressed her hands to her cheeks and took a few more deep breaths, as if trying not to totally flip out. “You’ve been keeping this from me?”

“For a few days,” he admitted. “I wanted to speak to Paula before I told you everything.”

“Because you didn’t want to upset me.”

He nodded, regarding her worriedly.

“Cooper, I’m not going to fall apart. Well, not really. I’m not going to get upset, or mad, or crazy. Well, okay, I am upset, really upset, but you’re going to find her … right?”

“I’m going to do everything I possibly can,” he stated firmly.

“But nothing crazy.”

“Nothing crazy. Unless you count squeezing Kirshner’s head in a vise until he tells me where she is, or tells me how to find her. He’s a …”

“Putz?” she offered up when he stopped himself.

“Yeah, that’s just what I was going to say.” Or prick or dick or jerk-wad.

She made a sound between a laugh and a moan.

“You okay?” Cooper felt his heart clutch a bit.

“Yes, yes. I’m fine.” It was a lie. They both knew it, but he wasn’t going to call her on it. “But please, don’t keep things from me. Okay? Just find her. And find her fast!”

“I will,” he promised.

She reached a hand out and he clasped it, holding it tight.

It was in the shower, while getting ready to meet Marian Langdorf, that the image came back to her.

Ronnie had stripped out of her clothes and ducked under the hot spray, shampooing her hair and generally warming up from her walk in the rain when she was flooded with the same scene she’d “witnessed” earlier.

A woman’s body, on the ground in the failing afternoon light, just before evening.

Head turned away from her. Wrists bloody, torn and ravaged.

Where’s the dog? I don’t hear the dog.

Who was the woman? Why was she seeing her?

There were other sounds and sights. Trees. Lot of trees, both deciduous and evergreen. Whistle of the wind through the boughs. Gravel under tires? The rev of an engine? Someone leaving the scene?

Ronnie froze in the act of washing her hair, her hands stopped as if a switch was thrown. She could hear the rush of the water from the showerhead, yet her flesh was chilled from a cold wind, blasting through her memory.

She concentrated. Struggled to gaze harder at the image before the edges slipped away and the entire picture floated apart and disappeared, as they always did.

The lean-to shed looked about to fall down. There were gaps in the boards. She sensed confusion and fear. A hand reaching for the dog … and there it was. A low grrrr and the raising of hackles, the fur soft beneath tense fingers.

Who’s there?

Was that the woman’s voice? Ronnie’s mind went back to her, lying in ice-crusted puddles, hair and clothes splattered or drenched with mud. A winged maple seed clung damply to one cheek. Her shoes were gone, although it looked like a black slip-on was lying on its side near her left foot.

Her left foot … was it moving ?

Fear shot through Ronnie and the image poofed out.

Gone.

Breathing hard and weaving on her feet, Ronnie slammed back to the present.

Quickly she shot an arm out to brace herself against the side of the shower and regain her balance.

Water ran over her head, cascading. Shampoo slid into her eyes.

Though the spray was warm, she shivered from head to foot, her teeth chattering as she reached for a towel.

Damn.

Sometimes it happened this way.

Sometimes all the noise and confusion and messy bits of information, or non-information, as the case may be, transformed into a piercing reality that needed action.

She’d felt this way with Jesse James Taft, the certainty that he was in life-threatening danger, that certainty enough to manifest his own long-deceased sister.

But who to tell about this latest vision? The dead or dying person in the clearing needed help. How or why she seemed to be reaching out to Ronnie was a mystery. One she couldn’t solve on her own.

You have to call the police.

She sighed. Toweling dry, she thought about calling Detective Verbena again, but this afternoon she’d met Detective Cooper Haynes. He was with the department. Except that he’d said he was on leave. Maybe he would be the best choice. Someone connected to the police but one step out?

But Verbena had listened to her. Sure, she’d eyed Ronnie with a careful expression, which meant she was assessing whether Ronnie was a complete loon or someone with real information wrapped up in woo-woo, maybe as a method to hide her involvement in the very crime she was reporting.

In the end, though, Verbena had used police resources to follow Edmond Olman and save his wife.

What to do? Unsure, Ronnie quickly dressed in black pants and a gray turtleneck, finally warming up as she stared at the items spread across her bed: cell phone, purse, laptop. A phone call wasn’t going to cut it. She needed to talk to Verbena in person.

And she needed to meet with Marian Langdorf.

Soon.

No. Now.

She threw on her raincoat, then slid her phone into her purse and slung the strap over her shoulder before hurrying down the stairs to her Escape.

All the way to her SUV she debated about blowing off the trip to the Langdorfs’ in favor of the police station.

But now she wasn’t sure what she’d actually seen. Was the woman alive? Was she even real?

“Ah, hell …” She climbed inside her vehicle. Not knowing what the truth was, was killing her. Muttering aloud, she cranked the wheel in the direction of the Langdorf estate.

In the twenty-five minutes it took to reach the Langdorfs’, Ronnie drove by rote, lost in her last vision, still vacillating on what action she should take regarding it.

She didn’t look forward to the grilling she would take, the sidelong looks, the general feeling that would prevail—that, once again, here was nutty Veronica Quick with another tale, dream, nightmare, vision that warned of impending doom, this time to a woman lying in a clearing somewhere, out in the elements.

If the woman was still alive, time was of the essence. But again, was she? Did she even exist?

She turned into the long drive of the Langdorf property.

The two-storied house was of gray stone, with gables and chimneys rising from the roof while mullioned windows stared down through the gathering gloom.

The house resembled an English manor on a vast estate and she wondered if there was a garden in the back, behind the neat wrought-iron fence with its wicked-looking arrow points marching across the top.

Ronnie parked where the drive looped in front of the mansion.

She was going to hurry through this meeting.

She shouldn’t have agreed to it, since she had no intention of taking Marian up on her offer.

On the other hand, it would be easier to say no, now that she’d been introduced to her would-be job in person.

She might not know what her future held, but it wasn’t going to be as Marian Langdorf’s guru.

The wind had dropped to a kicky breeze and she swept a hand across her forehead to hold back whipping, still damp strands of hair. She then pulled her phone from her cross-body purse and glanced at its face. Just after five. She might be a bit early, but she was eager to get this over with.

She rang the bell and waited … rang it again and waited some more. Was she that early? Leaning on the button with one hand, she tried rapping on the panels with the other. As a last resort she pulled out her phone and phoned Marian, but there was no answer.

Huh.

Well, fine.

She was heading down the one step of the porch toward her car when the door suddenly opened and Carlton stood back to allow her entry.

“I was just about to leave,” she said, stepping inside and hearing him close the door behind her.

“Marian wouldn’t like that,” he said without an expression in his face. “She’s expecting you.”

“Good.” Ronnie found herself standing in a foyer that rose two stories to a windowed dome decorated with a chandelier.

A large red fleur-de-lis mosaic was inlaid in the center of the marble floor while an intricately carved railing curved upward to her right, the dark wood gleaming under the chandelier’s illumination.