Page 66 of The Psychic

Myrna Gerling bustled back in before Ronnie could ask further questions, but Mom had already retreated into a blank silence. Ronnie’s heart fluttered as she recognized that she herself sometimes entered a similar fugue state.

Gerling pursed her lips at Mom’s frozen trance and shot Ronnie an accusing look. “This could go on for weeks,” she warned.

“Or last minutes,” countered Ronnie.

“It’s time for you to go.”

Ronnie looked at her mother, memorizing her face, before allowing Gerling to escort her out.

She turned her cell back on as she headed for her Escape and saw she’d missed a raft of texts and calls: Her father … Aunt Kat … Sloan … Brandy … Evan Caldwell …

Evan’s text read: How goes it with the fam?

Sloan’s said: Saw Hugh McNulty with Verbena. Call when u r free.

Brandy wrote: Can you come to Glen Gen. Want u to see Clint.

Aunt Kat was a missed call, no message.

The three calls from her father had culminated in one voice mail that she started to listen to but realized was just more blame shifting, so she cut it off.

She pushed Brandy’s number from her call list.

“Ronnie,” Brandy answered, sounding half panicked. “Clint’s come around. I don’t want him to talk too much. Abel was here and I don’t know what Clint said to him.”

“Don’t worry, Townsend’s already giving him the benefit of the doubt. I’m coming back from the beach, but won’t be there for a couple of hours.” At her moan, Ronnie urged, “Call Sloan. You can trust him.”

“He’s the one who’s been after Clint!” she retorted.

“He’s just following the evidence. You know he’s leaning away from Clint as the killer.”

“Ohhh …” she moaned. Then, in a hushed voice, “What if Clint accidentally did it?”

Ronnie exhaled heavily. Brandy’s fear kept sending her seesawing back and forth over her brother’s culpability.

It didn’t take a vision for Ronnie to imagine her sitting tightly in the hospital alcove, seeking to talk privately.

“I’ll be there as soon as I can, but you should call Sloan. You have his number.”

“I’m off in a couple of hours, but Clint could say anything while I’m working.”

“Trust Sloan.”

“I gotta go. Hurry!”

“Sloan!” she repeated.

The cat arched her back and hissed at Duchess, who was barking her head off as Harley raced into the house.

Greer was coming by to pick her up and they were going to the hospital, but she had to see Emma and Mom first. Cooper had already given them the good news that Mary Jo and the baby were safe and probably at the hospital by now, but Harley needed to touch base.

Emma shushed Duchess, who only paid attention to Twink when the cat decided to react.

Then, game on. When the barking slowly diminished and Twink stopped making that scary moaning sound in her throat that sounded like someone dying, Emma said to Harley, who was beelining for the stairs, “It’s a boy. ”

“It sure is,” Harley called over her shoulder. “And everything’s great and I’m going to the hospital with Greer.” She threw open the door to her mom’s bedroom.

“Tell me everything,” Mom demanded, unfazed by her charging entrance.

“He’s perfect. I’m heading to the hospital. More to come.”

“God, I wish I could go.” Her face was pinched.

“You okay?” Harley’s heart galumphed.

“I’m fine,” she said through her teeth. “I will stay here and stay calm and the baby inside me will not come until he or she is fully done.”

“You sure?”

Mom said, “All I need to know is that my little boy is okay.”

“Better than okay!” Harley beamed. “Really!”

“Pictures! Send pictures!” she cried as Harley raced back out of the room and down the stairs to meet Greer, who had already come in by the rear door. She jumped on him in glee, so boisterously unlike herself that he fell against the wall, taken by surprise.

“Wow,” he said. “I like the way you celebrate.”

“Let’s go,” urged Harley, sliding back to the ground and grabbing his hand, yanking him back toward the door.

“He needs a name.” Emma raised her voice from the kitchen.

“I’ll come up with one!” Harley yelled back.

The call from Brandy came in while Sloan was at his desk, reviewing everything Hugh McNulty had said to Verbena and him about Melissa and her many loves.

“She was always on the phone,” he’d told them, apparently eager to throw his dead wife under the bus. “Sneaky. Trying to hide one guy from another. It was a game.”

McNulty worked from home on Mondays. Like Caldwell, he had decent computer skills that Sloan suspected could maybe trip over the legal line sometimes, according to the rather sparse report Townsend had written up after interviewing the man.

Verbena had chosen to do the questioning, which left Sloan to silently assess the man.

He pegged him as one of those guy-guys who really didn’t like or respect women.

His massive biceps and ripped muscles suggested he spent a lot of time at the gym, and he proudly wore his shirt unbuttoned to display his abs during this December cold spell.

“We’ve split a bunch of times,” he’d said with a shrug. “I don’t want to talk trash about Melissa, but she liked having a bunch of guys hanging around with their dicks at attention. Guess one of ’em finally got fed up and killed her.”

“Do you have the names of these partners?” asked Verbena.

“A few. You have Mercer and Wetherly, right? And Neel? There were always more. That’s just how she was.

” He made a face. “You know, I ran into her, just kind of by coincidence, a month ago or so, and she was laughing on the phone to someone I could hear was talking dirty to her. Didn’t seem like anybody I knew of.

I thought she’d moved on to someone new. That would be like her.”

“Man or woman, could you tell?”

“Oh, man, for sure. Melissa didn’t have a lot of girlfriends. She’d piss them off too much. Steal their partners. Generally shit on them.”

“Yeah.” Verbena wrote herself a note, while Sloan had found his hands were balled into fists and forcibly relaxed them.

McNulty had then screwed up his face in thought. “She said his name … I think. Maybe that’s why I thought it was someone new. She was being flirty with him, but it didn’t sound serious, really. At least on her part.”

“What was that name?”

He screwed up his face in thought, but finally shook his head. “Don’t know.”

“Not Clint Mercer, or Neel or Wetherly?”

He snorted. “She said she had a thing for Mercer when she was a kid. Seemed like a joke, but then she decided to act on it when she had the chance. Doesn’t sound like it turned out that great.” He smirked. “Maybe he didn’t like being dumped.”

And that was about all they’d gotten from McNulty. Sloan had given him his cell number before they left, telling him to call if he remembered anything else.

On their way back to the station, Verbena had asked, “Did he seem credible to you?”

Sloan had a lot of things he could say about McNulty, but he’d focused in on the question. “Yeah. He seemed credible.”

“So, we widen the search for her killer, who might also be Shana Lloyd’s.”

And that’s where they’d left it as they walked in through the station’s back door.

Sloan had texted Ronnie several times and had heard back once with a nonspecific answer, which had left him with more questions than answers.

He’d grabbed tacos for lunch from a row of food carts that assembled near the station and brought them back to the break room.

His mind had then drifted back to Clint Mercer.

He couldn’t make himself believe the man had killed McNulty …

and Shana. But Mercer knew something. He’d been there, at the clearing, by his own admission.

He’d known the maple seeds and tire tracks would incriminate him and he’d charged after Neel and Wetherly, taking the law into his own hands, which had landed him in the ICU.

And now the call on his cell from Brandy. “Sloan Hart,” he answered.

“Ronnie said I should call you. I already think it’s a mistake.”

“How’s Clint?” he asked, ignoring that.

“Better,” she said cautiously. “Ronnie’s meeting me at the hospital when she’s back, but in the meantime I’m … I guess I’m checking with you.”

Back from where? He desperately wanted to ask but sensed she would balk at telling him something about Ronnie that he didn’t already know. “If he’s awake, I’d like to talk to him.”

“I’m sure,” she said sarcastically. “But fine. That’s why I’m calling. I’ll meet you at the ICU.”

Sloan looked at Verbena, who was on a long, involved call with her mother’s doctor. It didn’t sound good. He gave her the high sign that he was leaving, figuring she could text him when she was done, but he was glad that he would have at least a few minutes with Mercer on his own.

He headed out to his Bronco and wondered again where Quick was that she couldn’t text him. He had to work hard to tamp down the worry and fear that had their teeth in him.

Ronnie was lost in thought, driving back through the Coast Range. She felt low about her mother. She’d seen for herself the state her mother was in now, but she just couldn’t get over all the wasted time.

She was cruising through the eastern foothills when a call shattered her reverie. Darting a glance at the cell screen, her jaw tightened. DAD.

She didn’t want to talk to her father EVER AGAIN. But … what the hell.

She clicked on. “Dad,” she answered flatly.

“We had a swimming pool, do you remember?” he growled with no preamble.

“You fell in and your mother went to save you and she had a sudden cramp and was gone. Dead. Considered dead. She came back under CPR, but was never the same. You were unconscious, too. That was the first time she scared us that she would hurt you, but it wasn’t the last before we separated you from her. ”

“That was years ago, and—”

“And then, you went off to the river that day without telling me. You knew I wouldn’t allow it. And you nearly died again!”

“That wasn’t Mom’s fault!” Ronnie protested, stunned by her father’s sudden intensity. He rarely showed so much emotion.