*
This was the last thing I had expected. I was convinced Mac and I were done. We’d been together for almost a year when he left. I had thought he was the one. But he couldn’t deal with a girlfriend who predicted death, and that was the end of it. When he realized that I had known Dean Roberts would die and hadn’t told him, he was furious. Forget the fact that he claimed not to believe in premonitions. No matter how I tried to explain that I was never sure of these things and that I hadn’t found a way to prevent anything from happening, he had stopped listening. Dean had been the police chief and like a father to Mac; his heart attack had been devastating to everyone, but Mac took it especially hard. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen next, but the butterflies in my stomach were doing loop-de-loops, and I could feel my mouth stretched in a grin at the thought of going out with Mac.
I drove home to get Seth for dog rounds and was surprised to see Tish’s car in the driveway. Violet opened the door before I had a chance to grab the knob and, with a crimson-tipped finger to her lips, dragged me off to her apartment.
“What’s with the cloak-and-dagger stuff?” I said once she had closed the door.
Baxter came over to sniff my pockets and drool on my jeans.
“Tish just got here,” she whispered, and looked over her shoulder, even though we were alone in her sitting room. “She said she needed Rose to do a reading. They wouldn’t let me sit in. She claimed Baxter needed some attention.” Her glance in his direction indicated she thought this was a lie. “Something’s up, I can feel it.”
“So why did you drag me back here? Where’s Seth?”
Vi paced in front of me.
“Seth is upstairs with Tuffy. You’re going to help me figure out what’s going on.”
“What are you talking about?” I pinched the bridge of my nose to stop myself from watching her aggressive strides up and down the room.
“Baxter’s been telling me about the level of stress he’s been under at Tish’s house. He can’t take the pressure anymore. We have to help.”
I glanced at Baxter. He flopped to the floor and sighed.
“I think he’s hungry,” I said.
She stared at him for a moment and shook her head.
“We have to find out what’s happening in that reading.”
“Can’t you ask my mom when they’re done?” I was edging toward the door to escape further involvement.
“No. She’s got this client-confidentiality thing.” Vi made finger quotes in the air. “You’d think she was a lawyer or doctor or something. At least my clients don’t care who I talk to.”
I wondered how she knew that but didn’t go into it.
She continued on her back-and-forth journey. Baxter followed her with his eyes.
“There’s no choice. You’re going to have to use the crawl space.” She stopped in front of me.
“Oh come on, Vi.” I put my hand up to fend off her suggestion. “I haven’t been up there in years. I won’t fit.” Plus, I was pretty sure there were spiders.
“It’s the only way to hear what they’re saying.”
There was a crawl space above my mother’s parlor. It was mostly used for storage and only accessible through the front hall coat closet. At one time it was probably part of the attic until the various additions and remodelings changed it to a small loft-like space. Grace and I used to go up there to hunt for Christmas gifts, and we discovered that the acoustics were very good from Mom’s office. For a while we had my mother convinced we were extremely talented psychics as we recited readings she had given. It was a dark day when she discovered that not only had we been spying on her, but we also were not as talented as she had believed. Grace still held a grudge that she had lost her driving privileges for the summer while I was only denied the beach for a week. The fact that I was eight and she was seventeen at the time didn’t matter. She claimed she was really being punished for not having better psychic talents.
“This is crazy,” I said, but I was already heading back toward the front door and the closet. I wanted to know what Tish was so desperate to ask the cards, too. And maybe I could find out what had come between her and my mother.
We quietly set out the step stool and I hoisted myself up onto the rickety ladder that dropped down out of the ceiling. Vi’s shhing was loud enough to bring the neighbors over to investigate, but the parlor door remained closed. I shimmied through the opening. Vi stayed below as lookout.
Once in the crawl space, I held a small flashlight and carefully made my way toward the parlor area. There had been a time when I could walk upright in the space, but not anymore.
Finally, I got into a good position and could hear voices clearly. Tish was talking.