“Damn. You are psychic.”
She wasn’t psychic. She couldn’t meet people and hear the spirits of their loved ones talking to her, passing on messages. But there were times when she opened her mind, let herself think and feel and add in some good common sense, and could figure things out. Maybe there was something different in her subconscious, something her research had honed to a fine and useful edge. But though she wrote about other people’s encounters with the supernatural, and though she admitted to a knack for sensing things when others didn’t, she would never call herself a psychic, not when—no matter how much Jeremy Flynn apparently doubted the truth of this—she didn’t believe in the reality of the paranormal, only the possibility. No matter what others sometimes called her, as far as she was concerned, all she did was use her senses, all of them, along with her brain, to see possibilities and draw conclusions based on the available evidence. And she made very, very certain that no hint of her involvement ever reached the media.
“No, Joe, nothing psychic. I read it in the paper. And I have a…friend who is involved in a strange way.”
“What?”
“The guy I’ve been working with down here used to work with Brad Johnstone.”
“That investigator?” Joe asked. Like most cops, he didn’t like private investigators. He thought they were pains in the ass who messed up the official investigation into any case they got involved with.
“Yes.”
Joe’s silence clearly transmitted his opinion.
“He’s a decent guy, Joe.”
“Yeah, yeah. Great. Well, I’ll see you tomorrow. Wait, you called me. What’s up?”
“The Johnstone case,” she said dryly.
“If you read the paper, you know what I know.”
“But—”
“You’re coming home. Give me a call as soon as you’re back and we’ll talk.”
“Sure.”
She hung up. Since her own parents were dead and she had no siblings, Joe was the closest thing she had left to family. He’d lost his wife to cancer a decade ago, and their only son, Rowenna’s late fiancé, had been killed overseas, serving in the military.
Even though he was Jonathan’s father, he was always the first one to tell her she needed to move on with her life. He’d told her once that he was grateful she hadn’t forgotten him and started over again too soon, but his son was dead and buried, and there was even moss growing on the tombstone when he didn’t keep up with it. Time for her to build a new life.
He was also a detective with the county. Her “career” with him had begun over coffee one cold winter’s night when he had been talking to her about a recent murder. She’d asked him to show her the scene, and on the way, he’d told her what he knew about the victim. Sunny Shoemaker, thirty-four, depressed because she’d been let go at the real estate agency where she’d worked, had gone out to a bar with a few sympathetic co-workers. After a few drinks she’d left to go home, telling her friends that she was fine. She’d been discovered with a knife in her back beside the high fence of the old prison. Her handbag was gone; the presumed motive was robbery. The M.E. had found a hair, but that wouldn’t do them any good without a suspect with whom to compare it, and so far, they hadn’t found one.
When Rowenna stood there and closed her eyes, she could imagine what it might have been like to be Sunny. She hadn’t heard the footsteps of her attacker, so she hadn’t turned around. And she hadn’t fought to keep her purse. But wouldn’t a random thief have tried to wrest the purse from her first? Purse snatchers didn’t usually stab their victims in the back, then steal their purses.
Rowenna had noted the proximity of the bar, a place where the locals hung out after work, and, on a hunch, gone in the next evening.
She chose the same stool the bartender said Sunny had used, and sitting there, sipping a glass of wine, she watched the people around her, listening, trying to picture herself as Sunny once again. In her mind, she allowed a part of herself to become Sunny. An executive type, who’d been sitting with another man at a table, came up to the bar, taking the stool next to her. As the bartender mixed his drink, they joked about the fact that he just couldn’t stay away from his customary stool, and that he would have to reclaim it as soon as his client left. The man left an empty glass on the bar. When the bartender turned, Rowenna confiscated the glass. She gave the glass to Joe that evening, and one thing led to another, until Joe had a suspect.