She looked at him, shaking her head. “I…don’t mean to be looking for charity. Phil died so sudden, of a heart attack…and he was young, and we didn’t have life insurance. I don’t mean to be complaining—there were so many who lost everything, and I have my boys. But I haven’t ever taken any kind of charity, and—”
“Mrs. Trent,” he interrupted, “you’d be doing me the favor.” He set the picture aside and took her hands. “Frankly,” he said solemnly, “right now the police just think that I’m being a pain in the a—” He remembered Billy and amended what he’d been about to say. “In the butt. With a contract, I’ll have a legitimate reason to be a huge pain in the behind and follow any lead I want to. We can draw up a contract in which you pay me a dollar. How’s that?”
“But…why? Why would you do this for me? For Jenny?” she asked.
Why?
“I need to know,” he told her honestly. “I’m…” He hesitated, but he couldn’t think of a better word. “I’m haunted by all this. Now, please, sit down and tell me about Jenny. What she liked, what she didn’t like. Did she have a boyfriend? Was she friendly, trusting…?” He hesitated for a moment. “Betty, did you ever get any of her things? They said her car was found, but what about her luggage?”
Betty shook her head slowly. “No. And to be honest, I never thought about it. I hadn’t expected her to contact me. I prayed for a long time that maybe she had just decided for some reason to go off with someone, go somewhere else. But I knew it wasn’t true.”
“How?”
“Because I knew Jenny. Oh, the FBI got in on it and everything, thinking maybe she’d crossed state lines or something. But I know it’s not true, because if she could have, Jenny would have called me. She loved me. And she loved the boys.” She took a deep breath. “I know that Jenny is dead. I know it. But I still sure would love to know the truth. Have an ending to it, and see whoever killed her locked up or executed. You didn’t know her. They say good Christians shouldn’t support the death penalty. But I knew Jenny. I’d happily pull that lever myself if I knew who had hurt her. She deserved to live. Don’t you see? She was everything good about the world. I’ll do anything I can to help you find the truth.”
“Pay me a dollar, Mrs. Trent. That will do it.”
He looked at the picture of the lovely young woman with all the promise in her eyes.
And for some reason, just like Betty Trent, he knew that she was dead.
And he was almost certain he had touched a part of her earthly remains.
It was as if the card were staring up at Kendall. As if it were mocking her. She could have sworn she heard diabolical laughter, as if Death were being given a gift and she was privy to the knowledge of it, but there was nothing she could do to stop it. She was cold, icy cold, as if the skeleton’s fingers were clutching her very bones.
“What? Oh my God, what is it?” Ann cried, alarmed.
Kendall blinked hard and fought the vision. She tore her eyes from the card and focused on the young woman in front of her. “Nothing.” Her voice had a tremor. She forced herself to stare at the girl and not down at the card. “It’s nothing. I’m so sorry if I frightened you.”
“But that’s…Death.”
“No.”
“Yes, look at it!” the girl said.
“No, no, honestly,” Kendall insisted. “People see this card and they automatically think the worst, but I swear, that’s not the case at all. What this signifies is change, the end of something and the beginning of something else,” she went on, forcing her tone to be smooth, even and relaxed.
Even though inside she felt as if she were going crazy.
“An end and a beginning?” the girl asked blankly.
“Have you broken off a relationship lately?” Kendall asked Ann.
Ann’s jaw fell. “Oh my God! How did you know?”
Relief swept through Kendall. She was going to be all right. Ann was going to be all right. The whole ridiculous thing was going to return to normal.
She started turning over the other cards. “Here, see. Are you planning a trip, maybe?”
“Yes,” Ann said in amazement. “I’m heading out on a cruise ship from here.”
“That’s wonderful,” Kendall said, adding silently, You need to get out of here.
Oh, God, what had made me think that?
Ann frowned then, totally unaware of Kendall’s thoughts. “I’m not going to fall for the same lines and go back with Rodney, am I?”
“Not if you’re strong,” Kendall answered. That was an easy one.
“Rodney and I…he was a jerk. Such a jerk. He cheated on me, and I knew it. He even hit me once, and then he apologized all over the place, so I took him back, like an idiot. I am not going to do it again.”
“What the cards really do is tell us what we need to look for in ourselves,” Kendall said. “And the important thing—always—is to know that what happens in our lives depends on us.”
“Right.”
Kendall tried to move on to the other cards without looking at the skeleton again.
But it was still there, mocking her, grinning.
She tried to tell herself that she just needed more sleep. That Ann was not going to die, that she was going on a nice safe cruise. But her thoughts wouldn’t stop racing.