Clarity (13 page)

His eyebrows rose. “Nothing? You got nothing from that?”

“Sorry,” I snapped. “This isn’t a drive-through. You can’t just place a psychic order, supersized.”

Gabriel held his hands up. “No, I wasn’t criticizing you. It really seemed like you got something.”

“Not yet,” I lied, and quickly went back to work searching for anything else to give Gabriel so I wouldn’t have to give him the only truth I had.

“His mother said he’d been sitting at his desk that night,” Gabriel said. “Maybe feel the items on the desktop.”

Finally, he had a good suggestion. I felt the stack of magazines, a couple bills, and got nothing until I picked up an ordinary pen. Immediately, I saw Billy writing something. I felt his heart racing. This was something important.

“He wrote something,” I said. I looked around and saw a small white message pad. “On that. He wrote something on that.”

“Let’s hope he bore down hard,” Gabriel said, fishing a pencil out of a drawer. He held the pencil at a slight angle and gently shaded the top sheet of paper on the pad until, faintly, words could be read. The words Billy wrote on the top sheet that had been torn off. Three words.

I saw you.

FOURTEEN

“ ‘I SAW YOU,’ ” I READ OUT LOUD. “WHAT IS THAT? A threat?”

“Sounds like it.”

The question I most wanted answered was, “Who?” Who did Billy see? Did he merely see Perry and Victoria messing around or did he see the killer? If Perry had gotten a note like that, he would have told me, right?

“The note must have gone to the killer,” I said.

“Why play around? Why not come to the police?” Gabriel rubbed his chin. “He must have been angling for something. A little blackmail to keep quiet.”

“So where is he now? Did he get enough money to leave town? Or did he chicken out and run?”

“We’re done here, let’s go,” Gabriel said, interrupting my stream of thought.

We exchanged polite good-byes with Betty, then headed toward Gabriel’s red Jeep in the driveway.

“What now?” I asked.

“I might have a way to find him,” Gabriel said, leaning against the hood. “The pings.”

I put up a hand to shield my eyes from the sun reflecting off the windshield. “The what?”

“Billy’s mother mentioned his cell phone. How cell phones work is they emit signals called
pings
every few minutes to the closest cell tower, and the tower relays the info to the network.”

“Do the phone companies keep the data?”

“Some just keep the last ping, some keep twenty-four hours’ worth. And of course the phone has to be turned on to be pinging in the first place.”

“Then call the company and let’s see what they’ve got,” I said.

“Not so fast. You need a warrant for that.” He unlocked the car. “Maybe my father can get one. We’ll see.”

By the time I got back home, it was nearly five o’clock. I had to admit, I liked being able to come and go as I pleased. The house was usually attached to me like a ball and chain. Mom always wanted Perry and me there as much as possible in case walk-ins stopped by. Especially during the summer season, the time I most wanted to be outside. This helping the cops gig was giving me a taste of freedom, and I liked it.

Gabriel dropped me off and sped away. I wandered up the sidewalk as a customer left the house. As he got closer, I realized it wasn’t a customer after all. It was Phil Tisdell, plodding down the walkway with his shoulders hunched
over and his eyes locked on the concrete in fierce concentration.

“Mr. Town Clerk!” I greeted him with a smile. “How’s it going?”

He gave me a halfhearted wave. “Hi, Clare. See you tomorrow night.”

I’d never seen Phil so downtrodden. Normally, he’d give Santa a run for his money in a contest of joviality. Rather than his usual rumpled attire, he wore a neatly pressed blue shirt and dress pants. And was he wearing cologne?

“What do you mean, tomorrow night?” I asked, his words suddenly sinking in.

“The banquet?”

I shrugged. “You got me.”

This answer seemed to depress him further. He sighed. “The Eastport Chamber of Commerce Annual Banquet. It’s tomorrow night. Starla said you were accompanying her.”

Then, I got it. He’d asked Mom out. And she’d refused him, using me in her lie. I was going to strangle her. But not before I continued her tall tale.

“Oh, that! I didn’t realize it was a fancy banquet. I thought it was just a little meeting. Do I have to wear a dress? Mom didn’t tell me I’d have to dress up.”

The lie came easily, and I didn’t even have to fake my angry face. I didn’t know if Phil bought it or not, but he mumbled something about seeing me there before he shuffled off. I stormed up the front steps and into the house.

“Mom!”

“No need to yell, dear.” Mom came out of the kitchen wearing a dress that looked like it’d been created when a sewing machine threw up. “What’s the emergency?”

“Did you make that yourself?” I asked, motioning to the abominable creation.

Mom twirled. “Yes, I did. It’s called a tapestry sundress. I’m thinking about making more and selling them online. What’s all this yelling about?”

“I just saw Phil Tisdell outside.”

“Oh.” She scooted past me and back into the kitchen. I followed. She wasn’t getting out of this one that easily.

Our kitchen was relatively modern for such an old house. We’d remodeled it a few years back and put in an island and new stainless steel appliances. Mom insisted on painting the cabinets bright yellow because the kitchen was “her happy place.”

She stood on her tiptoes and pulled a large bowl from one of the happy cabinets now. “I’m making couscous. You want some?”

“No,” I said. I didn’t even know what that was. “You lied to him, Mom.”

She rifled through a drawer looking for something. “Would you rather I hurt his feelings?”

“And you involved me in your lie. So now I have to go to the banquet with you to avoid hurting him further.”

She continued to rummage through drawers to avoid eye contact. “Is it that horrible to spend a night with your own mother? “

“That’s not the point, Mom.” I steeled myself for the next comment. One I’d been holding in for a while. “You can’t spend your life avoiding interested men.”

She looked up sharply. “What does that mean?”

“What’s wrong with Phil?”

“Nothing’s wrong with Phil.”

“Exactly. He’s friendly. He’s kind. He’s head-over-heels crazy about you. He’s cute for an old dude. Bald is sexy these days.”

“Clarity, Phil is all those things, and if I were interested in dating anyone, I would definitely date Phil. He’s a wonderful man. But you know how things are.”

“No, I don’t. Explain them to me.”

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” She bent over her cookbook, pretending to read.

“You’re still waiting for Dad to come home.”

“Can you get me the bag of flour from the top shelf of the cabinet? You’re a tad taller than me.”

Inside, I was trembling, knowing I was coming close to a line I’d never crossed before. I stepped up to her and gently lifted her chin with my hand, forcing her to look into my eyes. “It’s been fifteen years, Mom,” I said, in a soft but insistent tone. “He’s not coming home. Dad’s never coming home. We don’t even know if he’s alive.”

I thought I’d frozen her with my touch, for she didn’t move, didn’t breathe, even when I let go of her face. Then a single tear escaped from her eye, and she ran past me and out of the room.

Nice going. Now I’d have to buy her flowers for our big date tomorrow night.

The next morning I woke, stretched, and padded across my bedroom rug to the window. I lifted the sash and took a deep breath. You didn’t have to be psychic to know a storm was on the way. The air was humid, the sky dark.

I checked my cell. The only word from Gabriel was a text message saying his father got the warrant. There was nothing I could do in the meantime while we were waiting for the phone company, so I figured I’d shower and see if we had any appointments.

Thirty minutes later, I went downstairs and found Mom polishing the long mahogany table in the reading room. We hadn’t spoken since our argument, and I knew we weren’t going to pick up where we left off. Mom preferred to handle difficult conversations by moving forward and pretending they’d never happened.

“Prepping for an appointment?” I asked, leaning against the doorway.

She shook her head. “Wishful thinking. Our first appointment for the day is at eleven. Maybe we’ll have an early morning walk-in if someone’s disappointed with the wait time at Madame Maslov’s.”

I gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze. “Business will pick up again. Remember what you always say? Word of mouth is the number one form of advertising in our line of work. As soon as word gets around that none of
her so-called predictions come true, people will come back to us.”

Mom half smiled, but I knew it was forced. I wish I hadn’t said those words about Dad yesterday. She didn’t need that on top of her business worries.

“Get your brother up for me, will you? He’s been so lazy this week.”

If she only knew the half of it.

I headed upstairs. Mom’s room was the master bedroom at the end of the hall. Perry’s room and mine were opposite each other.

I was thinking up cruel and unusual ways to wake my brother when I heard the shower start. Damn, already up. I went into his room figuring I’d tool around until he was done. The place was a mess. Clothes strewn across the floor. A few crumb-littered plates stacked on his nightstand. An empty plastic water bottle on the floor. I had no intentions of snooping. I just wanted to clean up a bit. I picked up a stack of books from the floor, intending to line them up on the shelf above his desk. A sheet of paper fluttered from the bottom of the pile and slid under the bed. I got down on my hands and knees, pulled it out, and gasped.

Victoria Happel smiled up at me.

She seemed legitimately happy in the picture. A glass raised high as if in mid-toast, her dark eyes looking somewhere off to the left, her face bright. She was smiling radiantly, perhaps about to break into laughter. This moment in time snapped by someone’s camera made her more real to me than the grainy newspaper photo or the shadowy naked figure in
my visions. My heart went out to her. Betrayed by her boyfriend and her best friend, she’d gone on vacation alone to forget her problems, and ended up dead.

Above the photograph was a headline written in large script that read:
Did you see this woman Saturday night?
In smaller letters beneath the picture were instructions to contact the local police department if you had any information. But this didn’t seem like a flyer the police would put together. It wasn’t done on a computer, for one. It was handwritten, the picture plopped on top, and then photocopied. Someone had gone through the trouble to do this themselves.

“What are you doing?”

Startled, I fell from my kneeling position back on my butt and the flyer whisked away and landed on Perry’s bare feet. He had a towel wrapped around his waist, his hair dripping wet.

“I was going to clean up and found —”

“You were searching my room.”

“No! I picked up the stack of books and that fell out.”

“It doesn’t matter. Whatever. I have to get dressed.” He aimed a thumb at the door, a polite way of saying it was time for me to get out.

I stood up and brushed myself off. “Did you make that flyer? ”

“No. I found it tacked to a telephone pole near Yummy’s.”

I cocked my head to the side. “Why did you pull it down?”

“Someone might come forward claiming they saw me leave with her.”

“Or someone might come forward with information leading to the real killer,” I said.

He looked down at the floor. “I didn’t think of that.”

“How come I haven’t seen these anywhere? Is this the only one you saw?”

His eyes snapped up to mine, glowing with guilt.

“Wait.” I thought for a moment. “The night of the fireworks, when you were missing all day. You went around town and took them all down.”

He lumbered over to his bed and sat down on the edge. Confession time. “Yeah, I did.”

“Do you realize how suspicious that would look if someone saw you doing that?”

“I was careful.”

I groaned. “Perry, I’m trying to help you here but you keep digging yourself in deeper.” I was frustrated at him. But I was also frustrated by the fact that every time I thought I’d banished any doubts about Perry’s innocence, something happened to make me doubt him again.

He propped his elbows on his knees and rubbed his face with his hands. “I guess I wasn’t thinking straight. I’m sorry.”

My cell rang. I glanced at the caller ID. “Fine. This is Gabriel anyway. I’ll see you later. Try not to make yourself an even more conspicuous suspect while I’m gone.”

I closed his door behind me. I flipped open the phone, hoping all that ping talk had amounted to something and they’d tracked Billy down.

At first I heard only static, then a few words. “Woods … need you here. Will come get you.”

“What?” I pressed the phone harder to my ear as if that would help. “I didn’t get that.”

“They found him,” Gabriel yelled.

“Billy? What’s he saying?”

“Not much. He’s dead.”

FIFTEEN

OF COURSE THE STORM CLOUDS CHOSE THE moment I left the house to open up and start spitting. I ran to Gabriel’s Jeep. Thankfully, he had the cover on. Rain began to sprinkle on the windshield. He turned on the wipers, and I winced at their initial squeaking.

During the drive, Gabriel explained that the phone company tracked the pings from Billy Rawlinson’s cell to the state park. Considering the acres of woods and hiking trails, it could have taken days to comb through the entire area. But instead Billy was in the first place they looked — the dirt road that cut through the center of the park.

Big fat raindrops plunked on the windshield. Moments later a flash of lightning lit up the sky, followed by distant thunder. By the time we reached the park, the rain was coming down so hard it was difficult to see out the window. Gabriel turned right at the entrance to the service road. He took the dirt road slowly and pulled over behind a single cruiser. The shadow of a man was in the driver’s seat.