The Loveliest Dead (12 page)

Jenna’s laughter was quiet at first, but got louder as Kimberly went on. It felt good to laugh so hard, and she enjoyed the feeling while it lasted.
 

“I’m not kidding—they wouldn’t survive their morning rituals without me,” Kimberly said. She moved the mouse slightly over the pad on the desktop and opened her Internet browser, nodded her head toward the computer monitor. “There are a lot of local psychics on the Internet, a lot more than I expected to find. Mediums aren’t as plentiful, but there are several. Some mediums call themselves ‘channels,’ and there are quite a few of those, too. But in the Humboldt County area, the most common are psychics. I did a little reading up on all of them, and I don’t think a psychic is what you need. There are psychics who read the future, psychics who advise, and psychics who can help you find your lost dog. Some claim to have spirit guides—the spirits of dead people who give them information from the other side—but they don’t talk to the dead, not the way you want to. For that, you need a physical medium. Or a channel. But the ones who call themselves channels tend to give off a New Agey vibe that really turns me off. Unless you’re into that. Are you?”
 

Jenna frowned. “Into what?”

“All that New Age stuff. You know, crystals, aromatherapy, Shirley MacLaine, unicorn art.”

“Definitely not.”

“I’m not too sure about the mediums, either, but at least they don’t give the impression they genuinely believe Yanni to be good music, you know what I mean?”
 

“I think so.”

“So I bookmarked all the local mediums who have Web sites, and here—” She picked up a white sheet of paper off the desk and handed it over to Jenna. Printed on the page was a list of names, telephone numbers, and street addresses. “From the Yellow Pages, I made a list of the ones who don’t.” Kimberly clicked on the top of the list of bookmarks. “I’ve already looked at all these. Let’s go through them, and I’ll show you the ones I think smell bad. Like this first one.”
 

A little animated naked man wearing a turban and sitting in the lotus position floated in the center of the screen, bobbing lightly in the virtual air, grinning. Above him arced the name ANTHONY WALL-COLE, and beneath him, MEDIUM TO THE STARS.
 

“First of all,” Kimberly said, “if he’s the medium to the stars, what the hell’s he doing here? Secondly, look at his picture.” She tapped her fingernail on the screen over the man’s photograph in the corner. “If he really talked to dead people, they’d tell him how ridiculous he looks with that toupee on his head. And the stars— Michael Landon, Princess Di, Bette Davis, Dudley Moore, Bill Bixby. It took me a minute to figure out they’re all dead. He never worked for these people before they died—he claims to talk to them now that they’re dead.
That’s
what he means by ‘Medium to the Stars.’ Well, who’s to say he doesn’t talk to them, but what difference does that make? You don’t need to talk to John Ritter, right? I think we can skip this guy.”
 

Jenna said, “I agree. Who’s next?”

“I’m gonna get some coffee first. You want some?” Kimberly stood.

“That sounds good. I’ll come with you.” As they went back through the house, she said, “How do you know so much about psychics and mediums?”
 

Kimberly laughed. “Are you kidding? I know less than nothing. Everything I told you I just picked up on the Internet last night. In fact, when I was growing up, I was taught to steer
way
clear of this stuff. My brother and I were both taught that it’s all evil. We were raised Seventh-Day Adventists.”
 

“Then why did you offer to help me?”

In the kitchen, Kimberly took her mug from the counter and got another from the cupboard, poured coffee into both, added cream to hers. “I said I was
raised
an Adventist, not that I still
am
one. Those stories scared me when I was a little girl, but I haven’t been one of those in a long time. You take your coffee black, right?”
 

“Yes. If that’s the way you were taught when you were young, then you must have been frightened when you realized it couldn’t have been your grandmother who had come to your room—that it was something... evil?”
 

“Oh, no, not at all. I was already starting to think for myself by then. Before then, really. Some people have to learn to think outside the box; I had to learn to think outside the church, but I started early. When I learned that Grandma had died that night, I knew in my heart, without even having to debate it in my mind, that she had come to kiss me good-bye, in spite of all the things I’d been taught. Like I said, I smelled her breath. I could smell her perfume in the room after she left. She might not have been
there
there, but she was there.”
 

Kimberly handed her the steaming mug, then they headed back to the bedroom.

“So this stuff doesn’t bother you now?” Jenna said.

“No, I’m intrigued. I got the impression something was bothering you the first time I saw you, but I had no idea it would be so interesting. You seem much better today, by the way.”
 

Jenna nodded. “I think it’s because I’m doing something about it. I’m still blown away by the fact that I’m doing this. I mean, I’ve always laughed at those guys on TV who talk to people’s dead relatives. And I’ve always thought the people who go to them are pathetic. But now
I’m
one of those pathetic people. If anyone who knows me ever finds out about this, I’ll be so embarassed.”
 

As they entered the bedroom, Kimberly said, “You’re not pathetic and you shouldn’t be embarassed. Spiritual paths take people in all kinds of directions, and if other people can’t understand that, it’s their problem, not yours. You want to talk embarrassing spiritual paths? Think of those Heaven’s Gate guys who had themselves castrated, then ate poison so they could board the star-ship
Enterprise
in the tail of some comet—wherever they are, they
still
must be embarrassed about that.”
 

Jenna nodded toward the monitor. “Could you e-mail all this information to me?”

“Sure, no problem. Look them over and decide who you want to try. I don’t go back to work till Wednesday, so that gives us a couple afternoons to check some out.”
 

“Are you serious? You really want to do this with me?”

“Sure, why not? You’ve got me all interested now. And it seems like two of us will be less likely to get taken, you know what I mean? No offense, Jenna, but I’ve got a feeling I’ll be a little less trusting than you.”
 

Jenna nodded. “David says that, too. He says I look like I’d give a handout to Bill Gates. That’s why homeless people approach me twice as often as they do everyone else I know. But really, I’m not all that trusting. Sometimes I actually feel guilty because I distrust people so much. But I keep it to myself, you know. It seems so... antisocial.”
 

“I know exactly what you mean,” Kimberly said. “Except I have a hard time keeping it to myself. But you’ve got some pretty emotional stuff wrapped up in this, Jenna. Some of these people are pretty good at what they do, and what most of them do is separate people from their money by manipulating their emotions. I can be an extra set of eyes. They might be able to catch you off guard, but it won’t work with me.”
 

“I hadn’t thought of it that way. That’s a good idea.”

“Here’s another one. Why don’t you and David stay for lunch? I was gonna make a chicken salad. We can have sandwiches, and I think I’ve got some chips in the cupboard. We’ll crack open some beers.”
 

Jenna smiled. “Sounds good.”

“Let’s go back to the kitchen and I’ll get to work on that chicken salad.”

After Mom and Dad left, Miles had gone up to his room to finish some homework that was due Monday. But as he sat at his desk, he could not get his mind off the area of floor immediately behind him and to his left, where he had seen the man rising up in the dark. His awareness of it made the skin between his shoulder blades tingle until he could take it no longer and looked over his shoulder. He checked every few minutes after that, just to be sure. There was never anything there, but that did not ease his fears or calm his tension. Finally, unable to concentrate, he left his bedroom and went downstairs to the kitchen.
 

Grandma sat hunched over an open tabloid in the breakfast nook with a cup of something hot on the table. Big-band music played on her radio. Miles sat opposite her and waited for her to look up.
 

When Grandma spoke, she whispered. There was no particular reason for it, yet it always seemed perfectly natural to Miles whenever Grandma whispered, which she did now and then. “What’s keeping you awake, Miles?” she said.
 

Miles did not have to say the same things to Grandma that he would normally say to his parents to keep peace. She made him feel, when it was just the two of them, that he could tell her anything, that he did not have to pretend about anything, and she always kept his secrets.
 

“Mom and Dad say I had a nightmare,” he whispered back.

She looked at him without lifting her head from the open tabloid. “That’s not what I asked you.”

“I saw a man coming up out of the floor. A big fat man.”

Outside, the wind blew and the swing’s chains rattled and squeaked.

Grandma said, “How do you know it wasn’t a nightmare?”

“Because I never woke up from it. I saw the man, and then I started screaming because I was so afraid, and Mom and Dad came in and turned the light on. He was gone, but I was still awake. It wasn’t a nightmare because I didn’t wake up from it.”
 

Grandma nodded once and turned a page. She looked at him again. “You know, sometimes we see things in those first few seconds after we wake up from a nightmare.” She did not sound convinced by her own words.
 

He said, “I wasn’t having a nightmare. I woke up all of a sudden, like I heard something, but I didn’t know what. I listened for a while. And then I heard his voice. He called me a puppy. He said, ‘You gonna be a good puppy?’ Something like that. And then I saw him. Coming up through the floor in the dark. It looked like he was wearing some kind of hat, but I’m not sure because he was in the dark.”
 

She nodded again and looked back down at the paper, but she did not turn another page. Miles watched her as she stared at the paper, sucked her lips between her teeth for a moment, and he decided she was thinking. Finally, she lifted her head and said, “Well, I don’t sleep so well, either. I been getting up pretty early lately and haven’t been able to go back to sleep. So next time you come downstairs, you check in here for me. Maybe we can play a game of checkers. That’ll put you to sleep. Okay?”
 

He smiled. “Okay.”

That evening, David got a phone call. The manager of one of the garages in Eureka where he had applied needed a part-time mechanic sooner than expected. He asked if David would be able to come in the next morning. Trying not to sound needy, he said sure, he’d be there.
 

“You did one job today, and then you got another,” Jenna said as they got into bed that night, shortly after eleven. “At this rate, you’ll be working full-time by Wednesday.”
 

David laughed. “Harry Gimble’s Dodge Durango wasn’t exactly a job. It was just a disconnected vacuum tube—I fixed it in two minutes. I didn’t even charge him. I bet he gets taken by crooked mechanics a lot. He doesn’t know a
thing
about cars.”
 

She cuddled up to him, thrilled that he’d finally gotten some work. She had already noticed a difference in his behavior since the phone call. His arm was more relaxed as he put it around her shoulders. “Do you like Harry?” she asked.
 

“He’s okay. A little wrapped up in his work.”

“He does talk shop a lot, doesn’t he?”

“You seem to get along well with Kimberly,” he said.

“Yeah, I do. I like her.”

“That’s good—I’m glad you’re making friends. What were you guys doing on the computer?”

Jenna had hoped it would not come up, but now that it had, she found herself with nothing to say. She knew that telling him the truth was out of the question. His reaction in the basement had been angrier than she’d anticipated—if he knew she was shopping for mediums, he would probably blow his stack.
 

David did not get angry often, but when he did, it was ugly. He had never directed it at Jenna—he had always gotten angry about things outside his control, like his inability to get a job as a mechanic, or Josh’s death. Jenna was afraid this would make him angry at her, and she did not want that.
 

She realized she was taking much too long to respond and said the first thing that popped into her head. “Shopping. We were shopping.”
 

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Just... thinking. You know, Miles was bugging me about getting a dog again tonight. Now that you’ve got a job.”

“It’ll have to wait till I’m working full-time. He wants a big dog, and big dogs have big appetites.”

“I explained that to him. He understands. He just wants a dog.”