The Loveliest Dead (26 page)

She shook her head. “I didn’t know what else to do. There’s something in this house with us, and I was trying to find someone who would know how to deal with it.”
 

“There’s nothing in this, house but
us
, dammit!” he shouted. “But now that we’re in the paper, you just wait—every phony-baloney medium and fortune-teller-within a hundred-mile radius is going to be knocking on our door. And when they do, we’re chasing them off. Do you understand, Jenna? No more of this shit. We can’t afford it, and even if we could, it would still be a waste of money, and I won’t have con artists in my house milking my goddamned wallet.”
 

Jenna decided to say no more. David was furious, and she knew any further discussion would only anger him more. At the same time, she refused to apologize for doing what she still considered the right thing in the face of something she found frightening and confusing.
 

“Let’s not fight,” she said. “Miles is home from school.”

“We’re not fighting.” He sat down on the edge of the bed, shook his head. “I don’t understand why you didn’t come to me.”

“I
tried
. That day in the basement. You didn’t want to hear about it, you made that clear. That was when I thought it was Josh. Now I know it’s not. But in a way, that’s worse, because I don’t know
what
it is.”
 

David opened his mouth to speak, but she kept talking.

“Whether you believe it or not, there’s
something
in this house.” She turned and left the room.
 

David tried to calm himself before going downstairs. He was angry that Jenna had borrowed money from Kimberly Gimble. It was bad enough that Martha had been paying for so much, but to borrow from a virtual stranger was embarrassing, and for something so ridiculous. It was so uncharacteristic of Jenna, he wondered if she was okay. Had the loss of Josh been eating at her in a way he had not noticed?
 

David thought of the boys he’d seen in the backyard. Had he really seen them the last couple times, or had they been part of his dreams? He thought of the fat, cigar-smoking man in his dreams, and of waking up in the basement, and in Miles’s bedroom in the middle of the night. But he refused to believe there was anything supernatural involved. He blamed it on his worries about finding work, a good job that would allow him to support his family again. As a boy, he had walked in his sleep whenever he had a lot on his mind—an upcoming test at school, an important football game. There was nothing supernatural about it.
 

It was so unlike Jenna to do what she had done that David wondered if he should be worried instead of angry-

The chirp of the telephone startled him out of his thoughts, and he picked up the receiver. “Hello.”

A second later, he heard Jenna answer downstairs: “Hello.”

After a moment of silence at the other end: “Hello, is this the Kellar residence?”

“Yes,” David said.

“You don’t know me. My name is Lily Rourke. I’m calling from Mt. Shasta.” She sounded uncertain of herself and overly pleasant, as if she were trying too hard. “This is going to sound ... well, it’s hard to know how it’ll sound to you because I don’t know you. I’m a psychic. I’ve helped the police solve a number of crimes, and I—”
 

“Hang up, Jenna,” David said.

Lily Rourke said, “No, wait, please. I read about you in the paper, and I need to tell you something. It’s very important. If you’d just—”
 

“You read about us in the paper?” David said.

“I read about what happened in your house. To the medium. The trucker.”

“But that was just in the local paper here in Eureka.”

“It was in the
Redding Record Searchlight
,” Lily Rourke said. “It seems one of the wire services picked up the story. I got the impression it ran nationwide.”
 

“Oh, shit,” David said. “Look, whatever you’re selling, we’re not interested.”

“Mr. Kellar, do you have a swing set in your backyard? And a slide?”

“
What
? Listen to me—do
not
call back, okay? Jenna? Are you still on the line?”
 

He heard the sharp click of the downstairs connection being severed.

“Good-bye,” David said before hitting the Off button with his thumb.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Lily. Thursday, 2:19 p.m.

Lily replaced the receiver, not surprised but no less frustrated. She sat at the table in her kitchen. A cup of coffee had gone cold and four slices of Entenmann’s apple crumb cake remained untouched on a paper plate. Lily’s appetite had been fading, and she did not sleep well at night. The visions left her with a nagging sense of urgency that had preoccupied her to the point of distraction.
 

She had learned from her previous visions that it: was not only the visions themselves that needed her careful scrutiny, but the feelings they left behind, and those they stirred in her waking hours as she thought about them. She had to be open to everything.
 

She was convinced that the unfamiliar faces she’d seen in her vision were the Kellars—David and Jenna, according to the newspaper article—and that the house she’d seen was theirs. She could not shake the feeling that they were in some kind of peril. But it was the little boy who impressed her as the one in the most danger. From what, she was not sure, but it had something to do with the fat man in the cowboy hat. Even if the Kellars had been willing to listen to her, Lily had no idea what she would have told them.
 

Claudia had shown her the story in the
Record Searchlight
that morning. As soon as she read “Starfish Drive,” Lily remembered the throbbing red starfish on the mailbox in her vision, and knew the address would be 2204.
 

She’d immediately called Directory Assistance and asked for both the telephone number and street address of the Kellars in Eureka on Starfish Drive. Sure enough, the address had matched. It had taken Lily a few hours to muster the courage to make the call. She had a difficult time dealing with people in normal situations—she had not looked forward to explaining to total strangers on the phone that she was a psychic having visions about them. A small part of her was relieved that Mr. Kellar had solved that problem for her. But she could not stop there.
 

Lily stood and dumped her coffee into the sink and poured a fresh cup. Flash, her pudgy manx tabby, shot through the kitchen in a gray blur. He made himself scarce most of the time, appeared only long enough to race through a room to get wherever he was going, and stopped only at mealtime to eat, and bedtime, when he curled up beside Lily on the bed and slept.
 

Phoning the Kellars was not going to work. Lily saw only one other option remaining, and she did not like it, but knew it was inevitable. She sipped her coffee and carried it with her as she left the kitchen and went out front to the store.
 

There were a couple of browsers—a young man with long dark hair and thick glasses in the Reincarnation section, and a bullet-shaped, middle-aged woman perusing the selection of tarot cards. Claudia was at the front counter, putting a new roll of paper in the register.
 

Lily joined her behind the counter and leaned close as she spoke in a whisper. “Could you get away for a couple days? Maybe a few?”
 

“Is this a trick question?”

“I need to go to Eureka, but I can’t go alone. So how would you like to get away for a while? I’ll pay your regular wages while we’re gone, because you’ll be doing all the driving, so it’ll be like you’re working.
 

“I think I could fit it into my busy social schedule,” Claudia said. “What about the store?”

Lily chewed her lower lip a moment as she looked around at all the shelves of books and thought.

Claudia said, “What about Mark Sieber?”

Mark was a local artist who had filled in for Claudia at the store a couple times in the past. Lily remembered him as quiet but efficient, and always pleasant with the customers. She said, “I’ll call and see if he’s available. If necessary, I’ll just close up.”
 

“Did you call the number?”

Lily nodded and told her how the call had gone.

“What makes you think approaching them in person is going to make any difference?” Claudia said.

“I have to try, I don’t have a choice. I wish we could leave right now.”

“Why?”

Lily took a deep breath and blew it out through puffed cheeks. “I can’t get rid of the feeling that I’m running against the clock. I’m not sure why yet, but I’m worried about their little boy.”
 

“Did they say they have one?”

“No, but they do.” Lily headed for the back again. “I’ll call Mark.”

“Hey, are you feeling okay?”

Lily turned to her. “Yeah. Just a little antsy.” She went back to her kitchen to make the call.

It took a little over two hours for Lily and Claudia to show Mark Sieber everything he needed to know about opening, closing, and running The Crystal Well for a few days. Lily showed him where to feed Flash and sent Claudia out to stock up on cat food. While she was gone, Lily packed some clothes and toiletries and was ready to go by the time Claudia got back.
 

Lily opened a can of cat food and Flash hurried into the kitchen a moment later. She dumped the food into Flash’s bowl against the back wall of the kitchen and tossed the can into the trash at the end of the counter. While the cat ate, she bent down and picked him up, cradled him to her generous bosom. Flash squirmed, but purred.
 

“I know, I know,” Lily said, “you don’t like to be held, but I’m gonna be gone for a while and I want to give you a little lovin’ before I go.” She stroked the cat. “I’ll be gone a few days, and when I come back, you’re gonna look at me like you didn’t even know I left, aren’t you?” She kissed the top of Flash’s head, then put him down by his bowl. Flash continued to eat his food with gusto. When she saw Claudia standing in the doorway smiling at her, Lily said, “I love my Flash.”
 

She put her suitcase into the trunk of her silver 1999 Volkswagen Beetle, and Claudia, who had parked her own car in back of the store, got behind the wheel. Lily could not risk driving, because she had no idea when another vision would cause her to black out. They went to Claudia’s house, where she packed some things, then called her mother and asked her to come over and feed her canary and get her mail while she was gone. It was a clear, cold afternoon, and they were traveling south on Interstate 5 by five o’clock.
 

“We can stop in Redding for something to eat,” Lily said, “then we’ll get on 299 West.”

Claudia said, “Wouldn’t it have been better to do this first thing in the morning?”

“I couldn’t wait that long.”

“It’s really bothering you, isn’t it?”

“Maybe I’ll actually get some sleep tonight, knowing I’m doing something. I’ve been getting by on two or three hours a night. I’m tired, but at the same time, I’ve been climbing the walls over this.”
 

Claudia nodded. “I knew it was bothering you, but I didn’t know you weren’t sleeping. Have you seen your doctor?”

“So he can tell me to get some sleep and lose weight? At the rate I’m going, I just might, because I don’t have much of an appetite. In fact, I think I’ve dropped a few pounds. I can’t stop thinking about that boy of theirs.”
 

“Thinking what about him?”

“He’s in trouble, that’s all I know. I think they
all
are, but especially the boy.”
 

“What are you going to do when we get there?”

“If I knew that,” Lily said with a sigh, “I wouldn’t have this big soggy lump in my stomach.”

Forty-five minutes later, they stopped at a Burger King on their way through Redding and had a dinner of Whoppers with fries and sodas. The restaurant was crowded and noisy. Lily and Claudia ate at a table in the back. Lily forced herself to nibble on her hamburger even though she did not feel hungry. Claudia, on the other hand, took great bites of her Double Whopper and nearly inhaled her large order of fries. She ate more than anyone Lily had ever met before, besides herself, and yet never gained a pound. She was so thin, she didn’t have much of a figure at all. But Lily would take that flat chest and ass in a second if given the opportunity, especially if she could go on eating the way Claudia ate.
 

Claudia had applied for a job at The Crystal Well two years before, after moving back to Mt. Shasta from Sacramento. She’d been attending business school there when she met and fell in love with a young man who asked her to marry him. Claudia had moved in with him and the engagement had lasted a couple years, until she found out he had been cheating on her repeatedly during that time. She’d decided to put the rest of her education on hold and return home for a while, until she decided what to do with her life. She had not yet come to a decision.