Grave Lies: A Psychic Investigator Mystery (Mercury Mediums Book 1), page 20
I will not stray from the Path.
Zandra had said she’d moved on from her failures. But Penny wasn’t ready to give up yet.
Maybe they needed to call in help from their fellow Mercury agents. Some cases were tough enough to require more than a single team. She and Zandra had worked well with Ben before. Once Heather got over the initial shock of Adelaide’s death, she might be willing to consider such options.
There was also the issue of their handler and whatever “changes” might be happening within Mercury. But Penny had a feeling Ben would agree to come in unofficially to help them clear this haunting.
She sighed and kicked off the blankets, sitting up. She went to get a glass of water in the kitchen. Through the crack between the curtains, the Davenports’ fields were still. Even the sky had cleared for the moment. A few stars twinkled faintly.
Penny tried to check the forecast on her phone, but her data was too slow. The last she’d heard, the snow was supposed to start again around midmorning and continue all day. At least fifteen inches expected, with temperatures dropping to near zero.
She saw a text she’d missed earlier.
Jason Rainier had written, Got the news about Adelaide. Awful. Let me know if there’s anything I can do.
He’d only sent the message an hour ago, and it wasn’t midnight yet. She wrote back, Thanks. Awful is right. We’re trying to regroup.
If you’re still up, can I stop by?
It was on the late side for a visit, but Penny was wide awake. Sure. Front porch? Others are already asleep. She assumed he’d be driving. It had to be too cold to walk the whole way.
Yeah. Be right there.
Penny grabbed her coat and gloves.
Jason’s truck rolled up the driveway, headlights glaring. Penny had to squint, raising her hand.
He switched off the engine and closed the driver’s-side door quietly. His boots crunched in the gravel. “I hope this is okay. I just needed to talk to someone about what happened.”
“I don’t blame you. Zandra and I have been feeling the same.”
Jason took a seat beside Penny on the porch steps. They both looked out over the road instead of at each other. It was too dark to see the horizon, yet Penny felt it stretching on and on and on.
“It doesn’t make sense,” he said. “We were looking for her, and…she was here? On Davenport Ranch?”
“She was. In the old cabin. Zandra and I found her.”
Another engine rumbled, and headlights appeared on the driveway. A police SUV pulled up in front of Heather’s house.
Was it Chief Novak? But what would he be doing here so late? Penny held her breath, worried something else awful had happened.
But it was Sam Krauss who stepped out, the badge on his belt glinting in the low light. “Saw the cars. Everything okay here?”
Jason stood up. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
Sam kept approaching until he stood just a few feet from Jason. The officer’s hands were fidgeting, keys clinking in his grip. “This place is a murder scene.”
Penny got up next. “It’s also Heather’s home. Are you saying we shouldn’t be here?”
Sam’s eyes moved over her head, looking at the house. “Guess that’s not my call. But none of this crap was happening until you people showed up in Coldwater.”
Did he mean her and Zandra? Penny shared an uneasy glance with Jason, who stuck his hands in his jeans pockets.
“I’m really sorry about Adelaide, Sam,” Jason said softly. “I know she was your sister. I can’t imagine how you must feel.”
Penny audibly sucked in a breath. His sister?
Sam barely reacted. “I’m sorry about it, too. But she wasn’t my sister. Genetics don’t make somebody family.”
Jason shrugged. “I guess not. But still.”
Sam’s jaw worked, like he had more to say yet didn’t want to let it out. Finally, he turned on his boot heel and walked back toward his SUV.
“Sam.” Jason’s tone was sharp.
The other man looked back.
“Maybe you shouldn’t be out. You should head home.”
Sam didn’t respond. But when he reached the SUV, his fist lashed out, punching into the door. Penny flinched at the thud of his knuckles on the hard surface. He jumped into the vehicle, backed up, and sped onto the road.
Penny’s body had stiffened with shock. “What did you mean, Adelaide is his sister?”
Then she remembered. Jason had no idea about what they’d found out. He was assuming that Tabitha and Reverend Berman were Adelaide’s parents. “Is Sam one of the cult kids?” she asked.
“I suppose, though I don’t think he’d appreciate that term. Krauss’s mother and uncle were church members who left during the big exodus. She died a long time back, though. Sleeping pills. His Uncle Wayne raised him.”
“Wayne? I think I met him. The server at the bistro?”
“Yep. That’s the one. He won’t hear a cross word against the church, even though he left. But Sam? He’s the opposite. Blames the church for his mom’s death.”
“Was Berman Sam's father?” she asked.
“Probably. I don’t know. Berman was a lot of people’s father. Krauss has a point about genetics not equaling family.”
Penny was shaking her head in disbelief. “And Chief Novak let him be involved in the search for Adelaide? The investigation? That seems really inappropriate.”
Jason sat back down on the steps. “Far as I can tell, Krauss has an axe to grind against anybody associated with them. I think that’s why he came down so hard on my mom during that whole drama last year.”
Penny cringed. “The shoplifting incident? Sam mentioned it when we were at your house.”
“My mom gets confused sometimes. Doesn’t think straight. She took a few candles, and Krauss wanted to haul her in like a mastermind criminal.”
“Because she used to be a church member? Really? Do you think Chief Novak realizes Krauss is biased?”
“You don’t get how things are around here, Penny. People know things, but they don’t always want to acknowledge them, much less talk openly about them.”
Penny sank down into a seated position again. “If Sam thought Adelaide was his sister—even just in the technical sense—it’s no wonder he’s torn up over it.” Especially with Reverend Berman turning up on the church property. It would be a lot to process.
“I’m upset, too, and she wasn’t related to me at all. Feel like I’m going to be sick.” Jason clasped his hands between his knees. “Is this because of what we were doing? Trying to find out more about her mother?”
“It’s possible.” Penny wasn’t sure if she should tell him. But Jason had been helping them. He’d arranged the meeting with Donovan, after all. “We just found out Tabitha wasn’t actually Adelaide’s mother. It was the woman we asked Donovan to locate. Stacey.”
Jason turned to face her. “You’re kidding. How’d you find that out? The DNA test?”
“No, I don’t think Heather’s gotten that back yet. We spoke to Stacey.”
“Donovan came through?”
“Well, no.” She figured she might as well tell him the rest of it. There wasn’t much reason to be secretive. Jason already knew they were mediums. “We learned Tabitha and Wes’s full names from the ghosts.” And from Gwendolyn Kwan, though that was probably more detail than he needed. “Which led us to Tabitha’s family. The Dailys. They knew Stacey.”
He whistled. “Wow. I just…it’s like there’s too much to get my head around. All the lies.” He touched a hand to his stomach.
“I know what you mean.” They were both quiet for a minute, letting the day’s cascade of terrible events and revelations sink in.
“What’re they like?” Jason asked. “The Dailys?”
“I only met Tabitha’s sister-in-law. She’s guessed for a while that Tabitha was dead, but it was still heartbreaking for her to know for sure. She was happy to hear that Tabitha’s child was still alive, but of course now we don’t even know that. I’m not sure what we’re going to tell her about Adelaide.”
“So you think they still wanted to meet Tabitha’s child? Even after all this time?”
“Of course.” It seemed like an odd thing to ask. Wasn’t that the most natural thing in the world, wanting to reconnect with a family member you’d lost?
They’d just been talking about how Kathleen had been a member of the Church of Universal Ascension, too.
“Do you think your mother knew Tabitha? I never asked—when, exactly, did your mother leave the church?”
“Around the time a lot of others left.” He’d mumbled these words. Jason’s feet shuffled. “What else did you learn from those ghosts?”
Penny suddenly felt uncomfortable. Like there was a deeper chill to the air, though the wind had shifted away from them.
It was the blank expression on Jason’s face. The monotone of his last question.
An unsettling thought came to her, seemingly from nowhere. Like a flare of intuition.
Or a ghostly whisper, traveling with the breeze.
“We haven’t learned much more from the ghosts,” Penny said, giving a non-answer to his last question. “But I keep wondering about Tabitha’s child. Did the person leave Coldwater? Or were they taken somewhere else? We don’t know if Tabitha had a boy or a girl. But they’d be in their early forties.” Stacey had helped pinpoint the summer of 1980 for the child’s birth and Tabitha’s death.
“Makes sense. Which rules out Donovan, since he’s younger by a few years.”
Penny’s laugh sounded forced. “Next thing you know, we’ll be asking everyone around forty in Coldwater to produce their driver’s license.”
“That might be awkward. The description could fit a lot of people. Like Sam Krauss.”
“Or like you?”
Jason returned her gaze, and his eyes were colder than the air around them.
He took out his wallet and extracted a card. “That answer your question?”
His date of birth was listed as 1983.
“People don’t like my parents around here, and I’m not too fond of them, either. But nobody’s gone so far as to suggest they kidnapped me.”
Or that they’d murdered two people? Now she felt like a jerk. And that brief flash of intuition had gone out. She’d been imagining it.
“Sorry. I didn’t really mean…”
“It’s okay.” Jason slid his license back into his wallet. “You might want to be careful going around town making accusations, though. Some people might not appreciate that.”
Like Officer Sam Krauss. After his angry outburst earlier, she was going to be more leery of the man. “You’re right. I apologize. We may not be in Coldwater much longer, anyway.”
“That might be for the best.” He pushed himself upright and looked at the sky. “I’ve spent of lot of my life trying to get away from this place. You don’t have anything tying you here. If I were you, I’d get on that freeway, and I wouldn’t look back.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Jason stepped inside the house, careful not to let the screen door slam. His father hated that noise, and at this time of night? It would wake the old man.
Any false move could set off one of his father’s rages.
But his father’s anger had a way of lying in wait until you thought maybe he’d forgotten about it. And then, when you didn’t expect it, the strike would come. Swift and cruel, knocking you down.
Once, Jason had borne the brunt instead of his mother. He hated to see those bruises on her arms. Probably explained why her head wasn’t always right these days.
He walked into the living room. His mother’s whining whisper greeted him even before he saw her.
“I was afraid you weren’t coming back.” She was on her corner of the couch. Her robe’s floral print blended in with the upholstery, like she was trying to disappear from view. In this house, it was usually better to go unnoticed.
“Now, Mama, why wouldn’t I come back? I said I would, didn’t I?”
“Don’t yell.”
He’d been whispering, just like her.
His mother followed him into his bedroom. She closed the door and kept advancing, even though he’d backed up against his dresser.
“Jason, do you know where your father was last night?”
“He was in bed, Mama. Like he always is.” He opened a drawer, taking out pajamas that he’d change into once she’d left.
“But when I woke up to use the bathroom, he wasn’t beside me. Not in the restroom, either.”
“What’re you talking about? Of course he was.”
His father couldn’t have been out. That wasn’t possible.
But if he had been…
“What about those women who came here?” his mother complained. “They’ve been poking around at Davenport Ranch.”
“I told you I would check on that. And I have. They don’t know a thing.” He wasn’t going to tell his mother that Penny and Zandra could communicate with the dead. That news would send her spiraling. Jason had been worried at first, too, when he’d heard. But thank goodness, the ghosts of Coldwater didn’t seem especially talkative. And Penny had said she and Zandra would leave soon.
On the day they’d arrived, Jason had spied them across the border between his property and Davenport Ranch. Everyone around town had been talking about Heather’s investigation into the old murders.
He’d urged Gretchen through the broken fence. He hadn’t needed to make up the part about the Rainier property being in disrepair. The ghosts on Davenport Ranch were well-known to him, but still, Jason hadn’t expected the horse to get so spooked.
He’d always been a quick thinker, though. He’d made the most of his opportunity to get to know the women, find out what they knew.
At times, he’d wondered if Zandra was suspicious of him. She’d looked at him with a more intense scrutiny than the others had, like she could see into his head.
It was too bad they couldn’t really be friends. These past couple of days had been far more pleasant than his usual ones. Jason had liked all three of them, Zandra, Penny, Heather. He couldn’t blame them for what they were doing.
Everybody had to carry their unique burden, though he doubted they’d understand his.
“Jason, this scares me. What if—” She grabbed for his arm.
“Don’t, Mama.”
“What if someone finds out?” Her grasping fingers dug into his skin. Sometimes, he forgot how strong she was when she got determined.
“Stop.” Her breath smelled like the casserole they’d had for dinner, onions and canned mushroom soup. If she didn’t get away from him, he’d throw up. “I said, don’t.”
She wouldn’t let go of him.
Jason yanked his arm away. His mother flew forward past him, falling into the bed and rolling to the floor with a thud.
They both froze, waiting for a shout to come from next door. What in the name of—
But the snoring didn’t stop. His father hadn’t woken. Jason’s lungs started to work again.
He bent down, trying to help his mother up. “I’m sorry, Mama.”
She scrambled away. “Don’t you know you sound like him? He never means it when he says that, either.”
He glared at her until she stood and backed away, silent tears streaming down her face. She wrenched open the door and slipped into the hall.
In the early hours of the morning, Jason sat awake in the living room until the snow started. It was just a light dusting, a mere precursor to the new storm later on. He’d brought Brandy inside so she didn’t get too cold, and she lay by his feet, eyebrows twitching as she slept.
It was hell being back here. But the guilt of being away had been worse.
And now look what’s happened.
Jason didn’t want to think about it. He wouldn’t. But he watched his parents’ door to make sure it didn’t open. Watched the snow fall outside through the window. And wondered what would happen next.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Zandra woke around ten. The cloudy sky shone through the windows, full of pale, diffuse light. The air in the Davenport house was cold. She lay still for a while, listening to see if Heather was up in her room. But there were no sounds.
Zandra had hoped some epiphany would come to her overnight. A strategy to deal with the mess of this case. But at the moment, she had nothing.
Eventually, Penny got up, and they put away the sofa bed and gathered their things. Neither of them wanted to leave without speaking to Heather, but if the woman refused to come out, there wasn’t much they could do.
“I’m just going to knock,” Zandra said, and went over to the bedroom.
The door cracked open. Heather’s face appeared, eyes swollen. “Yes?”
“Morning. We’re ready to leave, if that’s still what you want. But we thought we should check in before taking off.”
“I’m still upset.”
“We all are.”
The door widened. Heather leaned against the frame, crossing her arms. “I feel like wallowing about everything that’s happened in the last few months. Especially about Adelaide. But that seems pretty pointless. If you have any better ideas, I’m open to hearing them.”
“Come into town,” Penny said over Zandra’s shoulder. “You can hang out with us at the motel, and we’ll talk about what to do next. Or you could go by the police station to see if you can help. Better than being alone and snowed-in after the storm hits.”
She hesitated, then nodded, running her fingers through her messy hair. “All right. I could do that. I’ll get dressed.” Heather went back into her room.
Penny held her arms out at her sides. “Would you look at that? We’re not out of this yet.”
Zandra thought her partner was overstating things. But it was an improvement. If they were all feeling depressed, at least they could do it together.
They caravanned to The Fresh Catch, Heather in her truck, Penny and Zandra in their sedan. As they got out, Zandra saw Lester in the window of the front office.
He stepped outside. “There you are. Wondered where you two had been. Was getting a little worried.”
