What the Cat Knew

by P. D. Workman

  “Start at the beginning. Ling was coming here to talk to you. Why? To do another of your seances?”

  “I asked her to come.” Reg uncovered her eyes, but kept them closed. She rubbed both temples, head pounding. It was hard to believe it was first thing in the morning. She felt like she’d been through the wringer. She could hear one of them moving around, and discerned that Jessup’s partner was in the kitchen, putting on the kettle. She couldn’t even bring herself to care.

  “Why did you ask her to come?”

  “Because… I found her husband. Warren Blake. And he’s not dead.”

  This announcement was greeted with silence. Reg opened her eyelids a fraction of an inch to look at Jessup. Jessup had her notepad out, but she wasn’t writing anything down. She was just looking at Reg, her expression inscrutable.

  “You called her here to tell her that her husband wasn’t dead.”

  “Yes.”

  “And how exactly does that fit into channeling spirits? What did you expect to get from her when she got here?”

  “Nothing. I just… she needed to know. He’s her husband and she has the right to know that her husband wasn’t killed in that plane crash. He’s still alive and well. Or… still alive.”

  “And where is he?”

  “He’s in McNara, a hospital. But he’s not under his own name, so you can’t call and ask for him. He’s under David Forrester.”

  “You found out that Warren is checked in there under a false name.”

  “Yes.”

  “And how did you figure that out?”

  “It’s a long story…” Jessup didn’t believe that Warren was even there, there was no way she was going to believe Reg’s long story about the witches and about finding Warren there in a magical coma.

  “We’ve got all day,” Jessup replied. “We’re talking about two missing persons here. Allegations of fraud. Who knows what else.”

  “If you go and see… you’ll see for yourself.” As long as they hadn’t already spooked the culprits. With Ling showing up there, had they taken her out of the picture? Would they decide that holding Warren in a coma was no longer going to be enough? So far they had avoided actually killing anyone outright, but would that hold when the police started poking their noses into the operation?

  “If he’s still there,” Jessup said, correctly interpreting Reg’s hesitance. “But maybe he won’t be. Maybe there will be no sign that he was ever there.”

  “I don’t know. I’m not a part of this. I didn’t do anything to Warren.”

  “Why is he in the hospital? He was injured in the plane crash?”

  “I didn’t actually talk to a doctor… so I don’t know how extensive his injuries are. We just found him, and talked to him, and we’re trying to figure out what it all means—”

  “You talked to him.”

  “Yes—”

  “And what did he have to say?”

  “He wasn’t conscious. He was… in a coma, I guess? So he couldn’t talk… in a normal way.”

  “But you’re good at channeling spirits, so maybe you put on another show.”

  The kettle was whistling. Reg looked over at the man to give him directions, but he seemed perfectly at home in the kitchen, finding everything he needed.

  “I… channeled him,” Reg admitted. She didn’t know what else to say. There was no other way to explain what had happened. She couldn’t explain it in a logical, scientific way. If she were going to convince them of her innocence, she was going to have to put on the best act of her life. She had to convince them that she really was psychic and that was how she had found Warren. “There was no other way for me to communicate with him.”

  “So you must know all of the details of the plane crash and what happened to him.”

  Jessup’s partner put the tea service down on the table, and even though Reg didn’t want it, she prepared herself a cup, hoping it would calm her brain and help her to get her thoughts organized. Her fingers shook as she poured the water and picked up her cup.

  “No. He was confused. He couldn’t remember a lot of the details.”

  “Of course not. That would be too easy, wouldn’t it?”

  “I’m not trying to pull one over on you, Detective Jessup. I’m trying to explain what happened. They… drugged him or did something to him so he couldn’t remember exactly what had happened. I don’t even know if he went down with the plane, or if they dumped him somewhere…. or just checked him into this hospital…”

  “I thought psychics were supposed to be able to figure things like that out.”

  “Well, I’m trying. But it’s not instant… I called Ling to see if she knew anything about these guys that Warren had been dealing with, or if he had any papers, journals, flight plans, something that might help us to piece together what had happened.”

  “And you don’t think we would already have requested all of that in connection with the plane crash?”

  “You could have missed something… there might have been something that you didn’t know was important. You thought that crash was an accident.”

  “But you don’t.”

  “No. It was the men he was supposed to be doing a job for. They did something to him, and they crashed his plane.”

  “How would crashing his plane get them what they wanted?”

  Reg sipped her tea and concentrated on the question. What had the men wanted? If they wanted Warren to transport their illegal goods, then how would hurting him and crashing his plane help?

  “They must have… they must have used it first. Then they crashed it to get rid of the evidence.”

  “They could fly without Warren?”

  “I don’t know… maybe they could. Or maybe they forced him to fly, and he just doesn’t remember that part. There are a lot of holes.” Reg tried to pull the memories together into something cogent. She had it all, or most of it, if she could just sort it out. “There was a man in a long, dark cloak, he said. Or an overcoat. And a man with dreadlocks. I don’t know how many others.” She searched the memories for pictures of them. “The man with dreadlocks is black. Very dark and thin. There are others…” The center of Reg’s forehead was pulsing. She pressed into it with her thumbs.

  Starlight rubbed against Reg’s ankles. She bent over and picked him up. He purred and bumped his head against her. She rubbed the white spot on his forehead and the pain in her own head seemed to ease a little. She rubbed his chin and stared into his mismatched eyes.

  “There are others… but those two are the leaders, the ones making the decisions.”

  “Warren told you that?”

  “He… sort of. I can see… some of what he remembered. He couldn’t hold the connection, so he tried to give me everything he could, all at once… but it’s all jumbled and disjointed.”

  “So you have pictures of them in your head. Can you draw me pictures?”

  “The one in the overcoat… his face is always obscured…” She didn’t want to say that they had used magic spells to keep her from seeing their faces clearly. There were lots of legitimate ways people could hide their faces. Hats pulled low, collars pulled up. Masks. Makeup. Beards.

  She thought about Corvin’s beard. It was real, not something pasted on like a stage prop. But it was short and neat. Some men could grow a beard like that in a couple of days. Was he hiding what he really looked like so that Warren could never describe him?

  “What about the others?”

  She tried to picture the man with dreadlocks. Had the dreads been real? Not just a wig or fake hair attached to a hat? Was it also a disguise? A misdirection?

  “The man with the dreadlocks is very black and skinny—”

  “But his face? Can you draw his face?”

  Reg rubbed Starlight’s spot. “I don’t know… I could try, but I’m not very good at that kind of thing, and the pictures are… they’re blurry and fleeting. He tried to give me so much at once… it’s like drinking from a firehose.”

&
nbsp; Jessup scribbled in her notepad, but it didn’t look like she was writing words. “Unknown men, with no motives, intentionally crash a plane and put Warren Blake in hospital under another name… could you be any more obscure?”

  “I’m trying.”

  “So you had Ling here, dumped all of this on her, asked her questions about Warren’s operations and friends, and then she went away. Was she going back home?”

  “No, she was going to go to McNara. To see Warren.”

  “And then was she supposed to get ahold of you? What was the next step?”

  “She didn’t really believe any of it. She wasn’t working with me. I just told her about this… and she went to see.” Reg ground her knuckles into her forehead. She didn’t need to be channeling Warren to see how stupid she had been. “I shouldn’t have let her go alone. I knew these men didn’t want Warren to be found, so why would I let Ling go over there all by herself to find out she’d been lied to and that he was still alive? Whatever they did to him, they could do to her… or worse…”

  “You should have come to the police,” Jessup’s partner spoke up. “Civilians shouldn’t be trying to handle this kind of thing on their own. You knew there was an investigation into the plane crash. As soon as you found out Warren was alive, you should have contacted us.”

  “I just thought… there’d be a bunch of questions I didn’t know the answers to. If I could just sort out everything he said and gave to me, then I could have something coherent to tell you…”

  “You’ve withheld evidence.”

  “I don’t have any evidence.”

  “Warren Blake himself. You should have called us from the hospital. He’s key to our investigation,” Jessup pointed out.

  “I… yes, I suppose I should have. I was so tired after channeling him, I couldn’t think straight. I just wanted to get home and sleep.”

  “You put an innocent woman at risk.”

  Reg tried to focus on Ling. What if they had killed her? What if they had put her in a magical coma as well? She closed her eyes and reached out for the woman.

  “Oh, now we get a show,” Jessup’s partner said sarcastically.

  “Shut up,” Reg told him, trying to focus her concentration outside the cottage. Ling was out there somewhere. Reg had to make contact with her.

  Jessup whispered something to her partner, but Reg didn’t hear what it was and didn’t try to work it out. Let them talk. She had a job to do. Reg had put a client in danger, and she had to reach her again.

  She didn’t have a picture or personal item to help focus her search. But she had Warren’s memories, intimate portraits of their life together. She had met Ling before, which made it easier to search for her, like searching for a friend’s face in a crowd.

  Reg thought she could feel Ling’s energy. She rubbed her fingers into Starlight’s fur, trying to gather his psychic force to strengthen her own. She didn’t call aloud to Ling; this reading wasn’t for show. But she called out mentally, repeating Ling’s name, trying to establish a link between them. She kept running up against barriers. She couldn’t connect with Ling’s consciousness.

  Finally, she let out her breath, relaxed and smoothed Starlight’s ruffled fur, and opened her eyes. Jessup and her partner were both staring at her.

  ⋆ Chapter Nineteen ⋆

  “Well?” Jessup prompted. “I’m waiting for the crazy talk.”

  Reg shook her head. “I think… she’s okay. She’s not dead or unconscious like Warren. Sarah said…” She trailed off. She’d been trying not to mention Sarah or Letticia. They wouldn’t want to be involved with the police, and the police would just get annoyed at them. The two crones lived in a whole different world from Jessup.

  “Sarah who?” Jessup asked. When Reg didn’t answer, she pressed again. “Sarah Bishop?”

  Reg blinked. “How do you know Sarah Bishop?”

  “She’s your landlady, isn’t she? We’ve done our background. We wouldn’t just come in here blindly not knowing the situation.”

  “It’s nothing. I was just talking to her about Warren.”

  “And what did she have to say? What does it have to do with Ling’s situation?”

  Reg rubbed her forehead again, wishing she could just go to bed. The police had no idea how much mental effort it took to communicate over a distance. And they weren’t going to like anything Sarah had to say about what they had decided about Warren.

  “It’s just nonsense,” she said. “An old woman’s ramblings.”

  “Are you going to tell me, or do I have to get her in here?”

  Reg preferred to manage the information. Sarah would just blab everything unfiltered and her talk of magic spells would get her slapped into the loony bin.

  “It’s nothing… just… Sarah said that it would take a lot of effort to keep Warren unconscious. So I don’t think… maybe they don’t have the resources to do the same thing with Ling.”

  “Okay…” Jessup’s eyes were narrow, waiting for more details.

  “I was worried that if they couldn’t do the same thing with Ling, they might just… eliminate her.”

  “Which is why you should have told us about Warren last night instead of Ling.”

  “I guess.” Reg stared into Starlight’s eyes, not wanting to have to look into Jessup’s.

  “But you don’t think they’ve killed her,” Jessup’s partner said.

  “No, I can feel her out there, but she’s not responding to me, which I think means she’s still conscious and alert. People put up mental barriers when they’re conscious. You can’t communicate with them on the same level as you could if they were unconscious.”

  “Or dead.”

  “Right.”

  The seconds ticked by while Jessup and her partner watched Reg, evaluating her.

  “I’m not crazy,” Reg said. “I know this all sounds crazy, but it’s just… it’s just a phenomenon that we don’t understand yet. One day, science will be able to explain it.”

  “Psychic phenomenon,” Jessup’s partner said.

  “Yeah.”

  “In the meantime, we’re expected to take this on faith.”

  “You can go to McNara and see that Warren’s not dead.”

  “If he’s even there. And if he is, that doesn’t mean that the rest of this nonsense about cloaked wizards and dreadlocks dude is true.”

  “No… but it is. I’m not just making it up.”

  “That’s what you do for a living,” Jessup snapped. “You make things up. You fool people into paying you for made-up nonsense.”

  Reg bit her lip to keep from fighting back. She stared at the little card on the table in front of her. Readings and other services are for entertainment only. If she didn’t want to be charged with fraud, that was the line she had to stick to, whether she was imagining or actually making some kind of real connection.

  “I entertain people,” she said stoically. “Just like any Vegas magic act.”

  How many times when she was little had she cried and insisted to an angry foster mother that she was telling the truth, not making up stories about her imagined friends? It felt like a betrayal of herself to tell Jessup it was just illusion and imagination. She’d been whipped and locked up and mistreated for telling the things that she saw and heard. She’d been called a liar and worse. All because she saw things other people didn’t.

  Jessup and her partner exchanged looks. Finally, Jessup pushed herself to her feet. “We’ll go check out McNara,” she said. “You’d better stay here.”

  “Here? Are you putting me under house arrest or telling me not to leave town?”

  Jessup considered. “Don’t leave town.”

  Reg walked the two officers to the door, glad that the dizziness had passed and she was able to walk unassisted. She looked at Jessup’s partner’s name bar, squinting to make the letters stay still. Hawthorne-Rose.

  “We’ll be in touch,” Jessup said.

  “Will you call me after you see that it�
��s Warren?”

  “I’m not making any promises. If it is Warren, we’re going to need to talk to a lot of people. One of which will be you, to get a proper account of how you found him there.”

  Reg swallowed. She was grateful for the warning that she was going to have to figure out something to say. Maybe with some time, she could put together a story that made some sense and didn’t involve pure luck or psychic inspiration.

  Reg waited the rest of the day for a call from the police officers, but it never came. Had they identified Warren and become embroiled in the investigation, too busy to call her? Had they been bamboozled by the magical wards, deciding he wasn’t there after all or going off on some other wild goose chase? Had Warren been gone, spirited away by the men who had crashed his airplane?

  However much she wanted to know, she wasn’t about to call them and find out. That would just be asking for trouble. A suspect who showed too much interest in an investigation was just that much more suspicious. Like the firebug who returned to watch the firefighters putting out the blaze he had started.

  During the afternoon, the doorbell rang, waking Reg from a nap, and when she tottered to the door, still half-asleep, she found a young boy there. He was perhaps ten years old, blond, with wide blue eyes and childish round cheeks.

  “Yes?”

  She expected him to say that he’d hit a ball into the yard or that he was raising money for his scout troop. Instead, he held a folded piece of paper out to her.

  “I’m to give this to you.”

  “Oh. What is this?”

  He turned and ran away without answering. Reg looked down at it. It was a thick, substantial paper with a rough texture. Reg closed the door and unfolded the sheet, her heart racing in anticipation. A ransom note? An order to appear before Sarah’s coven for some innocent infraction?

  The thick calligraphic script was made by a practiced hand, not a computer. The ink was a deep indigo, with variation in shade from the thin strokes to the thick.

  Miss Rawlins

  I request the pleasure of your company at the Eagle Arms tonight at seven o’clock. (Neutral enough for you?)