Crystal Vision

by Patricia Rice

  Harvey grimaced but took off.

  Mariah hobbled back to the golf cart Valdis still hadn’t claimed. Keegan added his heavy weight to hers. The golf cart’s tiny engine protested as it clunked up the hill toward the cemetery.

  “What did Walker say about the arrows?” she demanded, trying not to imagine what trouble Cass might be instigating now.

  He didn’t sound surprised that she interrogated him about his visit to the town hall. “The arrows are common and can be bought in any sporting goods store. They found no fingerprints, but that’s not unusual. Many people prefer to wear gloves when pulling a bow of that size. Your police chief has his minions working their way through bow-hunting licenses.” Keegan shifted uncomfortably on the bench seat and bent his head to see beneath the tattered canopy.

  “And the attic crystals?” Mariah tried to distract her fears. She didn’t really believe the crystals would lead them to a killer, but the clues were few and far between.

  “The sheriff isn’t ready to release them.”

  “Then we’ll just have to work with those that Teddy and Harvey own, although I can’t figure out how you can identify them or how they’re related to Daisy.” Mariah parked the cart as close as she could to the steep path down to the vortex.

  “Without the missing journals, I can do no more than identify what type of crystals they are,” Keegan admitted, helping her out. “I cannot see how we will find any motivation for killing an old lady, whether she was harmless or not.”

  More than anything, Mariah hated being helpless. But the internet couldn’t track the life of a woman who hadn’t existed beyond these hills. The answers to Daisy’s death were here, somewhere. Mariah grimaced, knowing she had to physically work out this problem, just like any Null. And do it while crippled, she acknowledged, hobbling down the rocky path on Keegan’s arm and her staff.

  She halted half way down, where she could get a good view. The vortex was at the bottom of a natural amphitheater. From here, she could see any lurking intruders. She saw no one but Teddy and Sam watching Cass from the rocky platform that had been cobbled together beside the vortex. Cass often used it as a stage to address the Lucys in times of joy and sorrow. But today, she walked the rocky spiral maze around the vortex.

  “She is calling on spirit energy,” Mariah whispered, easing down the path.

  “Spirit energy?” Keegan inquired.

  He gripped her arm tightly so she didn’t stumble. The clasp of his strong fingers reminded her too well of what they’d been doing before they’d been interrupted. She supposed it made sense that she’d eventually find a man who attracted her enough to drive common sense out of her head. She simply wished it had been someone a little less intimidating, one she couldn’t suspect capable of ruthlessly doing whatever he thought necessary.

  Someone like her.

  “Ghosts,” she said, almost angrily, shaking him off. “Centuries of tattered energies that haven’t passed on as they should. There’s little to be learned from most of them, but if Cass can find one who can connect to those who have gone beyond, she’ll seek information.”

  That silenced him. Mariah had the uneasy notion he wasn’t quiet because he thought she was just another whacky Lucy, but because he was trying to work what she’d said through his own understanding.

  “She loses sense of time, and she’s not as strong as she once was.” Mariah used her stick as crutch and swung down to the next step.

  “What can you do?” he asked.

  “Channel the energy. I have no psychic connection to ectoplasmic energy, only physical. All I can hope to do is find and direct it, as I do with my ghostcatchers. At some point, we’ll have to bring Cass back to reality so she can eat and rest. I have no idea how long she’s been out here.” Because she’d been diving down internet rabbit holes, dammit. She should have known Cass would pull this stunt after they left.

  Again, Keegan didn’t question. With a family tree like his, she got that. Maybe that’s why she’d let herself go a little nuts with him. Learning his family was steeped in woo-woo, she felt safe confiding in him—which she knew was stupid. She just couldn’t seem to help herself. A man who didn’t laugh when she spoke about the weird was such a rarity that she was soaking up the attention like the earth soaked up rain after a drought.

  He helped her down to where Teddy and Sam hovered. “Go away now,” Mariah told him. “You’re this huge energy void and can only interfere.”

  Keegan drew down his formidable black brows in a frown but reluctantly hiked up the far side of the hill where he could keep an eye on anyone approaching from the road.

  “Energy void?” Teddy whispered, watching him go. “A man like that has more energy than he knows what to do with.”

  “I can’t explain it,” Mariah said impatiently. “I need to channel the spirits circling Cass so she doesn’t have to reach so far. I’ve never tried doing this with anyone else. But if our walking sticks can channel earth energy, maybe they can do the same with spirits. If you let me borrow some of your power, our chance of success should be greater.”

  “Daisy had us put the ends of our sticks together in a shallow bowl in the rock when we stopped the avalanche.” Sam climbed up to the rock stage, running her stick along the surface. “Maybe we could do the same?”

  “I wish she’d left us operating instructions,” Mariah muttered. “But yes, we’ve learned to communicate by finding or creating bowls in the granite. They have a crystalline structure that apparently resonates with the vortex energy.”

  “So it’s not necessarily magic, but some kind of vibration?” Teddy asked, lying down on the stone to sight irregularities.

  “Magic defines the inexplicable, which this is,” Mariah admitted. “We’d probably need Keegan to give us the scientific theory.” She located an indentation on the center rock. “This looks the right size. Just hold the ends of your staffs here and let me reach out to Cass.”

  She closed her eyes, centered herself on the crystal energy in the wooden handle, then let it flow toward the ground and the energy coursing through the other carved staffs.

  As she’d suspected, Teddy and Sam had power well beyond that of the crystals Harvey had chosen for them. She didn’t have enough experience working with others to know exactly how to use that much power, so Mariah simply concentrated on her own abilities. Letting the life forces circling the vortex find her, she blasted them toward Cass.

  “She’s stopped pacing,” Samantha whispered.

  Mariah released her physical body and flew with the souls she gathered. Turmoil, confusion, anger, sorrow whipped through her. A hawk’s mind was easier than the detritus of the human condition. The solid sensibility of Teddy and Sam held her steady as her ectoplasmic self whirled, spun, then gathered and formed a thin line aimed directly at the shining light she saw as Cass’s soul.

  She hadn’t realized she sought Daisy until she felt the feather-light touch that had always been Daisy’s life force. Tentative, ragged, as incomplete as Daisy, it brushed reassuringly along Mariah’s senses. Mariah reached longingly for that feeling, but Daisy had never been fully attached to the earth or anyone in it. She vanished.

  Mariah knew when Tullah joined them. Tullah’s psychic force was strong but untutored. Still, she anchored Cass in ways Mariah could not. With relief, Mariah began to let go, to return to the women on the platform before she lost herself.

  The heavy staff held her weak body in place until she could sit on solid earth. Mariah heard Teddy making Keegan back off and stay away. She was grateful for the understanding. He’d hauled her around the last time she’d been in this weakened state. She needed to rebuild her strength to shut him out.

  “Do we stop now?” Sam whispered above her head.

  “I’m not feeling the vibrations anymore,” Teddy said. “What’s Tullah doing?”

  “Sustaining Cass,” Mariah answered. “Go to Cass before she falls.”

  She felt their departure as a weakening of her ener
gy, and it was all she could do to remain sitting. Oddly, she sensed Keegan out there as a solid wall of nothing—a wall she could lean on. Was using her ability this way any better than when she sent it sliding down the interwebs?

  “Reporters,” Harvey cried from a distance. “Hide!”

  Oh crap, and she was in no condition to run.

  Keegan couldn’t stand to watch Mariah struggle. He didn’t know what the blazes she had done to herself—or why one should run from reporters—but he couldn’t sit idle. He jogged over the stones, past the women gathering around the gray-haired witch, and to Mariah before she slumped to the ground.

  He scooped her up and headed for the cart until she whacked him with her stick. He would be bruised from head to toe if he put up with her much longer. Contemplating the cost of a good psychiatrist, he halted and glared at her. “I am not putting you down.”

  “Cass’s house, by the path.” She pointed her stick to a well-trampled dirt path on the far side of the amphitheater.

  Since the tall African-American woman was leading Cass that way, Keegan adjusted his direction. “Why are Theodosia and Samantha not joining us?”

  “Because they’re smart,” she grumbled. “They’ll talk about art and galleries and contests and lead the intruders astray.”

  “Intruders?” He jogged up the path until he was right behind Tullah and Cass.

  “Reporters,” the thrift store owner explained, glancing back at him. “They ask the wrong questions.”

  If Keegan weren’t the descendant of a long line of enigmatic females, he’d put Mariah down and leave now. But comfortable with waiting for explanation, he played his role of beast of burden until they trusted him.

  “Did you feel Daisy?” Mariah called ahead, apparently feeling stronger.

  He’d watch her go pale and frail before his eyes, as if the life force had been sucked out of her. She still wasn’t her normal healthy self, but color was seeping back into her lovely brown cheeks. He admired her thick black lashes while contemplating her question. How did one feel the dead?

  “She only passed on the image of that damned cart,” Cass said wearily. “She’s well past the veil already. The connection was nebulous at best.”

  “I felt her,” Mariah said. “She’s happy is all she conveyed to me.” Amazingly, she closed her eyes and leaned her head against his shoulder.

  “Do we need to take apart the cart?” Keegan asked, trying to keep his tone neutral.

  “I will buy Valdis a new one,” Cass said without answering directly.

  “Drive it up to Cass’s,” Mariah whispered. “We can take it apart together.”

  “How will you get around then? As much as I enjoy carrying you, I don’t think it’s a practical solution.”

  She almost smiled. “I can be the albatross around your neck. We’ll work it out.”

  “I will not allow you to mess with my mind,” he warned. “So wipe that puss-and-cream look off your face.”

  She smiled even more. “Then use your molecular engineering abilities to deconstruct the cart without tools.”

  “I’ve never—” But he could. He glared down at her. “You believe me?”

  “Not yet, but I’m getting there. Leave me on the porch steps. I just need to catch my breath, and I’ll be fine.”

  “You don’t look fine. You’re as gray as death’s door.” He knew he sounded grumpy. He always did when he was terrified. And this woman terrified him in ways he couldn’t count.

  “Oh, thank you for that,” she said, wrinkling her lovely lips into a pout. “They had to take me to the hospital the last time I went spatial, so count yourself fortunate.”

  Went spatial? What the hell?

  “I didn’t need your help,” Cass said querulously—while leaning on Tullah’s arm.

  “You wouldn’t have reached Daisy without Mariah,” Tullah said in the firm tones of a teacher to an argumentative child. “When will you learn to call on us?”

  Cass didn’t answer, but even Keegan could sense what she didn’t say. She’d been here all alone for decades and didn’t know how to ask for help.

  “United, we stand,” Mariah whispered.

  Divided, we fall. Keegan tried to work his mind around that as he set Mariah on Cass’s porch and jogged off to find the cart. How did one know who to stand with? He’d always thought it was loved ones, until someone in his family had betrayed them. If he couldn’t trust those close to him, how could he trust strangers?

  Thirteen

  July 9: Monday, early evening

  Nursing Cass’s weak sangria, Mariah watched as Keegan donned his spectacles and cautiously ran his hands over the dilapidated golf cart. Gorgeous hunk looking intellectual—her heart did a little dance of appreciation.

  Samantha and Walker had followed behind the cart, carrying food from the diner. Mariah bit ravenously into an enormous po’boy sandwich, willing her energy to return.

  How did Cass manage to ride astral currents on a regular basis at her age? She sat there now, like a queen on her throne, not appearing as feeble as Mariah felt.

  “I took a look at your room, Keegan,” Walker said. “Way too many prints. How much do you want me to dig?”

  Keegan waved a dismissive hand. “I’ll persuade Aaron to install cameras.”

  “Maybe one of the journalists decided to check you out. They think they have a story with Gump’s death in the avalanche, combined with an old hippie wearing a feather cloak shot with an arrow.” Walker swigged the beer he’d bought at Pasquale’s. “Someone up here talked.”

  “Tourists,” Mariah said through the last bite of sandwich. “Mistake to bring them here.”

  “Hillvale will die without fresh money,” Samantha pointed out.

  “Your uncles may lose their business. That is not the same as the town dying,” Cass said coldly from her throne on the porch.

  “If you can’t agree on anything, then you will make no progress at all.” Keegan came up from underneath the cart looking dusty, oily, disheveled, and victorious. “There is a non-metallic anomaly beneath the bench, where I cannot touch it.”

  Walker produced a set of screwdrivers from the toolkit he’d brought up and began prying at the torn vinyl bench seat. “I doubt Daisy had tools to take this apart. It must pry up or the object was so thin that she slid it between the seat and the support.”

  “I do love watching Nulls accept that we know things that are not possible,” Mariah said in her most saccharine voice.

  “At what point do you accept that Keegan isn’t Null?” Sam asked in irony.

  She probably already had, but she needed to keep him at a distance, so Mariah shrugged. “When I’ve seen him do more than poke around at a cart because we told him to?”

  Keegan snorted and popped the panel open beneath the bench seat. “She slumps and turns pale, and I should believe that means she’s speaking to spirits. Even fake spiritualists did better than that.” He reached in and fumbled in the compartment while Walker stood over him as if he might produce a rattler.

  “I don’t ask anyone to believe anything,” Mariah retorted.

  “Children, behave,” Cass said wearily. “Our job is to find who killed Daisy. Have the decency to stay on task.”

  “Found it.” Keegan drew a piece of paper from beneath the cart seat. He handed it to Walker and returned to putting the panel back together.

  Samantha leaned over the chief’s shoulder. “It’s a pencil sketch of a man.”

  “Looks old.” Walker reached over Mariah’s head to hand it up to Cass. “Any idea who it is?”

  Cass frowned as she examined the sketch. “I wasn’t involved with the commune except to speak to their guests if they appeared in town. He looks vaguely familiar, but this could have been done any time in the last century. There is no date or signature.”

  Mariah backed up a step so she could lean over and look. “Hairstyle is more modern than the long-haired guys in Dinah’s mural. No sideburns or mustache. Why would D
aisy hide it in the cart?” Realization smacked her, and she tugged the paper away from Cass to wave it at Walker. “Daisy saw her own death! She’s telling us something.”

  “I can’t arrest someone because his sketch is in the victim’s cart.” Walker took the sketch away. “I’ll see if we can get a date on this paper, have copies made to pass around, and try facial recognition.”

  “Or someone may already have identified him if this face is in the mural,” Keegan added. “The last I heard, there was a grand prize involved.”

  “If we took photos of each face on the wall and ran it through the software, we’d have most of them identified in no time,” Mariah said.

  “Only if the people in the mural are alive and on social media. Most older people don’t flash their faces all over the internet, and this paper looks old.” The chief of police produced a plastic bag from his toolkit and set the sketch inside.

  “Let’s talk to Valdis and Susannah first,” Mariah suggested. “The guy in the sketch isn’t bad looking. Maybe they remember him if he was in the commune.”

  “The question remains, why would any man kill Daisy?” Keegan stood and dusted himself off.

  “Knowledge,” Cass said. “Daisy saw everything that happened in this town. No one ever paid her any attention. Aside from stealing artwork, she never interfered. But she was everywhere gathering her sticks and stones, painting anything that sat still long enough, putting together her treasures and distributing them throughout the town. The question becomes—why now? What did she see or hear recently that may have caused her to put this sketch in the cart?”

  They left on that sad note. Mariah let Keegan drive the cart into town.

  Bumping across potholes into the parking lot, they arrived in time to watch a procession wind through the park Sam had been creating next to City Hall. Mariah’s pulse quickened at the direction they were taking. “A memorial service! Up to the farm, please. No, wait a minute, Daisy loved Dinah’s donuts.”