Hillary snorted her opinion of them and beckoned for me to follow her. “My brother and sister are anxious to meet you,” she told me, as if she’d invited me to tea instead of to discuss a job. “Nothing big,” I remember she’d said on the phone. “We just need to clarify a few issues.”
Issues. Right. The new buzzword. As in, he has issues with alcohol or she has issues with men. Meaning he drinks and she sleeps around. I wondered what particular issues Hillary Cisco had in mind. They had to be substantial. People don’t hire a private detective otherwise. Then I thought about how much I wanted it to rain as I mounted the three steps that led to Hillary’s house.
A small white colonial, 113 Wisteria Lane was indistinguishable from the ones sitting to its left and right, even though Hillary had made a stab at decorating. Two wind chimes constructed from spoons hung from the eaves of the porch. A blue banner with several white music notes stitched to it jut ted out from the porch beam. Half-dead red geraniums lay wilting in the ceramic pots lining the path to the house.
“The banner is my sister’s handiwork,” Hillary explained. “She does crafts,” she continued, making the word crafts sound like some arcane sexual practice. “I sing, you know. Professionally. Teaching is my day job.”
I nodded politely. I guess I should have acted more impressed, because a spasm of irritation rippled across her face. She compressed her lips, pulled the door to her house open, and stalked inside. But I didn’t feel bad. I got the feeling she got irritated a lot.
The air in the hallway smelled faintly of cooking grease, room deodorizer, and kitchen trash. It had a dank, underwater quality to it, the kind you get in cheap motels in which the windows don’t open and the air vents need to be cleaned. The living room was done up in a Chinese motif.
The rug, furniture, and walls were all white. Badly painted Chinese scrolls hung on three walls. A lacquered screen, dotted with someone’s idea of a bamboo tree, stood off in the corner of the room, while a matching black lacquered coffee table sat in front of the sofa. Even the cabinet housing the television had an Asian motif. It looked like the kind of room they advertised on TV at two o’clock in the morning. Five pieces for seven hundred dollars. No money down. Two years to pay. By which time it would have come apart.
“My brother, Louis,” Hillary said, pointing to the man in Bermuda shorts and a polo shirt sprawled on the sofa, watching television.
“At last.” He clicked off the program he’d been watching, hoisted himself up, came forward, and shook my hand, engulfing it in his. “And yes,” he said, laughing. “We have the same mother and father. Everyone always wonders.”
It was easy to see why they did. If Hillary was the mini version, Louis was the jumbo king-sized. A bear of a man, everything about him was big, from his ears, beaked nose, and lantern jaw to his hands and feet. Looking closely, though, I could see a similarity in the shape of the mouth between him and Hillary.
“I’m glad you could come.” He was about to say something else to me when a woman burst out of the kitchen and planted herself next to Louis.
“I still think this is wrong,” she told him, ostentatiously ignoring me.
Hillary took a deep breath and let it out. “My sister,” she explained as her eyes lightened to an even paler shade of gray. “Evidendy, Amy still has a few doubts about the wisdom of what we’re doing. Although I thought we’d straightened that out.”
Amy flushed. “No, we haven’t.” She drank from the can of soda she was holding and brushed a strand of frizzy hair off her face. She seemed as if she were one of those women who always looked permanently disheveled. The jewelry she had on, a squash-blossom necklace and matching wristful of silver bangles belonged on someone five inches taller. The peasant-style white blouse and pleated gauze skirt she was wearing accentuated her pendulous breasts and stomach. She was as short as Hillary, but she outweighed her by a good seventy pounds or so. “Listen,” Amy went on, “all I’m saying is that Mom is going to be furious if she finds out.”
“She’s not going to,” Louis snapped.
“She always does,” Amy countered.
Louis glowered at her. “Don’t you think it’s time you grew up,” he said. “She’s not God.”
Amy’s face turned sullen. That’s not what I’m saying, and you know it.”
“Amy,” Hillary said, tugging at her sleeves. “Please. We’ve already had this discussion. We’ve decided—”
“You decided,” Amy snapped.
“No. You agreed. We all agreed.”
“I never said—”
“Yes, you did,” Louis replied. “If you can’t remember, maybe you’d better change those antidepressants you’re on.”
“That’s a lousy thing to say,” Amy flung back at him.
“You’re right,” Louis apologized. “It is.” Even though he didn’t look particularly sorry.
Amy put her can of soda down on the coffee table and began fiddling with her bracelets. “All I’m saying is that I’m not sure that this is the right thing to do.”
“Well, I am.” Exasperation underlined Louis’s words. “Why do you always do this?”
“Do what?”
“Say yes and then change your mind?”
“But what if she finds out?” Amy wailed.
“So what?” Hillary’s eyes flashed. “Big deal. So what if she does. We’re certainly not going to be any worse off than we are already.”
When Amy started to reply, it was all I could do not to say, Hey, people. Why don’t you all shut up. Instead, I picked my backpack up off the floor and said, “Call me when you’ve decided what you want. I have other things I have to attend to. ” Like finding Bethany. Like finishing restocking the shelves. Like repairing one of the filters in the big fish tank. Like ordering five more geckos.
“Please.” Hillary took my hand and began leading me to the sofa. “Don’t go.”
“Only if we can get down to business.”
It was the money that made me stay. Though if you asked me, I’d say that what these folks really needed was a therapist instead of a private detective.
Hillary glanced at Amy. Amy shrugged.
“All right,” she said. “But I’m not taking the blame for this.”
“How novel,” Louis sniped. “It’s not as if you ever take the blame for anything.”
“Both of you stop it,” Hillary ordered. “It’s the heat,” she said to me. “The heat is making everyone crazy. Let me get you a drink,” she continued. “An iced tea.” And, without waiting for my answer, she went into the kitchen.
As I listened to the air conditioner’s rattle and hum, I watched Amy wind a lock of her hair around her finger. Her face was round. She looked younger than her siblings and paler, as if she never got out in the sun. The outline of a faint mustache was apparent above her upper lip.
“It must be nice to still be able to do that,” she said wistfully, referring to the high-pitched screams of the children playing outside that were seeping into the room. Then she sighed and sat next to me. A faintly sour smell came off of her. “Do you believe in life after death?” she asked suddenly
Louis rolled his eyes and flopped down on the armchair to the left of the sofa. “Ah . . . we’re back to the great unknown.”
Amy sucked in her cheeks and straightened her back. “What’s wrong with that question?”
“Well—” I began when Louis interrupted. Doing that seemed to be a bad habit of his.
“Anyway, what she thinks is besides the point,” he said.
“It most certainly is the point.”
“No, it isn’t. The point is that we don’t want Mother taken advantage of.”
“That’s right,” Helen agreed, entering the room. As she handed me an iced tea, I could see that her nails were bitten down.
“I was just curious,” Amy said, but her tone had changed from defiant to defeated.
“You’ll have to forgive my sister,” Hillary told me. “She’s just concerned about
our mother.”
“As are we all,” Louis chimed in.
I took a sip of my tea and put it down. It had that chemical aftertaste of the powdered instants. “Does your mother have a name?”
“Oh.” Hillary paused. “I thought you knew.”
“Should I?”
“Of course not. Why should you?” She gave a dismissive little laugh at her own foolishness. “It’s Rose. Rose Taylor,” she continued, idly caressing her arm with her hand.
The name sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it, and I didn’t ask, figuring I could always do that later.
“I suppose,” Hillary continued, “I could go to one of the larger detective agencies, but that seems like overkill.”
“Not to mention expensive,” I couldn’t help volunteering. As an unlicensed part-timer I charged bargain basement prices.
“That, too,” Hillary conceded, her gray eyes widening a fraction. “I won’t lie about that.”
“One hundred dollars an hour is a lot on a postal worker’s salary,” Louis griped.
Hillary fingered the hem of her skirt. “Actually, I thought we needed a more personal touch.”
“So what is this job about?” I asked.
Louis and Hillary exchanged glances as Hillary sat down on the other side of me. She crossed and uncrossed her legs. She seemed to like the way they looked. I noticed she had a small half-moon tattooed on her left calf.
“Tell me,” Hillary asked, turning her head in my direction. “Do you believe in psychics?”
“Psychics? You mean people who communicate with the dead?”
“Yes.”
“No.” I’d tried one after my husband Murphy had died. It had cost me a hundred bucks and left me feeling like a fool.
Hillary and Louis exchanged another look. “Do you believe people have the ability to talk to animals?” Hillary asked me.
“I think we can communicate.” My dog, Zsa Zsa, was pretty good at letting me know what she wanted.
“I mean talking.”
I looked to see if she was joking. She wasn’t.
“As in my cat telling me, watch out, the lady down the street is in a bitchy mood today?” I asked
“Something like that.”
“Not outside of the movies.”
“Well, my mother does.”
“She believes she can talk to animals? I don’t think . . .”
“No, she believes a woman named Pat Humphrey can.” Hillary spread her hands and studied what was left of her fingernails.
“Go on,” I finally prompted.
“This is so embarrassing.”
I waited.
Hillary sighed and brushed a strand of hair off her forehead. “All right. Three months ago—more or less—my mother’s cat disappeared from the house. At first, we thought someone let it out by accident Now, of course—” Hillary stopped. “Well, you decide. My mother was hysterical. She’s very attached to . . . this animal. Anyway, the next morning at nine o’clock, this woman—”
“Pat Humphrey?” I asked.
Hillary nodded. “She appeared at my mother’s door with the cat in her arms. She said she was a pet psychic. She said she’d found the cat wandering in the park and the cat told her where my mother lived.”
“So you’re saying you think this woman might have stolen your mother’s cat and then brought it back?”
Hillary gave me the kind of smile a teacher bestows on a promising pupil.
“She said she didn’t want any money,” Louis continued, “but my mother insisted on giving her a reward.”
I leaned forward. “How big?”
“Five thousand dollars.”
I whistled. “Five thousand dollars is a fair chunk of change—even these days.”
“Not for our mother,” Amy blurted out. “She’s rich.”
Hillary glared at Amy, who turned her eyes downward. “Comfortable,” Hillary corrected. “She’s comfortable.”
While Amy bit her lip, Louis took up the narrative.
“In any case,” he said, “our mother talks to her every day now. Sometimes twice a day. We’re worried. We think our mother is giving this woman money.”
“I assume you think this woman is running a scam.”
Hillary nodded.
“So, then, why don’t you go to the police?”
“We will if we have to,” Hillary said. “But we’re hoping to avoid that. We don’t want to upset Mother unnecessarily. She’s a very private person. She would be furious if she thought we involved the authorities in her private business.”
“It would be like saying we thought she’s losing it,” Louis said.
Hillary nodded her head in agreement.
“But going to me wouldn’t be?”
“She’s not going to know.”
“I’m confused here. Now, what is it exactly that you want me to do?”
Louis looked at Hillary, and Hillary gave a nod.
“We’ve been thinking about that,” Louis said. “And this is what we’ve come up with. We want you to get an appointment with this Humphrey woman. And then we want you to tape your session with her. I don’t care if it takes one, two, or five times. We want tangible proof that this woman is a fraud.” i
It seemed as if that wouldn’t be too hard a task to accomplish.
Although the city of Syracuse is real, as are some of the place names I’ve mentioned, this is a work of fiction. Its geography is imaginary. Indeed, all the characters portrayed in this book are fictional and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
850 Third Avenue
New York, NY 10022
Copyright © 1999 by Barbara Block
ISBN: 978-1-5756-6671-6
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the Publisher and neither the Author nor the Publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
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