“Are you going to drop by later?” she asked.
“Who’s in the Big Room tonight?”
“Debbie Duncan.”
“I love Debbie.”
“That’s always been a prerequisite when we book acts. Who do you love, who can you flirt with?”
“Unfair. I didn’t flirt with Davina.”
“That’s because her husband is one of the Vagabonds and he would have hit you with his trumpet.”
“That is so accurate I don’t even know where to begin.”
Nina was chuckling when she stepped through the doorway.
“Let me know how the ghostbusting goes,” she said.
I poured another cup of coffee, sat behind my computer, and perused Hannah Braaten’s website some more. According to her origin story, “It wasn’t until Hannah was fifteen and working as a model…”
She really was a model, my inner voice said. From the pics on her website, I believe it.
“… that she began to realize that she could communicate with the spirits of those who have passed to the other side. Before that, she had suppressed her gifts, telling herself that the spirits she saw around her every day were products of an overactive teenage imagination. Once she fully understood that she could perform almost like a human telephone to talk with those who have passed on, however, she sought out professionals to help her develop and hone her gifts.
“Hannah put herself through an intense two-year training program during which she immersed herself in psychic classes. Afterward, like a great musician or athlete, she continued to train for ten years with professionals she trusted before she felt comfortable enough to share her gifts as a psychic medium and ghostbuster…”
They actually use the term “ghostbuster”? Huh.
“… with the public. Today, she continues to study and expand her gifts even as she uses them to help others.”
I searched more of the site. There were plenty of testimonials that spoke of Hannah’s “insightful, sensitive, and thought-provoking readings” and how she was “right on target on so many levels.” What it didn’t have was a way to contact her directly. She had an email address for the media, an email contact form for her fans, and a PO Box number for people who still used snail mail, but no phone numbers or home address.
Maybe she can feel that you’re trying to contact her, my inner voice said. Maybe she’ll call you.
I took a couple of long sips of coffee before I decided that wasn’t going to happen.
While Hannah’s contact information was limited, I discovered that she did provide a calendar listing of all of her public appearances.
One was scheduled during the lunch hour that day at the Deephaven Room in the Minnetonka Community Education Center in Excelsior, where Hannah was going to present an introductory class that would teach students to trust their instincts. It was called “Trust Your Instincts.”
According to the class description, “Every one of us is intuitive. We have all experienced a feeling, a gut instinct, a sense of déjà vu, or a dream foretelling a future event. Hannah will answer questions about everything intuition-related and present exercises that will help you strengthen and fine-tune your intuitive abilities, as well as conduct gallery-style readings on spontaneously chosen audience members.”
I glanced at my watch, which, in addition to telling time, counted the steps I took, the miles I walked, the calories I burned, and the beats of my heart. Right then my heart rate was higher than usual, but I blamed Nina. When I took a deep breath I could still taste the scent of her.
Excelsior is about twenty miles west of the Twin Cities. If you hurry, you should get to the community center at right about the time Hannah’s class is breaking up.
* * *
Except Hannah’s class went long. I found myself pacing the corridor outside the Deephaven Room while waiting for it to end. There were chairs in the corridor, and a handsome older woman was sitting in one of them near the door. She was wearing cheaters while reading her smartphone. Every once in a while she’d glance up at me and sigh as if she knew exactly who I was and why I was there.
The Minnetonka Community Education Center was one of those all-things-to-all-people institutions, which explained why its holiday decorations were all secular in nature; they wished their clients a Happy Holiday but not a Merry Christmas.
The center provided adult fitness and recreation classes, CPR and first aid training, an enrichment program that included art, computer, dance, financial, gardening, health, and cooking courses, music and driver’s education, day care, and a preschool that included a playground where kids could play on equipment that was guaranteed safe by various insurance companies. It even hosted a LEGO League and a dodgeball tournament. Yet except for me and the woman, it seemed empty.
Finally, the door to the Deephaven Room opened to the sound of applause. The woman put away her phone and glasses and stood, draping her big bag over her shoulder.
People began filing out of the room. Some moved like they were afraid their illegally parked cars would be tagged and towed. Others lingered as if they had just enjoyed a particularly satisfying meal.
The woman remained near the door until Hannah Braaten appeared. I recognized her immediately from her photographs. Even if I hadn’t she would have stood out, and not just because of her height. The woman moved quickly to her side, attaching herself to Hannah the way a bodyguard might as the younger woman greeted fans, shook the hand of anyone who wanted to shake hers, and paused for a few selfies. Seeing them standing side by side I noticed the resemblance. Mother and daughter didn’t share the same height, figure, or eye or hair color, but those cheekbones …
I tried to stay out of the way until the corridor cleared, yet Hannah seemed to notice me anyway, glancing several times in my direction. At one point she stopped and stared for a good five beats. I wondered if the older woman had told her that I had been waiting.
A few minutes later, a couple of community center employees began preparing the Deephaven Room for whatever came next. Except for them and the older woman, Hannah and I were alone.
Hannah moved to my side. She was one of the few women I’ve met personally that was taller than I was, and I found myself looking up into her amber-tinted eyes.
She smiled and pressed her thumb and index finger tightly together.
“Bzzzzzzzzz,” she said, then reached out and pinched my ear.
What the hell? my inner voice said.
I jumped backward. My hand went to my ear. The pinch hadn’t hurt, but still …
Who does that?
“Bzzzzzzzzz,” Hannah said.
She reached to pinch me again, only I deflected her hand.
Then it occurred to me that I knew exactly who does that, or at least who did that when I was growing up, and it caused me to stare.
“You’re afraid of bees, a big guy like you,” Hannah said. She added a “Tsk, tsk,” just the way that Agatha Mosley had.
“I was stung when I was a kid,” I said.
“I know, Rushmore.”
You haven’t told her your name.
“You were stung sixteen times after you thumped one of Mr. Mosley’s hives with a football. Mr. Mosley was a beekeeper and he told you to be careful, only you weren’t. I say Mr. Mosley because Agatha says that’s what you called him every day of his life.”
What is going on?
“Agatha wants you to know that she’s proud of you,” Hannah said. “Proud of the man you’ve become. Proud of the way you help people.”
I repeated the name like a prayer. “Agatha.”
“She knows you’re skeptical. She says that’s one of the things she’s always loved about you. Every time the Jarheads told you something in that we’re-the-adult-you’re-the-child tone of voice they used, you would ask why, and when they said ‘Because, we said so,’ you’d ask why again.”
When she was annoyed at them, “Jarheads” was what Agatha called Mr. Mosley and my father, lifelong friends w
ho had fought together with the First Marines at the Chosin Reservoir in Korea when they were practically children.
I glanced all around me and saw no one.
“Agatha is here?” I asked.
“Yes, but she can’t stay. She says not to worry, though. Someone is always watching over you. You have so many guardian angels.”
“Angels?”
“Agatha’s gone now,” Hannah said. “She hung up.”
“Hung up?”
“That’s how I think of it when someone from the other side breaks the connection, like they’ve hung up the phone.”
“I’m very confused right now, and I don’t like being confused.”
“So you’re pretty much like everyone else, Rushmore.”
“Most people call me McKenzie.”
“But not Agatha.”
“No, never Agatha.”
“Should we sit down?”
Hannah gestured at a few chairs grouped together along the wall. We sat. Hannah reached out and patted my knee. The older woman moved down the corridor a few yards to give us the semblance of privacy and fished her smartphone from her bag, but not her reading glasses.
“How can I help you?” Hannah asked.
“A good friend of mine was at a reading that you performed a couple of nights ago during which my name was mentioned. She said that a dead man threatened my life.”
“‘Spirit’ is a more accurate term, although I use the word ‘dead’ all the time, too. We don’t actually die, McKenzie. We pass on to a different plane.”
“In any case, I found the news very disconcerting.”
“I imagine you would. Don’t be afraid, though. The dead hold no sway in this world.”
“Ms. Braaten—”
“Hannah.”
“Hannah, I don’t know how any of this works. My entire database comes from a single episode of a TV show I watched once where some kid told a Hollywood celebrity that his mother loved him.”
“What would you like to know?”
“According to my friend, you can talk to the dead—to spirits, excuse me.”
“That’s true.”
“How?”
“It depends. Some of us receive messages telepathically. Messages are sent in the form of words or pictures from the spirit’s mind to the psychic’s mind. If they want the psychic to say the word ‘coffee,’ for example, they might show them a picture of a Starbucks, which is pretty confusing, if you ask me. With others, messages are sent through emotions and feelings. Spirits can make mediums feel depressed when they want to convey a message of sadness, or they can make their chests feel tight if they want to convey that someone had a heart attack.”
Can he make you feel the pain of being shot in the head? my inner voice asked.
“The problem is deciphering the message, in presenting an accurate translation to the sitter,” Hannah said.
“The sitter?” I asked.
“The individual for whom I’m giving the reading. There are plenty of charlatans who bring suspicion and discredit to the craft, of course. As for myself, I believe the greatest damage is done by honest and conscientious psychic mediums who make mistakes, who misread messages; who provide confusing readings or give the sitter information they don’t want to receive. Intuition is not entirely different from singing karaoke, McKenzie. Some people are very good at it. Some are not. Yet we all believe in our own voices, don’t we? I try to be very careful in that regard.
“Fortunately, along with those abilities, I can also see and hear spirits the way everyone else can see and hear someone they meet on the street. I can actually talk to them, carry on a conversation when they let me. Sometimes it gets complicated if the spirit isn’t a very good communicator. Often I can hear them but it’s as if they’re mumbling, or it’s like the volume is turned way down low. I can’t always make out what they’re saying, so I try to be cautious about what I pass on to the sitter.”
“The dead man who spoke to you the other day—you had no difficulty in reading him.”
“He was very clear in what he wanted done.”
“But you didn’t tell Ryan.”
“Most of us follow a code of ethics about what we tell people. We try not to give bad readings; we try to ensure that the information given is positive even if the sitter is currently experiencing negativity in their life. A son wants to reconcile with the spirit of his mother, and she says she wishes the son had never been born? Why would I pass that on, make the son miserable? True story—a man who was diagnosed with cancer went to a psychic medium he knew personally, who was his friend, and asked if he would be all right. She told him the truth. She shouldn’t have. It served no useful purpose and probably terrified the sitter. As it was, the man didn’t speak to her again from that moment until the day he died. And what if she had been wrong? You can’t lie, but sometimes it’s better to withhold the truth.”
“Including the fact that your father wants you to kill a man?”
“That, I have to admit, was a new experience,” Hannah said.
“It’s a first for me, too.”
“I can’t read minds, McKenzie, no matter what some people might think. I know why you’re here, though. I knew you would be coming.”
“Did Agatha tell you?”
“No, Shelby Dunston called. She’d said you’d show up eventually. She said you wouldn’t be able to resist.”
I don’t know why I thought that was funny, yet I laughed just the same.
“We exchanged numbers after the reading,” Hannah said. “Shelby was convinced that you were the McKenzie the spirit named.”
“Circumstantial evidence suggests that she might have been right.”
“What evidence?”
I explained.
Hannah rested a hand on my knee. “His name was Leland Hayes?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“You killed him?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry for you, McKenzie.”
“Sorry?”
“It must be a terrible burden to carry, killing a man.”
I was surprised by her sincerity, and the way I found myself gazing into her eyes probably revealed that. There was something about this woman …
“Sometimes it is,” I said.
“The other man was his son, you say. His name was Ryan Hayes?”
“You didn’t know that? The people who come to your readings, you don’t know who they are?”
“I know the names of the sitters who come to me for private readings, of course. But group readings, gallery readings, no, I don’t know who they are.”
“They must make reservations, right? When they buy tickets.”
“And leave their names so I can Google them, read their Facebook accounts, you mean? I don’t do that.”
“Never?”
“I’ve been called a fake before, McKenzie, and much worse than that. Many times in fact. Often to my face. I used to resent it. Now I try to shrug it off.”
“I was being rude. I apologize.”
“What do you want of me, McKenzie?”
“My girlfriend thinks this is all a load of hooey—”
“Nina Truhler?”
That caught me by surprise, and my expression must have shown it.
“Shelby told me,” the young woman said. “Sometimes people talk to me like I’m a priest or an old friend that they haven’t seen for years and years. They tell me things they would never tell even their closest friends.”
“Truthfully, Ms. Braaten—”
“Hannah, please.”
“Hannah, truthfully, I’m not sure what I think of all of this. It goes pretty hard against what I’ve been taught growing up.”
“That there’s no such thing as ghosts?”
“Something like that. I came here for two reasons. The first is to find out if I should be worried. It occurred to me, to me and Nina, since her name was brought up, that what we believe doesn’t matter. It’s what Ryan Hayes believes t
hat counts, and he might believe that I’m standing between him and a lot of money.”
“I didn’t tell him what his father wanted him to do.”
“The other reason, he might also believe that you know where the money is hidden. He might come back to get that information from you. If he does, I want you to feel free to call me. I might be able to help.”
“Is that the truth?”
“Excuse me?”
“Are you sure that you don’t want the money for yourself?”
I paused before I answered, partly because I was annoyed by the question. On the other hand, I had questioned Hannah’s integrity. Why shouldn’t she doubt mine?
“Pretty sure,” I said.
“Shelby called you an adventurer.”
“Did she?”
“She said you might try to recover the money just for the fun of it.”
“No,” I said. “Not this time.”
“Is that because of what happened to Leland Hayes?”
I stood and looked down into her amber-tinted eyes. I decided I was right before—Nina’s eyes were prettier.
“My offer still stands,” I said. “If you need help with Leland’s son, call me.”
“Agatha said you were a good man.”
“It’s nice to be well thought of.”
“I won’t be calling you, though,” Hannah said.
“No?”
“There are ethics in our profession about what we can share, like I said. I’ve already told Shelby Dunston, and now you, way more than I should have. My excuse with Shelby was that I was a little panicked at the time and that it had been a public reading, so the rules of confidentiality that we follow were already a little bent. With you—we’re in kind of a gray area. Although I did tell Shelby to warn you, didn’t I?”
“You did.”
Hannah shrugged as if to tell me that she had no intention of making the same mistake twice. I glanced down the corridor at the older woman.
“Excuse me,” I said. “Ma’am?”
The woman turned to face me.
“Am I right in assuming that you are Hannah’s mother?”
The woman glanced at Hannah and back at me before nodding slightly.
I walked toward her. Hannah stood up behind me.
From the Grave--A McKenzie Novel Page 4
