From the Grave--A McKenzie Novel

by David Housewright

  I found a spot where I could watch for Hannah.

  “McKenzie?” a woman’s voice asked.

  I turned to find Kayla Janas approaching.

  “It is you,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

  “I have an appointment to speak with someone. What are you doing here? Are you working one of the booths?”

  “No, no, no, I don’t have the experience for that yet. I came for the free workshops. The next one is about how the seven main chakras and the aura play a vital role in intuition, psychic abilities, and spirit communication.”

  “What are chakras?”

  “The internal energy centers of the body. After that there’s a workshop on reincarnation.”

  “Is your boyfriend here?”

  “Kyle? He isn’t really my boyfriend, although we do spend a lot of time together.” Kayla started chuckling. “No, he’s not here. Ever since we met, he’s been very supportive of me, yet I know, I just know, that he wishes I were a normal girl. My other friends, girlfriends, they’re not here either. They say they love me and I believe them, but then they roll their eyes … I don’t blame them. Growing up, all I ever wanted was to be like everyone else, too.”

  “Where’s the fun in that?” I asked.

  “I keep telling myself that we are all how God made us. If only I could convince my family.”

  “If nothing else, you’ll fit in fine with this crowd,” I said.

  “Why’s that?” Kayla asked.

  “Look around. From what I’ve seen, the female psychics fall into two categories. They either look like your sweet old grandmother or they’re babes. That sounds sexist, I know—”

  “Which group am I in?”

  “Stop it.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Kayla said. “They all look pretty normal to me. Well, there’s Hannah. I was just at her lecture. She is so smart and so beautiful. Hey, that’s who you’re here to see, isn’t it. Because she was the first psychic Ryan Hayes went to see.”

  “Yeah.”

  Kayla sighed dramatically. “I wish I knew how all this was going to work out,” she said.

  “Being a psychic, you’re supposed to see the future, I thought.”

  Kayla reached out and seized my hand. She glanced around as if she were afraid someone was listening and lowered her voice.

  “Sometimes I can,” she said. “I don’t know how or why, but sometimes … At the very beginning of the semester, we’re all about to start classes after summer vacation; everyone’s excited except for my roommate. She’s distraught, so terribly upset. I asked her why. It turned out that her boyfriend back home dumped her the very night before she left Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to come back up here for school. She told me that she’s had like a half-dozen boyfriends in high school and college and they all treated her like crap and she was blaming herself, saying she’d never find someone who loved her as much as she loved them. For some reason, I don’t know why, I told her—there’s a Caribou Coffeehouse just off campus—”

  “I’m familiar,” I said.

  “I told her to go there. I told her to go there right now. I don’t even know why; I just felt that’s where she needed to be. She went. Probably she did it to humor me. She walked in the door, and standing in line to get a coffee was a guy she went to high school with in Iowa who she barely knew, didn’t know he was going to the University of St. Thomas, didn’t even know that he was in the Cities. They’ve been together ever since and couldn’t be happier. Is that crazy or what?”

  “A little bit,” I said. “But in a good way.”

  “When I can make people happy it makes me happy, only I’m so terrified of unintended consequences. Readings that go badly. I mean, how happy have you been since I told you about Leland Hayes?”

  “Kayla, this might make you question my sanity, but I’m actually enjoying myself. I live for this crap. God help me.”

  Kayla did something I didn’t expect. She smiled and hugged me.

  “I need to go to the next workshop,” she said.

  “Take care,” I told her.

  * * *

  I watched Kayla walk out of the ballroom.

  And watched Hannah walk in. She was wearing a rose-colored dress made of some magic material that clung to her curves yet managed to look loose-fitting at the same time. Her hair was up and her makeup was impeccable, and I thought, She’s making an effort for the crowd.

  That’s when I noticed the cameras. Not cell phones held by fans looking for a selfie, hoping for something they could post on their Facebook pages, but professional video cameras. Hannah was being filmed. She was good at it, too, knowing how to play to the cameras, how to stand, to turn, to move without actually acknowledging their existence. I attributed her composure to her training as a model. The people who surrounded her were not nearly as skillful. They seemed genuinely intimidated by the cameras as well as the boom mics and the male director who attempted to choreograph everything without being noticed himself. Yet that didn’t stop them from maneuvering around Hannah with the hope of being immortalized forever on high-definition video.

  She stopped to speak to one woman in particular. The camera operators positioned themselves so that one was shooting Hannah, a second was shooting the woman, and a third was shooting them both with festival-goers in the background—all while keeping out of each other’s shots. The conversation lasted for a good ten minutes and ended with the woman breaking down in tears and Hannah giving her a hug and a few encouraging words before moving on. Afterward, one of the cameras remained while a second woman, who I presumed was a producer, took a few minutes to interview the first woman, probably about her encounter with Hannah. The producer was holding a clipboard with a form that the woman eventually filled out and signed.

  Hannah stopped to chat with a few more people, taking selfies and signing autographs as she made her way to her booth. Once there, she chatted, posed, and signed some more. Hannah’s mother stood near her, yet always out of camera range. She saw me and gave a wave as if I were a waiter and she was ready to order dessert. I took two steps forward, then stopped when she raised her hand as if she had suddenly decided to go on a diet. A moment later, she left the booth and maneuvered through the crowd toward me.

  “Mr. McKenzie.” She held out her hand and I shook it. “It was kind of you to come.”

  “Ms. Braaten.”

  “You’re probably wondering what’s going on.”

  “No,” I said. “Not really.”

  Esti seemed intent on telling me anyway. Apparently a production company with close ties to a cable TV network had arranged to follow Hannah during the festival. They were filming her interacting with her fans, giving lectures, giving readings, and generally emoting for the cameras—“emoting” was the word Esti used—against the possibility of turning her work into a reality TV series.

  “You’re telling me that all of this amounts to an elaborate screen test,” I said.

  “In a way,” Esti said. “The producers hope to put together a pilot, and if it scores well with preview audiences, we could be on the air by next fall. The producers are hoping to call the show Model Medium, but neither Hannah nor I approve of the title.”

  Call it “Psychic Babe,” my inner voice said. No, no. “MILF.” Medium I’d Like to—

  “That’s exciting,” I said aloud. “When did all this come about?”

  “We’ve been talking about it on and off for a few months now, but the decision to go ahead didn’t come down until Monday morning.” Esti waved her hand at the film crew. “TV people seem to take forever to make up their minds, yet once they do, they move in a hurry. Mr. McKenzie, you’ve involved us with the police. As you might imagine, involvement with the police cannot be to our advantage at the present time.”

  “It rarely is at any time. What did they tell you?”

  “Very little. Mostly they asked contentious questions and became accusatory when we couldn’t answer them to their satisfaction.”

>   Contentious and accusatory—that sounds like Shipman.

  “I am sorry about Mr. Fogelman,” Esti said.

  “Fogelberg.”

  “However, we had nothing to do with his demise, Hannah had nothing to do with it, and we deeply resent that you’ve involved us.”

  “Look at it from my point of view, starting with the very real possibility that Fogelberg might have been killed because he was mistaken for me.”

  I explained why in detail.

  “My daughter did not tell Ryan Hayes what his father told her during the reading,” Esti said. “That was someone else’s mistake. We are not responsible.”

  “Why was Karl Anderson following me?”

  “How should I know?”

  “I thought he might have told you when you chatted with him outside of your house twenty minutes after you and Hannah returned from the reading in Excelsior Thursday afternoon.”

  Esti gave it a few beats before she gritted her teeth and hissed between them. “You followed us,” she said.

  “No. I followed Anderson because I thought he was following you and your daughter, and I genuinely feared for your safety. I didn’t know you were pals.”

  “Anderson is no friend of ours. I told him to stay away from us or I would call the police. McKenzie…” Esti closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She seemed to visibly relax as she slowly exhaled and gradually reopened her eyes. “McKenzie.” Instead of a hiss, her voice now had a nurturing quality, like a teacher trying to reach a troublesome yet promising student.

  You should learn how to do that, my inner voice told me.

  “McKenzie,” Esti said, “when I first encountered Anderson at the community center, I assumed he was just another stalker.”

  “Stalker?”

  “Perhaps that is too harsh a word. Unfortunately, they’re attracted to my daughter like insects to a bright light, men who claim to fall in love with her at first sight and somehow expect her to reciprocate. This was especially true when she worked as a model. I’ve learned to spot them at a distance. Mr. Anderson attempted to charm her. Hannah was polite. I wish she would be more firm, but … In any case, Anderson quickly steered the conversation to the reading. He wanted to know what Leland Hayes told Hannah. He wanted her to contact Leland. Hannah refused to cooperate, which made him angry. That’s when I stepped in. I told Anderson to leave or I would have him escorted from the premises, which was a bluff, of course. How many community centers have a security detail? He did leave, however. Then I saw him parked outside my house. I told him again to leave. I said next time I wouldn’t bother to speak to him; I would simply pick up a phone and call the authorities. I didn’t know he was a private investigator until you told me.”

  Why didn’t you tell us this story when we asked about him the other day?

  “Is Anderson working for Ryan Hayes?” I asked.

  “He didn’t say. I didn’t ask.”

  “Perhaps I should.”

  “At the risk of seeming rude, McKenzie, I don’t care what you do. Just don’t involve my daughter.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Often, the people who come to Hannah do so for very specific reasons and will feel cheated when their expectations go unmet. But this is—” Esti began to laugh and I didn’t know why until she finished her thought and I realized that she was using words she must hear herself a hundred times a week. “This is nuts.”

  I laughed with her. Esti rested a hand on my wrist and bid me farewell. I watched her walk back to the booth and the fans and cameras that surrounded Hannah, and I thought I liked her more than I liked her gorgeous daughter.

  Oh well.

  * * *

  By then another round of lectures and workshops was letting out, and the population and volume in the ballroom had increased precipitously. I thought of buying a second bag of French beignets for Nina. They weren’t bad, and the woman did love her pastries. I gave another glance toward Hannah’s booth as I moved down the aisle. I stopped when I saw that she was doubled over in a metal folding chair and holding her stomach. Esti moved quickly to her side and began rubbing Hannah’s back in an attempt to comfort her. Cameras filmed her from three different angles. Festival-goers formed a semicircle around the booth and watched.

  I moved toward her because, well, that’s what I do. As I approached, Kayla came quickly to my side and grabbed my wrist.

  “I’m so glad you haven’t left yet,” she said. “I’m a little frightened by all of this.”

  “Frightened by what?”

  “He’s here. I saw him wandering down the aisles and sneaking into the lecture halls like he’s looking for someone.”

  “Who?”

  “Leland Hayes.”

  My hand went immediately to my hip where I normally carried my SIG Sauer. Unfortunately, I’d left it in the trunk of my Mustang because the hotel banned guns on its premises. Or fortunately, depending on your point of view. I mean, who was I going to shoot at? I spun around looking for Leland Hayes and saw nothing.

  “Where is he?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. I lost him a few minutes ago. What do you think he wants?”

  I glanced back at Hannah, who was still doubled over in the chair and clearly suffering a great deal of discomfort.

  “Payback,” I said.

  TWELVE

  I moved toward Hannah. Kayla followed closely behind. We managed to filter through the crowd. Hannah looked up and saw me. She wrapped her arms around her stomach and rocked back and forth as if she were trying to hold herself together.

  “I don’t know what’s happening,” she said. “I opened myself up to do some readings and I became so nauseous. This has never happened to me before.” Hannah continued to rock. “I had to shut down. It was too much.”

  “He’s standing behind you,” Kayla said. “He’s smiling.”

  Hannah’s eyes found Kayla’s face. “Who?” she asked.

  “Leland Hayes.”

  Hannah studied the younger woman for a few beats.

  “You can see him?” she asked.

  “Yes. Can’t you?”

  “I don’t want to see him. It hurts too much.”

  Hannah took a deep breath as she uncurled herself until she was sitting straight. She continued to study Kayla’s face as if searching for an answer to an unspoken question.

  “What does he look like?” she asked.

  “He has half a head.”

  “How do you communicate?”

  “Words and pictures.”

  “Not feelings?”

  “No.”

  “You’re lucky.” Hannah began rubbing her temples. “That hurts. What’s he saying?”

  “Nothing. He’s just smiling. Now he’s leaving. He’s … He’s gone.”

  “I don’t think he came from the other side. I think he’s earthbound.”

  “So do I.”

  “Who are you?”

  “My name is Kayla Janas. I attended your lecture. I wish I could turn it on and off, like you do. I’ve never been able to.”

  “I try to stay in normal mode most of the time, because mediumship is extremely draining and sometimes I get physically sick if I stay open all the time,” Hannah said. “I’ve learned how to set clear boundaries with the other side. You can, too.”

  All the while the cameras rolled. The director whispered into the ear of the man holding his camera on Kayla, and he nodded and moved slightly to his right. Next he whispered to the man holding the boom mics over Hannah’s and Kayla’s heads, and he nodded, too. He pushed past me and found a folding chair that he set in front of Hannah, again without speaking a word. Kayla must have received the message, though, because she sat down. A cameraman moved to his knees so he could shoot up at the two women.

  “I screwed up,” Kayla said.

  “It was you who told Ryan Hayes about Leland’s message, wasn’t it?”

  “It didn’t occur to me to withhold it at the time.”

  “That’s som
ething else you can learn.”

  A look of concern crossed Esti Braaten’s face as she realized that the entire exchange between her daughter and Kayla was being filmed.

  “You need to rest,” she said.

  Hannah glanced at her. Apparently mother and daughter had a private language, because she nodded in recognition and slowly stood up. So did Kayla. The cameras followed them.

  “I don’t understand this,” I said. “Leland shouldn’t be here, should he? You told me that there almost always needs to be a personal connection to draw a spirit out.”

  “That’s usually true,” Hannah said. “On the other hand, I’ve had spirits contact me hours before I’m supposed to do a reading, especially gallery readings. That’s why I always have a driver. Some of the spirits, they’ll ride in the car with me.”

  “Yes, but the spirits are connected to the people you’re going to read. Or am I mistaken?”

  “No, you’re not mistaken.”

  “So why is Leland here?” I asked.

  Part of the answer came from a few booths down. The two male psychic mediums who were working together began to speak in loud voices.

  “McKenzie,” they said. “Is there a McKenzie here?”

  The female psychic medium who was blessed with insight of intuition, clairvoyant, clairsentient, and clairaudient abilities asked the same thing. “McKenzie?”

  The psychic medium with five-star integrity gripped her head in the same way that Hannah had and called my name as if it caused her pain.

  The woman whose reputation everyone was supposed to know said the same thing, except instead of sounding like someone in pain, she seemed to be attempting to locate the owner of a freshly brewed café mocha. “McKenzie, please.”

  Not all of the mediums were chanting my name, however. Most of them seemed as puzzled as I was.

  Festival-goers began talking to themselves, confused looks on their faces. Some of them repeated my name as if saying it out loud would bring clarity.