“Give me ten more minutes. I’m almost finished with the first phase of this design.”
“I’ll put this on the desk beside the computer.” She waved the sweaty, crumpled paper through the air as if to blow off some of the contamination. “I need to know what you can find on Ronald Wayne Collins.”
Dawson sat down and resumed work on the Indian.
“Oh, and also Teresa Landow. Teresa Landow Hocker.”
Dawson looked up at her. “The woman accused of killing her husband?”
“That’s the one. I went to high school with her. Ran into her today and we’re meeting for dinner. Jake wouldn’t tell me anything about the evidence against her, so I’m counting on you.”
“Oh!” Dawson blinked and, with the back of the hand holding the paint brush, shoved his glasses higher on his nose. “You’re worried your friend might be guilty? Well, you were suspected of murdering Charley, and you were innocent.”
Since Amanda had fantasized about Charley’s murder several times, she wasn’t sure if she could be classified as innocent. “Right,” she said. “I didn’t kill him. And Teresa said she didn’t kill her husband. She’s probably telling the truth, but I’d just like to know a little more about her and what the cops have on her and all that sort of thing before we get together tonight.” So I’ll know if she has plenty of time to get Charley on his way out of here or if we need to hurry before they lock her up.
“Will do.” Dawson returned to his painting.
Amanda went to the small office and laid the hand-written document on top of the papers already lying on the ancient wooden desk. She needed to catch up on filing, put the orders, receipts and other business papers in alphabetical order in the metal filing cabinet that sat in one corner of the room, move anything important to their small safe. But not today.
“Charley,” she said quietly. “I know you’re here. You’re always here. You might as well talk to me.”
He appeared at the other end of the desk as if putting a safe distance between them, as if he thought she could physically hurt him for his misdeeds.
If only!
“It was a friendly poker game.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Friendly?”
“Okay, it was a cutthroat game of poker. Four of us. I was losing, but I knew my luck was just about to turn. You know how you get that feeling sometimes?”
Amanda stared at him wordlessly.
“Okay, maybe you don’t. But I knew I was going to start winning. It was one of those psychic things, like Teresa gets.” He shifted from one foot to the other though neither of those feet quite touched the floor. “I guess you had to be there. But I knew if I just had enough money for another hand, I’d win back everything I’d lost.”
“I don’t even want to know how much that would be.”
“Good choice. No point in dwelling on the past.” He waved a hand through the air. “The past is over and done. Let it go. We have to move on.”
Amanda spread her arms in frustration. “Not when the past comes up to bite me! So you signed over my shop…my shop...to that jerk for more gambling money?”
“Well, yeah, I guess you could put it that way.”
“Is there another way you’d put it?”
“I wrote out that paper and he gave me two hundred dollars.”
Amanda groaned. “Two hundred dollars? You sold my shop for two hundred dollars and then you gambled away that money?”
“No! I didn’t sell this place. I just borrowed against it, and then I won. I paid him back!”
“Really? You paid him back? Then what was all that about? Why is he trying to say he owns my shop? Why don’t you just tell me where you put the receipt, I’ll show it to him, and this will all be over.” There was, of course, no receipt. Charley would never have been that methodical.
He winced. “Well, I didn’t exactly get a receipt. I mean, it was just between friends. And he said he tore up that thing I wrote.”
“Oh, well, if he said he tore it up, then of course you had to believe him!” She leaned toward him. “But he didn’t tear it up, did he?”
“He tore up something. I was pretty excited about winning. Remember that time I came home with roses and took you out to eat at Rosewood Mansion the next evening? We had a great time, didn’t we? That chocolate dessert you had looked really good.”
Amanda ignored Charley’s attempt to divert her attention. “Oh, Charley, you’d think the way you scammed everybody, you’d be more suspicious of other people!”
He shrugged and looked at the floor. “Ronnie always had great weed. I might have been a little out of it that night.”
Amanda straightened. “If you were under the influence of drugs, then you couldn’t enter into a legal agreement.” She slumped. “But how do we prove it? Not like anybody’s going to take your word for it.”
“Maybe. Remember, Teresa can see me too.”
“Yeah, the testimony of a local psychic who’s accused of killing her husband will probably carry a lot of weight.”
“Are you talking to me?” Dawson came in and sat down in front of the computer.
“No,” Amanda said. “Just…talking. I’ll leave you alone while you work in case you want to hack into databases you don’t want me to know about.”
Dawson didn’t comment. He was already immersed in the cyber world.
Amanda paused in the doorway. “Dawson, do you believe in ghosts?”
“Of course. I wouldn’t want to be without it.” He hit a few keys then moved the mouse around.
Of course? That wasn’t what she’d expected. Computer geek, data-oriented Dawson wouldn’t want to be without ghosts?
But he’d said it not them.
“It? Are you talking about some ghost in particular?” Had he been able to see Charley all this time but never admitted it because he didn’t want to sound crazy?
He looked at her, his eyes large and guileless behind the thick lenses of his glasses. “Yeah, Symantec. Is there another ghost software out there?”
“Ghost software? What?”
Dawson frowned. “Isn’t that what you asked me, about ghosting the hard drive?”
“Uh…”
“Making an exact copy so if anything happens, the system crashes or something, I’ll have an exact backup?”
“Not exactly. I was thinking more of the spirit kind of ghost.”
Dawson nodded. “Oh, that kind of ghost. The concept isn’t as strange as it sounds. Physics teaches us that nothing disappears, it just changes form. Some people believe our spirits simply vibrate at a frequency we can’t see.”
“I’m not vibrating,” Charley said. “I’m standing perfectly still.”
“So, you do believe in ghosts?” Amanda asked.
He shrugged. “String theory, black holes, infinity…there are a lot of concepts that most of us will never understand. Ghosts may be one of them.”
That was certainly more open-minded than she’d expected Dawson to be. “Okay, well, just so you know, Teresa Landow, my former classmate, claims to be psychic.”
“I see.” Dawson turned his attention back to the computer screen. “It’s certainly possible, but I’ve never seen any evidence that my parents are still around.”
Too late Amanda realized how cruel her questions might be. His parents had been brutally murdered two years before leaving Dawson alone to raise his young brother. She cleared her throat and tried to think of something to say that would be consoling. “Just because you can’t see them doesn’t mean they’re not around.” You can’t see Charley, but he’s definitely here! Maybe someday she’d tell Dawson about Charley. It might make him feel better about losing his parents.
She went back into the shop area and took out her cell phone. With a judge for her father and a lawyer for her birth mother, surely she could get some legal advice about the stupid paper Charley had signed.
Her dad was doubtless presiding in court at the moment, but she could call his clerk and leave a
message. She didn’t really want her mother…the mother who raised her…to hear about this latest problem. It would upset her. But so long as she called her dad at work, it would be okay.
Or she could call her other mother, Sunny, who might or might not be available at the moment but always called her back as soon as she could.
She decided to call them both. Wouldn’t want either of them to feel left out of the latest development in Charley’s heritage.
Neither was available, so she left messages then set to work changing out a flywheel on a Honda. The job was simple, clear-cut, fulfilling. A wrench, a puller, everything cut and dried, solid metal. No ghosts, no questions of someone’s guilt or innocence. If only she could spend all her time with motorcycles and ignore the complexities of human beings. And the ghosts of those human beings.
She finished the job and went back to the office where Dawson still sat in front of the computer.
“Find anything?” she asked.
“Actually, with those two people on the Internet, I’m surprised there’s room out there for all that adware.”
It was Dawson’s attempt to make a joke. “So that means you found a lot?”
He nodded. “Ronald Collins has been married five times and divorced four. He’s still married to number two, so I guess that makes him a bigamist.”
Amanda frowned. “Really? Five women married that jerk? I’m going to assume he drugged them or held a gun to their heads. Any kids? Please tell me he has not passed his DNA along to innocent children.”
“Three boys and one girl. Doesn’t look like he’s paying child support for any of them. He only works intermittently. His most recent job was as a carpet layer. He lost that over a year ago.”
“Why?”
“There’s no official reason given. Employers have to be very careful about giving reasons for letting employees go because they’ve been sued in the past. We live in a very litigious society. But some things this guy’s done should wave a red flag to any future employer. He’s been in trouble for just about any crime you can name. Failure to register a motor vehicle, possession of drug paraphernalia, failure to pay child support, possession of a controlled substance, possession of a controlled substance with intent to sell, gambling, drunk and disorderly, driving under the influence, spousal abuse…” He sighed and looked up at her. “Maybe it would be easier to tell you what he hasn’t been accused of.”
“Okay. What hasn’t he been accused of?”
“Kidnapping and arson.”
She gulped. “What about murder?”
“They charged him with murder in a bar fight a few years ago, but he got off on self-defense. This guy must have some really big legal fees.”
“Nah,” Charley said. “He trades drugs for services with a couple of lawyers.”
“What a nice man Charley gave my shop to.” She glared at him from the corner of her eye.
Charley lifted his arms and spread his hands. “I didn’t give your shop away! I borrowed against it and paid him back!”
“Did you find an address for him?” she asked Dawson.
“Several. Some of them aren’t legitimate, some don’t exist, some belong to large estates. Maybe he worked at those places at one time or another and used their addresses.”
“Or maybe he burgled them and stole their addresses along with their valuables.”
“Possible. In any event, I don’t think we need to bother with most of his purported addresses. I’ve discounted all those and the ones older than three years. The address on his driver’s license which expired two years ago is an apartment a couple of miles from where I live. That’s a possibility, though the place is supposedly rented to an elderly lady now. The most recent is one he gave the post office for forwarding his mail a few months ago. It’s a house across town rented by a woman with three children. Property value indicates the house itself is virtually worthless, a tear down.”
Amanda released a huge sigh as she perched on the side of the desk. “Great. He needs a job and a place to live. He’s planning to live in my apartment and repair motorcycles in my shop.”
Dawson shook his head. “I can’t see any evidence he’s ever owned a motorcycle or had a license to ride one. Of course, someone like him doesn’t have a large personal presence on the Internet. Not like he’s on Facebook. He could be stealing and riding motorcycles every day without anything showing up.”
“Nah,” Charley said. “Ronnie’s scared of motorcycles. He thinks people who ride them are crazy. More likely he wants your shop so he can cook up a little meth. He tried that one time in his apartment, but the neighbors noticed the smell. This place would be perfect with all the room and the outside lot separating you from your neighbors.”
Amanda’s jaw dropped. “Meth? He’s planning to make meth in my shop?”
Dawson blinked rapidly a couple of times. “What? Meth? Amanda, what are you talking about? I never said the guy was making methamphetamines!”
“Uh…but you didn’t say he wasn’t. It’s just a, uh, sort of feeling I had. It probably doesn’t matter. I don’t think that man can do anything with that silly piece of paper. I called Sunny and Dad and left messages. I’ll get their opinions, but surely that creep won’t be able to do anything legally.”
“And we won’t let him bully you into anything,” Charley said. “He does that a lot. Bullies people. Cheats at cards too, but he’s not very good at it. I was better.”
Amanda drew in a deep breath and closed her eyes. Charley’s pride over being an expert in cheating at cards didn’t bode well for his making it into the light.
“You also wanted to know about your classmate?” Dawson asked.
“Yes,” Amanda said. She’d been so caught up in the horror that was Ronald Collins, she’d forgotten about Teresa. “Tell me about her.” Though the question of whether Teresa had murdered her husband suddenly seemed inconsequential in the face of losing her shop or maybe her life to the scumbag Ronald Collins.
“Teresa Landow married Anthony Hocker five years ago. He was already wealthy and became wealthier. He made money and both of them spent it lavishly for a while. Then about six months ago he filed for divorce. She counter-filed, charged him with adultery. She’s trying to get the terms of her pre-nup mitigated with the adultery charge.”
“She signed a pre-nup?”
“A very stringent one. Not that it really matters. Even if she got it set aside, Hocker didn’t have a lot of assets so she wasn’t going to get much from the divorce. But two months before he filed, she took out a million dollar life insurance policy on him. Of course, if she killed him, she can’t benefit from her crime and she’ll go to prison so it won’t matter.”
“I hope she didn’t, but it doesn’t look good, does it? I mean, the pre-nup, the big insurance policy, and she said there was a new girlfriend.”
“Yes, a twenty year old blonde who worked for him, Brianna Patterson. Teresa showed up at his office one day and caught the two of them together. Somebody posted a video on the Internet. Your friend went a little wild. Hit the girl with her purse and called her some rude names. The security guard had to drag her out of the building.”
“Teresa has a temper. I remember in high school when she found out one of the other cheerleaders was dating her boyfriend, the football captain.” Amanda smiled. “She put itching powder in her rival’s pom-poms and her ex-boyfriend’s helmet. During the next game, the two of them spent a lot of time scratching instead of playing and cheering.”
Dawson gave a half-hearted laugh. “She got both of them? I hope nothing happens to the husband’s new girlfriend. The deceased husband’s new girlfriend.”
“There’s a lot of difference between itching powder and murder.” But Teresa had hit the new girlfriend with her purse. That was up close, personal and physical. Not that Amanda really blamed her, considering the circumstances. She herself had never thought about attacking any of Charley’s women, but she had thought about doing bodily harm to him. “How
about news videos? Jake mentioned that she threatened him on the ten o’clock news. I never watch. It’s too depressing.”
Dawson nodded. “When they were coming out of the courthouse after the first hearing on the divorce, a couple of reporters were waiting. Caught her just as she came out the door, yelling that she’d take a gun and blow his brains out if he had any.”
“Okay, that’s not good, but a threat is a long way from the deed itself. Look how many times I threatened Charley.”
Charley made a face. “Yeah, I remember all those times.”
“Of course, if I’d had a million dollar life insurance policy on Charley, that would have gone a long way toward closing the distance between fantasizing and actually murdering him.”
Chapter Four
Amanda arrived at the Mexican restaurant a few minutes late but still before Teresa. She requested a table on the patio outside where people would be less likely to notice the two of them talking to Charley.
As soon as she was seated in the shade of a large umbrella, she ordered a frozen margarita. She was probably going to need a couple of them. Not only did she have to worry that Teresa would be arrested before she could send Charley on his way, but both Sunny and her father had returned her calls and told her that Ronald Collins could cause her some problems with his nasty piece of paper. Neither thought his claim would prevail, but he could probably get some sleazy lawyer to take on the case and force her to fight him.
Charley sat in the chair beside her. “Seems kinda strange that you can see me but Teresa can’t see her husband, and she’s a psychic. Maybe there’s some kind of a rule that you can’t talk to somebody after you kill them.”
Amanda had given a passing thought to the same thing, but she wasn’t about to agree with Charley. The waiter brought her drink along with a basket of chips and a bowl of hot sauce. She lowered her mouth to the straw of her drink and hoped none of the people seated at the tables around her would notice she was talking to her margarita. “I find it hard to believe she’d be asking you to talk to her dead husband if she murdered him. That could be kind of embarrassing when he ratted her out.”
3 The Ex Who Conned a Psychic Page 3
