3 The Ex Who Conned a Psychic

by Sally Berneathy

Teresa frowned. “Are you sure? This guy says he’s your grandfather and, as Charley said, they don’t lie on the other side. Tall, curly red hair, says he died in a hunting accident when your mother was three. You’ve certainly got his hair.”

  Amanda’s hand holding the guacamole dropped slowly to the table. “Does he—can you ask him what his name is?” Sunny’s father had been killed in a hunting accident when she was three, but there was no way Teresa could know about her birth mother’s existence, much less about that birth mother’s father who’d been dead for over forty years.

  Teresa sat quietly for a moment as if listening. “William Donovan, but everybody called him Don.” She scowled and looked at Charley. “He says Charley did some bad things to your mother, but he forgives him. Does that make sense to you, Charley?”

  “It makes perfect sense to me.” That certainly dissolved any remnant of doubt she had about Teresa’s abilities. Even if the woman had researched Amanda’s family, she’d never have found the grandfather Amanda hadn’t known about until she learned the true story of her birth a few months ago.

  Charley cleared his throat and squirmed in his seat.

  “He said for you to tell Sunny and Meg how much he loves them and that he’s still around.” She looked puzzled. “I’m getting the impression that Sunny is his daughter and Meg was his wife. Is your mother’s name Sunny? That doesn’t sound right.”

  The only mother Teresa could have known about was Beverly Caulfield. Amanda swallowed and cleared her throat. “It’s her nickname.” That was true. Amanda’s birth mother’s name was Suzanne, but everyone called her Sunny. “Tell him I will pass the message along to Sunny. To my mother.”

  “I don’t have to tell him. He can hear you. He’s pleased that you and Sunny are so close.” Teresa smiled. “That’s nice that you’re close to your mother. So you got past the what would people think phase?”

  Amanda thought about trading her once-again-empty glass for Charley’s full one, but she had to ride her motorcycle home so that wasn’t a good idea. “Not really. Sort of. How about your mother?” She asked the question in a desperate attempt to change the subject. “Did you get past that phase with her?”

  Teresa shrugged and grinned. “Not really and sort of. When Daddy lost all the money, he and Mother lost all their love. Funny how that works. She’s in Kansas City with her second husband, and Daddy’s in Florida with his third wife. Actually, he may be on number four or five by now. I haven’t heard from him in a year or so.”

  “So you’re all alone now that your husband’s dead?” Charley’s voice was surprisingly soft and sympathetic. Maybe he was making some progress toward that next level after all.

  Teresa laughed, the sound melodious and free in the gathering dusk of the summer evening. “I have friends, my created family. Trust me, that’s a lot better than the one I was born into.”

  Amanda leaned back in her chair. Yes, she liked Teresa. So what if the woman talked to dead people and maybe killed her husband. She herself talked to her dead ex-husband and had often fantasized about killing him. Everybody had a few peculiarities.

  She’d made a new friend, and that friend could help her finally get rid of Charley. For her part, she would do her best to help Charley make contact with Teresa’s husband so he could tell Teresa who killed him. They’d help each other.

  Who’d have thought the cheerleader she’d once envied and hated would one day become her friend? Even Charley’s presence didn’t diminish Amanda’s pleasure.

  When they had consumed the last fajita, the last chip and the last bit of guacamole, they split the check and left.

  “Another bad thing about being like this,” Charley said, “is that I can never pay the tab. I hate seeing you two ladies have to pay.”

  Charley had always insisted on paying the bill when they went out to eat. Of course, she often had to loan him money or a credit card in order for him to do so. But Amanda refrained from mentioning that part, from disturbing the serenity of the evening.

  “This has been so much fun! We’ll have to do it again even if Charley can’t talk to Anthony.” Teresa gave her a quick hug. “I’m parked next to your bike.” She pointed in the direction of a sapphire blue BMW convertible.

  “Nice car. It looks like you.”

  “Thanks. It’s fun to drive. The only good thing that came out of my marriage to Anthony.”

  As they started across the parking lot, Amanda noticed a tall bearded man wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses climbing into a battered car on the other side of her bike. Who wore sunglasses at night? Was Ronald Collins following her? She was probably being paranoid.

  Nevertheless, she made a mental note of the license plate.

  Chapter Five

  Shots rang out.

  Amanda sat bolt upright in bed, going from sound asleep to wide awake in an instant, heart pounding. The clock on her nightstand showed three a.m.

  With a rowdy bar down the street, it wasn’t unusual to hear a shot or two in the middle of the night on Friday or Saturday, but this was Tuesday, the bar was closed, and the shots had sounded really close.

  She listened but heard nothing. No more shots, no screams, no sound of running footsteps. Maybe she’d been dreaming. Much as she hated to admit it, the visit from Ronald Collins had spooked her a little. He was a creepy man.

  “Want me to go check it out?” Charley appeared beside her bed.

  “You heard it too? I wasn’t dreaming?”

  “I heard it.”

  “A car backfiring? Somebody shooting off firecrackers?”

  “Sounded like gunshots to me. I’ll go look.”

  Amanda swung her legs over the side of the bed, pulled open the drawer of her nightstand and took out her Smith & Wesson .38 revolver. “I’ll go.” If somebody was out there, she was better equipped to handle him than Charley was. She had a gun and a smart mouth. Charley could make somebody shiver if he went through that person. Not a lot of help.

  She strode through her apartment to the front door, opened it and stepped onto the small landing. The street light was out. That could have been one of the shots. Even so, she could see well enough to be certain there was no movement in her parking lot, no sign of anybody. But somehow the warm night air felt ominous, as if something evil had passed through leaving remnants of its essence behind.

  She almost laughed at her own fancifulness. That damned Ronald Collins had creeped her out more than she wanted to admit.

  Holding the revolver behind her back, she moved slowly down the wooden steps.

  “I don’t see anybody.” Charley’s voice behind her startled her, made her gasp.

  “Thank you. I feel so much better now.”

  “You do?”

  “No.”

  She reached the bottom of the steps. Nothing seemed disturbed. The door to the shop was intact and locked. She pressed her ear to the door but heard nothing inside.

  Suddenly she felt silly, standing outside in the middle of the night, wearing a red nightshirt printed with dancing M&Ms, and clutching a gun. She looked around, this time in fear of seeing a casual observer watching her and wondering about her sanity.

  No one. The street in front of the shop was empty and still. The night was calm. Not even a night bird rustled in the leaves. Nothing moved in the shadows except Charley who was hovering under the big live oak tree a few feet away from the building. She had no idea what he was doing. Checking for fingerprints? Taking a leak? She was pretty sure ghosts didn’t take leaks since they didn’t drink anything, but there could be ghostly rules she knew nothing about.

  She started back toward the stairs.

  “Amanda, you need to look at this tree.”

  The tree stood tall and sturdy, leaves shimmering in the faint moonlight. Was Charley trying to create a romantic moment? “Okay, I see the tree. Now I’m going back to bed.”

  “No, come over here.”

  Amanda paused with one hand on the stair rail. “Why?”

&nbs
p; “Because somebody shot your tree.”

  “What?” Amanda frowned but walked over to the tree.

  Four large caliber bullet holes.

  “Not a tight pattern,” she said. “My tree assassin isn’t a very good shot.” Something to be grateful for.

  “Yeah, I heard five shots. He missed once.”

  That might account for the street light even though it was nowhere near her tree.

  She’d lived in that apartment for two years and nobody had tried to murder her tree before she met Ronald Collins. She couldn’t rid herself of the creepy feeling that he’d been there recently, that he’d left an aura of evil behind him.

  Ridiculous.

  Amanda stalked back upstairs, returned her gun to the nightstand drawer and settled into bed.

  Sleep was elusive.

  It was no big deal. Nobody had been harmed. A few bullets weren’t going to hurt the big live oak. She hadn’t seen anybody lurking around. Nothing to be concerned about.

  Purely coincidental that Ronald Collins had showed up that morning and somebody shot her tree that night. As for the man she’d seen in the restaurant parking lot, he was just a bearded stranger wearing sunglasses. Probably smoking dope and didn’t want anybody to see his eyes.

  She turned over and ordered herself to relax and go back to sleep. She was not going to let some creep like Ronald Collins make her paranoid.

  *~*~*

  Amanda woke early after a couple of restless hours of intermittent sleep. As she stumbled around in the shower, she cursed whoever shot her tree for disturbing her sleep and Ronald Collins, whether or not he was the shooter, for causing her stress.

  She grabbed a robe and left the bathroom to find Charley waiting just outside.

  “Rough night, babe?”

  “Don’t call me babe.” She dressed, strode to the kitchen and got a Coke. The bubbles fizzed over her tongue and down her throat, making her feel instantly better.

  “I’d bring you chocolate donuts if I could.”

  She glared at him. “I can’t prove you had anything to do with the shooting last night, but you did bring Ronald Collins into my life. Instead of thinking about chocolate donuts, you need to focus on getting rid of him. In the meantime, don’t talk to me.”

  She dressed, warmed a piece of leftover pizza in the microwave then went downstairs and opened her shop. Dawson wasn’t due for another half hour. She had time to relax, eat her pizza and drink her Coke.

  She was seated at the desk with her feet up, finishing the last bite of pizza and feeling almost human when she heard the front door open.

  “You’re early,” she called. “I’m back here.”

  But it wasn’t Dawson who crossed the room and appeared in the doorway to the small office.

  Ronald Collins stood there holding a Starbucks cup, tobacco-stained teeth showing through his beard. She was pretty sure the macabre expression was supposed to be a smile. “I brought you some coffee. Thought you mighta had a bad night.”

  Her suspicion had been right. He was the SOB who’d shot her tree.

  Amanda slammed her feet to the floor and stood, gripping her Coke can so tightly it crumpled. “My night was just fine, and I don’t drink coffee.”

  “Looks like somebody used your tree for target practice. Woman living alone, shots in the middle of the night—” He shrugged and set the cup on the desk.

  Amanda arched an eyebrow. “Really? I didn’t hear a thing. I’m a very sound sleeper.”

  “You have a good day.” Collins turned and left the room.

  “You have a lousy day. I hope a meteorite falls on your head and burns that mess off your face.”

  He laughed and she heard the front door close.

  “You okay?” Charley appeared by her side.

  Amanda whirled on him. “No, I am not okay! What does that man think he’s doing?”

  “He’s trying to intimidate you. He probably knows he doesn’t have a legal leg to stand on, so he’s planning to bully you into giving up.”

  Amanda slammed her empty, crumpled Coke can on the desk. “I’m not intimidated. I’m mad. The jerk doesn’t know me very well if he thinks he can bully me.”

  Charley looked around the room, not meeting her eyes. “He probably thinks you’re somebody you’re not.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Well, you know how men like to brag about their wives…”

  “You bragged about me?” That surprised her and gave her a touch of mellowness toward him.

  “I did, but that’s not exactly what I meant.”

  So much for feeling mellow. “Then what, exactly, are you trying to say?”

  He shrugged and continued to look across the room. “We sort of bragged about how we had control of our wives.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah, they all did it, so I did too. We’d talk about how we did what we wanted and came home whenever we got ready and told our wives what to do, and they did what we said and didn’t dare complain.” He cleared his throat. “He thinks you’re, uh…”

  Amanda moved in front of him, forcing him to look at her. “He thinks I’m what? Weak? Easy to control? Malleable?”

  “Yeah, except I don’t know what that last word means.”

  “I wish you were still alive so I could kill you!” She stormed out of the office into the main area.

  The front door opened. She grabbed a piece of twisted metal, formerly part of the fender of a wrecked motorcycle, and strode forward, wielding the makeshift weapon.

  Dawson entered, his eyes widening when he saw her. “Uh, good morning.”

  Amanda laughed and dropped the piece of metal. “Good morning. I thought you were Ronald Collins coming back.”

  “Yeah, I saw him leaving. What did he want now?”

  “To intimidate me into giving him my shop.”

  Dawson laughed. “He’s in for a surprise.”

  “When you get a chance, I want you to check out a license plate number for me.”

  “The one on the car he’s driving? I’ll do it now. It won’t take more than a minute or two.” He moved past her into the office.

  She followed him in, picked up a piece of paper and wrote the numbers and letters from the car outside the restaurant the night before. “Is this the plate on the car he was driving this morning?”

  Dawson took the paper and read the digits. He shook his head. “No. It was completely different. I’ll check both of them.”

  Amanda went to the refrigerator in the corner for another Coke. It was definitely a multi-Coke morning.

  True to his word, within ten minutes Dawson looked up from the computer. “The car he was driving this morning is a 1987 Jeep Cherokee that’s registered in the name of Janice Horne. She’s the woman with the three kids whose address he’s been using most recently. The one you gave me belongs to a car owned by Clyde Watson, a seventy-five year old man who lives in Waxahachie.”

  Amanda frowned. The man she’d seen last night was not Collins. She was being paranoid. “I suppose the man I saw could be seventy-five if he was in really good shape and dyed his beard.” She moved around the desk to stand beside the chair and peer at the monitor. “Do you have a picture?”

  “Sure.” He tapped a few keys, moved the mouse around, and a Texas driver’s license for Clyde Lee Watson appeared on the screen.

  Amanda sighed. “Unless he’s grown a beard, dyed it brown, lost a hundred pounds and grown six inches since that picture, this is not the man I saw, but I suppose anybody could have been driving his car.”

  “Yeah, he might have loaned it to his grandson or somebody. I don’t see any reports of the vehicle being stolen.”

  “Can you find out if Ronald Collins is related to him?”

  Dawson checked several more websites. “Not that I can find.”

  “Okay, I’m being paranoid. Thanks for checking. While you’re on the computer, would you scan that paper Collins brought in and email copies of it to my dad and S
unny?”

  “Sure.”

  Amanda went back to the regular shop area to install custom pipes on a bike. Dawson joined her a few minutes later.

  Her cell phone rang. She laid down the parts, wiped her hands on an already greasy rag and pulled the phone from her pocket. Teresa.

  “Good morning.”

  “That man wants me to come in for questioning again.”

  “That man?”

  “Jake Daggett. This is the second time. Do you think I need to get a lawyer to go with me?”

  Amanda drew in a deep breath and slowly released it. Damn! Jake asked her out but he was jacking with the one person who could make it possible for her to be alone with him, just the two of them, no ex-husband trailing along and making snide remarks. And she couldn’t tell him. Not that it would matter even if he knew and believed. He’d still do his duty as an officer of the law and all that stodgy stuff.

  “When are you going in?” she asked.

  “This afternoon at two. The only lawyers I know were friends with Anthony. Probably not the best pool to choose from when I’m suspected of murdering him.”

  “A friend of my dad went with me. You probably don’t really need anyone if they’re just questioning you. He hasn’t accused you yet, has he?”

  “No. He just said they had some more questions.” She sighed.

  “Then you’re probably fine. If they start reading you your rights, you’ll know it’s time to lawyer up.”

  “That’s not something I’m looking forward to. Well, I guess I’ll just suck it up and see what they’re going to throw at me.”

  Amanda thought about her interrogation after Charley’s murder. Both her father and her lawyer had gone with her. Her lawyer had been more annoying than helpful, but having her father there for moral support had been of immeasurable value. “I’ll go with you if you want me to,” she offered impulsively. She could be supportive of her new friend and maybe win some brownie points to trade for Teresa’s help with Charley.

  “Thank you.” Teresa sounded relieved. “I really appreciate that. I’ll pick you up at one thirty.”

  “I’ll be ready.”

  Amanda disconnected the call.