3 The Ex Who Conned a Psychic

by Sally Berneathy

  Jake stared at her silently for a long moment. Uh oh. Bad cop was moving in. “You had a drink with him.”

  Teresa shrugged. “Sort of. He poured two glasses of wine and set them on the coffee table in front of us. Said he wanted to toast to new beginnings. I didn’t trust him, so I pretended to take a sip.”

  “You didn’t trust him?”

  “Duh. All of a sudden he’s acting all contrite and sweet. He was up to something. When he offered me a drink, I figured he’d put drugs or poison in it. I wasn’t about to drink anything he offered me. I pretended to take a sip then went straight to the bathroom and from there, out the front door.”

  Jake looked down at the papers in front of him then back up to Teresa. “So when you left, the glasses of wine were sitting on the coffee table?”

  “Yes. Where were they when you found them?”

  “In the trash, broken, but one did have your fingerprints on it.”

  “That sounds like an Anthony reaction. Get mad and break something.”

  Jake nodded slowly. Again he looked at the papers and said nothing.

  “So, are we done?” Teresa asked again.

  “Just one more question. About that million dollar life insurance policy...”

  “What about it?”

  “You said he must have forgotten to cancel it.”

  “That would be my guess. He cancelled all the other policies.”

  “But he didn’t know about this one, did he?” Jake accused.

  “Of course he knew. How could he not know?”

  “You took out the policy.”

  “I took out one on his life, and he took out one on my life. We did it about six months ago when he first started complaining that we were going broke.”

  “He took out a policy on you?” Jake asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have a copy of that policy?”

  For the first time, Teresa looked a little uncertain, but her voice was firm when she spoke. “No. I told you. He kept everything.”

  “We haven’t found any policies on your life payable to him, just the policy on his life, payable to you. And coincidentally, he’s the one who’s dead.”

  Teresa hesitated for an instant then lifted her purple designer purse, set it on the table and smiled. “A happy coincidence.” She stood. “Anything else?”

  Jake ran a hand through his hair. Ross studied Teresa, his gaze inscrutable.

  “Nothing else today,” Jake finally said. “But don’t leave town.”

  “I’m broke. I can’t afford to leave town.”

  “You have five thousand dollars.”

  “”I have what’s left of that money after paying my rent and buying groceries.”

  Not to mention her handbag that looked new and expensive.

  Amanda and Charley rose, and the three of them left the depressing room.

  “He’s looking at you,” Charley said.

  “Give it a rest!” Amanda whispered.

  “Oh, of course you’d think Jake was looking at you. I’m not talking about him. I mean Ross is looking at Teresa.”

  Teresa turned, looked back into the room, smiled and waved.

  Amanda had to give her credit for having guts. Not a lot of common sense, but plenty of guts.

  They walked to the car in silence though Amanda was bursting to ask Teresa about the contents of the safe.

  When they were finally settled in Teresa’s car in the shade of a big maple tree at one end of the parking lot, she asked the question. “How much money did you actually get out of that safe, and what else was in there?”

  Teresa collapsed against the back of the seat and exhaled a long breath. She wasn’t as composed as she’d appeared. “Do you think they knew I was lying?”

  “Probably.”

  Charley leaned between them from his perch on the back. “You’re not very good at it. I could teach you.”

  Amanda groaned at Charley’s words. “No, you couldn’t. If you don’t stop that sort of thing, you’ll never get to the light.” And she’d be stuck with him forever. No chance of taking a shower without looking over her shoulder. No chance of having any privacy with Jake. “Teresa, you’ll be fine as long as they can’t prove anything. So what did you really find in that safe?”

  Teresa clutched the steering wheel and looked around as if to be certain nobody was close enough to hear. “Well, it was mostly cash, fifty thousand dollars in hundreds.”

  “Wow. That seems like a lot of cash to have on hand.”

  “It’s more than he usually has, but he does like to flash the cash. I’ve seen him tip the valet with a hundred dollar bill, but only if somebody else was there to see it and be impressed. But the other stuff I found is really interesting. I was in a hurry, so I just swept everything into my bag. I didn’t know there was anything else until I got home and emptied it all out.” She paused to let a man with a briefcase walk past her car.

  “What else?” Amanda encouraged when the man was out of earshot.

  “A flash drive and a phony passport!”

  “A phony passport?”

  “Yeah, it had a picture of Anthony, but the name on it was Joe Richards.”

  “He was planning to skip town!” Charley said.

  Teresa nodded. “With that much money in cash and a phony passport, yeah, I think that’s exactly what he was planning.”

  “No passport for the bimbo?”

  Teresa shook her head. “Nope. Maybe little Brianna had hers with her.”

  “I think you need to tell the police about this.”

  “Why?”

  “It could relate to his murder.”

  “Yeah, and I stole it from his house. How’s that going to look? I had a right to the money. Half of it, anyway. But I probably didn’t have any right to his phony passport. I don’t want to get in more trouble than I’m already in. If I have to give back twenty-five hundred dollars, I can do that. But I’m not going to admit to anything else.”

  “You don’t have to tell them how much money you took, but I really think you need to tell them about this other stuff. What’s on the flash drive?”

  “Just a bunch of garbage as far as I could tell. But I didn’t get custody of the new computer. Maybe Windows 95 can’t read whatever it is.”

  “I think we should let Dawson have a look at that flash drive.”

  “Why?”

  Amanda threw up her hands. “Teresa, you’re in trouble! Dawson might be able to figure out what’s on it. We need to give the cops somebody else to investigate for Anthony’s murder.”

  “Maybe the bimbo didn’t have a passport. Maybe he was planning to leave town and not tell her. Maybe she killed him.”

  “Maybe. And maybe this passport and whatever’s on that flash drive will point them in her direction.”

  “They’re the police. They should be able to figure it out for themselves. That’s what we pay them to do.” She reached for the key to start the engine.

  They wouldn’t be able to talk while riding in a convertible at eighty miles an hour. Amanda closed her hand over Teresa’s and halted her action. “You could go to prison. You need to do everything you can to avoid that.”

  Teresa took her hand off the key, bit her lip and looked at Charley. “If you could just talk to Anthony and ask him who killed him, we’d be able to solve that problem.”

  “I think I may have been close last night when somebody decided to murder our tree and interrupted me.”

  “Murder your tree?”

  “Gunshots,” Amanda explained. “One of Charley’s old friends expressing himself. It’s a long story. We can talk about it later.”

  “He’s not my friend.”

  “Yeah,” Teresa agreed, “friends don’t usually come around in the middle of the night to shoot your trees. Did you call the cops?”

  Amanda shook her head. “By the time I got outside, he was long gone. I can’t even be certain it was him.”

  “It was Ronnie, all righ
t,” Charley said. “That’s the kind of thing he does. He’s trying to bully Amanda into letting him have her shop and apartment.”

  Teresa’s jaw dropped. “What? You can’t be serious! Why would he do that?”

  “Because Charley signed my property over to him.” Amanda gave Teresa a quick version of the Ronald Collins story.

  “I paid him back the money!” Charley insisted. “How was I supposed to know he’d do something like this?”

  “He’s a criminal,” Amanda said. “What did you expect?”

  “Charley,” Teresa said quietly, “you have to stop making excuses and start taking action to right your wrongs.”

  “I’m trying!”

  Amanda twisted in her seat to look at him in amazement. “You are? How do you figure that?”

  “Well…” He looked upward toward the branches of the maple tree as if seeking divine assistance. Amanda was fairly certain that was not going to be forthcoming. He turned his gaze toward Teresa. “I’m trying to contact your husband.”

  “And what does that have to do with Ronald Collins or the other things you’ve done wrong?” She threw up her hands in resignation. “Fine. Whatever. So you think you got close to reaching Anthony?”

  “Did you see him?” Teresa asked.

  “No, not really.”

  “Hear him?”

  “No. Maybe. Almost.”

  Teresa’s forehead creased in a frown. “So exactly what happened to make you think you got close to reaching him?”

  “Just…a feeling. I was doing like you said, staring at his picture and thinking his name, and it sort of felt like maybe he was there, but then the shots interrupted me.”

  “Hmm.”

  Charley couldn’t lie, but Amanda figured he was exaggerating, trying to convince Teresa he’d accomplished something he hadn’t. Teresa knew it too.

  If Charley didn’t help Teresa, she might not help him move on into the light, out of Amanda’s life.

  “We’ll work on it together tonight, won’t we, Charley?” Amanda said.

  “I’m trying! I really am!” he protested. “I don’t know how to do this. You should try being dead. It’s not as easy as you think.”

  Amanda opened her mouth to tell him to stop whining, but Teresa spoke first. “How about we go to my apartment and I coach you with contacting the jerk?” She looked at Amanda. “Have you got another hour?”

  “Sure. Dawson can handle things until I get back. And while we’re at your place, you can give me that flash drive so I can take it to him and let him have a look.”

  “Okay,” Teresa agreed. “Just don’t tell anybody about the money.”

  They drove to a colonial style complex in the Oak Lawn area of town where Teresa pulled into a reserved spot in covered parking. The grounds were well tended, bushes trimmed and grass mowed. Mature trees shaded and sheltered the building. Add in the covered parking, and Amanda would bet the place wasn’t cheap.

  “Be prepared,” Teresa said, climbing out of her car and closing the door. “My apartment is tiny.”

  Compared to the houses Teresa had lived in before, her apartment probably was tiny. Compared to Amanda’s apartment, probably not so much.

  They walked along a sidewalk to the back of the complex and entered through a door half hidden by shrubbery.

  The living room was small but cozy. Bright pillows had been tossed in a casual pattern on the white sofa and chair. Candles of different colors and shapes decorated the surface of the coffee table along with a couple of decks of bright Tarot cards and a glass bowl of crystals of different hues.

  “Have a seat. I’ll get us something to drink. Iced tea okay?”

  “Sure.” Amanda sank onto the sofa and Charley sat beside her.

  Teresa disappeared into the kitchen.

  “This looks like she knows what she’s doing,” Charley said. “With the spirits and all that, I mean.”

  “Obviously she has some ability. She can see you and she can see Sunny’s father.”

  Teresa screamed.

  Chapter Seven

  Amanda ran to the kitchen with Charley close behind.

  Teresa stood at the counter, paging frantically through a cookbook and swearing with vehemence and skill.

  Amanda stopped in the doorway. No intruder wielding a knife or waving a gun. No bloody baseball bat lying on the floor. Nothing but a woman looking through a cookbook with a red plaid cover. “What’s wrong?”

  “Somebody’s been in my apartment.” Teresa pulled a slip of paper from the cookbook, clutched her chest as if in relief then looked up with a wide smile. “Thank goodness!” She waved the paper in Amanda’s direction. “My grandmother’s recipe for happiness. It wasn’t in the place I usually keep it, and I was afraid someone had stolen it.”

  Amanda blinked a couple of times. Somehow Teresa didn’t strike her as the kind of person who would have an emotional attachment to some schmaltzy recipe for happiness left by her grandmother. However, she would have never thought in high school that she would one day become Teresa’s friend, so anything was possible.

  “Read it,” Teresa offered.

  Amanda reached for the paper and read aloud the “recipe” written in faded blue ink and perfect penmanship.

  Recipe for happiness

  1 man to love you

  2 children for you to love

  1 dog who thinks you’re perfect

  1 cat who thinks he’s perfect

  1 house with 6 bedrooms

  $1 million in a bank account in your name only

  Teresa had a soft smile on her face, and her eyes were misty. “My grandmother was a special person. I miss her a lot.”

  Charley moved over to give her a comforting pat on the shoulder, a pat that went halfway through her shoulder.

  Amanda frowned. “I thought you still talked to your grandmother.”

  “I do, but not very often anymore. The longer someone’s been on the other side, the harder it is to reach them. They move on to other planes and visit here less often.”

  That gave Amanda hope that eventually Charley would be gone of his own accord. But eventually wasn’t even close to soon enough.

  Teresa tucked the paper back into the cookbook. “It belongs between the recipes for ginger snaps and oatmeal cookies. That’s where Grandmother left it.” She closed the book. “Just now I found it between bread and butter pickles and sweet pickles. Somebody moved it. Somebody’s been in my apartment.”

  Amanda looked around the small room. It was cluttered in an artistic way…copper kettle on the stove, copper pans hanging on the end wall and several colorful items strewn around on the beige countertop. Nothing looked out of place. “Maybe you moved it yourself accidentally. Why do you think somebody was in here?”

  Teresa waved a hand at the counter. “Look at my canisters.”

  Amanda looked. Southwest style pottery decorated with bright colors. “Has their aura changed?” she ventured. “Can you see strange fingerprints on them?”

  “Actually,” Teresa said, “I can feel a lingering presence that doesn’t belong here, and it’s a dark presence. But I can give you more concrete evidence.” She turned one of the canisters slightly then another and another. “Now the peppers are centered. They weren’t before. Plus there’s flour on my counter.” She pointed a perfectly-manicured purple nail to an almost invisible white streak near the largest canister then spun around and indicated a drawer. “It’s not in there straight. It sticks and I have to wiggle it around to get it straight. My burglar wasn’t tidy.”

  Who’d have thought Teresa would be a neat freak?

  Amanda still wasn’t convinced she’d been burglarized. “Is something missing?”

  “I doubt it. I don’t have anything worth stealing. No jewelry, no expensive stereo, computer with Windows 95.” Teresa gave a short laugh. “I’ll bet whoever broke in was pretty disappointed.” She shivered and bit her lip. “But it creeps me out that a stranger was in here, touching my stuff. I’
m going to throw out everything in those canisters, the flour first.”

  “Let’s look around and see if anything’s missing,” Amanda suggested. “We probably ought to call the police.”

  Charley grimaced at that suggestion. “We don’t need no stinking cops. I’ll check the bedroom, make sure nobody’s hiding in there. We can handle this.” He walked through the doorway, his feet only a fraction of an inch above the floor. Showing off. Trying to look normal.

  Amanda and Teresa went back to the living room where Teresa looked over everything carefully. “My crystals are out of order. Somebody touched them. I’ll have to cleanse them.”

  This whole situation was eerily similar to what had happened to Amanda when Charley was murdered…an estranged husband killed, the widow’s apartment searched. In Amanda’s case, the killer had taken the gun he thought would incriminate him. So maybe now…

  “Teresa, you do have something worth stealing.”

  “I do? What?”

  “The money you took from your husband’s safe.”

  Teresa shook her head. “Nobody knows about that except you, me and the cops. The cops wouldn’t have had time to break in before we got here.”

  “True, especially not with the way you drive. Besides, they’d just get a search warrant and do it legally. They’re funny like that. But there is somebody else who may know about the money. The person who murdered Anthony.”

  Teresa’s hand flew to her mouth. “Omigawd! You’re right! I didn’t take time to close the safe. If somebody came to kill him and steal the money—”

  “And saw you leaving with a big tote bag—”

  “It wouldn’t take much to figure it out.” Teresa sank onto the sofa, her tanned face noticeably paler.

  “Nobody in the bedroom,” Charley said, darting back into the living room. “I told you we don’t need the cops. What’s wrong, Teresa?”

  “What did you do with the money?” Amanda asked. “I don’t suppose you put it in a nice safe bank account?”

  “No, of course not. It’s in the trunk of my car. I need to have it handy when I go shopping.”

  Of course she did. Amanda sank onto the sofa beside her. “Do you think that’s a good idea? What if your car gets stolen?”