3 The Ex Who Conned a Psychic

by Sally Berneathy

  “I usually bring the bag inside with me. I just didn’t want to be tacky and haul around a bag of money while I have guests.”

  Good manners were more important than guarding thousands of dollars. Teresa hadn’t completely set aside her mother’s admonitions about propriety. “I think we can dispense with etiquette for the moment. Let’s go get it. Now.”

  Teresa stood and took her keys from her pocket. “If you’ll go get the bag, I’ll get that tea for us. Thank goodness I have a pitcher in the refrigerator since my teabags are in one of those canisters he contaminated.”

  “Don’t you think you should check the bedroom and see if anything’s missing?”

  Teresa’s smile returned. “What? You think somebody might steal my five hundred thread count sheets? Or maybe my Victoria’s Secret underwear.” She shuddered. “The jerk probably went through my underwear and touched everything. I’ll check that while you get the bag.”

  Amanda took the keys and headed out the front door, pausing to check the frame for any visible signs of entry. Nothing. But the lock was old and simplistic. It wouldn’t have taken much to get past it.

  “She needs a deadbolt,” Charley said, inspecting it carefully. “I could open that with a credit card.”

  “Yes, she does need a deadbolt.” Amanda refrained from asking whose door he’d opened with a credit card.

  She went to Teresa’s car, took the bulky canvas bag from the trunk and returned to the apartment.

  Three glasses of iced tea waited on the coffee table amidst the Tarot cards and crystals. The glasses all matched.

  Amanda sat on the sofa and took a big gulp. Cold, sweet, crisp…perfect. Was Teresa a good cook in addition to her cheerleading abilities? But they were friends now. Amanda wasn’t going to feel jealous of the other woman’s talents.

  Charley wrapped both hands around his glass, lowered his face to the amber liquid then looked up and smiled. “Excellent.”

  Teresa sat on the floor and pulled the canvas tote bag over to her. “One of these days, Charley,” she said, “you won’t miss food and drink.”

  “Maybe we could get started on helping him to move to that higher plane soon. Like tonight,” Amanda suggested.

  “Sure.” Teresa turned the bag upside down and several neat bundles of money fell out along with a passport and a flash drive.

  Amanda looked at them, wondering if she should put on gloves before she touched them so she wouldn’t contaminate any lingering fingerprints.

  Teresa had no such reservations. She picked up the two objects and studied them. “Anthony used computers all the time. You could be right. There may be something on here that will lead the police to his killer.”

  “I don’t think you’ll get in trouble for not telling the cops about all this,” Amanda said. “Okay, maybe a little trouble, like they might yell at you, but that’s no big deal. If you’re really worried, you could tell them these items slipped into a pocket in the bag, and you just now noticed them.”

  Teresa nodded. “I suppose I should take this stuff to them.” She picked up a stack of bills. “But there’s no point in mentioning the exact amount of the money. Agreed?”

  “Agreed.” Amanda took another sip of tea. “So are you going to call them now and tell them about the break-in?”

  “Do you think I should? What am I going to tell them? That I sense a dark presence has been in my kitchen? That somebody moved my grandmother’s recipe and dribbled flour on my counter? Nothing was taken. Underwear and sheets are all accounted for.”

  Amanda thought of how much grief the cops had given her when she’d tried to tell them someone had broken into her apartment and stolen her gun. In Teresa’s case, nothing was missing and there were no visible signs of forced entry. “Up to you.”

  Teresa chewed her bottom lip for a couple of moments. “I don’t think so. I think I want to have as little to do with the cops as possible.”

  “Wise decision,” Charley said.

  “In fact,” Teresa continued, “since you know those guys and they’re not trying to pin a murder on you, why don’t you take the flash drive and passport in for me?”

  “Me? No. You should do it.”

  “You live closer to the substation than I do.”

  “Yeah, but…” Amanda hesitated. “Okay, I’ll do it if you’ll start working on Charley’s progress into the light tonight.”

  “I will if he’ll try to contact Anthony first.”

  “He will.”

  “I will?” Charley looked confused.

  “Of course. Why not?” Amanda asked.

  Charley nodded uncertainly. “It just feels a little strange, having you all talk about me like I’m not here.”

  “Please?” Teresa asked, giving him a big smile.

  “Oh, all right, I’m in.”

  “Okay, deal,” Teresa said.

  “Deal,” Amanda confirmed.

  Teresa handed the passport and flash drive to Amanda then began arranging her crystals and lighting her candles.

  Amanda opened the passport and studied the picture. Similar to the one Teresa had given Charley, but in this one he looked grim. However, passport pictures made pretty much everybody look grim.

  Joe Richards.

  “Have you tried looking for bank accounts in this name?”

  Teresa halted in her preparations for the ceremony. “No. Any idea how I’d go about that?”

  “I don’t, but Dawson will. I’ll let him take a look at the passport and flash drive before I take them to the cops. The data must be important or Anthony wouldn’t have put it in the safe.”

  “I guess so. Or it might just contain pornographic pictures of the bimbo.”

  “I suppose that’s possible, but I’m thinking something a little more interesting, like maybe names of people who threatened his life.”

  Teresa gave a short, unamused laugh. “I don’t think that list would fit on a flash drive. You’d need a couple of terabytes for that. He scammed a lot of people out of a lot of money.”

  Amanda held up the passport. “The bimbo may be on that list. Remember, there’s only one passport here.”

  “I never liked her, but if she had the guts to kill him, I may have to rethink my opinion of her.”

  *~*~*

  By the time Amanda arrived home that evening, dusk was settling in and Dawson had closed the shop and gone home. She lifted the large overhead door and put her bike inside.

  The evening had been interesting but not very productive. Despite Teresa’s best efforts, Charley had not been able to contact Anthony, nor had Charley moved even one inch further toward the light and away from her. She couldn’t prove it, but she suspected he wasn’t trying very hard to do either.

  She slammed down the kickstand, got off the bike and removed her helmet. Charley was right beside her, a place he’d rarely been in life but always was in death. “Are you sure you’re really trying to reach Anthony?” she accused. “Are you sure you’re not worried Teresa will move you into the light and you won’t be able to annoy me anymore?”

  “Of course I’m trying! I don’t know how to contact dead people. I’m not a medium. I don’t know why she can’t get hold of him. When I died, I came straight to you, Amanda. I didn’t avoid you like he’s doing to her.”

  “Come off it! You have no idea how you got stuck to me. You admitted you just showed up.” Amanda pushed past him, locked the large door and went outside through the regular entrance, locking it behind her.

  “That’s true,” Charley admitted, “but I think it was because I was worried about you and knew you’d need my help.”

  “I seriously doubt that.” Amanda climbed the outside stairs to her apartment.

  Charley floated up beside her. “You can’t prove that’s not what happened.”

  “No, but you can’t prove it is. However, if what you say is true, you’ve already told me who killed you. That man is in prison and I’m safe, so why haven’t you moved on?”

&nb
sp; Charley didn’t hesitate. “You still need me to take care of you. For one thing, if I wasn’t around, you might get involved with that awful Detective Daggett.”

  Yes, Amanda thought. I might. But I certainly won’t with Charley around.

  *~*~*

  Amanda was sleeping soundly when her cell phone rang. It was still dark outside. Probably a wrong number. She pulled the pillow over her ears.

  “It’s Teresa!” Charley announced, and a cold feeling on her shoulder told her he was trying to shake her awake. “You need to answer!”

  Teresa?

  Amanda checked her bedside clock. Three in the morning. What was Teresa doing up at that hour?

  She reached for her phone and put it to her ear. “Do you know what time it is? You better be dying.”

  “Close.”

  At the word and the tension in Teresa’s voice, Amanda sat up, wide awake. “Define close. Are you hurt? Did the burglar come back? What’s wrong?”

  “No, the burglar didn’t come back. I talked to Anthony.”

  Amanda knew Teresa talked to dead people. So did she, for that matter. Well, one dead person. But the news still surprised her. “You did? How did you finally reach him?”

  Charley put his head close to the back of the phone as if trying to listen. Amanda turned her head away from him, but he moved with her. Couldn’t even have a private conversation with her new best friend in the middle of the night.

  “I didn’t contact him. He came to me. I was asleep when I heard his voice.”

  A dull roaring noise sounded in her ears. Probably the result of Charley’s head halfway through hers. “That’s good, right? What did he say? Did he tell you who killed him?”

  “No. He said he can’t tell me until I give back the things I took from his safe.”

  “What? What use is he going to have for money on the other side?” Charley might yearn to taste food and drink, but he’d never said anything about money even though he’d been quite fond of it while alive.

  “None, of course. But he says my taking the money and other things so close to the time he was killed has created some sort of link holding him between here and there.”

  “Wow. I have enough trouble dealing with the real world. I mean, this world. I guess there’s a whole different set of rules on the other side. Have you ever heard of something like that happening before?”

  “No, but remember, I’m just now starting to really explore my gift. I used to talk to dead people only when they talked to me, and I sort of accepted it as normal. I don’t know all the rules. This is new territory for me too.”

  “So he can’t tell you who killed him because you took his stuff or he won’t tell you?”

  “He says he can’t, but I don’t know if I believe him. I told him I thought somebody had been in my apartment and maybe that person was trying to steal the money. He confirmed that his killer had been there searching for the money and that I’m in danger as long as I have it in my possession.”

  Amanda shivered in the warm night air. “So if you get rid of it, how will the killer know you don’t have it anymore?”

  “Anthony will tell me his name and I can tell the cops so they can arrest him. I really think he’s lying and he could tell me if he wanted to, but he’s blackmailing me. He won’t tell me until I give back the money. If he can’t have that money, he doesn’t want me to have it either.”

  “How are you going to give it back?” Amanda had a vision of Teresa handing the money to a ghostly figure of her husband, and the money falling through him to the floor.

  “It’s a symbolic thing. I have to take the money, the passport and the flash drive, put them in a bag that’s all natural fiber and take it to the nearest Goodwill store exactly at midnight tomorrow night. I’m to leave the bag on the top of the bin along with a message saying all the proceeds should go to the poor.”

  “That’s…interesting. What are the poor going to do with a flash drive and a phony passport?”

  “Maybe somebody will donate a computer to go with the flash drive. As for the passport, it’s—”

  “I know. Symbolic. Did you ask him what was on the flash drive and what he was planning to do with that passport?”

  “Yes. He admitted he was going to get out of the country because of the SEC stuff. He said that flash drive has encrypted pictures of him and the bimbo, just like I thought. He realizes now that he was a bad person, and he’s sorry and all that. Blah, blah, blah. Too little, too late. He’s ruined my life, and if I have to give back that money, I’ll be even worse off. But I don’t know what else to do. So I need you to bring back that passport and flash drive. We can’t take it to the cops. I have to give it to Goodwill. I wonder if he’d know if I only left part of the money. Ask Charley what he thinks.”

  Charley moved away and shrugged. “She knows more about this other life stuff than I do.”

  “Did you hear that, Teresa? He doesn’t know.”

  The roaring noise continued even though Charley had removed himself from her ear. Had he permanently damaged her hearing?

  Teresa sighed. “I guess I’ll have to do it. He refuses to even show himself until we get that little task out of the way. Said he couldn’t. I don’t know if I believe him. I think he’s just being mean.”

  “Charley says he can’t lie anymore. I would think the same restraint would apply to Anthony.”

  “You would think. But I’m not sure Charley was ever as evil as Anthony.”

  Amanda looked at Charley and thought about the things he’d done, including blackmailing her dad. “Oh, yeah. I think he was. I’ll bring the flash drive and passport back this evening.” As soon as she made a copy of both of them.

  They ended the call, and Amanda sat on the edge of the bed with the phone in her hand, trying to take in everything Teresa had said. The woman’s psychic abilities were genuine, so if she said she had talked to her deceased husband, she probably had. Amanda’s only knowledge of the rules on the other side came from Charley, and he’d never been a fan of rules.

  The roaring persisted even though Charley was all the way across the room. Had the wind risen in the night?

  “I’m wide awake now,” she said. “I’m going downstairs and copy the flash drive onto the computer then scan the passport.”

  “Good idea,” Charley said. “Sounds to me like there may be something on there that Anthony doesn’t want anybody to see, something besides nude pictures.”

  Amanda shrugged. “We already know about the phony passport and his plans to leave the country. What else could there be?”

  “I don’t know, but let’s have a look and find out.”

  Amanda couldn’t deny she was curious about the contents of that drive.

  She pulled on a pair of jeans, crossed the room and opened the front door. For a moment she thought she’d talked to Teresa so long it was already morning and the sun was rising.

  But a glance across the parking lot told her it wasn’t morning. Her truck was on fire.

  Chapter Eight

  “Omigawd!” Amanda ran down the stairs in her bare feet. With each step down, each step closer to the fire, the temperature got hotter. The truck was several feet away from the shop, but the flames were shooting high into the darkness, licking ominously close to a couple of trees.

  “The truck’s on fire!” Charley shouted.

  “Really? How can you tell?” Amanda darted to the shop door and unlocked it with trembling fingers. Was the fire going to reach her building? Was she going to lose her motorcycle? Her customers’ motorcycles? All her clothes except the jeans and nightshirt she was wearing? Was she current on her insurance premiums? How could that stupid truck be burning? She never put much gas in it because she was never sure how much longer the ancient vehicle would run.

  Snatching a fire extinguisher from the wall, she started back out then hesitated and darted around the bikes and bike parts to the room with the phone.

  She set the passport and flash drive down
on the desk, lifted the receiver and dialed 911, reported the fire then grabbed the fire extinguisher and ran back outside.

  “Hurry!” Charley said, darting dangerously close to the flames.

  She rushed toward the blaze, hefting the fire extinguisher that suddenly seemed very small. “Be careful!” she warned Charley. “You’re going to get burned.” As soon as the words left her mouth, she realized how absurd she sounded.

  He darted through the flames and back to her, screaming as if in pain, then smiling as though he’d performed a delightful trick.

  “Not funny!” She lifted the nozzle of the fire extinguisher and pointed it at the truck.

  By the time the fire truck arrived with sirens screaming, her extinguisher was empty and the blaze was dying down more from running its course than from her pitiful attempts to stop it.

  The firemen made short work of dousing the remaining flames.

  One man took off his helmet and gloves then approached her while the others packed up their equipment.

  “Are you the person who called 911?”

  “Yes. I own this place.” She gave him her name, address and phone number, and he wrote it on a form.

  “How did this fire start?” he asked.

  “I have no idea. I was inside.” She indicated her second floor apartment. “I heard a roaring noise, but I thought it was…” She looked at Charley who stood by her side. Probably not a good idea to tell the fireman she had thought the noise was her ex-husband’s ghost with his head inside her ear. Did firemen have the authority to haul her off to the mental hospital? “I thought it was the wind.”

  “There’s no wind.”

  “I was inside. I didn’t know that.”

  He nodded. “Any idea how long the fire had been burning when you called us?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe ten minutes. Fifteen. A while but not long.” How long had she talked to Teresa?

  “The sound of the fire woke you?”

  “No. I was already awake. I was on the phone with a friend.”

  He nodded again, seemingly unsurprised that someone would be on the phone chatting with a friend at that hour. “The fire marshal will come back tomorrow when things have cooled down to do an investigation. Your insurance company will need that information.”