Amanda selected a piece of the lukewarm pizza. “Why don’t you take the rest of this to Grant? Go home early.”
“No,” Dawson protested. “We got in a new paint job today and I need to get started on it.”
“Tomorrow’s only a few hours away. Go home. Get rested up so you’ll be able to deal with the extra work I’m going to dump on you.”
Dawson left with a grin and the pizza, and Amanda continued to work. Not the paint job, of course. That was strictly Dawson’s specialty.
When the sunlight streaming through the west windows of the shop turned to a soft dusk, she set aside the greasy parts and wiped her hands on a towel.
“Are we heading to Teresa’s now?” Charley asked, going through the motions of wiping his hands. Though he could no longer work on motorcycles, he seemed to enjoy pretending while Amanda worked and often gave advice, some of it valid.
“I’m calling her right now to tell her we’re on our way.”
She punched the number on her cell phone.
Teresa answered on the first ring. “I was getting worried. It’s almost eight o’clock.”
“We have plenty of time. He said you have to do this at midnight, right?”
“Yes.”
“See you in a bit.” She’d wait until she got there to tell Teresa she was going to accompany her.
Amanda locked the shop and went upstairs. After a quick shower, she dressed and tucked the envelope containing the phony passport and blank thumb drive into her motorcycle bag.
When she threaded a belt through the loops of her jeans and added the holster holding her latest acquisition, a small Colt Mustang .380, Charley protested. “Why are you doing that? Are you planning to shoot Teresa?”
“I’m planning to go with her to the drop site.” She smoothed her T-shirt over the gun. “How does it look? Am I printing?”
“Are you what?”
“Printing. Can you see the gun?”
“No, you just look like you’re fat on one side.”
“Thank you. I know I can always count on you to say the right thing.” Amanda grabbed her leather jacket and headed out the door.
“So you think you’re going to shoot Anthony’s ghost? Sometimes I worry about you, Amanda.”
As Amanda continued down the steps, she thought of her father’s oft-repeated words: Never point a gun, loaded or unloaded, at anybody unless you’re ready to kill that person, and when you start firing, don’t stop until you run out of bullets.
That advice didn’t apply to the present situation. If she started shooting at Charley, she’d only succeed in blowing holes in her own building.
*~*~*
Teresa was waiting with three glasses of red wine. “I’m so glad you’re here.” She sat on the sofa and lifted a half full glass to her lips. “I’m freaking out about this whole situation. If I leave these things with Goodwill, Anthony might still refuse to tell me who killed him. I wonder if it’s possible there’s something on that flash drive that might lead us to his killer and get the cops off my case and he doesn’t want them to have it.”
Amanda set the envelope on the coffee table, took a seat on the sofa and lifted her glass of wine. “I’ve thought about the same things. I had Dawson take a look at what’s on that drive, and it’s not pictures. It’s bank accounts in four different countries.”
Teresa shook her head but didn’t look surprised. “That lying SOB.”
“It would seem he doesn’t have to abide by the same rules Charley does.”
Charley, sitting on the sofa between them, looked up from sniffing his wine glass. “I don’t lie.”
“But he can still be deceitful and give false impressions and make up lies for me to tell,” Amanda explained.
Charley opened his mouth as if to protest, then turned back to his wine sniffing.
Teresa lowered her glass to the table. “Anthony lied about what’s on the flash drive. So what else did he lie about?”
“I have…Charley has a theory.” Give credit where credit was due. “He suggested it’s possible Anthony’s not interested in the passport at all. He’s trying to get you to give somebody the money you took from his safe as well as the information to get into those bank accounts. I find it highly suspicious that he wants you to put the items on top of the bin rather than throw them inside. If you stick them inside, it would make it difficult for somebody to retrieve them, whereas if you leave them on the top, somebody can just stroll by and pick them up.”
“Somebody?”
“His partner, whoever that is.”
Teresa’s eyes narrowed and her nostrils flared. “Probably the bimbo.” She took a long drink of wine. “People on the other side worry about the ones they loved who’re still here. Good example, my grandmother warned me not to marry Anthony.”
“I try to take care of Amanda,” Charley said. “I worry about her. I watch over her.”
Charley was getting awfully close to breaking the lying barrier. “The bimbo is actually my choice for a murder suspect,” Amanda said, “but I’d really like to know who’s going to pick up that stuff. It will give the cops somebody else to focus on instead of you.”
“I don’t know anyone else it could be except the bimbo. He didn’t have any friends.” She emptied her glass of wine. “So it’s possible that jerk may be so concerned about his bimbo that he’s working from the other side to get money to her, even if it means I go to prison for murdering him? Not enough he jacked over me completely in this life, now he’s doing it from the other side.” She picked up the wine bottle and poured herself another glass.
“We don’t know that it’s the bimbo. It doesn’t need to be a friend, just a business partner, somebody who helped him run a scam.”
Teresa’s eyes blazed with dark, angry fire. “No, he wouldn’t do this for somebody who was just a business partner. This has to be personal. It sounds exactly like something he’d do. He is such a dick. And yes, I’m speaking in the present tense. Even in the spirit world, he’s being a dick. That man is going to have to reincarnate about twenty times before he even makes it to the first level. He’ll probably come back as a goat next time. No, scratch that. Goats are nice animals. A cockroach. He’s on the level of a cockroach.”
It was a good thing Teresa was taking the angry route instead of the sad one. Anger worked much better than grief when it came to dealing with lying, cheating, dead spouses, but right now wasn’t the appropriate time. They had to be calm and logical to make Amanda’s plan work.
“Okay, here’s what I think we should do,” she said. “We put a fake passport and flash drive in a bag along with stacks of cut-up newspaper with a few dollar bills on the front and back and drop it off then hide and wait to see who picks it up.”
Teresa nodded. “I like that idea. Catch the bimbo in the act. I think she killed him.”
“Surely he wouldn’t want to pass on his money to his murderer.”
“I don’t know. People are different once they’re on the other side. Maybe it’s so wonderful over there, he’s forgiven her for killing him. Or maybe he’s just so infatuated with her, he doesn’t care if she killed him.” She compressed her lips. “I don’t think they have sex on the other side, but nobody’s ever said one way or the other. That might explain a lot. I’ll get some magazines.” She set down her wine and went to her bedroom.
Amanda looked at Charley. “Did you forgive Kimball for killing you?”
Charley took a final sniff of his wine then sat upright. “I don’t know. I wanted to see him in prison, but that was mostly because he was causing you problems.”
So the bimbo could be both partner and murderer. That certainly put a new light on events.
Teresa returned with several magazines, a handful of rubber bands, a pair of manicure scissors and her purse.
She settled on the floor, took a few dollar bills from her wallet and tossed them onto the coffee table. “Only one pair of scissors. We can take turns cutting and bundling.” She pic
ked up a fashion magazine and began snipping viciously.
Amanda lifted the envelope containing the fake passport and flash drive from the coffee table. Guilt stabbed through her gut and sat heavily on her shoulders. She liked Teresa. No matter how justified she might feel in her actions, she couldn’t lie to her. She cleared her throat and Teresa looked up, eyes wide and trusting. The guilt settled into a painful knot in her stomach.
“I have to tell you something.”
Teresa waited.
Amanda cleared her throat again. She could feel the blood rushing to her cheeks. “I gave the real passport and flash drive to the cops. These are replacements. I was afraid there might be evidence on the originals that would clear you and Anthony didn’t want you cleared.”
Teresa laid her magazine and manicure scissors on the coffee table and studied Amanda.
“I’m sorry!” Amanda lifted her hands to the sides of her face and pressed against her temples which were starting to throb. So much for having a new friend. “I didn’t mean to deceive you. I know I should have asked you first but I was afraid you’d say no and then the evidence would be lost forever.”
Teresa dabbed at her eyes and sniffed. “That is so sweet.”
“It is?”
“That you were trying to help me and you told me the truth.” She smiled, picked up her magazine and resumed clipping but with much less anger. “I already knew. Ross called earlier to ask me some more questions. He thought I knew you’d taken the items in. I didn’t tell him anything different. I think when this is all over and they catch the killer, he’s going to ask me out.”
“You knew all along? But you didn’t say anything? You’re not mad at me?”
Teresa continued to clip. “I was a little upset at first, but Ross mentioned how concerned you were about proving my innocence. I don’t think anybody’s ever stood up for me or taken my side my whole life.” She looked up from her work. “That means a lot, and if you felt you had to deceive me to do it…” She set an irregularly shaped, vaguely dollar bill sized piece of magazine on the coffee table. “Everything has a price.”
Amanda looked at Charley who had remained atypically silent. She thought he looked slightly smug at the justification of lying, his former favorite pastime.
“No,” Amanda said. “That’s not right. There’s no price on my friendship, and lying isn’t right. Well, lying to a friend isn’t right. It’s okay to occasionally lie to somebody who’s trying to kill you and sometimes to the cops, but not to a friend. I need you to accept my apology.”
Teresa stared at her for a long moment then smiled. “Okay. Deal. I accept your apology and your friendship. But I think I need your help cutting up these stupid magazines or we’re going to be here all night.”
Amanda picked up one of the magazines, tore out a page, folded it in half and tore, then repeated the procedure until she had a pile of rectangles no more imperfect than Teresa’s versions. “We only have to fool him long enough to see who he is.”
“Or she.”
“Oh, yes, Brianna. Does she have a last name?”
“Brianna Carroll. And she looks just like that name sounds. She’s skinny and blond and has a thin little nose.”
“I hate skinny women,” Amanda said.
Teresa grinned. “And I hate blond women with thin noses.”
Amanda settled into her magazine shredding with a warm feeling. Sure, part of that feeling came from the wine, but a lot of it came from spending the evening with a girlfriend plotting the downfall of a cheating ghost ex-husband.
*~*~*
A few minutes before midnight Teresa pulled into the alley behind the Goodwill store and Amanda got out of the car. She strolled casually along the sidewalk toward the corner, arms at her sides in case she needed to pull out the .380. Passing a laundromat, a discount store and several vacant units, she scanned the area for suspicious people, especially skinny blond women with thin noses.
A man in shabby clothes sat on the curb, smoking a cigarette. He glanced up at her and mumbled something. She reached a hand under her T-shirt and flipped open the thumb break of her holster, ready to draw her gun if necessary. The man looked down to the street again and continued mumbling. He wasn’t talking to her. He could be talking to Anthony for all she knew.
Across the street a bearded man lounged against a vacant building, drinking from something inside a paper sack. Probably not a Coke. For a moment she thought it might be Ronald Collins. He had the beard, but he had too much hair.
She continued down the sidewalk.
Anthony certainly hadn’t shown any concern for Teresa’s safety when he’d instructed her to come to this part of town at midnight. Maybe in his current state he was unaware of the dangers of the physical world. Or maybe he was just a douche.
Before they left Teresa’s apartment she had produced from her designer bag a small purple stun gun that she claimed would effectively disable anyone who bothered her. Amanda chose to put her faith in guns with real bullets, but at least Teresa wasn’t totally defenseless.
“That homeless guy’s looking at you,” Charley said.
Teresa didn’t even have her own personal ghost to warn her about perverts but Amanda did. She turned back to glare at the guy sitting on the curb. He immediately lowered his gaze and began talking to the street once more.
Amanda passed the Goodwill store, making note of the metal bin in front where Teresa was to leave Anthony’s stuff then continuing on across the street. After a final glance at her surroundings, she sat down on the curb.
She should have thought to bring a bottle of Coke inside a paper bag. That would have helped her blend in like the guy on the other side of the street. He still lounged against the building though he’d lowered his bag and was watching her. When her gaze settled on him, he looked away and again lifted the bag to his mouth.
She could really use a Coke. This whole business was making her nervous. She ducked her head, stared at the street and tried to look inconspicuous.
Charley sat down beside her.
A car pulled up and stopped.
“Here comes Teresa,” Charley said. “She’s getting out of the car and walking toward the store. She’s holding the bag so anybody watching can see it. Oh, that homeless guy looked up and said something to her.”
“Don’t even think about it!” Teresa said loudly.
No zapping noise ensued so Amanda assumed Teresa hadn’t used her little purple stun gun.
“He’s talking to the street again,” Charley reported. “You don’t have to shoot him.”
“I’m glad,” Amanda whispered. “Shooting people makes such a mess.”
“Yeah,” Charley agreed. “Kimball made a big hole in my chest and got blood all over the apartment.”
Amanda cringed. She hadn’t been thinking when she’d made her snarky comment about shooting people, but it seemed Charley didn’t mind discussing the gory details of his own demise. Further evidence that Anthony might not view his own death as a crime and could be turning his money over to his murderer. Or murderess.
“She put the bag on top of the bin. Now she’s turning around and heading back to her car. She’s driving away, going around the corner.”
Now they waited. Teresa would drive a few blocks then double back and park in the alley until something happened or didn’t happen and Charley summoned her. That was their plan.
Amanda shifted her position. Sitting on a curb wasn’t all that comfortable, and her leather motorcycle jacket was uncomfortably warm when she wasn’t moving through the air at seventy miles an hour.
“Somebody’s coming,” Charley reported. “It’s a woman, a blond woman.”
Amanda held her breath. The bimbo?
“I knew it!” Teresa shouted.
Damn! This wasn’t anywhere in the plan.
Amanda shot to her feet and whirled to see Teresa converging on the skinny blond woman who wore a very short skirt and knee high boots. She had a thin nose and big boobs.
Had to be Brianna.
“Get away from me!” Brianna tried to sidestep Teresa’s grasp but stumbled in her four-inch heels, falling into the lap of the man who talked to the street.
“Hey!” the bum protested, shoving Brianna away.
Teresa grabbed the woman’s arm and yanked her up. “You’re not getting one penny of that money!”
“Let go of me!”
The man rose and tried to push Teresa away from Brianna. “Don’t do that!”
Amanda rushed up to intervene. “It’s all right. They know each other!”
“Women shouldn’t fight!” He grabbed Teresa’s arm with a bony hand.
Teresa shook him off and focused on Brianna. “How dare you think you could get away with this!”
“Teresa, what is wrong with you? Stop!” Amanda clutched ineffectually at the battling hands of the women.
“Get away from me, you crazy bitch!” Brianna yanked at Teresa’s silk blouse, ripping off two buttons. “No wonder Anthony left you!”
“I’m placing you under citizen’s arrest for killing him!”
“Good job, Teresa!” Charley’s hands struck each other in silent applause.
“I didn’t kill him! You killed him because he dumped you for me!”
The man from the curb lifted his arms in a defensive gesture. “I didn’t kill anybody!”
Amanda tried to get between the two struggling women. “Let’s talk about this! You came to get the money,” she accused Brianna. “How did you know it would be here?”
“I came to see Anthony!” Brianna shrieked. “He loves me!”
“He’s dead. You killed him and now you want my money!” Teresa struggled to hold Brianna’s arms.
“He didn’t say anything about any money! He said he has to move on and he wanted to see me one more time!” Brianna freed one arm from Teresa’s grasp and reached for Teresa’s hair but caught Amanda’s instead.
“Ouch!”
“He couldn’t have told you that!” Teresa shouted. “You can’t talk to dead people. I’m the one who talks to dead people!”
“You talk to dead people?” the bum asked, his dilated pupils becoming even more dilated.
Brianna released Amanda’s hair, jutted her chin and looked down her thin nose at Teresa. “Well, he did! His spirit came to me last night and told me to meet him here, and you ruined everything! I hate you!”
3 The Ex Who Conned a Psychic Page 10
