3 The Ex Who Conned a Psychic

by Sally Berneathy

  “I hate you more!” Teresa lunged for the girl’s throat, but Amanda wedged herself between the two of them.

  “He must have talked to her or she wouldn’t be here.” Amanda turned to Brianna. “But Teresa’s right. You’re not getting the money.”

  “What money are you crazy bitches talking about?” Brianna threw her arms into the air. “I came here to say goodbye to the man I love!”

  “You didn’t come to pick up…” Amanda turned to gesture to the canvas bag on the metal bin at the end of the block.

  It was gone.

  Chapter Ten

  Teresa’s mouth fell open. She turned to Brianna. “How did you do that?”

  “She didn’t.” Amanda looked around but saw no one except the three of them, the bum who talked to himself and, of course, Charley. Even the man across the street who’d been drinking from a paper bag was gone. Probably terrified the crazy women were going to attack him.

  Or maybe…

  She looked at Charley. “Did you see anybody close to the bag?”

  “No,” Brianna, Charley and the bum who’d become embroiled in their fight answered at the same time.

  “She’s not talking to you,” Teresa snapped at Brianna.

  The man backed away. “I swear I didn’t see anybody.”

  “I was watching you all.” Charley grinned. “I always did enjoy a good cat fight.”

  “I’ll deal with you later.”

  She was talking to Charley, but the bum didn’t know that. He flinched and turned to leave. Amanda laid a hand on his arm before he could get away. “There was a bag on top of that bin,” she said, trying to sound calm and not freak him out any more than they already had. “Someone took it. Did you see who did it? How about that man who was standing across the street? Do you know who he was?”

  The bum snatched his arm away. “I gotta go. I got an appointment with the president.” He turned and walked down the street in a shambling but hurried manner.

  Charley darted after the man. “Are you going to let him get away?”

  Amanda spread her arms. “What do you want me to do? Shoot him?”

  At her last words, the man began to run.

  “Damn it!” Amanda sank to the curb and put her head in her hands.

  Teresa sat down beside her. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have run out like that. I just got so mad when I saw that woman.”

  “I hate you!” Brianna shouted. “You killed Anthony so I couldn’t have him and now you and your friend kept me from saying goodbye to him.” She began to sob.

  “Oh, stuff it!” Teresa ordered. “You’ll wash those stupid false eyelashes off and you’ll look like a raccoon.”

  Amanda rose. “Do you have a phony passport?”

  “What?” One eyelash hung lopsided, and Brianna did indeed resemble a raccoon with her mascara smudged beneath both eyes.

  “Your lover had a passport in a phony name and he moved all his money to foreign bank accounts.”

  Brianna’s raccoon eyes widened.

  “He was planning to leave the country. If you didn’t have a phony passport too, I guess he didn’t plan to take you with him.”

  Brianna sobbed more enthusiastically. That was sufficient answer to that question.

  Amanda slid her cell phone from her pocket and resumed her seat on the curb. “We’ve got to call Jake.”

  Teresa shook her head. “No!”

  “Yes! I don’t know what’s going on with her.” She nodded toward Brianna. “But somebody took the bag. This was a setup. It proves Anthony had a partner. He probably lured the bimbo here just to have a diversion so we wouldn’t see his partner take the bag.”

  Teresa glared up at the sobbing woman. “He wasn’t going to say good-bye. He didn’t love you. He just used you!”

  “You’re mean!” Brianna said between sobs.

  Amanda located Jake’s cell number and touched the screen to call him. “You’ll get to see Ross again.”

  Teresa yanked the phone away from Amanda. “That’s exactly why you can’t call them. How are we going to explain to them that we came to be here in the middle of the night, delivering a bag full of phony money?”

  “He knows you’re a psychic.” From the corner of her eye, Amanda saw Brianna start moving away. “Stop!” she ordered, and to her astonishment, the woman halted in her tracks. “Stay right there!”

  The girl continued to sob but didn’t move.

  Teresa glanced at Brianna then turned her attention back to Amanda. “It’s one thing for Ross to know I’m a professional psychic. But if he thinks I really talk to dead people and that Anthony told me to bring his money and passport to the Goodwill store, he’s going to think I’m a nut job!”

  “It’s okay for Ross to think you’re a fake psychic but you wouldn’t want him to know you’re the real thing?”

  “I guess that would be the same reason you haven’t told Jake about Charley.”

  “Yeah, she does try to keep me a secret.” Charley affected a sad expression, a bad imitation of a basset hound.

  “Okay, I’ll try to minimize the psychic factor, but we’ve got to either call in the cops or get out of here. By now whoever took that bag realizes it’s not the real thing, and he may be coming back. And he’s not going to be happy with us.” Amanda held out her hand and Teresa returned her phone. “Besides, I’m not so sure it was actually Anthony who told you to do this. You said you didn’t see him. How about you?” She turned to Brianna.

  The girl wiped her eyes, smearing the black stuff more. One lash came off on her hand. “No, I didn’t see him. It was dark. He woke me up in the middle of the night. I don’t see why he’d talk to you when he loved me.”

  “You’re obviously not familiar with the rules for spirits,” Teresa snapped.

  “And you are?” Brianna put a hand on her hip and sneered at Teresa.

  “She is,” Amanda assured her. “So neither of you saw him. You only heard a voice. Are you sure it was Anthony’s voice?”

  “Of course I’m sure,” Brianna said. “I know the voice of my beloved.”

  Teresa thought for a moment. “It sounded sort of like Anthony, but it was a little different. Hollow. Like it was coming from far away. Of course, he is far away.”

  “Has that happened with anybody before? That you could hear but not see the person?”

  “No, but I never stole anything from anybody before. He said that was why I couldn’t see him, because he was stuck in between.”

  “You stole from Anthony?” Brianna put both hands on her hips. “You really are the wicked witch!”

  “Really?” Teresa stood, hands on her hips. “You stole a husband. What does that make you?”

  Brianna thrust out her chin. “I didn’t have to steal him. You were such a bad wife, you ran him off!”

  “That’s enough!” Amanda stepped between the two women in an effort to avoid another fight. “I’m calling the cops so let’s be on our best behavior.” She lifted her phone.

  Teresa gave a resigned sigh.

  “I’m not staying around for the cops,” Brianna said. “I talked to them once and they weren’t very nice.”

  “You were part of this. You need to stay here and talk to them,” Amanda protested.

  “Let her go,” Teresa said. “The cops know where she lives. They can track her down and haul her skinny butt to jail if they need to.”

  Brianna opened her mouth, but before she could continue the exchange of insults, Amanda waved an arm in her direction. “I’m tired of hearing it. Go. Leave. Now. Before I sic my private ghost, Charley, on you.”

  Brianna’s smudged eyes widened and she turned and teetered down the street in her four-inch heels.

  Charley chased after her, emitting melodramatic ghostly laughter.

  “Do they have therapists on the other side?” Amanda asked. “He needs help.”

  “Freud’s probably over there somewhere.”

  Amanda shook her head and dialed Jake’s num
ber.

  “Amanda?” Jake sounded sleepy and she wondered, not for the first time, if he regretted giving her his cell number.

  “Yeah, I’m sorry to call you so late, but we have information on the Hocker murder case. You and Ross probably need to come down here and check for trace evidence.” She gave him a brief recap of the last few minutes.

  “Why did you decide to leave the bag of phony money and passport on top of the Goodwill bin in the middle of the night?”

  “Teresa got a message saying she should do it, and we thought we could trap the murderer or Anthony’s partner or…somebody.” It sounded pretty lame when she said it.

  “Does Teresa have a copy of that message?”

  “No, it was…verbal.”

  Teresa gave her a thumbs-up sign and a smile.

  “All right. I’ll call Ross and we’ll be there as quick as we can.”

  Amanda disconnected the call. “They’re on their way. You can tell them whatever you want about the voice in the night. I have no idea what Brianna’s going to tell them.”

  Teresa sank down onto the curb again, put her elbows on her knees and rested her chin in her hands. “I have to tell them the truth.”

  Amanda sat beside her and Charley joined them in a semblance of sitting.

  “Do you think Anthony really talked to Brianna?” Amanda asked.

  “He must have or she wouldn’t have known to come here. Maybe he planned to tell her goodbye and move on as soon as his partner got the money.”

  “Or maybe it wasn’t his spirit at all. Maybe his flesh and blood partner pretended to be him. Maybe he was afraid you’d be here waiting for him, and he used her as a distraction so he could grab the cash and run.”

  Teresa grinned. “Really? You’re having a problem accepting that Anthony’s spirit is talking to his ex-wife and his mistress when Charley follows you everywhere you go?”

  Amanda couldn’t refute Teresa’s logic but she couldn’t quite accept it either. Her only experience with spirits was through Charley, but this whole situation reeked of earthbound greed.

  *~*~*

  Twenty minutes later a dark sedan pulled up to the curb. Amanda and Teresa rose to greet Jake and Ross.

  “Good evening, ladies.” Ross took his backpack from the trunk and turned to them with a gleaming smile. “Dallas’ finest at your service.”

  Jake stood for a minute looking around the area. “This isn’t the best part of town to be in this time of the night.”

  Amanda lifted her T-shirt to expose her weapon. “No problem. We’re both armed.”

  “I feel so much better knowing you two are running around town with guns.” He didn’t sound as if he felt so much better. In fact, he sounded downright sarcastic.

  “I just have a stun gun.” Teresa displayed her small purple weapon that resembled a cell phone more than a gun.

  Jake and Ross looked at each other but made no comment.

  “Okay,” Jake said, “what’s going on? Why are we all here in the middle of the night?”

  Ultimately there was no way around telling them that Teresa’s dead husband had been their source of information. To their credit, neither Jake nor Ross showed any sign of being shocked by Amanda’s recitation of the events leading up to their appearance at the Goodwill store in the middle of the night.

  Teresa lifted her chin. “I’m a psychic. I often talk to spirits.”

  “But this could have been somebody alive,” Amanda interjected. “Anthony’s partner. The person who took the bag tonight.”

  “That would be the person who’s going to be very disappointed when he discovers the contents are not what he’s expecting,” Jake pointed out. “Any idea who that person could be?”

  Teresa shook her head. “Anthony worked with a lot of people, but he wasn’t really close to anybody except, of course, the bimbo.”

  “If the bimbo—” Ross stopped and cleared his throat. “I mean, if Ms. Carroll was being used as a distraction, perhaps she knows who the other person is.”

  Teresa nodded. “I have no doubt she knows. All that BS about Anthony wanting to say goodbye to her…ha! She was here for the money, and she ran away as soon as she thought her partner had it. I’d really like to see her face when she realizes their little plan didn’t work. She said you talked to her. Does she have an alibi? She was probably skulking around the day Anthony was killed and saw me with him so she killed him because she thought she was losing him.”

  “We have talked to Ms. Carroll,” Jake assured them. “She has an alibi for the time of the murder.”

  “Then her partner did it. The man who took the bag. Are you going to dust that bin for fingerprints?” Teresa flung an arm toward the metal bin.

  “I’ll have a look, of course,” Ross said. “But there are probably thousands of prints on that thing, and if this mysterious person just grabbed the bag off the top, he may not have touched anything.”

  Amanda flinched. “You mean we got you two down here in the middle of the night for nothing?”

  “No,” Jake assured her. “What happened tonight is important, and we need to investigate the scene. Can you show me exactly where the man across the street was standing?”

  “And I need to know exactly where you placed that bag.” Ross set his backpack on the sidewalk then brought out a camera and some plastic baggies. “There may not be fingerprints, but that doesn’t mean the person didn’t leave some sort of evidence behind.”

  Amanda, Jake and Charley walked across the street. “Do you think Ross believes Teresa’s nuts because she talks to ghosts?” Amanda asked. Ross hadn’t seemed particularly perturbed with Teresa’s confession, and his eyes still twinkled when he looked at her. But Amanda was actually more interested in Jake’s reaction.

  “Ross? No, a little thing like talking to dead people won’t stop Ross from pursuing a beautiful woman.”

  “How about you? Would that sort of thing stop you from pursuing a woman?”

  Charley rolled his eyes. “Of course it would!”

  Jake looked at her, his lips tilting up in a grin. “I guess that would depend on the woman. Have you been talking to Teresa’s dead husband too?”

  “What if I have?”

  “Have you?”

  “No.”

  “Aren’t you going to admit that you talk to your own dead husband?” Charley demanded.

  Time for a change of subject. Amanda pointed to the boarded up window of the building next to them. “The man drinking out of a paper bag was standing right there.”

  She left Jake examining the area and walked across the street to where Teresa and Ross were doing more talking and laughing than examining. Obviously he was sufficiently enchanted with Teresa’s bubbly personality that it didn’t bother him to know she shared that bubbly personality with ghosts. Jake hadn’t given her even a clue about his attitude regarding that sort of thing, but she suspected he might not be as blithely unconcerned about it as Ross was.

  “Okay, you’re right,” Teresa said. “A lot of people came to our parties and got drunk and told Anthony how wonderful he was. But I wouldn’t consider any of those people friends. They were just business associates. Any of them would have a motive to kill him if they heard about the SEC investigation or when they realized he’d scammed them out of their savings.”

  Ross snapped a picture of what appeared to Amanda to be a crack in the sidewalk. “We’re looking into all those people, and there are enough to keep us busy for a while.”

  Teresa leaned close beside him as if she were fascinated with the crack in the sidewalk…or the man studying the crack. “What about the aliens?”

  Ross stood straight, looked at her uncertainly and blinked a couple of times.

  Amanda had the same reaction. She’d accepted Teresa’s ability to communicate with spirits since she was able to communicate with Charley. But…aliens?

  “You talk to aliens as well as dead people?”

  “They’re not really dead, you know. T
hey’ve just left their bodies. And of course I talked to the aliens. Anthony was never around to give them directions.”

  “Directions? To get home to their own galaxy? Was the compass on their flying saucer damaged?” From the look on Ross’ face, Amanda suspected they were getting close to the she’s beautiful but she’s just a little too nuts for me point.

  Teresa threw back her head and her light laughter filled the dark, empty streets. “No, silly! I mean illegal aliens, like from Mexico. About a year ago he fired our lawn service and started hiring illegal aliens for the yard work. He said he was doing it to help the men. Let them live in the guest quarters and paid them a small salary in cash. I thought maybe he was trying to become a better person so I worked with the first one to help him get his citizenship.” She shuddered. “But when Anthony found out, he threw one of his tantrums. Told me to stick to shopping and mind my own business.”

  “Do you have names for these people? Contact numbers? Relatives?”

  Amanda realized Jake had come up behind her and was holding his small notebook and pen.

  “There were three of them, and Anthony called each of them Juan. I thought that was pretty rude, but Anthony was a rude person. The men had names, and I do know them.”

  “How about other employees? Housekeeper? Pool boy? Chauffeur?” Ross asked. He had his own little pen and notebook. If somebody could get the contract to sell small notebooks and pens to cops, they could likely rake in a bundle.

  “Don’t be silly. We weren’t that wealthy. I had a housekeeping service and a pool service. They came once a week. Well, the pool service didn’t come during the winter, of course.”

  “And you had a lawn service until a year ago. What happened with that?”

  “I have no idea. Anthony fired them one day and a few days later, Juan One appeared.”

  “What happened to Juan One?”

  “His real name was Hector Garcia, and when Anthony found out he was applying for citizenship, he fired him. Called him ungrateful.”

  “What about Juan Two?”