3 The Ex Who Conned a Psychic

by Sally Berneathy

  As if the insults weren’t bad enough, now he was going to stink up her apartment. “No smoking in my home. You light that, and you’re a dead man.”

  He laughed, drew a lighter from his pocket and prepared to light up.

  Amanda stood, strode across the room and snatched the cigarette from his mouth. “I said, no smoking. Are you hard of hearing or just stupid?”

  Collins grabbed her wrist with one hand and pulled her so close she could smell the rotten stench of his breath. “No woman talks to me that way.”

  Now that she was closer, she could see the dark glittering in his eyes, eyes that seemed to be completely black with no iris. Did meth cause pupil dilation? It wasn’t something she’d thought about or researched. Janice had said he got more dangerous when he was on drugs. Whatever the problem was, it ramped up her levels of fear and anger.

  He laughed, the sound ugly and dark, erupting from his gut through the scraggly beard.

  “Amanda, I think he’s high.” Good old Charley. Master of the understatement.

  Amanda made no attempt to free her wrist but aimed her gun at his crotch. He was restraining her. Surely that gave her the right to shoot him.

  “Turn me loose.” She kept her voice calm though her insides were in turmoil. Was it true that someone on meth could take a gunshot and keep coming like the monsters in horror movies? She had five rounds in her .38. Would that be enough to stop him?

  His fingers tightened around her wrist and he jerked her closer. “You gonna shoot me if I don’t? Is that thing even loaded?”

  Charley floated up beside her. “Amanda, we got a problem.” Again with the understatement.

  “Don’t anybody move.”

  Amanda’s head jerked toward the bedroom, toward the sound of the new player.

  The first Ronald Collins, the one with hair and no beard, held Teresa in front of him, one arm around her throat, a Glock pressed to the side of her head.

  Chapter Seventeen

  His attention diverted, Collins’ grip around Amanda’s wrist loosened and she twisted away, hiding her gun behind her back. The man could shoot Teresa before Amanda could get her weapon aimed. She had to wait for the right time.

  “Who the hell are you?” Collins demanded. “What’s going on here?”

  “I want my property.” The man’s voice was firm and well-modulated as if he was accustomed to being obeyed.

  Two of them in her living room. Two bullets each and one to spare.

  “Your property?” she asked. “What are you talking about?”

  “Yeah, this place is my property!” Collins said.

  “It’s Anthony.” Teresa’s voice was small and choked.

  Amanda shook her head. “No. You’re dead. I mean, he’s dead.”

  Collins shot up from the sofa. “Who’s dead?”

  “Obviously I’m not dead. I’m alive and I want my passport and that flash drive.”

  Teresa gave a slight shake of her head, as much as she could in her restricted position.

  Amanda interpreted it as a warning not to admit she’d given the items to the cops. No problem there.

  Stall.

  “Who the hell are you?” Collins repeated. Limited vocabulary.

  “Sit down and shut up!” Amanda directed. She had to focus on the situation with Anthony. Bad enough she had to deal with Charley’s interference. Now she had another mouthy jerk in the room.

  “Who do you think you’re talking to, bitch?” Collins reached for Amanda again, but she stepped backward and he stumbled, barely righting himself before falling.

  “Okay, but you have to prove you’re Anthony Hocker,” she said to the man holding a gun to Teresa’s head. “As far as I know, you’re dead. I’m not giving anything to some imposter.”

  Anthony’s lips thinned and he jerked Teresa tighter. “Tell her who I am.”

  Teresa clutched at Anthony’s arm with both hands and made choking noises. He loosened his grip. “Tell her who I am!”

  “It’s Anthony.”

  “Not great validation when you’re choking her. You could make her say anything you want. If you’re Anthony, who do the police have in the morgue?”

  “Atta girl,” Charley encouraged. “You’re really good at frustrating people.”

  Amanda let that one go but saved it for later.

  “Somebody’s in the morgue?” Collins inched closer. “Who’s in the morgue? Amanda, have you been a bad girl?”

  “It’s Eduardo, isn’t it?” Teresa asked.

  “Eduardo was the same height and body build as me, the same hair and skin. I figured nobody would miss an illegal alien.”

  Amanda thought of the tears in Isabel’s eyes, of Eduardo’s widow and fatherless children in Mexico. “Somebody misses him.”

  “I really don’t care. I just want my passport and list of bank accounts so I can get the hell out of here.”

  Collins waved an arm toward the door. “Yeah, you need to get the hell out of here!” He took another step closer to Hocker and Teresa.

  Amanda moved into more of a direct path between the two. She couldn’t risk Collins doing something stupid and causing Anthony to shoot Teresa.

  Keep Teresa alive and stall until the cops got there. Janice’s words about how many women were assaulted or killed while waiting for the police to arrive echoed through her mind.

  “That was you outside the Mexican restaurant, wasn’t it? I thought it was him—” Amanda jerked her head in Collins’ direction— “but it was you, following Teresa. You were driving an old car.”

  “That clunker was all I could buy with the cash I had on hand because this bitch took my money. She’s been driving around in that flashy car of hers while I drive that piece of crap.” His face became even darker, the rage increasing.

  Perhaps that had not been a good choice of subject for stalling. Amanda’s mind went blank. She couldn’t come up with any other topics of conversation. Seen any good movies lately? probably wouldn’t work.

  “I don’t know who you people are, but you need to get out of here. Me and Amanda was having a nice little talk before you showed up.” Collins took another step toward Anthony who pressed the gun more tightly to Teresa’s head.

  “Back off, baldy, or I’ll shoot the bitch.”

  “You shut your mouth!” Collins lunged toward Teresa and Anthony.

  Charley ran between them, and Amanda threw herself at Collins. They both tumbled to the floor with her on top. Collins cursed and floundered to his knees.

  Amanda got to her feet but he grabbed her ankle with one hand and reached up toward her arm with the other. She had no choice. She couldn’t let him put Teresa’s life in jeopardy. She shoved the gun barrel against his hand and squeezed the trigger. He screamed. That was one hand that would never batter a woman again.

  Apparently what they said about meth users was true. He staggered to his feet and surged toward Hocker again. Amanda shot his right knee. Surely with no knee cap he couldn’t keep moving.

  He screamed and fell to the floor, holding his knee, cursing and bleeding all over her hardwood floors. Thank goodness she hadn’t put down new carpet.

  “Put the gun down,” Anthony ordered, his voice suddenly quiet. “Put the gun down now and get my passport and flash drive now. We’ve just run out of time. Somebody may have heard those shots.”

  “Call a doctor!” Collins begged. “That bitch shot me!”

  Amanda set her gun carefully on the coffee table and lifted her hands. “Okay, got it. Your things are in the safe downstairs in my shop. I’ll go get them.”

  “We’ll all go downstairs and get them.”

  “Okay. I just need my keys.”

  “Where are your keys?”

  “In the bedroom. You think I’d leave them out here where some intruder could get them?”

  “Help me!” Collins entreated. Amanda resisted the urge to kick him in his knee. She was barefoot and didn’t want to get his blood on her skin.

  Anthon
y stepped out of the doorway, tugging Teresa with him. Amanda slid past him, into the bedroom. Her keys lay on the nightstand next to Teresa’s little purple toy. She laid her hand on the keys then hesitated. She’d seen how powerful that stun gun was. She slid her other hand toward it.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Anthony ordered, and she jerked her hand back. “And you shut the hell up!” He kicked Collins in the head with a booted foot, and the meth man slumped unconscious on the floor.

  Amanda was glad she didn’t have to listen to him anymore, but Anthony had no right to do that. Collins was hers to hurt.

  She glared at him as she moved past him. “Dickhead.”

  “What did you say?” he demanded.

  She turned to face him. “Dick. Head.”

  Before he could respond, someone pounded on the front door. “Police! Open up!”

  Collins moaned.

  Anthony cursed.

  Charley darted through the door then came back. “It’s the cops all right. Two uniforms.”

  Beads of sweat broke out on Anthony’s forehead.

  “It’s over,” Amanda said. “Let her go.”

  “If you want your friend to live, you tell those cops to get in their car and drive away. Then we’ll all go downstairs, get my passport and bank accounts, and the three of us will drive until I’m sure we’re not being followed. Then you two will get out and walk while I leave the country. Otherwise, you can both die right now. I’ll go to prison, but you won’t be around to see it.”

  Amanda could see two major problems with that scenario. She could get him a copy of the numbers for his bank accounts, but she didn’t have the passport. The second problem was equally insurmountable. She couldn’t imagine him letting Teresa and her live when they knew the phony name on his passport and could alert authorities to that as well as his foreign bank accounts.

  He pulled Teresa tighter against him, and she gave a frightened squeak. “Get rid of them,” he said.

  She set her keys on the coffee table and lifted her hands in a gesture of surrender. “All right! Hold on, I’m coming!” she shouted. She went to the door and opened it a crack. Two uniformed police officers stood there. “Hi!” She tried to sound normal for Anthony’s benefit, but rolled her eyes to the side to let the officers know that things weren’t normal.

  “We had a 911 call about an intruder at this address.”

  “That wasn’t me.” She moved her eyes up and down in a nodding motion to indicate she was negating what she’d just said.

  “The caller gave the name Amanda Caulfield.”

  “I’m Amanda, but I didn’t call. It was probably my daughter.”

  “You don’t have a daughter,” Charley protested. “They’ll check and find out you don’t have a daughter and then they’ll know…oh, I see. Good idea!”

  “She went to a slumber party tonight,” Amanda continued, “and I let her take my cell phone, and you know what silly things those teenage girls can get up to.” She twisted her lips and made a negative motion with one hand.

  The officers exchanged dubious glances. The taller man shifted and dropped his hand to rest casually beside his gun. “We heard shots and screaming coming from your apartment.”

  “The shots, oh, yeah, the shots. I was cleaning my gun, and it went off.”

  The second officer frowned. “Twice?”

  “Yeah, pretty careless of me. I’m not very familiar with guns.” If they checked, they’d find she’d gone through training and had a permit to carry a concealed weapon.

  “And the screaming?”

  “Television. I was playing it really loud. It’s quiet and lonesome around here without my daughter.” She pointed her index finger with the other fingers folded, making the sign of a gun, then lifted her index finger to her chin and made a face.

  “Ma’am, are you all right?” the taller officer asked.

  “Oh, sure, I’m fine.”

  “You don’t seem fine. Are you having some kind of a seizure?”

  So much for her attempts to communicate. “I’m fine.”

  “We’d really like to come inside and talk with you.”

  “No! No, that wouldn’t be a good idea. The place is a mess. I haven’t had a chance to clean what with my daughter home for the summer.” If they did even the most cursory check on her, they’d realize she had no daughter and then they’d surely understand she’d been trying to tell them she needed help, that someone was inside with a gun, that they should bring the SWAT team, call out the negotiators, bring in the hounds, take some sort of action.

  “Ma’am, we don’t care what your house looks like.”

  “Oh, there goes the oven timer! I have to get back to my cake. It’s a wedding cake. I can’t let it overcook.”

  “Good one,” Charley said. “Everybody knows the only time you turned on that oven was by accident. You couldn’t bake a cake if somebody else mixed it for you.”

  Amanda could have done without Charley’s encouragement. She forced a phony smile to her lips. “Thank you so much for dropping by.”

  She closed the door and turned back into the room.

  Nothing had changed. Collins still lay on the floor, unconscious and bleeding. Anthony still held a gun to Teresa’s head. Surely his arm would get tired eventually.

  Footsteps sounded going down the stairs outside. Were the officers stomping unusually loudly so Anthony would think they were leaving when they really weren’t?

  “Look out the window and tell me when they’re gone,” Anthony ordered.

  Amanda went to the front window and looked out. Her heart sank as she watched the men walk across her parking lot to the street, get in their cruiser and drive away. Damn. But maybe they were only going around the block. Maybe they’d be back.

  “They’re gone,” Charley announced. “I guess they didn’t understand what you were trying to tell them.”

  All the facial contortions and eye rolling had done nothing except make them think she was having a seizure. She turned back to the drama in her living room. “They left.”

  Teresa closed her eyes and Amanda didn’t have to be psychic to know what she was thinking. The cops were gone along with their best chance of rescue.

  But not their only chance.

  Amanda lifted her gaze to Anthony’s, to the shadowed malice and greed. He had killed a man because he valued money more than that man’s life. He counted the man of no consequence. He counted the woman he’d married of no consequence, and that woman was Amanda’s friend.

  Amanda would come up with something.

  “Let’s go.” Anthony waved the gun toward the door.

  Amanda opened the door and stepped outside. Dark and silent. The street light was still out. The sliver of moon shed little light on the area, and the bar down the street was closed, its neon signs dark.

  She started down the stairs.

  No one walking down the street. No cop cars driving back around the block. She was on her own.

  Charley appeared beside her. “I think Ronnie’s waking up. I’ll ask him to get your gun and come down and—” He sighed. “No, I won’t, will I? You and Teresa are the only people who can hear me.”

  Really? Even if Collins could hear him and even if Collins could walk with a shattered knee cap, telling him to get a gun and come help them was about the dumbest idea Charley had ever come up with. “Tell Teresa everything’s going to be okay, that I have a plan,” she whispered.

  “I knew you’d think of something. What are you going to do?”

  “I have no idea, but tell her anyway.”

  “Are you talking to yourself?” Anthony demanded.

  Amanda reached the bottom of the stairs and turned an angry stare on him. “Yes, I am. Do you have a problem with that?”

  “I don’t care what you do just as long as you get me my passport and bank accounts.”

  Amanda moved slowly to the shop door, buying time, hoping to think of something.

  “Don’t worry,” s
he heard Charley say. “Amanda’s got everything—” He choked and tried again. “Amanda—” Damn! She’d forgotten he couldn’t tell a lie. “Amanda said to tell you she has a plan.”

  Amanda smiled. Charley was sneaky. He could even get around the celestial prohibition against lying.

  She slid her key into the lock and turned it slowly.

  Think! There were lots of tools and metal pieces lying around and they’d have to walk past them to get to the back room where the safe was located. Maybe she could shove something in his path and make him trip…if he wasn’t holding that blasted gun to Teresa’s head. If he tripped and fell, he might squeeze the trigger. That would not be a good thing.

  She flipped on the light switch and moved slowly across the large open area. Thanks to Dawson, it was relatively clean and free of debris.

  Think!

  “Can’t you walk any faster?” Anthony demanded. “Where is this safe?”

  “In the office. Duh.” Amanda reached the room at the back and went in, moving slowly around the desk to the small safe in the corner.

  “Hurry up. Get it open and let’s get out of here before your cop friends come back.”

  “They’re gone. They’re not coming back.” She certainly hoped that was a lie.

  She sat down in front of the safe and began twirling the dial back and forth, careful not to stop on any of the correct numbers of the combination.

  Charley crouched beside her. “Go slow! I’ll think of something!”

  She arched a dubious eyebrow and kept twirling the dial.

  “What are you doing?” Anthony demanded. “Get it open. Now!”

  “Stop bullying me! You’ve got me so nervous, I can’t remember the combination.”

  “You’d better remember it soon unless you want your friend’s brains splattered all over this place. I know she doesn’t have many, but it’s still going to be quite a mess.”

  “Hi, Grandma Minerva!” Teresa said, her voice weak and shaky. Not surprising under the circumstances.

  “Don’t start with that ghost stuff,” Anthony ordered. He sounded angry but just a little bit uncertain. “Your ghosts are about as real as the speaker I hid in your apartment so I could stand outside and talk to you. Only there’s no speaker here. You’re just nuts.”