by Jane Heller
“There’s one from somebody named Jazeem,” Annie went on.
“From The Clearing House,” I told them.
“There’s one from somebody named Dan.”
“Dan?”
“Yeah. Just Dan. No last name. But the card does say ‘Reiki healer.’”
“Fantastic! What else does it say?”
“It says, ‘Tune in to the Universal Life Force Through Touch to Harmonize the Mind, Body and Spirit.’”
“What does it say in the way of an address or phone? We’re trying to reach this man.”
She read me Dan’s address and phone number and I scribbled the information down on a five-dollar bill Terry had in his wallet. “Do you think Dan killed Amanda?” she asked.
“We don’t know, but he might have been at Cathedral Rock the day she disappeared. We’re very interested in talking to him, and, thanks to you, Annie, we’ll be able to. Now, your dad wants to say a quick hello.”
I turned the phone over to Terry, who told her she did a swell job and said he’d see her later.
“Next project—getting ahold of Danny Boy,” he said after he hung up.
“Wait,” I said. “Let’s think about this for a minute. Are we just going to come right out and tell this guy that we suspect him of killing Amanda?”
“Not immediately,” said Terry. “First, we’re going to tell him we have something that may belong to him—the silver-and-turquoise cross. Then, depending on how he reacts, we’ll hit him with our suspicions.”
“But if the cross is evidence that could incriminate him and exonerate Will, why not take it to the police?” I said. “Why hand it over to this Dan person, whom we don’t know or trust?”
“The police do not want evidence that directs them away from me,” Will said. “Detective Whitehead has made up his mind that I am guilty. He does not listen to other ideas, other theories. He hears what he desires to hear. If we bring him the cross, he will disregard it. I know this.”
“Will’s got a point,” said Terry. “Whitehead’s never been fond of Indians, and he’s never had a case that’s generated so much publicity. He’s in a big hurry to put somebody away and that ‘somebody’ is Will. He doesn’t want anything to muddy the waters.”
“So you both agree that we should forget the police and confront Dan?”
Terry and Will nodded.
“Then I guess we’re going for it,” I said.
“We’re going for it,” said Terry, who volunteered to call Dan.
He dialed the number I’d written on the five-dollar bill and we waited. We had anticipated that we’d have to leave a message on an answering machine, since a major part of Dan’s shtik was getting out among the tourists and diagnosing the “badness” of their spaces, but, surprisingly, the man himself picked up the phone.
Will and I were practically on top of Terry, straining to hear both sides of the conversation.
“Love and light” was Dan’s greeting, as opposed to your basic “Hi.”
“Is this Dan?” Terry asked. “The Reiki healer?”
“Yeah,” said Dan. “You’re in a bad space, man. I can hear it in your voice. A really bad space.”
“Actually, Dan, you’re the one who’s in a really bad space,” said Terry. “You lost a piece of jewelry, didn’t you? A silver cross on a black cord?”
No response.
“Are you there, Dan?” Terry asked.
“So you’re not calling to make an appointment?” Dan said.
“I am calling to make an appointment,” said Terry. “I don’t want you to heal me, though. I want you to identify your cross and tell me how you came to leave it at Cathedral Rock.”
Again, a pause.
“Who is this?” asked Dan. “My clairvoyant gift alerts me to the realization that you have toxic thoughts toward me. It is important for me to have information about who you are and what your spiritual goals are.”
“No problem,” said Terry. “My name is Terry Hollenbeck and I live and work in Sedona. I run Sacred Earth Jeep Tours—you’ve seen our vehicles around town—and I’m at a public phone right now with my friends Crystal Goldstein and Will Singleton. We have your cross and we want to give it back to you. That’s our spiritual goal.”
Dan coughed or sneezed. I couldn’t tell which from where I was standing. “What makes you think this cross you keep talking about is mine?” he asked before coughing or sneezing again.
“One of my friends remembers seeing you wearing it,” said Terry. “She also remembers seeing you not wearing it—after Amanda Reid vanished from Cathedral Rock.”
“Amanda who?” Dan said.
Obviously, he was playing dumb. Everybody in Sedona knew who Amanda was. There was no escaping the story of her disappearance.
“Amanda Reid,” said Terry. “Look, Dan, how about we cut to the chase here? My friends and I would like to get together with you, return your cross, ask you about the day you dropped it at Cathedral Rock. We’d like to have this little chat within the hour. At The Coffee Pot on 89A.”
“Sorry. I’m tied up,” said Dan.
“Now that’s a shame,” said Terry. “But, hey, if you don’t want your cross, I bet the police will be happy to have it. You get my drift, Dan?”
Wow, I thought. Terry’s good at this tough talk. He should have been a cop.
And then I laughed to myself. Given the numerous jobs he’d had over the past twenty years, maybe he’d been one.
“We’ll see you at The Coffee Pot in an hour,” Terry repeated. “Is it a date, Dan?”
Dan sighed. “How will I know you?” he said, his voice heavy with resignation.
“Not to worry,” said Terry. “We’ll know you.”
The Coffee Pot was a Sedona institution, Terry explained—an all-day diner/restaurant set in the shadow of Coffee Pot Mesa, a red rock formation shaped like a guess what. Located on Sedona’s main road, across the street from Kentucky Fried Chicken, it was a gathering place for psychics, who spent hours over coffee swapping predictions.
“This is it,” said Terry as he swung the Jeep into the parking lot. “Before there was Starbucks, there was The Coffee Pot.”
The antithesis of trendy, the coffee shop was housed in a low-slung beige building whose most distinguishing feature was its blue and red sign near the entrance. It read: “Home of the 101 Omelettes.”
“I didn’t know there were 101 things you could put in an omelette,” I remarked as we got out of the car.
“If you stay in Sedona, you can find out what they are,” Terry said, giving my hand a squeeze. “How’s that for an incentive to hang around, huh?”
I smiled at him. He was so sweet, so loving, so appealing. I was enjoying our time together more than I thought possible. But stay in Sedona? Uproot myself? Relocate?
How could I? My father was in New York. My best friend was in New York. My business was in New York. Duboff Spector or no Duboff Spector, there weren’t any big accounting firms in Sedona. People in Sedona didn’t need CPAs; they had their psychics to tell them how much they owed the IRS. And then there was the fact that, as beautiful as red rock country was, as wonderful as Terry was, as endearing as Annie was, I’d experienced them all while I was on vacation, when everything looks rosy and nothing is as it seems. Most of all, no matter how much Terry had changed since we were divorced, no matter how much I had changed since arriving in Sedona, the reality was, he and I had failed as a couple once. Why fail as a couple twice? Why set myself up for more frustration, more disappointment, more hurt? Maybe I did love him—still or more or differently, as he’d put it. Or maybe I was simply stuck in the past, unable to resist the temptation to make things come out right this time.
No. Of course you can’t stay, Crystal, I said to myself. There are too many unanswered questions, too many unknowns. Have some fun, find out what happened to Amanda Reid, and go home.
We sat at a table for four, ordered coffee, and waited for Dan to show up. After twenty minutes or so,
I spotted him standing at the entrance to the restaurant, looking warily over the sea of faces, trying to guess which of us had made the phone call. I felt a chill of recognition as I recalled the first time I’d seen him at Tranquility. He had seemed so harmless then, just another intense young seeker—seeking to make a fast buck. But on this Sunday morning, he seemed sinister—darker than the “local character” with the shoulder-length blond hair, the faded blue jeans, and the “There’s No Place Like Om” T-shirt.
Terry stood up and waved him over to our table. He nodded and walked toward us. When he sat down, he introduced himself.
“Dan Kelly,” he said. Nobody shook his hand.
“Coffee, Dan?” I asked, not sure how else to begin. He wasn’t as young as I’d thought, now that I was seeing him up close. Late thirties, I supposed. Forty, maybe. And he had a lazy eye, the kind that never lines up with the other one, a defect I hadn’t noticed during our initial encounter, as he’d been wearing sunglasses.
He shook his head, declining the java. “You said on the phone that you have my cross,” he said. “Let’s see it.”
Terry produced the cross from the back pocket of his jeans. He held the black cord between his fingers and dangled it right in front of Dan’s face. “Look familiar?”
Dan took a swipe at it.
“Uh-uh-uh,” Terry taunted, pulling the cross away from Dan. “You don’t get it back until you tell us what you were doing at Cathedral Rock the day you misplaced it.”
“I was doing what I do,” said Dan as he twisted the hair on his left eyebrow. “I was searching for those in need of healing. The cord must have been frayed. I guess it finally broke.”
“You guess?” Terry said skeptically. “The cross that was hanging from that cord is silver. When metal falls on top of rock, it makes a sound. A little ‘clunk.’ You know?”
“I didn’t hear anything,” Dan maintained. “I was probably deep in meditation when it slipped off my neck.”
“But surely you must have realized it was gone,” I said. “Why didn’t you go back and look for it?”
“Because it’s a material possession,” said Dan. “I’m not about material possessions.”
“Is that it? Or is it that you couldn’t take the risk?” said Terry.
“Risk? What are you talking about?” Dan bristled.
“You couldn’t risk going back to the scene of the crime,” Terry persisted. “Isn’t that true?”
Dan rolled his eyes. “You people are in a bad space. A really bad space. Keep the cross. You need it more than I do.”
He started to get up to leave, but Will, who had been silent up to that point, placed his hands on Dan’s shoulders and pushed him back down into his chair. “We have not finished our meeting,” he told Dan. “You have not been truthful with us about Amanda Reid. You saw her at Cathedral Rock the same day you lost your cross.”
“I didn’t see her at Cathedral Rock,” Dan protested. “I saw her picture in the paper like everybody else.”
“Oh?” I said. “On the phone, you gave us the impression you’d never heard of her. ‘Amanda who?’ you asked. Remember?”
“Okay, okay. Listen,” said Dan. “I did drop the cross the same day Amanda Reid disappeared. But I didn’t admit it because I don’t want the cops breathing down my neck the way they’re breathing down this guy’s.” He nodded at Will. “I’m just a small businessman. I can’t afford to lose customers, sitting in some detective’s office answering questions about a murder I had nothing to do with. So I’ve kept my mouth shut. So sue me.”
Boy, I thought. It’s amazing how unspiritual some spiritual people can sound when they’re not paying attention.
“What you’re telling us—what you expect us to believe—is that you were at Cathedral Rock the day Amanda Reid was there and the cross dropped off your neck only yards from where she was sitting, yet you didn’t see or speak to her,” Terry summed up.
“That’s what I’m telling you,” said Dan. “Can l go now?” He glanced at Will, who shook his head.
“I’m not sure we shouldn’t give the cross to the police,” Terry bluffed. “Why not let them decide if it’s relevant to the case? Or, better still, we could give it to our pal Michael Mandell. He’s covering the investigation for a national magazine.”
“No,” Dan said quickly. “No media. No way.”
“Then keep talking,” said Terry. “We’ve got plenty of time.”
No one spoke for several seconds, a standoff. Eventually, Dan threw in the towel. He seemed eager to get us off his back and beat it.
“Fine,” he said. “Here’s what happened. I did see the Reid woman that morning. She was sitting on a blanket. I told her she was in a bad space. She said, ‘You’re not kidding, mister. If I don’t get out of here, I’ll die of boredom.’”
“And did you take her out of there?” I asked. “To someplace more private, perhaps?”
“I didn’t take her anywhere,” Dan said. “I wished her love and light and went about my business.”
“That’s funny, Dan,” I countered. “Your ‘business’ is Reiki healing. Why didn’t you offer to heal Amanda? Suggest that she schedule an appointment with you? Give her your business card?”
“Because I didn’t,” he snapped.
“She must have offered you money to help her down the canyon, though, didn’t she?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “I don’t remember.”
“You don’t remember if she offered you money?” I said, incredulous. The man was a hustler, after all.
“No. Yes. Look, I talked to her, she talked back, and then I split,” he said, growing angry at being put on the defensive. “That’s the truth.”
“You have told us different truths,” Will pointed out. “If a person lies once, he lies often.”
“Nice speech, but I’m not the one the cops are about to arrest,” said Dan, flashing Will a little sneer. Clearly, he’d had enough. “I’m not the one with a noose tightening around my neck. You want to give them my cross? Go ahead and give it to them.”
He rose from his chair. This time, Will made no attempt to stop him.
“You must be some terrific healer,” Terry said sarcastically as Dan moved to leave the table.
“Heal this,” Dan responded, flipping us all the bird.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Anybody hungry?” I asked after Dan had bid us such an unceremonious farewell.
“I could go for an omelette,” said Terry. “We could each order a different one. Then we’d only have ninety-eight more to try.”
Will agreed. He had the ham and spinach, Terry had the ham and swiss, and I had the ham and sage. When in Rome, I figured.
While we ate, we rehashed the meeting with Dan. All three of us were convinced that he was involved in Amanda’s disappearance; he had acted too suspicious not to be, changing his story, becoming so belligerent, refusing to tell the police he had not only seen Amanda at Cathedral Rock but had spoken to her there.
“The man is a liar,” said Will.
“And a bastard,” said Terry.
“And a bad dresser,” I said. “I think he wears the same clothes every day.”
Between bites of our omelettes and sips of our coffee, we debated whether we should follow our instincts and pursue Dan further.
“He’s guilty of something,” Terry asserted. “I say we drive over to his house and poke around. Who knows what we’ll find?”
“What if he’s there?” I said, horrified that we would be trespassing on someone’s property—and that we might get caught.
“We’ll wait until he isn’t,” said Terry. “He’s not gonna sit home all day, not with so many tourists roaming the vortex sites. Not our Dan.”
“Terry is right,” said Will. “If we go to Dan’s house, we can watch and listen. I believe there will be a sign, some evidence that Mrs. Reid has been there.”
Suddenly, I was reminded yet again of the pronouncement that Sergei had mad
e.
You have it in your possession…A piece of paper that will lead you straight to Amanda Reid’s door.
Dan’s address was printed on his business card. Annie had read it to me. I knew where to find him.
“It could be dangerous to go to Dan’s house,” I pointed out.
“It could,” Terry conceded.
“Not only that, it would be a nightmare if we found Amanda lying there, dead,” I added. “The victim of some bizarre, ritualistic torture.”
“Might be a grisly scene, yeah,” said Terry.
“God, I don’t think I could handle that,” I said.
“Then we’ll drop you at my house,” Terry suggested. “You could stay with Annie and Jean while Will and I look around.”
I considered the idea. Why not let the men handle this? Who needs grisly?
And then I remembered. Sergei had been very definite about the fact that I held the key to finding Amanda, that the piece of paper was in my possession, that it would lead me straight to her door.
Terry signaled the waitress to bring us the check. Apparently, he was treating.
“It’s all set then. We’ll swing by my house, drop you off, and drive over to Dan’s,” he said to me.
I shook my head. “I’m going with you.”
“But you said—”
“It’s destiny,” I interrupted him. “Don’t fight it.”
Dan Kelly lived in a mobile home park off 89A. And not one of those nice, lushly landscaped mobile home parks, either—the kind where people fuss over their trailers as if they were mansions, charming them up with hanging plants and patio furniture and welcome mats. No, there was nothing remotely “parklike” about Dan’s trailer park. It was a trailer slum—a barren, sad-looking junkyard of a place where everything was run down, even the “Enter” and “Exit” signs, each of which was missing its first letter and, therefore, they read: “nter” and “xit.” Garbage in, garbage out.
Dan’s trailer was particularly unattractive. It was basically a long turd with wheels—a brown rectangle with a door, windows with their curtains drawn, and a broken TV antenna.
