Dream Caller (A Dream Seeker Novel Book 3)

by Sharp, Michelle

  “But you were angry that she changed her mind about having sex Friday night?”

  “I was frustrated, okay? She was always so busy . . . We both were. She said she couldn’t skip the party because she was a chaperone for one of the freshman.”

  “A chaperone?” Isobel challenged.

  “They do this thing in her sorority where every freshman gets paired up with an upperclassman. Kind of a buddy system so none of the girls get too drunk or taken advantage of. I just wanted one night where it wasn’t about school, family, or sorority crap.”

  “Did the fight turn physical?”

  “What? No,” David said. “There wasn’t really even a fight. I told you, I’d never hurt Hailey.” David got very quiet. Tears started running down his face again. “Oh God, you think I killed her, don’t you? I swear I didn’t.” He leaned toward Ty. “I loved her. I picked out a ring to give her when school was over this summer. I already made the first payment. I can’t believe she’s gone,” he sobbed.

  “No one is accusing you of killing her, David.” Ty narrowed his eyes at Isobel, knowing full well that was exactly the road she was barreling down. “In order to find who did this, we need a timeline so we understand everything that happened in her life. Right up until the last minute.

  “What happened when the fight ended, David?” he asked.

  “I went to the basement and played poker.” David’s gaze met Ty’s. “And I drank. I’m so stupid. I loved her, and I could have spent a few more hours with her, but I didn’t. I should have been there to walk her home. If I’d done that, she’d still be alive, wouldn’t she?”

  Ty watched the tears flood down David’s cheeks.

  “Every relationship has fights,” he said. He thought about Jordan storming out of his office a little while ago. “But it really is better to tell us everything now. If we find out later that you lied, then it looks like you had something to hide.”

  “When was the last time you saw Hailey alive?” Isobel jumped in again.

  “I told you. Before she left the frat house,” David mumbled.

  “What time was it?”

  David shrugged. “I don’t know. I can’t do this anymore.” David dropped his head on the table. “I want my dad. Please, I just want my dad.”

  Ty tried to calm David a couple more times, but David just kept crying and asking for his dad. They were walking a fine line between witness and suspect, and Ty didn’t want to jeopardize the case. He followed Isobel out of the interview room.

  “See, this is why I told you to read him his rights,” Isobel said.

  “I had no plans to arrest him, Isobel. I just wanted to know what happened. And he’d have told us a hell of a lot more if you hadn’t scared the shit out of him.”

  “More lies, you mean?”

  Ty folded his arms. “I didn’t get the feeling he was lying. He’s so hungover he can’t even think straight, much less form a decent lie.”

  “Are you kidding?” Isobel tossed her hands up. “A rich, spoiled kid like that, completely used to having his way and getting exactly what he wants? Except he didn’t get Hailey, and he was pissed about it. He told us that much himself.”

  “That doesn’t mean he killed her. And if you’d backed off a bit, he probably would have been more open about what happened next instead of asking for his dad. Which is just the same as asking for a lawyer.”

  “So let him get a lawyer. I’m checking on the warrants to search his frat room and car. And if we find any piece of evidence or get another witness to remember any violence between them, I’m going to the DA.”

  “I think that might be premature, Isobel.”

  Isobel’s expression turned softer, almost like she took pity on him. “That’s because you’re a good guy from small town, USA. I’ve dealt with his kind, Ty. Wealthy, arrogant, making a lifelong career out of lying and avoiding any responsibility. I agree we don’t have enough on him yet. Let’s see what the search turns up.”

  Isobel pranced away, and Ty got the feeling he’d just been called a dumbass hillbilly in the nicest of ways. Apparently one of them was a dumbass, because they weren’t seeing eye to eye regarding David Benson. Despite the drinking and the fight with Hailey, he didn’t think those things added up to David being a murderer. Then again, he’d also thought he could keep Jordan and Isobel from ever crossing paths, and look how well that turned out.

  ***

  Jordan used the one-and-a-half-hour drive to Saunders Funeral Home in St. Louis to calm herself.

  Damn men.

  Why did relationships have to screw with your head so badly? Since when had she become such a jealous idiot?

  She glanced in the rear-view mirror. Her hair was in a ponytail. No make-up to speak of. Jeans, boots, an old jacket. Okay, so she did look more like a sandwich delivery girl than a cop. But Cherry-bomb certainly didn’t ooze professionalism, either. Seriously, who investigated a murder wearing fuck-me-red lipstick?

  Someone who wanted to fuck a big rugged cop like Ty, that’s who.

  “Okay, enough,” she chastised herself. None of this was Ty’s fault. She couldn’t act like an idiot every time an attractive woman flirted with him.

  Ty wasn’t a liar.

  And he wasn't a cheater.

  By the time she pulled into the parking lot of the funeral home, she decided she owed him an apology. And how the hell that had happened, she had no idea.

  Damn relationships.

  She turned off the car and looked around. So this was it? She’d worked so close for so many years and never had a clue that graves for her family were just around the corner?

  In less than fifteen minutes, she walked out of the funeral home with a map of the huge cemetery and a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. It had taken a few little white lies and a wave of her badge, but she’d also managed to harass the timid clerk into giving her a plot number where Jack Delany had been buried.

  This certainly wasn’t how she’d pictured the last few days of her vacation. Visions of sand and ocean and sipping frosty little drinks while Ty rubbed lotion all over her body was a much nicer image. She was a long, long way from that fantasy.

  The narrow blacktop road twisted and curved toward a large lake and the spot the clerk had marked on the map. She parked, got out, and leaned back against her car. The snow accumulation was barely a dusting here. Acre after acre of headstones and flowers peeked up through the thin layer of white. Kind of gruesomely beautiful, really.

  But she sensed very little energy. Seemed the dead didn’t like hanging out in cemeteries any more than the living.

  She’d been to rock concerts where she sensed more spirit. Yet it made perfect sense. If a soul could bounce around anywhere, a sandy beach in Jamaica had to beat the hell out of a depressing grave in Missouri.

  If some drug dealer eventually put a bullet in her, she had no intention of hovering over a cold chunk of stone when her spirit could instead invisibly ogle Ty in a warm shower.

  She closed her eyes and attempted to mentally prepare for whatever lay across the road. Graves or no graves, it shouldn’t matter. This shouldn’t matter. Her family had been gone for twenty years.

  So why did she feel like she was losing them all over again?

  She pushed off her car, but her feet didn’t seem to be on board with the need to move. Maybe because she couldn’t think past the memory that kept looping over and over in her mind—her uncle’s blue and white pontoon boat.

  Certain days leave an imprint, much like a brand on the brain. Time had never dulled the memories of spreading ashes of her mom, dad, and Katy.

  The sun had been bright, but the cold, windy day had bit at her cheeks like a million stinging bees. Her stomach was sick, and the throbbing in her head intensified with the speed of the boat.

  She had once loved that lake. Her family had, too. However she had never been out on the water when no one else was around.

  It was the wrong time of year for boating.

&n
bsp; A box sat next to her. Her uncle had explained that it contained three urns. Until that day, she hadn’t known what the word urn had meant. The vibrations of the boat made the metal urns clank together.

  The clearest memory was how unfathomable it had been that her entire family, three whole people, fit inside a small box with room to spare. Her whole world had been in that box. And she watched that world float away in the waves in the lake.

  Maybe. But maybe not. If Bahan were correct, it seemed that might be another fact up for debate.

  No, absolutely not. She refused to believe it. For years she’d resented her uncle for not taking her in when her family had been murdered. She considered him a major asshole for that, but even he couldn’t be cruel enough to stage the spreading of ashes for his own family.

  She cleared her mind and forced herself away from the car. Counting the rows and headstones, she came upon . . .

  Jack Edmund Delany.

  After reading the documents in her father’s file, she’d expected a headstone with her father’s name on it, had steeled herself for it. She just hadn’t expected the sick roll of her stomach, as though she were still on that damn pontoon boat.

  Her throat swelled and burned.

  Her eyes stung.

  “I’m sorry, Dad,” she whispered. “I don’t even know how to ask for forgiveness. I’ve managed to find the truth for complete strangers, but you . . . I never did for you. Now I will. I promise.”

  She glanced at the next headstone. Mary Elizabeth Delany. Her mom.

  Rein it in, Jordan. This can’t be real. Even so, the third headstone was a bitter pill. Jordan Miranda Delany, June 30, 1983 – November 25, 1993.

  A cruel irony swallowed her up, because she couldn’t say that the date of her death was wrong. Anything she had been before November 25, 1993 was a hell of a long way from everything she’d become after.

  But seeing the headstone with her name on it was almost a relief, assurance that all of this really was just an elaborate setting. She wasn’t, after all, dead. For certain, at least one of the graves was empty. In her heart she believed the other three were, as well.

  Then she read the fourth gravestone. Kathleen Janet Delany.

  Katy.

  Her Katy.

  She turned from the graves and tried to suck air back into her lungs. She bent forward, propped her hands on her knees, and let her head hang.

  This is just another lie someone created. An extensive lie, but a lie nonetheless.

  Her little sister had never belonged to her mom and dad. Katy was hers, her bad guy to tie up or her doll to dress. Her partner in crime. An easy victim to point the finger at when Mom was pissed because crap ended up broken. A sloppy little roommate who would crawl into bed with her when the dreams got bad.

  The same frigid tears from all those years ago streaked down her cheeks. She turned back to Katy’s grave. The ground was damp and slushy, and still she kneeled and brushed dead leaves and snow from around Katy’s headstone. Her left hand smoothed over the carved letters of her own name; her right hand traced Katy’s name. When would the one spirit she really wanted to hear from ever come through?

  Katy had called out for her just seconds before the last gunshot rang out. Of all the things Jordan regretted, not opening that closet door and going to Katy was at the top of the list.

  “I’m sorry, Katy. I really am. If I could change what I did that night and be with you, I would.”

  She had no idea if Katy could hear her, because unlike her parents, Katy was still holding a grudge. She had been since the night of the murders.

  “Why won’t you talk to me? Dad tries to talk to me in my dreams all the time. Hell, I can’t get Ty’s sister to ever shut up. Why can’t you forgive me and show up in a dream just once? One time, that’s all I’m asking.”

  An older man with a long beard walked by and looked over at her. Embarrassed, Jordan swiped at the tears and stood. She was pleading with her dead sister. Beard guy probably thought she’d lost her mind.

  Actually, she did feel a bit like she was losing her mind. She had to know if her family was here or if this was just a charade that had been put in place to protect her. She looked down at the graves, determined to see them for nothing more than the cover-up they were.

  She’d spread her family’s ashes, said goodbye to them that day on her uncle’s boat. This . . . this couldn’t be anything more than a farce. But how could she prove it? There were laws against exhuming graves, even for cops. She’d have to get a lawyer and go before a judge. And screwing around with graves that the Feds had made a public production out of would be trickier yet.

  There was, however, one person who could clear everything up without any of that hassle.

  Her uncle Bill.

  Too bad she’d sworn to never speak to the son of a bitch again.

  She swiped at her wet, dirty knees, and snapped pictures of each of the headstones with her cellphone. The answers were out there. The real answers. She had a right to know what her father had been working on and why he’d been killed. And she had a right to know if she really had spread her family’s ashes, or if it was one more lie she’d been told.

  Chapter 5

  Ty drove through the gate of the ranch he shared with Jordan. Just the sight of their new property gave him a feeling of pride and contentment he’d never experienced before. The house needed work and the stables needed work. But he remembered what the place had looked like in its heyday. Jordan was going to love it when he was done.

  Maybe a little more than she loved him right at the moment. She’d been pissed when she left the precinct earlier. It had taken her about two seconds to zero in on Isobel’s behavior. Seemed living with a psychic detective apparently didn’t give you much wiggle room to make dumb guy mistakes.

  As predicted, he was running almost an hour late. So he’d called Jordan to make sure she was ready.

  She was waiting for him on the porch as he pulled up. She climbed into his black F-350 and they took off toward his parents’ house.

  “Look,” he said, “I want to explain about the female detective you saw today.” There was no point in delaying the inevitable. Jordan wasn’t stupid.

  She sighed and held up her hand.

  He paused, wasn’t quite sure what to make of her gesture.

  “Let me start by saying I’m sorry. I know you don’t control who MHP sends to help with cases. I walked into your office and behaved like a jealous child.” She reached over and lightly traced a finger over the back of his hand. “You had a long, stressful day, and I made it worse. You’ve never given me any reason to doubt you.”

  A bitter laugh erupted from her. “But in my defense, I’ve warned you that I suck at relationships.” Her thumb rubbed a soft little circle on the back of his hand. “I suppose the only thing I can do now is try to make it up to you somehow.”

  Great. Now he felt like a real dickhead. “Well, to tell you the truth . . .” He glanced at her without turning his head.

  She laced her fingers with his, lifted their hands, and kissed the back of his. Then she teased him by gently sucking on his index finger.

  His heart rate spiked.

  He hadn’t done anything wrong, but figured it might be a good idea to come clean before they went any farther.

  “I just think you should understand—”

  “I do understand. You’re a good-looking guy. Women are going to come on to you. I get it. And I know in my heart you’re not stupid enough to sleep with a co-worker, even if I wasn’t in the picture.”

  She sighed. “Just don’t be mad at me while we’re at your parents. I can’t take that. I’m already nervous as hell.”

  “Baby, I’m not mad.” He squeezed her hand this time. “And you have nothing to be nervous about. They’ll love you.” He paused for a second, then decided to attempt to put her at ease regarding his parents before stirring her up about Issy. “They already like you. A lot. I told them you were the one responsible for
me being able to catch the guy who killed Tara.”

  Jordan pulled her hand away from his. “What? You didn’t tell them how, did you?”

  “Of course not. Just that you were another cop who helped me.”

  “What am I supposed to say if they start asking questions about how I helped?”

  He shrugged. “Tell them we can’t talk about the specifics of the case. Or that you’re uncomfortable talking about cases with family members of the victims. Or . . .” He glanced at her again. “We could tell them the truth.”

  “Funny. You’re funny.”

  He stopped at a light and glanced over at her. “I’m not trying to be. I’m serious. Losing Tara was awful. I still miss her, but knowing she’s around sometimes makes it . . . I don’t know, tolerable somehow. I’d do anything to make it tolerable for my parents.”

  Her mouth dropped open.

  Okay, not a good sign.

  “You are not serious. You do not expect me to go in there and say, ‘Hi. Nice to meet you. By the way I’ve connected with your dead daughter and she’s doing fine.’ Why don’t you just burn me at the stake now, ensure your entire family thinks I’m a nut job from the very beginning. And guess what?” She poked him in the arm. “You just moved in with me, so they’re going to think you’re as crazy as I am. Trust me on this. Sometimes it’s kinder all around to spare everyone the ugly truth.”

  He had never been a good liar, wasn’t brought up to hide the truth from the people he loved, even if it was ugly. But maybe Jordan was right. Maybe some truths were better left unsaid. Like the fact that Jordan communicated with the dead.

  And the fact he’d slept with Isobel.

  He was beginning to see the wisdom in her logic. As he turned onto the long gravel drive to his parents’ house, he decided that at the very least, both conversations were going to have to wait. “Whatever you say, baby. Whatever you say.”