Gone and Done It (20 page)

On this second go-around, his face seemed welcome and familiar. I hated to admit defeat, but the words tumbled out. “Not this time. I’ll be back.”

“I know everybody.” He snapped his fingers. “Why don’t you leave a message with me?”

This situation had never come up before in my discussions with Daddy. But Joe’s proposal seemed so logical. It would give me something positive to report. And, having an ally up here could be a big asset to my police consultant work. Besides, what could it hurt? I nodded my approval. “The message is for Lakeisa Upshaw. Her granddaughter’s beauty shop is profitable.”

Joe beamed. “I’ve zeroed in on it.”

He faded from sight as my spirit returned home. Sunshine danced around me, warming me as I awoke. My mug of tea had grown cold. Verbena paced the floor, the room vibrating with her weighty steps. “Did you find granny? Did you tell her my news?”

I rolled my shoulders to ease the stiffness. It wasn’t enough. I stood and stretched full out. “Sorry, I couldn’t locate her. But I left word with a spirit. He’ll pass your message along.”

She grinned from ear to ear. “Granny’s gonna bust a gut with pride.”

“I’m glad I could help.” Satisfaction hummed in my bones. I couldn’t wait to tell Daddy of my success. Hard to believe I’d worried about dreamwalking for years.

“You was gone a really long time.” Verbena pointed to a clean plate sitting in my dish drain. “I fixed myself a bologna sammich. Hope that was okay.”

“No problem.” Hmm. A bologna sandwich sounded yummy.

Verbena picked up her purse. “I’ve got folks waiting at the shop. Thanks for getting the word to my granny.” With that, she left.

I felt so wonderful, so energized, I wanted to jog the five miles over to my parents’ house, not my usual mode of operation. I should focus that energy burst on something productive. Like washing the snake guts out of my truck.

Did that.

Then I washed the outside of the truck and patched up the hole in the floorboard with duct tape. Washed both dogs. Took a shower. I twiddled my thumbs for a few minutes. No pet clients and no landscaping clients.

I decided to ride around town, to see if I could scare up some work. If that failed, I’d go over and catch Charlotte at the newspaper.

Oh, and the library. Mental head smack. How could I have forgotten that’s where I wanted to go? The library it was.

I tucked the Glock in the glove compartment, in case I ran into trouble.

The Jeanie Mixon Public Library had two computers with access to the Internet. The clerk, Alpharetta Reid, a spinster with eighties hair and clothing, sat at the checkout counter and waved me over to the unattended computer. Seventy-year-old Edward Stafford had the other one.

Except for the occasional rustle of clothing and the muted fluorescent hum, the library was silent. I searched for the odd place name. Wetumpka. It sounded a bit like an Indian name. We had plenty of Indian place names in Georgia. Most of our rivers retained Native American names; several islands traced their names back to the land’s earliest human settlers.

A map of a small town in Alabama flashed onto the screen. I scrolled through the information. Nearly six thousand people lived in Wetumpka. The name came from the Creek Indians and meant rumbling waters.

There was also a Wetumpka, Oklahoma, because the Creeks had been forced to move west. That population was much smaller, and the location was farther removed from Georgia. Wetumpka, Alabama, felt right to me.

Besides, Angel/Lisa had stated her son was in Alabama when Running Wolf and I encountered her in the dreamwalk. Wetumpka, Alabama, was a few hours from the Georgia state line. It was plausible an Alabama woman could be found dead in Georgia.

But Sinclair County was on the eastern side of Georgia. How did she get all the way over here?

I searched for missing adults. At the first few sites, I didn’t notice any people from Alabama, so I searched specifically for missing people in our adjacent state. Bingo. Screen after screen of missing people. I accessed the females. Their stories ate at me. Warrants for child abuse. Abandoned car found halfway across the state. Violent lover. Missing from a tavern.

Man, oh man.

This was hard to see, all these faces and broken lives. I could dreamwalk for each of these people. I could help their families. I could spend the rest of my life looking for missing people. But what if they didn’t want to be found? Who was I helping then?

The woman from my dreams, Lisa or Angel or whatever her name was, didn’t appear in the pictured women missing, and the list went back ten years.

Maybe I had it wrong. Maybe she didn’t live in Wetumpka, but her baby did. Was it possible her family didn’t know she was missing? Lisa/Angel could’ve had a job away from home, a traveling job. I checked missing persons from Tennessee, the Carolinas, and Georgia.

Nothing.

No matches.

I buried my face in my hands. I wasn’t getting anywhere. I couldn’t make the facts fit the few miserable bits of evidence we had. A woman was dead in Sinclair County. No one in nearby states had declared her missing. The coroner had her body and her vital statistics, but because she’d been shot in the face, law enforcement didn’t know what she looked like.

I did.

Too bad I couldn’t draw worth a hoot.

Too bad we didn’t have cop sketch artists here.

At the tap on my shoulder, I glanced up in alarm. Alpharetta Reid scowled down at me. “People are waiting to use this computer. Your hour is up.”

I glanced up at the clock. I’d been here nearly an hour and a half. Where had the time gone? “Sorry. I lost track of time.”

I collected my stuff and sat out front, in the butterfly garden I’d created for the library. No butterflies in January, but the fountain and the greenery were pleasing all the same.

Our dead woman had two names, a baby in Wetumpka, Alabama, and a lover named Jay. She hadn’t been reported missing. The coroner said her teeth were of Native American descent.

Had I been wrong to dismiss Wetumpka, Oklahoma? Her teeth didn’t lie. Those shovel-shaped incisors were hard facts.

How much should I tell the sheriff and the coroner? There had to be some way I could ask them about my new information. Wait. Couldn’t they tell if a woman had given birth? I could ask that question without seeming like a total flake.

Charlotte huffed up the sidewalk and plunked down on the bench beside me. She was garbed in vibrant lilac today. I could almost sniff the purple blossoms. “There you are. Why aren’t you answering your cell phone?”

I nodded toward my backpack. “Turned it off while I was in the library.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You working the case?”

“Checking some things out.”

Lights danced in her eyes. “Gotta scoop for me?”

“No scoops. Only more questions. I can’t get a handle on the pieces of this puzzle. I should be able to see it, but I can’t get there from here.”

Charlotte appeared to be absorbing that for a moment. I noticed she was twisting the life out of her bright yellow purse strap. “What’s eating you?” I asked.

My friend stilled. She appeared to be absorbed in the flowing fountain before us.

“Tell me,” I urged.

“It wasn’t my fault.” Charlotte’s voice quivered up and down the scale. “I want you to know I had nothing to do with this.”

A sinkhole opened in my stomach. “What?”

“Bernard stole my notes. He convinced Kip to let him do a story about the changing of the guard. His story is in today’s newspaper. I tried to stop it. Honestly, I did, but they wouldn’t listen to me. Bernard can rot in hell for all I care.”

I arched my eyebrows and waited.

Charlotte heaved out a troubled breath. “He snapped a picture of you at the jail. When your hat blew off. His story is about how your hair streak publicly marks you as the town’s reigning psychic.”

“The only good news I have for you,” Charlotte said, handing me a newspaper, “is that you’re below the fold on page one. Kip put the Native American rally on top. He also printed up five-hundred extra copies of the paper.”

“My hair is front-page news?” I couldn’t draw in a full breath as I scanned the article.

“Not your hair, per se, but what your hair means. Bernard dug around in the archives and found early pictures of your dad with the same white streak. He even interviewed Mamie Conner at the nursing home about your grandmother.”

I glanced up. “Goodness sakes, Mamie’s got to be a hundred years old.”

“She’ll be a hundred and one in August. Her body crapped out, but her brain is as sharp as a blackberry thorn. She says you are a living legend, my friend.”

“Crap. I agreed to step into Dad’s shoes because his job was killing him. I don’t want my new sideline in the newspaper.”

“There was nothing I could do to stop it. Kip slotted Bernard’s article before I had a clue about what was going on. Both of them are insanely euphoric about it. I’m so mad at Bernard I could just spit. Call up some nasty spirits and sic them on him.”

“I wish. It doesn’t work that way. We’ll have to get our revenge another way.”

Charlotte’s eyes gleamed. “Yeah. Let’s get even.”

“Count on it. But first I have to get the word to Larissa and my parents.”

“Duh. That’s easy. Beam your thoughts over, like you did when Maisie Ryals tried to smash your head with a tire iron.”

“That was a special occurrence. I don’t want to be Chicken Little.”

“Your daughter and your parents would never think that about you. Do it now.”

“Bossy britches.” She was right. I thought of the right words and sent them out.
Larissa, Daddy, the newspaper ran a story on my hair. Apparently I’m a living legend. Didn’t want you to be surprised. I’m okay. Love you both.

I didn’t know the range of my telepathic beam. Last time, I’d reached my daughter from about five miles away. Her school was about that distance from the library. Daddy could be anywhere in the region. Neither of them could broadcast back to me, but if they were in range, they’d receive my message.

At the low-throated diesel rumble on the adjacent highway, I glanced over. Realtor Buster Glassman drove by with Carolina Byrd in his deluxe pickup. Charlotte followed my gaze. “There goes trouble.”

A thought tugged at the edge of my memory. “What happened to that article you were going to write with him? How come I never heard about the big lunch date with Mr. Snazzy?”

“He cancelled. He won’t return my calls either.”

“Curious.”

“Tell me about his gambling problems. I can get even with him in print.”

“Nah, Buster Glassman is mean. He said he’d crush my business prospects if I crossed him. Remember Janna West from high school? He dated her once, said he screwed her repeatedly. After his lies went around, she tried to commit suicide.”

“Janna West. I remember her. Just barely, though. Perky brunette cheerleader. Her family moved here when she was a sophomore. She went to school with us for one term and then finished school elsewhere.”

“So she wouldn’t see Buster again.” I shuddered. “I do not want to be a Janna West. Neither do you.”

“I dunno.” Charlotte primped her chin-length hair, light glinting off her glasses. “If Buster blabbed that he’d slept with me, it would do wonders for my dating prospects.”

“You don’t want those types of dates. Steer clear of him.”

“Wonder what he’s doing with that Macon woman?”

Lord, I had to love my loyal friend. “He’s probably one of the few people she already paid in full. He likes looking like he’s got a client in his truck; she likes looking as though she has lackeys at her beck and call. It’s a match made in heaven.”

“Or hell, depending on your view of the people involved.”

“Once Carolina reads in the paper that I’m the resident kook, she’ll never pay me. But I’ve got her weeping cherry and her
Podacarpus.
She won’t get them back unless she pays me.”

Charlotte pawed the air. “Grrr, get ’em, tiger.”

“I’m not going anywhere near her. She can call me if she wants her trees back.”

“Where does this leave you with the sheriff? Are you a suspect or an investigator?”

I tucked the newspaper in my backpack and rose. “Heck if I know. That’s where I’m headed next.”

My friend lunged off the bench, tripping over her feet and teetering wildly until she got her balance. “Wait for me.”

We met Carolina and Buster coming out of the Sinclair County Law Enforcement Center. If looks could kill, Charlotte and I would be charcoal-broiled. Carolina ignored my smile and greeting. Buster, always mindful of his sales career, managed a cool nod of acknowledgment. Anger radiated from them in unrelenting waves.

Interesting. What had them madder than feral hogs?

“You thinking what I’m thinking?” Charlotte grabbed my arm and slowed me down once the lobby door closed behind us, with us safely inside and them roaring off in Buster’s truck.

I nodded hello to the tired-looking woman built like a fireplug sitting next to the gumball machine. “Depends on what you’re thinking.”

“I’m thinking the sheriff told them not to leave town, that they are numbers one and two on his suspect list.”