Vortex (5 page)

“Oh, yes. The possibilities are mind-boggling. And it’s all ours.”

“But you must keep a lid on this or people will be killing you to take it away. This is... astonishing. I’m sorry I couldn’t come sooner but I was committed to a project in Dubai.”

“I’m just glad you’re here now, Irina.”

C
rystal took them to a cozy but crowded Italian restaurant, and by the time they got there, Karen was starving. Several people at the restaurant, both employees and patrons, knew Crystal and greeted her as the hostess led them to a table. She introduced Karen and Gavin to all of them.

“These are my writer friends, Susan McGee and Peter King,” she said. “They’re mystery writers and they’re staying in town for a while because they’re writing a mystery set here in Mt. Shasta.” After a few of those, they got a table and Crystal leaned across to whisper, “That should do it. It’ll be all over town by lunch tomorrow.”

After ordering cocktails, they browsed the menu. They ordered their meals, then Gavin said, “I drank a lot of coffee to stay awake because flying makes me sleepy, so I’m going to have to excuse myself for a moment.” He got up and went to the bathroom.

“You’ve been working together for, like, a few years now, right?” Crystal said.

Karen nodded. “A few, yes.”

Their cocktails came. Karen took a sip of her bloody Mary.

Crystal said, “Why haven’t you told him how you feel about him?”

Karen put her drink down and said, “I’m sorry?”

“You’re very attracted to him. You have been for a long time.”

“Is this a theory Martin shared with you?”

Crystal sipped her white wine, then smiled as she shook her head. “I’m psychic, remember?”

“Ah, yes. That’s right.” Karen suddenly felt a little uncomfortable. She didn’t put much stock in psychics in general and she certainly hadn’t expected anything authentic from Burgess’s “mystorian” girlfriend, but she proceeded with caution. “What would you, um, recommend that I do?”

“I wouldn’t want to tell you what to do. But I would say that your policy of not becoming romantically involved with coworkers doesn’t really apply here because the only time you two work together is when Martin hires you. Isn’t that right?” Karen’s eyebrows rose. “How did you know I have a—” She closed her eyes a moment. “Nevermind.” She was beginning to worry that she might have to take Crystal seriously—a possibility she had not anticipated.

“The funny thing is that he feels the same way about you,” Crystal said. “But I get the sense that he’s, like... afraid. He had some kind of bad relationship experience in the past.” She frowned down at her glass of wine, then looked at Karen. “Did he have a bad marriage, or something? I mean, like...
really
bad?”

Karen hesitated. “He was married twice. The first time when he was young, and that didn’t last. The second time lasted longer, but it ended... disastrously. I don’t think he’s been involved with anyone since then.”

“Well, he may be afraid to try again, but he feels the same way about you, and what’s even funnier is that, deep down inside, even though you haven’t really, like, admitted it to yourself, you
know
that. So, I’m not telling you
what
to do, but... you should consider doing
something
.”

Karen chewed on the inside of her cheek for a moment, then took another drink of the bloody Mary. Finally, she said, “I’ll give that some thought, Crystal. Thank you.” Then she tried to turn the conversation away from herself.

Standing at the small mirror in the restaurant’s cramped, poorly lit men’s room, Gavin straightened his tie and steeled himself before returning to the table. It was distracting to be with Karen
and
Crystal at the same time. He was already terribly attracted to Karen, but Crystal was beautiful, and the expanse of pale flesh and voluptuous cleavage revealed by her plunging neckline did not make it any easier for him to focus.

He left the men’s room and went back to the table, where Crystal was saying, “I’ll take you for a walk through town after we eat. We can walk off all the pasta we’re going to have. I’ll take you over to my office.”

“I suppose an after-dinner walk would be nice,” Gavin said as he sat down.

“Believe me, we’ll need it,” Crystal said. “The food here is delicious, and the portions are, like,
huge.
The only problem is that they’re a little slow. It’s worth the wait, though.”

They chatted as they waited for their food. After a while, Karen said it was her turn to excuse herself and left the table for the ladies’ room.

“Do you mind if I ask you a personal question, Gavin?” Crystal said.

He shrugged. “I won’t guarantee an answer, but sure, go ahead.”

“Why haven’t you told Karen how you feel about her?”

“How I-I... what’s that?”

“You’ve known her all this time and you’ve never told her how attracted you are to her or how much you think about her when the two of you are apart.”

Gavin opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out for a moment. Finally: “Were, uh, were you discussing this with Karen when I was in the bathroom?”

“Remember, I’m psychic.”

“Uh... yeah. That’s right. And you... sensed this?”

“Very strongly. Intensely. Another personal question, if you don’t mind. You’ve had a very bad experience with a woman, haven’t you?”

“Um...” He didn’t response.

“I’m feeling that. Your wife, maybe? Karen mentioned that you were married a couple of times. The second time was, like, a bad experience, wasn’t it?”

He nodded slowly. “It... wasn’t good, no.”

“I have just one little piece of advice for you.”

“Whats that?”

“Karen’s not your wife. I know I just met you today, but I’m feeling, like, a lot of compatibility between you two. For what that’s worth.”

Their food came then, and a couple of minutes later, Karen returned.

From then on, Gavin’s attention was not as divided between the two women. It was focused on Karen.

Over dinner, they discussed possible ways of figuring out the two unanswered questions: What were residents of Mt. Shasta doing in the middle of the night that they seemed to be unaware of? What were the people from Km Services doing in town and where were they staying?

“I had one idea,” Crystal said. “Like I said, I walk every night. One of you could, like, come with me while the other waits in a car nearby. When we see something odd, somebody driving around town, we call the car on a cell and whoever’s in it follows the person.”

“We could do that,” Gavin said, nodding. “Do you still have the license plate numbers from the Km Services vehicles?”

“I’ve got them at home,” Crystal said.

“We should know those numbers, along with makes and models. Show us where you’ve seen the vehicles. We’ll be spending time in town the next few days, just looking around and getting a feel for the place. We’ll look for them. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

After dinner, Crystal took them on a walk through the town of Mt. Shasta. By then, it was mostly empty.

The night was cold enough for exhaled breath to float through the air as a ghostly vapor. Mt. Shasta was a quaint little Mayberry-like town that Karen thought probably looked like a Christmas card during the holidays.

“There’s hardly any crime,” Karen said. “People are friendly and kids are safe. It looks like a town where nothing could possibly go wrong, doesn’t it?”

Karen and Gavin nodded in agreement.

“Well... somethings wrong,” Crystal said quietly as she removed keys from her purse and stopped in front of a door next to a plate glass window. A small, discrete sign in the window read, “Psychic and Astrological Readings.” She unlocked the door and went inside.

“This is my office,” she said, turning on the lights.

It was small, and it was more of a store than an office. A glass case held a variety of crystals and geodes on one shelf, jewelry on another. Several shelves on the walls held books on crystal power, pyramid power, astrology, Lemuria, Atlantis and Native American lore about Mt. Shasta.

“Actually, my office is in the back,” Crystal said. She pointed to an arched doorway in the rear and said, “That’s my reading room. I was skeptical when I first opened up, but I have quite a few regulars now and people, like, pop in and out every day for unscheduled readings or to browse and buy. I write between customers.” She smiled. “If you want me during the day, this is where I’ll be.”

Gavin turned to Karen and said, “We should get back and get some sleep. I’d like to get up early tomorrow and get started.”

The cottage had central heating and was pleasantly warm. As Gavin showered, Karen undressed and put on a pair of shorts and a tank top, then climbed into the big bed. It was unbelievably comfortable, maybe the most comfortable bed she’d ever encountered.

She listened to the hiss of the shower in the bathroom and thought about what Crystal had said. If it was true that Gavin was interested in her, why hadn’t he said or done something about it by now? They’d known each other for six years. In all that time, he hadn’t made a move.

Could his bad marriage have done that much damage? Was Gavin really that vulnerable? He seemed emotionally sturdy and self-confident. Maybe that was a front. They’d talked very little about his marriage and Karen didn’t want to pry, so she hadn’t asked for more than he’d volunteered. He’d been married to his second wife, Jan, for twelve years, madly in love with her, devoted to her. Then he’d learned that during all those years, she’d been getting it on with many of his friends and a lot of strangers. Worse, Gavin had discovered that nearly all of his friends and most of his family had been aware of it the whole time but had decided not to tell him.

“I was devastated,” he’d told her over a late dinner while they were together on a job for Burgess.

That was all he’d said. Maybe that word hadn’t been strong enough. Maybe he’d never recovered from that devastation and was unable even to consider the possibility of beginning a new relationship with a woman, even a woman to whom he was very attracted.

Or maybe he
wasn’t
attracted to her.

He’d had plenty of time, and more than enough opportunities, to try to start something with her or at least let her know how he felt. In fact, he’d had so many opportunities that Karen could not avoid the conclusion that he hadn’t made a move simply because he didn’t want to. Maybe Crystal didn’t know what the hell she was talking about. Then Karen frowned and wondered why shed ever considered the possibility that Crystal
did
know what she was talking about. Like all professional psychics, she got by on a combination of lucky guesses and an innate ability to read people.

What was I thinking?
Karen wondered as she turned onto her side and got comfortable in the heavenly bed with its feather pillows and down comforter. Within minutes, she was asleep.