Slightly Psychic. Sandra Steffen

being held?”

      “Her hands were cuffed.”

      “But she’s alive?”

      Lila had seen Holly Baxter writhing, an expression of intense pain on her young face. Closing her eyes on a feeling of deep and imminent sadness, she said, “I believe she is, yes.”

      “Where is this inn?” Malone asked, speaking for the first time.

      This was the part Lila most dreaded trying to explain. “I don’t know where it is, exactly.”

      “Oh, for crying out loud. She’s wasting our time.”

      Malone was going to be no help whatsoever. Turning to his partner, Lila said, “I’m pretty sure I’ll know it when I see it.”

      She wasn’t the only one who was surprised when he said, “Let’s go.”

      Twenty minutes later she was sitting in the passenger seat of an unmarked police car heading out of Hartford. Other than occasional static on the police radio, not a sound came from the interior of that car. Keeping her mind clear of doubt, she concentrated on the falling leaves and the shadows cast by the evening sun. Every so often she told Detective Malone to turn right or left. She lost the trail a few times, and had to ask him to turn around. Each time they neared an old house that had been converted into a bed-and-break-fast inn, he slowed slightly, waiting for her to say something.

      At one point she happened to notice him looking in his rearview mirror. A bundle of nerves, she glanced over her shoulder in time to see a Channel 4 news van round the corner behind them. He swore under his breath, but it was too late to turn back because goose bumps skittered up and down her body, and her earlier vision shot through her mind.

      “Turn here,” she said louder than before.

      He swerved. Barely keeping the car out of the ditch, he made a right onto Hampton Road.

      “There,” she said, motioning to a narrow driveway between crumbling stone pillars. Her stomach was on fire, and she felt an eerie sense of déjà vu as they pulled through the open gate.

      “That looks like Holly’s car,” Detective Owens said, pointing to the back corner of a blue Beamer, all that was visible behind an overgrown hedge near the back of the property.

      “Room number six,” Lila whispered, squeezing her eyes shut against the image playing behind them.

      “Stay here,” Owens ordered, getting out. But she followed anyway.

      Malone radioed for backup.

      “And you—” Owens glared at the news team. “Stay out of the way or I’ll throw you in jail for obstructing justice.”

      The news team gave the detectives a head start before closing in, leaves crunching with every step they took. Lila followed far more furtively.

      “Police!” Malone yelled. “Open up.”

      A woman screamed.

      Malone kicked in the door. He and Owens entered, pistols drawn. The cameraman crowded closer. Holly Baxter screamed again.

      Peering around everyone else, Lila stared at the naked man in the king-size bed. “Alex?”

      “Lila, what the hell?” He grabbed the sheet to cover himself.

      “You’re supposed to be in Dallas.” Her voice seemed to come from far away.

      “You know him?” Lieutenant Owens asked, his gun still pointed.

      Holly Baxter nodded slowly.

      And Lila heard herself say, “He’s my fiancé.” Shuddering violently, she added, “My ex-fiancé, it would seem.”

      Holly blushed scarlet. Alex looked shell-shocked. Somewhere, someone chuckled.

      The room spun, and Lila spun with it. A strange silence was falling all around her. She felt herself falling, too, and all the while she was aware of the cameraman capturing everything on film.

      CHAPTER 2

      Six months later

      The people gathered on the sidewalk in one of the oldest neighborhoods in Providence held morning newspapers and coffee mugs instead of microphones or cameras. They stood talking amongst themselves, two here, three there. There wasn’t a member of the press among them. Lila Delaney was old news.

      Two teenaged boys carried boxes containing all that remained of her life and her work here in Rhode Island. Everything fit neatly in the back of one compact U-Haul trailer.

      A cheerless gray drizzle began to fall, sending the neighbors back inside their well-kept, closely spaced houses, so that only Lila and the young men wrestling her garden statues up the ramp of the rented trailer saw the taxi pull to a stop at the curb. One of the teenagers whistled under his breath as a svelte blonde dressed all in black got out. If anyone had been looking, they would have seen Lila’s face brighten, too.

      Penelope Bartholomew was always a sight for sore eyes.

      Carrying herself with the regality inherent in the DNA of the naturally wealthy, Penelope, nicknamed Pepper years ago, stopped a few feet from Lila. “I go to Europe for eight months and all hell breaks loose for you.”

      Lila still cringed at the memory of her fast, humiliating and thorough downfall.

      “They really sold T-shirts that said My ex-fiancé, it would seem?” Pepper asked after the two old friends had hugged.

      Lila shuddered. “Coffee mugs, too.” It had been the most coined phrase and biggest publicity circus since Who Shot JR? and Where’s The Beef?.

      “I can’t believe you didn’t call me.”

      “Would you have talked me out of it?” Lila asked.

      “When have I ever been able to talk you out of anything?” Pepper’s bright pink umbrella went up like a splash of color in a black-and-white photograph. Holding the umbrella over both of them, she said, “I recall talking you into a few things, though. Remember the time I persuaded you to attend that Harvard Fly Club party with me?”

      Who could forget? Convinced her boyfriend was cheating on her, Pepper and Lila had gone dressed as guys. When they’d gotten caught, Pepper’s parents had threatened to dissolve her trust fund over the incident. Although they would have liked to somehow blame it on Lila, they knew their daughter. Still, who could fault Mary Bartholomew for wanting her youngest to choose friends who came from old money and had grown up someplace suitable, such as the Cape or the Hamptons? Instead she’d brought home a waif from Chicago who had large hazel eyes and strange ideas about the universe.

      Lila said, “We made quite an entrance that night, didn’t we?”

      Pepper nudged her with one shoulder. “If it hadn’t been for your C cups, we would have fooled those fly-boys. But pooh grand entrances. I hear nobody makes grander exits than you, and on national television, no less.”

      Some grand exit.

      Shuddering again, Lila turned her attention to the clanking and banging coming from the trailer. “Please be careful with Apollo. He belongs to my mother.”

      Pepper hid a yawn before saying, “There’s a twenty in it for whichever one of you would be so kind as to move my bags from that taxi to the backseat of Ms. Delaney’s car.”

      While the quieter of the two fetched Pepper’s bags, his friend said, “Are you here for a séance? Or are you pa-psychic, too?”

      His cocky grin faded fast when Pepper stared at his fly and chanted something that sounded like a Romany curse. He loaded the last statue by himself, and barely waited for Lila’s payment.

      The moment the boys were gone, Lila said, “He has no idea you just told him you liked his shoes. For the rest of his life, he’s going to believe any problem he has in bed is your fault.”

      “What