Black-Eyed Moon (A Guinan Jones Paranormal Mystery #1) (14 page)

"If only I'd done what she asked and stayed home. My wife would not have gotten into that car. She'd still be alive. Don't you see how it's happening again?"

I shook my head, not sure why. I didn't know what to believe.

"You and your mother were supposed to be
gone by now." It was hard to look at the tears welling up in his eyes, but I didn't look way. "That dream you had, dying under a full moon in that field—"

"I'm not going anyw
here near that field," I said. My words came out in a rush. "Grandma changed what she saw at least once. The future isn't set in stone."

He shook his head. "I don't care. Seeing someone else's death and seeing your own are two different things. I'm not taking a chance, and ne
ither are you. I've told your mother all this."

And she doesn't believe the dream was about me.
Usually, she was ready to believe the worst.

A nurse came into the room
. "We don't mind if you stay with us all week, Chief. But I'm sure you'll want to leave soon, so you'll need to rest."

He scowled at her. "I can rest in my own bed. I need to go home. Today."

I shuffled my feet. I was the reason he was in a hurry.

"What's going on?"

All three of us looked toward the door. My mother had a pack of crackers and a Mountain Dew in her hands.

"Granddad wants to go home
today."

My mother looked from him to the nurse. "Is that possible?"

"He really needs to stay at least one more day and—"

"Let me talk to the doctor," he said.

The doctor gave him a mini-lecture on what he needed to do. As Granddad dressed in the bathroom, my mother and I made sure we had everything else he needed, and the three of us headed out. I fidgeted in the back seat, knowing he wasn't going to rest. His department had two murders to solve. I was going to be a good little girl and stick close to home. I was determined not to give him another heart attack.

***

That evening, the Hicks family came over. While the adults talked in the den, Zeke and I took the twins upstairs to my room. Once I got them settled on the floor with a few of my old stuffed animals I took from the closet shelf, I told him about my grandmother's car accident dreams. For a few minutes, we didn't speak. The sound of toddlers shrieking and laughing filled the void.

"What a world, huh?" He lay on his side at the foot of my bed, and I sat propped against the headboard hugging a pillow.

"You know, when you told me about that dream, I wondered if your grandmother might have had a similar one."

My eyes widened. "Very perceptive."

He blushed and sat up. "Yeah, well. It's not that big a leap. Have you ever thought about why you dreamed about death? Why not lottery numbers or which college you'll get into?"

I stared at him
. "Maybe I'll end up dreaming about that stuff."

"Or
maybe there's something about death that demands attention. It's final. The end of life, at least physical life. It's huge." He shrugged and watched the boys play tug-of-war with my panda. "You ever wondered why you can see recently dead people's thoughts but only sense emotions of the living?"

I'd given myself headaches trying to figure it out. 

"What it is about death?" he said.

"I guess
the dreams and thoughts are some kind of warning from the universe."

He eyed me skeptically. "The universe? More like from God."

I bit my lip. "Why would God give me the power to know what a dead person was thinking before he died or to see my own death?"

He reached down and picked up Jacob, who was about to cry after Jude had won the tug-of-war. He bounced the boy on his lap. He'd make a good father.

"Remember when I told you about doing something good? You can help solve crimes."

I scoffed. "I
can't see who murdered Kate or Skeeter, and I saw myself die. What good is that to anybody?"

Zeke put the squirming boy back
on the floor and handed him the orange giraffe, who Jacob promptly tried to eat.

"You're looking at it
the wrong way," he said, turning to face me. "I think the answers are right there." He tapped a finger on the side of his head.

"You mean I already know who the killer is?"

He pressed his lips together and blew out a long breath. "I think you might."

I leaned my head against the headboard, closed my eyes, and instructed my brain to tell me the killer's name. I opened my eyes and shook my head. "Nope, not working."

He gave me a crooked smile. "I don't think it works like that."

Someone tapped on the door. "Hey, kids."

Tessa pushed the door open, and the twins discarded my stuffed animals, ran to her, and clung to her legs. She looked at me. "We're leaving. Isaac needs his rest."

Zeke sat up. "C
all you later?"

I nodded.

"I'll be down in a minute," she said to him. "Will you take them?"

"Sure." He
gazed at me before he left. It made me sad all over again to be leaving.

Tessa closed the door and
sat on the bed. "Isaac is going to be fine."

"I was worried there for a minute."

"He's strong. A little stubborn, but strong."

I knew she hadn't sent Zeke away
to talk about Granddad's condition. I carefully watched the woman I sometimes wished were my mother.

"Guinan," she said, looking into my eyes, "you're feeling confused. Sad. Angry. Scared."

My smile faltered. Her eyes seemed to be locked onto mine, and I felt like stalked prey. Adrenaline rushed through me, and I resisted the urge to flee. I broke eye contact and sat upright. "What was that?"

"I'm sorry. I was
reading you."

"Reading me?"

She nodded. "I'm empathic, too."

Something clicked in my brain. My eyes traveled from her face to the spot on her forehead where a widow's peak would be
. She noticed me looking and brushed her fingers over the spot.

"When my mother started letting me shave my legs, I'd shave this thing off, too."

My hand went to mine automatically.

"Saundra's grandmother
and mine were sisters," she said. "Their mother was clairvoyant, the first known one in the family."

I stared at her and forced my mouth to form words.
"Does that mean my mother is also clairvoyant?"

"I've never sensed it, and
she's never mentioned it to me. In your mother's case, it must have skipped a generation. Not so in mine."

"Your mother," I said.

Tessa's lips twisted as if she'd tasted something sour. "As far as I know, she set up on the boardwalk in Atlantic City as a fortuneteller reading palms and tea leaves."

Her mother sounded like a prime example of why I didn't like being called a psychic. Still, Tessa could have helped me.
Instead, she'd concealed the truth. She must have read it on my face. Or sensed the emotions.

"I'm just like Tilda. I don't want to be clairvoyant. I don't want to sense or dream or
—"

"You have precog dreams?"
I rose from the bed. My legs felt like jelly. "Why are you telling me this now?"

She looked at her hands. "Your mother and I were in the kitchen talking and, well, she
let it slip that your grandmother sent her some journals. I'm almost certain Tilda mentioned my clairvoyance. I'm sorry I lied to you."

"I understand," I said. Did I really? "
My mother said she hasn't read the journals. They're mine. At least when I turn eighteen."

She cocked her head. "Are you sure she hasn't read them?"

"She said she hasn't, and I believe her. Does she know you're clairvoyant?"

"
I think she suspects."

"Does your family know?"

Tessa lowered her gaze and folded her arms. "No. But I plan to tell them."

I rubbed my forehead and tried to make sense of this news. "Can you hear dead people's thoughts?"

She shook her head. "Besides empathy, I can sometimes sense things before they happen."

"Premonitions?"

She nodded. "There's something else I need to mention that's probably in the journals as well. Before Tim and I married, I had a miscarriage. I was twelve weeks along. We were planning to marry before the baby was born."

The two most important women in my life had lost babies. I couldn't begin to imagine what that was like.

"Things worked out," she said, smiling. "Afterward, we got married and had Zeke. I had some fertility issues after that, but then the twins came."

"I hope
to have what you have some day," I said.

She looked at me, eyes w
ide. "I know you envy me. I make it look easy. It isn't."

I didn
't know how to respond.

"You
'll get a fresh start in D.C. You better keep in touch."

I'll call and text. And
I expect weekly pictures of the twins. They'll grow so much while I'm gone. Can we talk sometime...about our abilities?"

The
idea triggered a memory.

"Of course, you can."

A knock sounded on the door. It opened a crack, and Zeke peered in.

"Mrs. Jones is kicking us out."

We rose from the bed, and I touched Tessa's arm. She stopped and looked at me.

"
Did you know Granddad was going to have a heart attack?"

She lowered her gaze. "
Just before you called, I saw it."

I braced myself. "Did you have premonitions about what happened to Kate and Skeeter?"

"I wish I had," she said.

I nodded and
followed her downstairs. As his parents and siblings headed down the walkway, Zeke lingered on the porch. Before I could say anything, he pecked me on the cheek and jogged to catch up.

This was huge.
I felt even more of a kinship with Tessa. Another empath in the family, and she had premonitions. Sensing something will happen before it happened sounded cooler than seeing dead people's thoughts.

That evening, while my grandfather slept, m
y mother and I stared at the TV. I wasn't ready to tell her about Tessa. I was in a sort of trance when the news anchor announced a break in the Theodore Watson murder, which also could be linked to the Kate Mansfield murder. An arrest was imminent.

I sat up, then looked at my mother. She'd
told the station not to call my grandfather about work, no matter how important they thought it was. It meant we heard this news on TV like everybody else.

She
let out a shallow breath. "I wonder who it is?"

I chewed on a nail. We'd know soon enough.

Soon enough came the next morning. My mother gave up trying to make Granddad stay in bed. He agreed not to go the station but set up office on the dining room table and talked on his cell non-stop.

"There's been an arrest,"
he said during a rare break. "The media hasn't gotten wind of the details, yet, but we found what might be Eric's custom-made baseball bat. His prints were on it as well as a goodly amount of dried blood. Human blood."

My mother
covered her mouth. "It's over, then?"

I smiled while she hugged me.
"Where was the bat found?"

S
till in his pajamas and robe, Granddad leaned back in the chair and rubbed his eyes. "Well, thanks to your detective work, I had a couple officers go back to the crime scene. I told them to check that oak tree and the vicinity to see what they could come up with."

My cheeks grew hot. My detective work?

He continued. "One of them noticed that a patch of ground a few feet from the tree looked freshly turned. I don't know how we missed it the first time, but that's spilled milk under the bridge. They started digging and found the bat several feet deep."

While my mother talked non-stop about my homecoming, I thought it
odd that Eric would bury the bloody murder weapon. But what did I know of the minds of murderers?

***

I watched the news and followed the story online all day. I texted Tamzen for the tenth time, and for the tenth time, she didn't reply. If Eric had been at her house around the time Skeeter was murdered, how could he have been murdering him? Unless he lied. Or they both lied. I was going crazy watching and surfing and waiting. I left my house and drove straight to hers.

My polite knocking on the door turned into banging. I shouted her name, went around to the back, banged on that door, and shouted some more.
No response. I called Zeke and asked if he'd seen or heard from her.

"She calls but I don't answer," he said. "She's stopped leaving messages
, though."

His casual tone irritated me.
"Do you have to be so...so cruel to her? First, you have sex with her. The next day, you dump her."

"
Whoa, what? Tamzen and I did not have sex."

"That's what she told me."

He gave a humorless laugh. "She lied. You couldn't sense it?"

I stared into space. She hadn't actually said they had sex. But she'd given me that impression. And her emotions...

Intense
physical and emotional satisfaction. Triumphant smugness.

"
We kissed and stuff for a while."

And stuff?

"After that, we went to sleep."

"I remembered that she avoided
eye contact at certain points. I guess she'd wanted to me to think you guys did more than kissing. But why would she lie?"

A flash of deception.
At the time, I didn't connect the flash with her lying about something so important.

"Who know
s why that girl does anything," Zeke said.

"
When was the last time she called you?" I waited while he checked his call history.

"Last night around eleven."

"Did she call Thursday night?"

"I think so."

"What time?"

"Why?"

I bit my lip, wondering whether I should say. Zeke wasn't her boyfriend anymore, and what she did was her business. It was also private. "Eric told me they spent some time together that night. Apparently he lied, because Tamzen said she wasn't with him."

I waited for
his response. I heard him breathing evenly as if he were trying to stay calm. Was he jealous?

"I was wrong," he said. "She didn't call me Thursday night. She called during the day, around noon."

Maybe Zeke's rejection prompted her to turn to Eric.

"When I read
Skeeter Friday night, I—"

"You were
at the scene?"

"Granddad called while I was out and asked me to come over. Needless to say it was
a shock to—"

"You were out with Tamzen? I thought you guys had fallen out by then."

I raked a hand through my hair. I didn't have anything to hide. "Dean and I were hanging out."

I
waited for his reaction. Jealousy? Indifference?

"Well, it's all over, so I guess you and your
mom will be leaving. If we don't talk again, have a good trip."

He hung up.

I kept the cell to my ear. There had to be some kind of mistake, and I'd hear his voice again. But there was no voice. Zeke Hicks hung up on me.

I looked at the cell, put it back into my pocket, and
I took my time walking to my car. Inside, I rolled down the window and watched Tamzen's house. I thought I saw a living room curtain flutter.

What am I doing? The murderer had been caught. It was over. But instead of driving home, I drove to the police station. I parked behind the building, dialed Brenda, and pleaded
with her to let me in through the back door. The first person I saw when I entered the hallway was Rory. He stood outside my grandfather's office rubbing his forehead. He spotted me and smiled.

"Did Isaac send you to work his shift?"

I laughed. "He wants to work it himself."

Rory shook his head. "Just got out of the hospital, and he's raring to go. Did he send you for a file or something?"

I shook my head. "Can I ask you a question?" I realized I'd set myself up.

"You just did," he said, grinning.

"Did Eric tell the police he had an alibi for the night Skeeter died?"

"
Don't they all? He gave us some BS about spending the night at Tamzen Parker's. She denied it."

My skin
tingled. "Really? Did she come to the station?"

"She was here this morning. Why?"

"I'm looking for her. She's not answering her cell and or the door."

He
ruffled his hair and yawned. "Eric's in custody, if that's what you're worried about."

I nodded absently. Eric was in custody. A double-murderer.

"All I can tell you is she came in this morning with her mother," Rory said, "gave a statement, and left." The phone at his desk rang. "If that's all?"

He
dashed to his desk. He sat down, picked up the receiver, and began writing in his notepad.

I
slipped inside my grandfather's office, shut the door, and sank into his chair. I swiveled around and stared out the window. A few townspeople ambled in the parking lot, which had been a lot fuller after Kate's body was discovered. It was as though a murderer in custody was anti-climactic. I reflected on all that had happened.

A little over a week ago, a teenage girl had been murdered. Then Tim's affair with her came out. Zeke started talking to me again. Then he and my best friend broke up. Eric ran me and Skeeter off the road. Then Skeeter ended up dead, too. I closed my eyes and let my thoughts run like a movie.

It's Saturday night, and Eric pretends to be Tim and lures Kate to Jepson's Point. He hits her on the head with his custom-made bat and kills her. Maybe he didn't intend to. Why bring the bat? It was probably already in his car. I've seen bats in players' cars. After they argue, he retrieves it and does the deed. Skeeter Watson sees him do it and blackmails him. The following Thursday night, he goes to Skeeter's, probably pretending to make amends. Skeeter's drunk or high. Eric kills him with the same weapon and buries it at Jepson's Point. He lies and says he was at Tamzen's around the time Skeeter was killed.

I rubbed my forehead.
Had Eric discovered the carving and decided to kill Kate near the tree and bury the weapon there, too? Perhaps it was a symbolic act. It wasn't the carving specifically, but what it symbolized. Would I ever kill another human being? I could see doing so accidentally. But murder? What could ever be bad enough in my life that I'd murder someone? I'd defend myself and my family. Would I avenge the death of someone I loved?

Eric Rodman had
it all: straight-A student, star of the baseball team, gorgeous girlfriend, rich parents. He turned to drugs, got kicked off the team, and lost his girlfriend. Resorting to murder was so extreme.

I supposed that was the point.

What was it Zeke about death dreams?

Or maybe there's something about death that demands attention. It's final. The end of life, at least physical life. It's huge."

My grandmother dreamed of death before it happened. I dreamed my unborn brother died before it happened. The death I dreamed hadn't happened yet. Did we dream about future deaths to prevent them? There had to be a point to it.

I opened my eyes, sprung fr
om the chair, and paced.
Symbolic.
I wondered if Eric buried anything else in those woods.