Black-Eyed Moon (A Guinan Jones Paranormal Mystery #1) (6 page)

"Sorry, man," Zeke said, but Adam ignored him.

"Anything else you need to know?"

I said the only thing I could say. "Sorry."

He scowled, pushed past the group, and headed to his car. I avoided looking at Zeke's eyes.

"
What do you think you're doing? You practically accused him of murder to his face."

"My parents are making me leave Ridge Grove," I blurted out.

He took a step back. "Why?"

"Because of the murder."

"Do you want to leave?"

"Of course, I don't. No choice. I mean, I can refuse, I guess."

He chuckled. "With your mother? Once Saundra Jones makes up her mind about something, it's set in stone.

I made it a habit not to talk on my cell while driving, but when I saw Tessa's number, I answered as though it were a lifeline. Her voice sounded scratchy and strained. Whatever was going down at their house, I wanted to help.

Zeke's car wasn't in the driveway, and I felt
both relief and disappointment. Tamzen was probably comforting him right now. A familiar stab of jealousy burrowed into my chest. Maybe leaving Ridge Grove for a while was for the best.

The police car Tim usually drove home wasn't there, either. I couldn't imagine he was at the police station. I hadn't had a chance to ask my grandfather about his status, but I was almost certain Tim had been given some time off. I rang the bell and waited, hoping he wouldn't be the one who answered it.

When his form filled the doorway, my knees went weak. I forced a smile. He held the door open and swept his hand in a come-in gesture. I stepped over the threshold, averted my eyes, and mumbled thanks. He disappeared down the hall, and I headed to the kitchen.

Tessa
sat at the table in front of her open laptop. I was about to sit down across from her when she stood and embraced me. I inhaled a familiar smell—ginger and lemon—and took in the unusual silence of the house. Her eyes glazed, she motioned for me to sit.

"Are the twins napping?"

"Yep. I wish I could."

To avoid talking about the murder or the affair, I told
her about my grandmother and Miss Patsy.

She gave me a wan smile. "I know about that."

My eyes widened.

Tessa looked at me thoughtfully. Her hair
was piled on top of her head, and her clean, porcelain skin was free of makeup. She looked like a china doll, the effect slightly marred by a faint red blemish above her forehead. "Your grandmother was capable of more than she let on."

I leaned forward and rested my elbows on the table.
Grandma had been like a puzzle box. I'd bombard her with questions, never knowing which one would open her up. Once she relented, she rewarded me with the tiniest bit of information. She apparently shared more with Tessa. Why had she shut me out?

"You know why she was so reticent to talk about the clairvoyance, don't you?"

I replied the only way I could. "No."

"When she was about your
age, she told a friend that she dreamed one of the church deacons was going to die of a stroke. Well, the friend told her mother, not taking it seriously, of course. A week later, the deacon died of a stroke. The girl's mother told Tilda's parents about the dream. They freaked out."

I thought about what it would have meant at the time. "That was the late sixties, right? Weren't people more enlightened by then?"

"You'd think," Tessa said, laughing. "Her parents knew she was...different. Up until then, they preferred to ignore it."

Like parents, like daughter.

"As is the case in a small town, word got around about the dream. Some considered it a gift, others a curse. Women from the latter group started coming over to the house after church to pray the 'devil' away. Tilda said she wasn't possessed, and that her abilities were a gift from God."

My mouth was agape. I'd never gotten even the tiniest impression my grandmother felt that way. "
What changed her attitude?"

Tessa's expression became grave. "
I'm part of a prayer circle, but I'd never try to convince a scared and impressionable teenager that she's evil."

Good to know.

"Her parents started to believe she was possessed," she said. "I think they were afraid of her, and that deeply affected her."

I could relate to that.

"When she..."

I trailed off and followed her gaze to the door.
Tim entered the kitchen. He tossed an empty beer bottle into the trashcan and retrieved another from the refrigerator. When I arrived, I hadn't noticed the bags under his eyes or his hair sticking up or the stains on his T-shirt. He glanced in our direction before leaving the room.

When he was gone, I said, "How are things?"

Tessa rose and filled the kettle with water. She removed two tea cups and saucers from the cabinet and dropped tea bags inside. "As you'd expect when a wife finds out her husband cheated on her. But I don't believe he killed that girl." She faced me and leaned against the sink.

Neither did it,
but I was basing it on feelings, not hard evidence. There was a rare awkward pause between us. Tessa cleared her throat.

"There's something else you need to know about
why Tilda's attitude changed. When her parents began to believe she was possessed, they sent her away."

Just like my parents did.

"Where did they send her?" I imagined her grandparents raising her as she'd do with her own grandchild.

"
To a mental hospital."

The walls seemed to shift. "What?"

"Some place in North Carolina. She was there about six months. After that, I doubt she shared her dreams with anyone but Isaac."

I let it sink in. If her parents truly thought she was possessed, why send her to a mental hospital instead of an exorcist?

Tessa continued. "When lived with them for a while, she opened up to me. I couldn't relate to the clairvoyance part, but I was all too familiar with the feelings of isolation."

Why had Grandma opened up to Tessa
and not me, her granddaughter and fellow
clairvoyant
? Maybe she thought I was too young, and she'd planned to confide in me when I got older. She never got the chance.

I watched Tessa pour
steaming water into the cups and bring both to the table. I stared absently at mine.

"I agree with your gr
andmother about certain things," she said. My stomach dropped.
A curse.

"
She came to believe that reading people's emotions was a violation."

"
I agree if the person doesn't want to be read. But what I do for my grandfather—"

"Because a person's dead, reading his
final thoughts doesn't matter?"

My face grew hot. "It's just, well, knowing how someone died can't be bad."

Tessa folded her arms. "In the case of murder, I'd agree. Even so, I doubt the police need your help to solve the crime."

I nodded in agreement.

The police had more than enough to go on.
Kate had rejected Eric and Adam, and someone wouldn't leave her alone. Then again, she'd probably rejected a lot of guys. Heads swiveled when she walked the hallways at school, her dark hair swinging down her back.

I drank tea and shared theories
about Eric and Adam, but Tessa wasn't in a theory-sharing mood. She repeated what she'd said about letting the police handle it.

It hadn't escape
d my notice that I sat across from someone who also had motive to see Kate dead. I couldn't let my love for the family blind me to other possibilities.

The more I thought about my Grandma's stay at a mental hospital, the more I wondered
whether they really sent her away because of a dream.

***

Instead of heading home, I detoured to the police station. In contrast to the day Kate's body was discovered, the place was almost empty, except for Brenda the receptionist, Rory, and Skeeter Watson. I glanced at Brenda, who gave me a familiar look: eyebrows raised and lips pursed. She wanted to gossip about something. I sidled over and gave her a "What's up?" face.

Eric Rodman had been in for questioning the day of the murder.

"He said he quit the team because he was tired of it," she said, her eyes wide. "But of course, it's more to it than that."

I leaned in
conspiratorially and waited for her to spill the news.

"
I heard he got kicked off for using drugs."

I, Guinan Jones, the girl with a sixth sense
, tended to hear about these things third hand. Zeke hadn't mentioned this piece of possibly relevant information, and I'd never heard even a whisper about it. I knew of only one other druggie, and he was sitting in the same building.

I g
ave her a questioning look and inclined my head in Skeeter's direction.

"It seems his story of finding the bo
dy is somewhat implausible. He said he'd been in the woods that night and hadn't seen or heard anything unusual."

Brenda paused to answer the phone. She transferred the call and continued.

"Isaac thinks it's odd that Skeeter didn't discover the body until eight the next morning."

"What was he doing out there?"

"Said he went for a walk and fell asleep under the stars." She made a face. I shared the sentiment.

"So they
think he's lying about when he found the body, but they don't think he killed her?"

"That's the impression I get."

I folded my arms and frowned. "They question Eric and let him go. They're questioning Skeeter and probably will let him go. Interesting."

The police sometimes lied about what they knew
, let a suspect go, and gave him enough rope to hang himself. Maybe that's what they were doing.

We both
glanced at the door opened. Granddad walked in looking harried. He did a double-take when he saw me and gestured for me to follow him to his office.

"Close the door," he said, plopping down in h
is chair. His usually neat space was cluttered with file folders and empty food containers. From the faint light streaming through the window, I saw the strain on his face. "What have you got for me?"

"Me? I…well…"

"You look worried. Did you mother call again?"

"No need," I said, sitting down across from his desk. "She's determined."

"She's as stubborn as your grandmother," he said, carefully pulling the top off his coffee cup.

I wondered if he knew about the mental institution.

"Do you think my parents might have me committed?"

The look on his face
confirmed my suspicions. He laughed. "Don't be silly. Things were different back then. You know, parapsychology is a legitimate field these days. We know so much more about psychic phenomenon—"

"But some people still believe it's evil," I said.

"Well, I'm not one of those people." He narrowed his eyes at me. "Shouldn't you be home packing?"

"I was thinking I could read suspects for you. Help with the case."

He choked on his coffee. "Oh, how the tide has turned! Now you want to read for me. No, I want you away from here, at least until this mess is over."

So there it was. I have no chance of changing my mother's mind if my grandfather agreed with her.

He watched me thoughtfully. "I wish Tessa hadn't told you about the hospital."

"Why did Grandma
tell her and not me?"

"When Tessa
came to stay with us, she was shy and maybe even a little depressed. They spent a lot of time together, talking. Then she met Tim, and things began looking up for her."

I waited for him to answer the question, but he patted the papers on his desk.

"Lots of work to do. See you at home."

"One more question," I said. "Does Eric have an alibi?"

"His mother said he was at home asleep."

"Do you believe her?"

He winked. "We check out everything."

I left the office but lingered around the station. I heard Rory tell Skeeter he was free to go, and I followed him as he scampered out of the building. I broke into a jog to catch him before he reached his truck.

"Skeeter?"

He looked around, shading his eyes with his hand. His dirty-blond hair hung in greasy strings around his pale face. He was twelve years older than me, and he resembled Kurt Cobain. Or so my mother said.

The p
olice had cleared him after the shooting eight years ago, but his wife left him, anyway. He started selling crystal meth. Then he started using. Now he was a sad-looking man who got high in the woods at Jepson's Point.

He wore a long-sleeved flannel shirt. In this heat.
When I reached him, I noticed he wasn't sweating at all.

"Look who it is," he said.

I gave him a weak smile. "They didn't arrest you."

"
They don't know what the hell they're doing." He looked me up and down.  "Damn, girl. You grew up nice."

His
checking me out didn't make me cringe. "You were doing drugs out there that night?"

He sneered.
"I've been clean since March. I was out taking a walk."

"
On a Saturday night into Sunday morning?" The police had been over this with him, but I needed to do only what I could do. "What were you really doing out there?"

He
stared at me with vacant eyes. "Why don't you do your witchy thing and find out."

Here we go again. "I can't read people's minds. If I could, I wouldn't be asking you questions."

He leaned toward me expectantly.

"I read people's emotions."

Skeeter smirked. "Weak. You don't need to be a psychic to do that."

"And I know what a dead person was thinking just before he or she died."

He stopped smirking. "Is that why your granddaddy brings you to see dead bodies? What was Kate thinking, then?"

I bit my lip.
He's a suspect.
If I told him what I'd seen, he might use it to avoid a murder charge.

"I think she knew the killer."

"Yeah? And I take it you don't know who that is?"

I shook my head.

He glanced at the police station. "Maybe I can do something about that," he said. He started walking to his dingy white truck.

"Do you have the murder weapon in your truck or something?"

Skeeter got in, leaned across the seat, and opened the passenger-side door.

I looked back at the p
olice station. "What do you want to show me? Can't you just tell me?"

He rolled his eyes. "Just get in. What, you think I'm the killer?"

I didn't know what to think. But if Skeeter had information...I gave the station a fleeting look, patted my back pocket to make sure I had my cell phone, and got in. The stun gun my Granddad insisted I carry was in the glove compartment of my car.

He started the truck and pulled out of the parking lot. He
lit a cigarette and took a long drag. "I may be an accidental killer, but I'm not a murderer."

Our eyes briefly connected.
Intense regret. Deep and oppressive self-pity. Longing and loneliness. Anybody with any sensitivity at all could sense these things about Skeeter Watson. But I couldn't be sure his regret had to do with killing Kate recently, killing his father-in-law years ago, or both.

He jerked a thumb behind him. "And I'd have to be pretty stupid to kidnap the chief's granddaughter in broad daylight and take her somewhere and kill her."

I heard a car engine start and watched a car drive by. "Are we going to Jepson's Point?"

"Yep," he said, flicking ashes out the window.

"Who do you think did it?"

His laugh turned into a cough. "What would you say if I told you I think Officer Timmy did it?"

I shook my head slightly but otherwise stared at the road.

"Come on," he said. "I knew Tim was sleeping with that girl long before everybody else found out. He's got the motive."

"Just because he slept with her..." I trailed off, not sure I believed what I was going to say.

He
took another long drag and tossed the stump out the window. "Let's say he had motive because she was going to spill the beans. Did he have the means? Kate was hit with something blunt. A tree branch, maybe. That's easy. Next, did he have the opportunity?"

I realized I was gaping at him. "Tessa said he was at home with her, in bed."

He glanced at me, his eyebrows raised. "What else would a wife and mother of young kids with a husband suspected of murder say?"

"So you're saying Tim might have killed her, and Tessa is covering for him?"

"I'm just considering possibilities."

"You found the body at what time?"

He cut his eyes at me. "Like I told the cops, around eight Sunday morning."

"What were you doing out
—"

He held up
a hand. "Not the point. It's not against the law to go for a walk. Stay with me here."

I stared at his profile as he rattled off how Eric was too obvious a suspect and how Tim was a stronger one. He also brought up a drifter-murderer theory because the Interstate-77 access ramp was a few miles from the center of town.

"That's unlikely, though," he said. "Just tossing things out. You?"

I told him about Kate rejecting Eric and Adam, which he already knew.

"That's all you got?" He shook his head. "Chief of police's grandkid and town psychic. You ever thought about going deeper than that?"

"Well, the pool of potential killers is limited," I said, feeling defensive.

He shifted in his seat. "That's right. Limited to people she knew. Now, think beyond the men she screwed and screwed over. Who else would have a reason to kill her. And," he said, holding up a finger, "did the person intend to kill her?"

A
half-formed thought teetered at the edge of my mind. "So you think the person might have lured her there just to talk, and then things went wrong?"

Skeeter shrugged and gave me a sideways glance. "Did your granddaddy tell you what the murder weapon was?"

I shook my head. "They're not releasing that information, so when they question people—"

"Yeah, yeah, the murderer might give himself
—or herself—away. But I thought your grandfather might have told you."

"And if he had, I wouldn't tell you."

He flicked his hand as if batting away a fly. "That don't matter. I'm guessing it was something handy."

I wouldn't have guessed
Skeeter was so talkative. Or analytical. I never asked my grandfather about the weapon. Long and slender. It could have been a tree branch. Or a baseball bat. I found myself wanting to open up to Skeeter about the dream. I decided to ease into it with small talk.

"
I think the moon was full that night. Did you notice?"

He
frowned. "It was kind of dark. Not a full moon."

I nodded absently, brushing
strands of hair out of my face. The hot wind from the open windows had blown it all over my head.

"I read somewhere that the moon is actually black," he said. "Did you know that? People think it's white."

I laughed. "A black moon? I don't think so."

He grinned
. "It looks white because the sun's shining on it."

I closed my eyes and tried to visualize the moon as it appeared in my dream.
Had it been full? I did a quick Google search on my phone. The night Kate was killed, the moon was in a waxing crescent phase.

Forget about the dream for now
.

"Skeeter, when you said I should go deeper into this, what did you mean?"

"I meant you should consider people other than the husband, the dumped boyfriend, and the other rejects. Who else would want to see Kate dead?" I must have been silent a beat too long for his taste. "Come on, girl. Just say it out loud."

I took a deep breath. "A cheated-on wife might want to see her dead."

He nodded. "She might."

"But in this case, she has an alibi."

He smirked. "Right. So if one was asleep, how could he or she be sure the other was there the whole time?"

"You have a point," I said. "But I know Tim and Tessa. They're not murderers."

He cut his eyes at me again. "You probably didn't think Tim would turn out to be a cheater."

In the brief moment we held eye contact, I sensed
an undercurrent of excitement. Was this all a game to him?

"You know more than you're saying, don't you?"

"Beware of the evil eyes," he said.

"Huh?"

He kept his eyes on the road, and I couldn't tell if he was serious or joking. Before I could respond, his truck lurched forward. My pulse quickened, and my hands flew up in front of me. The instinctive move kept my chest from slamming into the dashboard. The passenger-side seatbelt hadn't locked with the impact.

The
tires screeched as Skeeter cut the steering wheel to the right to keep from running off the road.

"What the hell? Crazy bastard!"

"Who is that?" I said. My heart pounding, I twisted around and saw a black SUV I didn't recognize. The windshield was tinted too dark to see the driver. "And this seatbelt is broken!"

I expected Skeeter to pull over, but he sped up.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm gonna kill that snot-nosed little
—"

The driver
slammed into the back of the truck again. I didn't have time to brace myself. My body, still twisted in the seat, jerked forward. I hit the dashboard. My right arm took the brunt of the impact. I held my breath against the sharp pain and gripped my arm. "Skeeter, stop this truck!"

But he maintained his speed, sideswiping a mailbox.

Where were the police when you needed them?

"My arm...Skeeter, stop."

"Hold on!"

He made a sharp right, his
truck fishtailing. What had I gotten myself into? Skeeter had seemed so rational a minute ago. Now he was acting like the crazy man everybody said he was. I reached for my cell phone, temporarily forgetting that my right arm felt as if it were on fire. The truck swerved left, and so did I.

Before
I could tell him again to stop, the words caught in my throat. An oak tree seemed to be moving toward us. He cut the wheel until the driver's side faced the tree. In those seconds, my grandmother's face floated before my eyes. Tires screeched, and the last thing I saw were the squashed innards of a dead bug on the windshield.