Hear No Evil (18 page)

Ronald Ness, the owner of the dealership, said the T-shirts had been used as an advertising promotion five years ago, but were handed out not only to buyers, but to staff and their families, as well. The shirts had been given away as prizes on the radio and at the county fair and during the townwide Midsummer Madness Sales.

In all, five hundred Ness Chevrolet T-shirts had been distributed, said Ronald Ness, and sometimes people didn’t want them and gave them away to somebody else. They turned up in the local Salvation Army store, where anyone could buy one for twenty-five cents.

Owen had brought an old photograph of Mimi and a Polaroid he’d taken of Peyton. The pictures didn’t jog Ness’s memory in the least.

Owen visited every child-care service listed in the Sedonia Yellow Pages. Nobody recognized either Peyton or Mimi. He was given the names of several women who did baby-sitting. Those he tracked down only shook their heads when he showed them the photos. No, they’d never seen them.

He went to the three elementary schools in Sedonia,
figuring Peyton was old enough to be either in kindergarten or first grade. But no teacher knew her.

He went to the police department and talked to a detective who grumped, yes, Endor police had contacted them about the woman, but there was not enough information to go on. He clearly did not want to be bothered.

It was almost the same story at the county sheriff’s office, where the fat deputy that Owen talked to kept yawning, displaying a fine collection of silvery fillings in his molars.

The deputy, Carl Biddemeyer, explained he was in the Freedonia Hills Volunteer Fire Department and had been routed from bed just after dawn.

“Bad fire,” Biddemeyer said, shaking his head so that his big jowls wobbled. “Ragin’ by time we got there. Couldn’t do nothing but contain it. Burnt to the ground. Woman died. You hate it when that happens. You sure the shit do.”

Biddemeyer looked troubled at the memory. Owen nodded with a counterfeit of sympathy and steered the conversation back to Peyton and Mimi. He showed Biddemeyer the pictures.

The fat man frowned. “I could have seen that woman somewhere before. Maybe. Maybe not.”

“You remember where?”

Biddemeyer shrugged massively. “Nope. So many newcomers moving in. It used to be nice here, peaceful. It’s getting too crowded. It’s the chicken business did it. Chicken business gonna be the ruin of this town. That’s why I moved out to the country. Four months ago. Bought me a little farm. Got a pond with catfish
that
long in it.”

Owen kept his face impassive. If the detective had
been stingy with his time, Biddemeyer seemed to have too much of it. He was ready for a nice free-form chat.

Owen thanked him and took his leave. He’d been putting off calling Eden, but he supposed it was time. He drove to the Gas ’n’ Go, bought another cup of coffee, then parked near the river again.

As he dialed Jessie’s home number, he realized his pulse had begun to beat harder and faster. For no reason, he felt as edgy as a bumpkinish boy calling up to ask for his first date. It annoyed him, and he gritted his teeth.

She answered on the fifth ring, sounding slightly breathless. “Buddress residence. Jessie isn’t here right now. This is her granddaughter Eden. May I take a message?”

For the first time he noticed how low and supple her voice was, and it sent unwanted vibrations through his blood.

“It’s Owen. I’m in Sedonia. You sound out of breath.”

“I was in Jessie’s room, plugging in the psychic line. Have you found out anything? About Peyton or Mimi?”

She sounded both hopeful and anxious. He could not feed the hope, only the anxiety.

“Nothing,” he said. “I keep hitting brick walls. Sorry.”

“Oh,” she said. Then, after a pause, “Thanks for trying. Will you come back now?”

“No. There are paths I haven’t tried. Which means, in all probability, there are more brick walls to hit. If I have to hit them all, I’ll hit them all.”

He told himself that cop habits died hard. He told himself it was the least he could do for Jessie. He told himself he was doing it to get Eden and Peyton out of his life, that was all.

Slowly, dearly, in her unfaltering voice Eden told him of last night, of Jessie’s cryptic description of the blond woman with her hand full of fire, and how Peyton’s drawing had shown the same inexplicable image.

Owen scowled as Eden recounted how the card of death had triggered an unbidden vision in the old woman. “Wait a minute,” he interrupted. “She said what? Exactly what?”

He heard Eden draw a deep breath and then she repeated what Jessie had said. “Then Peyton put her hands up to her face and cried, and she said, ‘The house, the lady, it’s all gone? They burned it? They burned it up, too?’ ”

“Hold on,” he said. “ ‘The house and lady’? ‘They burned it?’ What house? What lady? And Jessie said a fire? What fire? And who’s ‘they’? You’re sure Peyton said ‘they’?”

“I don’t know. She wouldn’t say anything else. But yes, she said ‘they,’ I’m sure of that. Why?”

“I don’t know,” he said. But a memory that had seemed small and inconsequential stirred in his head like a tiny snake coming out of hibernation.

“Jessie shouldn’t have said such a thing in front of her,” Eden said, and he could hear the disapproval in her voice.

“But what about this vision?” he asked quietly. “Do you believe it?”

“All I know is the poor kid’s traumatized, and Jessie frightened her. I called my friend Sandy in L.A. I asked her to find me the best child psychologist in this area. She’s got connections. I don’t care if I have to drive clear to Little Rock or Tulsa. Jessie won’t like it, but—”

“Yeah,” he said, but he wasn’t thinking about a psychologist. When Peyton had been frightened about the
explosion in Miami, she’d said, “The plane burned up.
They
burned it all up.”

Who was this mysterious “they” she spoke of, and why had she twice mentioned them in connection with fires?

I hate Alexander Graham Bell and the horse he rode in on
, Eden thought uncharitably.

She would no sooner set down the receiver of Jessie’s phone than it would ring again. Everyone, it seemed, wanted a hot line to the mysteries of the past, present, and especially the future.

Peyton sat in the living room, watching television and playing with a box of buttons Eden had found in the closet, stringing them into long necklaces. She seemed used to amusing herself and was absorbed in her private game.

Today Jessie’s callers were as diverse as they were unrelenting. There was the grief-stricken woman searching for her lost dog, the man wanting advice on a sex-change operation, the real-estate developer agonizing over land that he itched to purchase.

Using numerology, she assured a harried hostess in Memphis that the omens for chicken Kiev as a main course tonight were excellent. She read the cards for a banker from Ohio who wanted to know what was to happen to the Japanese yen, and she cast a horoscope for a lonely farmer in Iowa.

When the farmer hung up, she leaned her elbows on Jessie’s desk and put her head in her hands. The phone rang. She raised her head and stared at it. “Damn,” she muttered. It rang again.

With an exasperated sigh, she reached for it. “Sister Jessie,” she intoned. “God’s gifted seer.”

A voice, hoarse, slurred, and breathless, greeted her. “Hello, Jessie. It’s me, it’s Constance.”

A giant hand seemed to clutch Eden’s heart, making her breathless herself. Her mouth was suddenly dry. She checked the small green on light of the tape recorder, looked at the caller ID. The readout said, “Unavailable.”

The woman spoke in a rush. “I want to talk to you. I got questions, important ones. I want you to read the cards.”

Eden tried to make her voice sound as old and wise as the earth itself. “Constance—I been thinking of you, honey.”

The space of three heartbeats passed before the woman spoke. “Thinking of me? How?”

That voice, Eden thought in dismay. It did not sound like Mimi’s voice at all. Yet once again, she sensed an eerie familiarity, an elusive quality that she could not name.

“You asked about a child,” Eden said carefully. “I had me a vision about that child. She needs her mother.”

“No,” said the woman with surprising force. “She doesn’t. Her mother’s no good for her. No damn good.”

She’s been drinking
, Eden thought, certain of it. “This mother,” she said carefully, “could she be in trouble of some kind?”

There was a strange little sound—a sob or a laugh? “Yeah. You could say that.”

Mimi? Is this you? What’s the matter?

“How bad is this trouble?” Eden asked, her heart hammering.

“About as bad as it gets.”

Eden felt sick with apprehension. “Maybe—she should go to the police.”

“No. She can’t.”

“Then,” Eden took a deep breath, “maybe she should go home to her people. They’d take her in.”

“She can’t. She”—the woman hesitated—“it wouldn’t be safe.”

“For her?”

“Oh, God,” the woman said miserably. “Just lay out the cards. Just talk to me, okay? Let me hear you.”

Eden ran taut fingers through her hair. The voice sounded weary, desperate, irrational. It sounded like Mimi, yet it didn’t sound at all like Mimi.

“I’m dealing the cards,” Eden answered. “Sister’s here to help you any way she can. I mean that. Any way she can.”

The woman made a small, mysterious sound, like a tired gasp.

“This woman,” Eden said, “I know if she’d come home, she would be cared for. That’s a fact. I know that.”

“No. No. Read the cards.”

Eden thought of Jessie’s words and Peyton’s drawing. She tried another tack. “Do you know a blond-headed gal?”

There was no answer, only husky breathing.

“She carries fire in her hand.”

“Oh, God,” the woman rasped.

Go for it
, Eden told herself. She said, “She’s pretty, mighty pretty. But she can change how she looks, just like a chameleon. She’s got a whole pocketbook full of faces.”

“Oh, God—oh, my God,” she moaned.

Pull back a litle, this is scaring her
.

“Now, I don’t know what that means,” Eden soothed. “It’s something the cards say, that’s all. Now what questions you got for me, honey? I’m here to help.”

“What else do you know about this woman? Tell me.”

“Who is she, honey? You sound scared. Are you scared of her?”

“What else do you know about her?” The voice trembled.

Eden took a deep breath and made a tactical decision to go with Jessie’s dream. “Has she got a ring with a blue stone in it? Like a turquoise maybe?”

The woman drew in her breath, a cracking, sucking sound.

“I see this gal and a flag is burning inside her and her hand is full of fire.”

“Miami,” the woman said shakily. “You know about Miami?”

What is this about?
Eden wondered, tense with anxiety.
What in the name of all that’s holy is she talking about?
“Miami?” she echoed.

“What else do you know?”

Eden bit her lip and winced. “These cards say, don’t you do nothing rash, be careful. Oh, yes, I just turned another card, I see it plain, you got to be mighty careful—”

“Oh, God, somebody’s at the door. I got to go.”

“Honey, the spirits are speaking very strong to me. They say they want to help you. But you got to talk—”

“I have to go.”

An abrupt click cut off the conversation, and the line went dead.

•  •  •

In Branson, Mimi rose numbly from her seat on the bed, her legs weak and unsteady. Who was at the door? Had they found her? Had Stanek somehow traced her here? Or had Drace himself hunted her down and come to punish her?

Or was it the police, the FBI, the ATF? Either way she was dead. Why hadn’t she made sure she was beyond their power, the whole lot of them?

The knock rapped smartly at the door again.

“Yes?” asked Mimi. Her heart galloped in fright.

“Housekeeping,” said the voice of an older woman. “You want clean towels? Or not?”

Half-faint with relief, Mimi leaned her forehead against the door. “No,” she said. “No. Go away. Just go away.”

She sat down on the edge of the unmade bed. She put her head in her hands. Her money was running out. Her time was running out. And her luck, it seemed, had run out, an eternity ago.

She wept.

Owen finally tracked down John Mulcahy of the Missouri State Police, the investigative officer who’d been called to the scene of the fire. Mulcahy was a beanpole of a man with a jutting chin, a beak of a nose, and cold sea-green eyes.

He was at home, on his hands and knees in a well-spaded plot of front yard, planting tulip and crocus bulbs. The call to the scene of the fire had been the last of his shift.

“It was good of you to see me,” Owen said. “I thought you’d be asleep.”

“I got a sleeping disorder,” Mulcahy said rather
sourly. “When I can’t sleep I get up, work around the house. Might as well.”

The white house shone in the afternoon sun, the green shutters gleamed. The porch and walk were immaculately swept, the lawn mown and raked. Behind the tulip bed, yellow mums stood in military precision. Even the birdfeeder looked waxed. Mulcahy must get very little sleep, Owen thought.

“I wouldn’t be talking to you if it didn’t involve a kid,” Mulcahy said, not looking up. “A kid makes it different.”

Yeah
, Owen thought.
It does
. He said, “This Louise Brodnik, the woman in the fire, you said on the phone that sometimes she took care of kids.”

Mulcahy nodded as he patted a tulip into its winter grave. “Her mail carrier, Gordon Freefoot, contacted us. He’d been worried. Brodnik hadn’t taken in her mail the last couple days. Either she was sick or gone. But she hardly ever went away. He said she wasn’t much on driving.”

A woman who didn’t like to drive might not drive straight through to Endor
, Owen thought.
She might be gone for a couple of days
. He drew Peyton’s picture from his shirt pocket and knelt, showing it to Mulcahy. “Ever see this kid?”

Mulcahy gave it an austere glance, then Owen one that was even more severe. “You should take that to headquarters, buddy.”