Too Far Under (27 page)

Wait a minute. Isn’t he leaping to
conclusions about Lacey? I almost jumped in with that, but reminded
myself of his caring concern the night before, took a deep breath,
and answered him in my calm therapist voice. “We really don’t have
many facts. Actually I was hoping you could help with that. Is
there any way you could find out what the coroner’s report said
about Vernon’s death?”

“It’s too soon. The coroner won’t have
written his report yet. Why don’t you ask Derrick Townes what the
hospital physicians told him?”

“Derrick’s a suspect,” I said. “I can’t ask
him.”

“You have to have a murder before you can
have suspects, Cleo.”

My emotions got the better of me and I spoke
out of frustration. “Oh, here we go again,” I said exasperatedly.
“The police are going to say Vernon fell down the steps by
accident, and then they won’t investigate. The whole thing will be
swept under the rug.”

“Cleo, you know that’s not the way the police
work.” Pablo sounded irritated. “If a death looks suspicious, there
will be an investigation. The Boulder police might already be
looking into the death. But they’re not going to tell me about it
because I’m in the Longmont PD, not the Boulder PD. And they’re
certainly not going to tell you about it because you’re not even a
cop.”

I could see this was going nowhere. Plus it
was almost 2:30 and I needed to eat something before I met with a
client at 3:00. So I backpedaled. “You’re probably right, Pablo. We
don’t have enough information to know whether Vernon fell by
accident or not.”

Of course I didn’t mention that Lacey was
going to try to get that information by contacting Vernon’s spirit
that afternoon. Just thanked Pablo sweetly for his concern and told
him I had to go grab some lunch.

I hustled back to my office, ate some yogurt
and an apple from my frig, and met with my 3:00 client. By then it
was nearly time for Lacey’s appointment. She showed up on the dot
of 4:00, bounding into my office. Her eyes were puffy and her face
was drawn, but she looked much more rested than she had earlier.
“I’m so ready to talk to Grandad and find out what happened,” she
said. “Can we start right now?”

“Hold on, Lacey,” I said. “I know you want to
get right to it, but reaching a spirit isn’t like making a phone
call. I need to help you relax and focus before you go in there.
Let’s go sit in the counseling room and you can tell me some of
your best memories of your grandfather.”

I had her lie on the couch and close her
eyes. Then I led her through some deep breathing exercises. When
she was relaxed, I said, “Now keep your eyes closed and remember
some good times you spent with your grandfather. Try to see him and
hear him as he was then. Can you tell me about a time you
remember?”

She lay quietly for a few minutes. Smiles
flickered across her face. Then she said, “When I was little and
Grandad had his office on the Pearl Street Mall, I used to love to
go there with him. My favorite place in the office was the
floor-to-ceiling windows that looked over the mall. I’d sit on the
floor and watch the people going by. Grandad would be working at
his desk, but he’d come over and sit with me some of the time and
make up stories about the people we could see—like this one lives
in a haunted house with twenty-seven dogs all named Buster, or that
one is under a magic spell that makes him wear plaid shirts that
are too small for him every day. He’d have me rolling on the floor
laughing,” she said with a broad grin.

“What a great wonderful memory, Lacey. How
about when you were older? Can you recall happy times with
him?”

She took a minute, then began slowly. “He was
so great when I was a teenager.” Her face turned sad. “I don’t
think I ever thanked him enough for all he did for me back
then.”

I wanted her to stay focused on positive
memories and not descend into grief, so I redirected her back to
her experiences. “Can you tell me about something fun you and he
did together when you were a teenager?”

“Sure. But there’s so much it’s hard to pick
only one.”

“You don’t have to choose the best example.
Just go with whatever comes up.”

“Okay, I’m thinking of a time he took me with
him on a trip to New York City. He had some meeting to go to and
I’d never been to New York. My parents were always too busy to take
us on trips. It was fabulous. We stayed at The Carlyle on Madison
Avenue with amazing views of Central Park. He arranged for someone
to take me to museums and shopping while he was at his meetings and
at night he took me to shows. We saw Chicago and The Phantom of the
Opera. I felt like a princess.” Again the huge grin.

I let her bask in the memory glow a few
minutes before I began to bring her gently back to the room, open
her eyes and sit up. We moved into the apparition chamber, where I
got her comfortably situated and reminded her of the procedure of
staying relaxed and thinking of her grandfather while gazing
intently into the mirror. Then I left her there and went across the
hall to my office, keeping my door and my ears open.

An hour later, I was working through a stack
of insurance paperwork when Lacey opened the door from the
apparition chamber to the hall. I got up and went to her. She
wasn’t jumping up and down with excitement like the last time—just
standing quietly looking a bit bewildered. I put my arm around her
shoulders, led her to the couch in the counseling room, and got her
a glass of water. I also got her a pen and some paper so she could
make notes like she had done the other time. She sat quietly
sipping the water and staring off into the distance.

I sat across from her and waited until her
gaze turned to me. Then I said quietly, “Would you like to tell me
about what happened?”

“It took a lot of waiting,” she began slowly,
“but he came. He was in the mirror, but he didn’t come out of it
and touch me like Mom did. He smiled at me and said, ‘I love you
Lacey. Don’t be sad.’ I asked him what happened on the stairs and
he said, ‘It was my time to go, Lacey. Don’t be sad.’ I kept trying
to tell him that I wanted to know whether he fell or someone pushed
him, but he never answered that question.”

At that point Lacey stopped talking and began
writing slowly. After she’d covered about half a page on the pad
I’d given her, she looked up. “Grandad said some stuff about Mom. I
wanted to write down his words before I forgot.” She looked down at
the notepad. “He said, ‘Mirabel didn’t trust people. She thought
money turned people bad. Maybe she was right.’ I asked him who she
didn’t trust but he didn’t answer that either. Somehow I couldn’t
seem to ask him the right questions.” Lacey was looking
increasingly troubled.

“No, Lacey,” I said. “It’s not your fault if
you didn’t get the answers you were looking for. I don’t think
there are any right questions. Talking to spirits isn’t that easy.
They’re on a different wavelength. Mostly you have to take what
they give you and try to make sense of it. Did he say anything
about her will?”

Lacey began clasping and unclasping her hands
nervously. “Not much,” she said. “He just said something about how
it’s easy to change a will. Then he faded away." She sighed and
leaned back into the couch looking exhausted.

I worried that she was blaming herself for
not getting more information from Vernon. “It sounds like you found
contacting you grandfather more frustrating than helpful,” I said.
“Sometimes that happens.”

Lacey stared down at the floor for a moment
and then shook her head. “No, I’m glad I saw him,” she said. “It
was good to hear him tell me that he loves me and not to be sad.
But I didn’t find out what happened to him on the stairs. Even
though I got a strong sense from him that it doesn’t matter, I want
to know what happened.”

“It sounds like you’re saying that it was
good to see him, but you want more answers.”

She frowned and continued. “Right. I really
didn’t find out anything. We still don’t know who killed Mom or how
Grandad died or whether there’s a new will. Maybe I should try to
contact Mom again?”

I needed some time to process all that had
happened in the last few days and I thought she did also. Plus I
was hoping the police would come up with some information about
Vernon’s death that would lead us to some answers. “This has been
an intense time,” I said. “Let’s give it a few days. Maybe you and
Shane and I can talk early next week about where to go from
here.”

I was tired, she was tired and I missed the
signs of an impending explosion. With no warning she jumped up off
the couch and began pacing the room, screaming, “No! No! No!”

I stood and walked slowly toward her. “What,
Lacey?” I said softly. “What is upsetting you?”

She turned toward me, waving her arms and
crying. “Waiting doesn’t work,” she shrieked. “Give it a few
days—that’s what Mom and Dad kept saying about Kari before she
died. I would tell them that she wasn’t eating anything, that her
ribs and hip bones stuck out like a skeleton, that she was
exercising for hours every day. I’d push them to do something and
they’d say, ‘Let’s give it a few days.’ And then it was too late.
In a few days she was dead.”

She stood in front of me sobbing, “Bad things
are happening,” she cried. “I’m scared for Angelica. She’s the one
who says she knows Mom was murdered. I’m afraid whoever did it will
go after her next. We need to stop them before Angelica has some
horrible accident that isn’t really an accident.”

I put my arms around her and let her cry
until I could feel that she had released much of her tension. Then
I led her back to the couch and sat with her. “I know you want to
take action right away,” I said, “but we don’t even know if there’s
a killer out there. As you said, your contact sessions with your
mother and grandfather didn’t give us any new information about how
they died, which makes me think that their spirits aren’t going to
tell us about that.”

“Are you saying I shouldn’t try to contact
them again?” Lacey asked.

“I’m saying that I don’t think you should
contact them again to ask whether or not someone killed them.
Neither of them gave you an answer when you asked that before. You
may have another reason to try to contact one of them later to
resolve unfinished issues you have with them or to say goodbye in a
way that feels more complete to you. But I don’t think the next few
days is the time to do that.”

“But what about Angelica? How can we protect
her?”

“Here’s a suggestion. It’s Friday afternoon.
I’m sure Angelica is upset about her grandfather right now and
could use some time with her big sister. Can you be with her over
the weekend, watch over her without being too obvious about
it?”

Lacey thought for a minute. Then her eyes lit
up. “Yes, I can do that. There’s a gallery in Aspen that has a show
of paintings by a young girl about Angelica’s age. Faye suggested
she go see it, and I said I’d take her sometime in the next month.
We’ll do it—go up tomorrow and come back Sunday. And she won’t be
going to school Monday either because of Grandad’s funeral. So I
can be with her then too.”

My relief at the idea of getting both Lacey
and Angelica out of the vicinity, even if it was only for a couple
of days was tinged with concern about where we would go from there.
I tried to tell myself that by Monday the whole situation might
look so different that our fears for Angelica’s safety would
disappear. But I didn’t really believe that.

Early Saturday morning I sat at my kitchen
table drinking coffee and reading a front-page newspaper article
about the closing of Shady Terrace. Entitled, “Seniors forced out
in the cold,” the article quoted a communications director from the
national office of the corporation that owned Shady terrace. He
said that although the corporation is selling the building, which
means the residents will have to relocate, Boulder has other
options available.

He made it sound so simple. Just sign up for
one of the other options. I wondered whether he’d ever had to look
for “options” for someone he loved. I pitched the newspaper into
the recycling bin and gathered up the materials I had collected
about Gramma’s options. I had the housing guide that Tim had given
me, my notes from the family meeting he’d held two weeks ago, and
materials from the nursing homes I’d visited. But nothing spoke to
me. I knew I hadn’t found anything that was even close to being
right for my beloved Gramma.

Just then my phone rang and the Shady Terrace
phone number popped up on my caller ID. Yikes! Could they possibly
have yet more bad news for me?

But it wasn’t bad news. It was Betsy, one of
the Shady Terrace social workers, with an intriguing possibility.
“Some of us on the staff have been working on finding a way to open
a small assisted living house,” she said. “We couldn’t take
Medicaid—at least not in the beginning, because it takes so long to
get approval. At first we could only take the private-pay
residents, so we’re trying to talk to as many of them and their
families as we can to see who might be interested. Would you like
to hear more about it?”

Would I? Someone up there must have been
listening to my prayers. Maybe Grampa found a way to influence
events down here.

“I’d love to hear about it, Betsy,” I said
eagerly. “What’s the plan?”

“It’s too complicated to go into on the
phone,” she said. “So we’re trying to tell families about it in
some small meetings. We’re having three today—one this morning at
10:30 and two this afternoon, one at 1:30 and one at 4:00. Could
you possibly make one of those times? The meetings will only take
about an hour.”

I could hardly wait to hear their plan.
“Absolutely, Betsy,” I said. “I’ll be there at 10:30.”