She settled on the chair with her butt barely touched in the seat. “Listen carefully. An apartment building is going to burn. It will be arson for hire and the person is close to you or knows someone close to you. I’m not sure if it is firsthand or secondhand contact.”
His head spun. “Could you be more specific?” With his pen poised over the yellow pad he waited for her to elaborate.
“The apartment building is old.”
“We have at least three old buildings in Glen Hills alone. More in the rest of the county. What exactly do you expect me to do with this information?”
She stood, turning away from him. She waved her hands in the air. “Use it how you like. You will anyway.”
Her colorful robe
swirled as she exited his office. Multiple necklaces clanked together reminding him of a prison door closing.
Zach expected her to hop onto a broom, but instead she drove off in an expensive, foreign sedan. “Guess voodoo pays off.”
***
Grace fell into bed after her shift. Exhaustion slowed her body, while her mind moved at light speed. She needed to pack to move the next day, her only day off for a week. The details begged to be dealt with, but she had no energy.
Then the phone rang. Phone calls in the middle of the night were never good. She would have traded her ability for the ability to predict who was calling. Maybe she should get caller I.D.
“Hello,” she mumbled, hoping it wasn’t an insomniac telemarketer.
“Gracie,” a voice danced out of the receiver.
Her eyes flipped open and she sat up in her bed. Her heart warmed to hear his voice. “Mark. Where are you?” Her best friend Mark Handon.
“In California.”
“Oh? An acting gig?”
“Nah, I’m directing.” His laughed soothed her through the phone. She hadn’t talked to him in ages. She blinked. He hadn’t called last time she rewound.
“Are you sure you should be in that hotbed of excess and drugs?”
An exasperated sigh came out of him. “It’s been three months, Gracie. I truly want to stay clean. Trust me.”
“I’ll try.”
“Best I can hope for. Did I wake you?”
She shifted on her pillows then propped them behind her. “No, what’s up? How’d you find me?”
“I have my ways. Besides I figured I sold you on Glen Hills. It was a neat town to grow up in.”
As if he were psychic, he did always find her. “If I didn’t trust you I’d think you were a stalker. Are you really in California?”
She checked her Mickey Mouse clock.
“It’s two in the morning, here. I’m waiting for the sun to come up. Too bad I’m on the beach facing west.”
She had to laugh. He didn’t sound stoned, but then he was a little off-center, even sober. “You can’t do anything the way the rest of us do it, can you?
“So how’s your new place? Shame about Ken.”
For a moment her recent breakup and relocation sent a pain through her heart. Part of her knew she had unfinished business with her ex. “It was time to move on.”
“Yeah, you’d been in that town for a whole two years. I was sure you were putting down roots,” Mark said.
“You make that sound like a bad thing.”
She shifted the sheet over her. Despite the continent separating them, she didn’t like speaking on the phone to Mark if she were naked.
“Well, you know me. I’m never gonna own a house.”
He’d be fifty wandering from acting job to acting job. She didn’t envy his wanderlust. Just once she’d like to stay in one place more than a few years. “No white picket fences in your future.”
“So, have you time slipped again?”
She sighed. Only Mark knew about her gift. He was her safe haven when the talent became too much for her to handle. “Yeah, I have. For three weeks I’ve avoided dead people.”
“So what happened?”
“I had no choice but to enter a hospital room. I even steered clear of her, but she managed to touch me. Hey, you didn’t call me the first time around.”
“You know I can’t explain this any better than you can. So was she murdered?”
Grace tucked a stray hair behind her ear. She liked talking to Mark. He understood her in so many ways. “Always. The victims of natural causes don’t bother to get in touch with me,” she said.
“This getting you down?”
“Just the last time. I never solved it and she still died.”
“You’re whining. You’re not a superhero.”
“But wasn’t I given this odd gift to help people? If I don’t, then what’s the use?”
A deep, feminine voice purred in the background. Then Mark said, “Gracie, I have to go.”
“I’ll bet. Ever the Casanova.”
“You know me.”
The dial tone hummed, their connection severed.
Zach typed Grace’s name and license plate number into his computer. Hopefully nothing would come back. He didn’t want to see his ex taken in by anyone.
Shaking his head he turned his mind back to his task. But his thoughts stilled on the idea of his baby growing inside Dolores.
He didn’t feel anything for her. Was he monster?
He’d love the baby because he couldn’t do anything else.
The computer sat on a scarred wooden desk he’d found at an estate sale. Something about it called to him. He even left the initials “D.W.” in it. He did put on a clear finish and bought a glass blotter it to protect the character it possessed.
The hairs on the back of his neck stood up when Grace’s name appeared in the national database. The one he shouldn’t still have access to, but his teen neighbor hacked into for him.
She’d been accused of murder. “That can’t be good.”
He yanked the phone off the hook and dialed Dolores’ house. The house where his child would grow up.
Calling up the archives for a newspaper local to where Grace lived when she under suspicion, he listened to Dolores’ phone ring.
The answering machine picked up and Zach contemplated not leaving a message. “Lors, call me at work or on my cell. It’s important.”
He dropped the receiver back in its cradle, frustration seeping into his bones. He’d offered to buy her a cell phone, but she saw no reason for it. Right now he’d give anything to get in touch with her. Grace Harmony had to be bad news.
Shame since he found her attractive, but women like that were akin to Black Widow spiders. She’d probably eat her young, too.
Then he smacked his own forehead, Dolores’ whereabouts came clear to him. “What day is it?”
Tuesday, his discarded newspaper told him.
She’s at work. He tried her there.
“Hi, Zach. Is something wrong?” she said. Her voice sounded faraway, distracted.
Too many years of him calling that he’d be home late for dinner. She always assumed there was a problem.
