He shook it off and formulated another try-on. The first had been just an easy warm-up, to break the ice and gain a smidgen of her confidence. From here it got a little tougher.
Look at her: cleans houses, bargain-rack clothing; he couldn't see Clarence as a corporate exec. She mentioned him going off to work as if it were a routine thing. Good chance he had a steady blue-collar job, maybe union.
Try-on number two...
'Why do I want to say he worked in a trade?'
'He was an electrician!'
'A loyal union man.'
She frowned. 'No. He was never in a union.'
Whoops, but easy enough to save. 'But I get the feeling he wanted to be in the union.'
'Yes! How did you know! That poor man. He tried so many times but never qualified. He was always talking about how much more money he could be making if he was in the union.'
Lyle nodded sagely. 'Ah, that was what I was picking up.'
Let's see... blue-collar, frustrated... maybe Clarence liked to knock back a few after work? And even if he was a teetotaler or an ex-drinker, the temptation to drink offered a ready fallback.
'I'm getting the impression of a dimly lit place, the smell of smoke, the clink of glassware...'
'Leon's! That awful place! He'd go there after work and come home reeking of beer. Sometimes he wouldn't come home till after midnight. We had such terrible fights over it.'
Drunk... frustrated... go for it, but keep it vague.
'I'm led to say that some harm was done?'
Melba looked away. 'He never meant to hurt me. It's just that sometimes, when I got him real mad after he came home late, he'd take a swing. He didn't mean nothin' by it. But now that he's gone...' She sobbed and grabbed the tissue to dab at her eyes again. 'I'd rather have him home late than not at all.'
'I'm losing contact!' Lyle said. 'The hands! The stones. Please stay in contact with the stones.'
Melba grabbed them again. 'I'm sorry. It's just-'
'I understand, but you must hold the stones.'
'Got her wallet here,' said Charlie's voice in his earpiece. Obviously he'd made it back to his command center with the pocketbook. 'Picture of her and some fat guy-I mean, I could be looking at the Notorious B.I.G. here-but no kid pics.'
Lyle said, 'I'm looking for children but...'
He left a blank space, hoping she'd fill it in. As with most sitters, she didn't disappoint.
'We didn't have any. Lord knows we tried but...' She sighed. 'It never happened.'
'Not much else goin' down here,' Charlie said. 'Keys, a lipstick, hey-beat this: a harmonica. Bet it ain't hers. Good shot it's her old man's. I'll get the bag back lickity.'
While waiting, Lyle made a few remarks about Clarence's weight problems to bolster further his psychic credibility. The picture he'd formed of Clarence was that of a frustrated, money-squeezed, bad-tempered drinker. An answer to a dead-or-alive question on a guy like that had to lean toward dead. He might have got himself involved in some quick-buck scheme that went wrong, leaving him food for the worms or the fish.
Lyle felt a tap on his leg: Charlie had returned the bag.
Lyle cleared his throat. 'Why am I hearing music? It sounds reedy. Could it be a harmonica?'
'Yes! Clarence loved to play the harmonica. People told him he was terrible.' Melba smiled. 'And he was. He was just awful. But that never stopped him from trying.'
'Why do I sense his harmonica nearby?'
She gasped. 'I brought one with me! How could you know?'
Preferring to let her provide her own answer to that, Lyle said, 'It might facilitate contact if I can touch an object that belongs to the one we seek.'
'It's in my handbag.' Melba glanced at her hands where they rested on the stones, then back at Lyle. 'Do you think I could...?'
'Yes, but one hand only, please.'
'We gonna take this poor lady's money, bro?' Charlie asked in his ear. 'She ain't exactly our usual breed of fish.'
Lyle couldn't give him an answer, but the same hesitancy had been nibbling at him throughout the sitting.
He watched Melba free her right hand, pull her handbag up to ker lap, and fish out a scratched and dented harmonica with 'Hohner Special 20 Marine Band' embossed along the top.
'This was his favorite,' she said, pushing it across the table.
Lyle reached toward it, then stopped as warning alarms rang through his nerve ends. Why? Why shouldn't he touch the harmonica?
After a few awkward seconds, with Melba's expression moving toward a puzzled frown, Lyle set his jaw and took hold of the harmonica-
-and cried out as the room did a sudden turn and then disappeared and he was standing in another room, a suite in the Bellagio in Vegas, watching a fat man he knew to be Clarence Toomey snore beside a blonde Lyle knew to be a hooker he'd hired for the night. He knew everything-the half-million-dollar lottery prize Clarence had won and kept secret from his wife until he'd collected the money, how he'd left home and never looked back.
Melba's cry from somewhere in front of him: 'What's wrong?'
Charlie in his ear: 'Lyle! What's happenin'?'
The feel of the harmonica in his hands... uncoiling his fingers one by one until...
The harmonica dropped onto the table and abruptly Lyle was back in the Channeling Room, looking at Melba who faced him with wide eyes and her hands pressed against her mouth.
'Lyle! Answer me! Are you all right?'
'I'm okay,' Lyle said, for Melba's sake as well as his brother's.
But he was anything but okay.
What had just happened? Was it real? Had he truly been looking at Clarence Toomey or imagining it? It had seemed so real, and yet... it couldn't be.
Nothing like this had ever happened to him before. He didn't know what to make of it.
'Ifasen?' Melba said. 'What happened? Did you see anything? Did you see my Clarence?'
What could he say? Even if he were sure it was true-and he wasn't, not at all-how do you tell a woman that her husband is bedded down in Vegas with a hooker?
'I'm not sure what I saw,' Lyle said. Couldn't get much truer than that. He pushed back from the table. 'I'm afraid I'm going to have to cut short our session. I... I don't feel well.' No lie. He felt like hell.
'No, please,' Melba said.
'I'm sorry. I will refund your money.'
'Mah man!' Charlie said in his ear.
'I don't care about the money,' Melba said. 'I want my Clarence. How will I find him?'
'The lottery,' Lyle said.
She looked at him. 'The lottery? I don't understand.'
'Neither do I, but that was the message that came through the clearest. Check with the New York State Lottery. Ask them about Clarence. That's all I can tell you.'
If she did that, and if Lyle's vision had been real-a big if-she'd learn about Clarence's big win. She could hire someone to track him down, maybe get a piece of whatever was left.
She wanted to find her husband, but success was going to bring her only a load of hurt.
Charlie appeared, looking at him strangely. He had to be bursting with a million questions, but couldn't ask them while Melba was here.
Lyle said, 'Kehinde will show you out and return your money. And remember what I told you: Check with the lottery. Do it today.'
Melba's expression was troubled. 'I don't understand any of this, but at least you tried to help. That's more than the police have done.' She held out her hand. 'Thank you.'
Lyle gripped her hand and stifled a gasp as a whirlwind of sensations blew through him-a brief period of
