“My guess would be that he didn’t go there. If we know that he fell asleep before he drowned, then it’s logical that the person who drugged him could drag him down to the lower cave. It’s a pity that the rocks and cave floor get so thoroughly washed over by the tides or we might have found scraps of fiber on some of the rocks.”
“So somebody knew he was planning to have a long meditation session in that upper cave and made sure he was drugged enough to put him to sleep. That’s right. You don’t have any hunches about which of them it could be?”
“That’s the tricky part. Everyone we spoke to had a good reason for wishing Randy Wunderlich wasn’t there— including his wife, I might add. But I wouldn’t go jumping to any conclusions if I were you,” Evan said. “My girlfriend had an interesting observation. She said he’d been a famous psychic in the States and people like that make lots of enemies.”
“So you think it could have been someone from outside?”
“I think it wouldn’t hurt to look into his background in the States.”
“Brilliant. I’ll run a computer search and see what comes up. I’ll let you know what I find.”
Evan smiled to himself when he hung up. At least Glynis was grateful for his help and happy to keep him updated on new developments, even if she did get the credit and he didn’t. He tried to concentrate on adding up figures for the last week. Then, some half hour later, the phone rang again.
“Evan, you’ve got to get down here and see this,” Glynis’s excited voice echoed down the phone.
“Your search engine turned up good stuff?”
“I’ll say. I’ve put in a call for Sergeant Watkins to come over and see it too. The D.C.I. is out at a regional meeting or I’m sure he’d want to see it.”
Evan ran straight to his motorbike. He was in on the action at a meeting where there would be no D.C.I. Hughes to ask him what he was doing there and to remind him that it was none of his business. He took the bends faster than he ever had before, now more comfortable with leaning inward and feeling the pull of gravity. “Next year, Isle of Man TT races,” he said to himself and laughed.
Glynis was sitting at the computer, printing out Web pages as he came in.
“This search engine has turned up over seven hundred mentions of his name.” She looked up excitedly.
“Popular man.”
“Or unpopular, as the case may be.” She handed him some sheets of paper. “Look what I’ve printed out so far.”
Evan took them from her and read the top headline: “Psychic Hot Line Guru Sued for Five Million.” His eyes scanned down the page. “Randy Wunderlich, whose psychic hot line has made his face familiar to every TV viewer in the country, is being sued in a Florida district court by Mary Sue Harper of Dade County. The suit alleges that Randy Wunderlich duped her out of her life savings by encouraging her to keep in daily contact via the 900 number and that his advice made her make disastrous life changes.”
“Five million,” Evan said. “So he must have been wiped out financially.”
“He won the case.” Glynis handed him another sheet of paper. “The jury decided that nobody forced Ms. Harper to keep running up phone bills by consulting him every day. But the judge warned him that what he was doing was morally wrong and he was going to recommend that the hot line be investigated by a federal commission.”
“And was it?”
“It’s all here.” Glynis waved papers excitedly. “He was investigated, the hot line was shut down, and he had to pay restitution to a whole lot of angry people who claimed he had tricked them out of money and wrecked their lives.”
“Not that great a psychic then.” Evan flicked through the pages she had given him.
“Not a legit psychic at all. No kind of credentials, anyway. Did some undergraduate work at a state college in California but that’s about it. A con man, actually.”
“Fascinating.” Evan continued to read case after case of people, mainly women, telling stories of how Randy had kept them dependent on his advice, which often turned out to be bad.
“Do you think one of them could have tracked him down over here and then killed him?” Glynis asked.
Evan stared at the computer screen, thinking. “The person who killed him had some inside knowledge of his routine. That person knew he was planning to go and meditate in a cave. I can’t imagine he’d have announced that fact to the whole world.”
“So it still comes back to those closest to him—someone else who works closely with the center.”
“Maybe the next step should be to find out who had a prescription for the right kind of sleeping pills,” Evan said. “If it was someone from the center, they wouldn’t have had the prescription filled too far away, would they? We know which chemist handled Lady Annabel’s prescriptions. Her son went to pick one up for her that afternoon.”
“Too late to drug Randy.”
“Yes, and according to Michael, it wasn’t a drug he picked up. It was some kind of medicated face cream to get rid of wrinkles.”
Glynis grinned. “If she’s so vain, you’d think she’d go on a diet, wouldn’t you?”
“I get the impression that—” Evan broke off, staring at the computer screen. The Web page was a report of the federal commission’s investigation into the psychic hot line. Names of a lot of women registering complaints filled the page. Evan had been scanning them idly. None rang a bell. But at the bottom of the page: “Also indicted for fraud is Mr. Wunderlich’s partner, Mary Elizabeth Harcourt of Philadelphia, Pa.”
“That’s it!” Evan stabbed excitedly at the screen. “I knew something about her didn’t add up.”
“Do we know her?” Glynis asked.
