Shauna smiled at the description. 'She took me to dinner once with her' – she made quote marks with her fingers – 'spiritual guru. She claimed that he could read minds and tell the future and all that. He was helping her communicate with her dead mother. Wendy's mother had committed suicide when she was six.'
I let her go on, not interrupting with the obvious 'what's the point?' Shauna was taking her time here, but I knew that she'd get to it eventually.
'So we finish dinner. The waiter serves us coffee. Wendy's guru – he had some name like Omay – he's staring at me with these bright, inquisitive eyes, you know the type, and he hands me the bit about how he senses – that's how he says it, senses – that maybe I'm a skeptic and that I should speak my mind. You know me. I tell him he's full of shit and I'm tired of him stealing my friend's money. Omay doesn't get angry, of course, which really pisses me off. Anyway, he hands me a little card and tells me to write anything I want on it – something significant about my life, a date, a lover's initials, whatever I wanted. I check the card. It looks like a normal white card, but I still ask if I can use one of my own. He tells me to suit myself. I take out a business card and flip it over. He hands me a pen, but again I decide to use my own – in case it's a trick pen or something, what do I know, right? He has no problem with that either. So I write down your name. Just Beck. He takes the card. I'm watching his hand for a switch or whatever, but he just passes the card to Wendy. He tells her to hold it. He grabs my hand. He closes his eyes and starts shaking like he's having a seizure and I swear I feel something course through me. Then Omay opens his eyes and says, 'Who's Beck?' '
She sat down on the couch. I did likewise.
'Now, I know people have good sleight of hand and all that, but I was there. I watched him up close. And I almost bought it. Omay had special abilities. Like you said, there was no other explanation. Wendy sat there with this satisfied smile plastered on her face. I couldn't figure it out.'
'He did research on you,' I said. 'He knew about our friendship.'
'No offense, but wouldn't he guess I'd put my own son's name or maybe Linda's? How would he know I'd pick you?'
She had a point. 'So you're a believer now?'
'Almost, Beck. I said I almost bought it. Ol' Omay was right. I'm a skeptic. Maybe it all pointed to him being psychic, except I knew he wasn't. Because there are no such things as psychics – just like there are no such things as ghosts.' She stopped. Not exactly subtle, my dear Shauna.
'So I did some research,' she went on. 'The good thing about being a famous model is that you can call anyone and they'll talk to you. So I called this illusionist I'd seen on Broadway a couple of years ago. He heard the story and then he laughed. I said what's so funny. He asked me a question: Did this guru do this after dinner? I was surprised. What the hell could that have to do with it? But I said yes, how did you know? He asked if we had coffee. Again I said yes. Did he take his black? One more time I said yes.' Shauna was smiling now. 'Do you know how he did it, Beck?'
I shook my head. 'No clue.'
'When he passed the card to Wendy, it went over his coffee cup. Black coffee, Beck. It reflects like a mirror. That's how he saw what I'd written. It was just a dumb parlor trick. Simple, right? Pass the card over your cup of black coffee and it's like passing it over a mirror. And I almost believed him. You understand what I'm saying here?'
'Sure,' I said. 'You think I'm as gullible as Flaky Wendy.'
'Yes and no. See, part of Omay's con is the want, Beck. Wendy falls for it because she wants to believe in all that mumbo-jumbo.'
'And I want to believe Elizabeth is alive?'
'More than any dying man in a desert wants to find an oasis,' she said. 'But that's not really my point either.'
'Then what is?'
'I learned that just because you can't see any other explanation doesn't mean that one doesn't exist. It just means you can't see it.'
I leaned back and crossed my legs. I watched her. She turned away from my gaze, something she never does. 'What's going on here, Shauna?'
She wouldn't face me.
'You're not making any sense,' I said.
'I think I was pretty damn clear-'
'You know what I mean. This isn't like you. On the phone you said you needed to talk to me. Alone. And for what? To tell me that my dead wife is, after all, still dead?' I shook my head. 'I don't buy it.'
Shauna didn't react.
'Tell me,' I said.
She turned back. 'I'm scared,' she said in a tone that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
'Of what?'
The answer didn't come right away. I could hear Linda rustling around in the kitchen, the tinkling of plates and glasses, the sucking pop when she opened the refrigerator. 'That long warning I just gave you,' Shauna finally continued. 'That was as much for me as for you.'
'I don't understand.'
'I've seen something.' Her voice died out. She took a deep breath and tried again. 'I've seen something that my rational mind can't explain away. Just like in my story about Omay. I know there has to be another explanation, but I can't find it.' Her hands started moving, her fingers fidgeting with buttons, pulling imaginary threads off her suit. Then she said it: 'I'm starting to believe you, Beck. I think maybe Elizabeth is still alive.'
My heart leapt into my throat.
She rose quickly. 'I'm going to mix a mimosa. Join me?'
I shook my head.
She looked surprised. 'You sure you don't want-'
'Tell me what you saw, Shauna.'
'Her autopsy file.'
I almost fell over. It took me a little time to find my voice. 'How?'
'Do you know Nick Carlson from the FBI?'
'He questioned me,' I said.
'He thinks you're innocent.'
'Didn't sound that way to me.'
'He does now. When all that evidence started pointing at you, he thought it was all too neat.'
'He told you that?'
'Yes.'
'And you believed him?'
'I know it sounds naive, but yeah, I believed him.'
I trusted Shauna's judgment. If she said that Carlson was on the level, he was either a wonderful liar or he'd seen through the frame-up. 'I still don't understand,' I said. 'What does that have to do with the autopsy?'
'Carlson came to me. He wanted to know what you were up to. I wouldn't tell him. But he was tracking your movements. He knew that you asked to see Elizabeth's autopsy file. He wondered why. So he called the coroner's office and got the file. He brought it with him. To see if I could help him out on that.'
'He showed it to you?'
She nodded.
My throat was dry. 'Did you see the autopsy photos?'
'There weren't any, Beck.'
'What?'
'Carlson thinks someone stole them.'
'Who?'
She shrugged. 'The only other person to sign out the file was Elizabeth's father.'
Hoyt. It all circled back to him. I looked at her. 'Did you see any of the report?'
Her nod was more tentative this time.
'And?'
'It said Elizabeth had a drug problem, Beck. Not just that there were drugs in her system. He said that the reports showed the abuse was long-term.'
'Impossible,' I said.
'Maybe, maybe not. That alone wouldn't be enough to convince me. People can hide drug abuse. It's not likely, but neither is her being alive. Maybe the tests were wrong or inconclusive. Something. There are explanations, right? It can somehow be explained away.'
I licked my lips. 'So what couldn't be?' I asked.
'Her height and weight,' Shauna said. 'Elizabeth was listed as five seven and under a hundred pounds.'
Another sock in the gut. My wife was five four and closer to a hundred fifteen pounds. 'Not even close,' I said.
'Not even.'
'She's alive, Shauna.'
'Maybe,' she allowed, and her gaze flicked toward the kitchen. 'But there's something more.'
Shauna turned and called out Linda's name. Linda stepped into the doorway and stayed there. She looked suddenly small in her apron. She wrung her hands and wiped them on the apron front. I watched my sister, puzzled.
'What's going on?' I said.
Linda started speaking. She told me about the photographs, how Elizabeth had come to her to take them, how she'd been only too happy to keep her secret about Brandon Scope. She didn't sugarcoat or offer explanations, but then again, maybe she didn't have to. She stood there and poured it all out and waited for the inevitable blow. I listened with my head down. I couldn't face her, but I easily forgave. We all have our blind spots. All of us.
I wanted to hug her and tell her that I understood, but I couldn't quite pull it off. When she'd finished, I merely nodded and said, 'Thanks for telling me.'
My words were meant to be a dismissal. Linda understood. Shauna and I sat there in silence for almost a full minute.
'Beck?'
