"Bad Karma" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weir Theresa)

Chapter Five

Back in the motel room, Cleo began cutting out pictures, then remembered she didn’t have any glue. She ended up borrowing some from the sleaze at the front desk who smiled at her in a knowing way, as if she now owed him sex for the glue, or at least a performance in his next porno flick.

A short time later she showered, all the while trying not to touch anything, making a mental note to pick up flip-flops. Afterward, she sat cross-legged on the bed, cutting out pictures and gluing them to the yellowed motel stationery she’d found under the Bible in the drawer beside the bed. It was something her shrink had taught her to do whenever she couldn’t relax, when she couldn’t shut off her mind.

And for some inexplicable reason, she was finding herself drawn to pictures of barns.

Cleo didn’t fall asleep until dawn, not until reassuring sunlight began to filter its way around the outer door. When the alarm sounded at eight o’clock, she’d barely managed two fitful hours of sleep. Unfortunately, her inability to sleep was part of an old, familiar pattern, one she’d almost forgotten until the events of the previous day. First there had been the nightmare, then the little problem with Beau’s pumpkin pie, then being unable to sleep when she was exhausted.

It’s this room, she tried to convince herself. It’s not me. It’s this creepy room.

She got out of bed and slipped on her sandals. Without bothering to brush her hair or teeth, still wearing the knee-length gray tank top she’d slept in, she left the room and marched to the lobby, where she rang the bell until her buddy from the day before showed up, a jelly doughnut in his hand and in his teeth.

“I want another room.” He wasn’t the only one with an attitude.

His eyebrows lifted in surprise. “You got the best room in the place.”

“I want a different room. There’s something wrong with the one I’m in.”

“What? What’s wrong with it?”

“It’s too orange.”

“They’re all orange.” Nevertheless, he checked the keys that hung on the pegboard behind the counter. “Lemme see…that’s storage. That’s storage. Ceiling fell in on that one. That room’s got a standing reservation. That leaves us with number three. It’s got a broken air conditioner. Number eight’s got a broken toilet.”

“What about nine or ten?”

“Remodeling them. Tearing out the wall between the two rooms to make one deluxe suite with a Jacuzzi. How’s that sound?”

“Like I’ll be staying in number six.” She didn’t even want to know about the room with the standing reservation. “Is there anyplace to get something to eat around here?” she asked, resigned to the fact that she wouldn’t be moving anytime soon.

“Gas station two blocks down the street. Got pop and juice. Here.” He shoved a box of doughnuts at her. “Knock yourself out.”

Amidst the jelly and powdered sugar, she found a plain doughnut. She took it. “Thanks.” And went back to room six.

She couldn’t remain there another night. She had to leave. She would tell the chief of police she couldn’t stay.

What excuse could she give? That the motel gave her the creeps? And how could she leave? She’d spent her last dime getting to Egypt, Missouri. Adrian had been right. She shouldn’t have come.

She found herself staring at the barn pictures she’d cut out the previous night. Perhaps it was slightly obsessive-compulsive, but she wanted the pictures out of her sight. And not only out of her sight, but hidden. She finally shoved them between the mattress and box-spring and immediately felt better. Not great, but better.

At 9:00 a.m. sharp a knock sounded on the motel room door, bringing Cleo back to her immediate problem-Police Chief Josephine Bennett and Cleo’s psychic commitment.

Chief Bennett pretty much fit the mental image Cleo had gotten while speaking to her over the phone. Her hair was short, gray, and tightly permed. She was large around the middle-not fat, but a shape that sometimes went with menopause. Unlike Daniel Sinclair and his civilian clothes, Josephine appeared to be regulation, from her tie to her holstered gun and her shiny black oxfords. On the pocket of her crisply pressed shirt was a silver badge that read Chief of Police.

For a moment, Cleo recalled when she and her brother, Adrian, had gotten badges like that out of a cereal box. They were shaped just like the one in front of her, and they could have been real if you didn’t look too closely.

Josephine stuck out her hand and introduced herself, insisting Cleo call her Jo. “Everybody calls me Jo.” She had one of those voices that fell somewhere between male and female. Not surprisingly, her grasp was warm and strong. “Have you eaten breakfast?” Jo asked.

Cleo nodded. She’d been able to get half the doughnut down before it began to taste like moldy grout. The last thing she wanted was for Jo to swing by some greasy spoon where they could both load up on bacon and undercooked eggs. “Stuffed,” she said, grabbing her bag and closing the door, the smell of the room following her.

“Ignore the mess,” Jo said as they got into the squad car.

That was a little hard when the floor under Cleo’s feet was littered with paper and unopened mail.

“Coke?” Jo flipped the lid on a small cooler that sat on the seat between them.

“No, thanks.” What was she doing here?

Tell her you have to leave. Tell her you got an emergency call and you have to leave, urged part of her mind. But another part of her countered, Don’t be a baby.

Cleo rolled down the window and took a deep breath. It seemed as if she couldn’t get away from the smell of the motel room. She sniffed her hair. It was in her hair. And on her hands. Even her hands smelled like some stranger’s body odor.

“So, what do you think of our little town?” Jo popped open the Coke, took a long swallow, then settled the container in the weighted cup holder on the dash. “I run on these things. If I don’t have my third Coke by nine-thirty I get a killer headache.”

“It’s nice,” Cleo said, answering Jo’s question.

“It was ranked one of the best places of its size to live and raise kids. Safest town in the country.”

Cleo wanted to believe that. But she didn’t. Small towns were never as innocuous as they appeared.

“Do you like calliope music?” Jo picked up a CD. “Come on. Be honest.”

Cleo felt too many things were being thrown at her at once. “I always thought there was something a little sinister about music that’s so perky.”

Jo let out a laugh and refrained from pushing the CD in the player.

On the way to the police station, she filled Cleo in on what she knew about the loss of the key, going into a little more depth than she had over the phone. “There’s only one master key, of course. It unlocks every public building in town-the schools, the courthouse, the police station, the fire station. The fire chief’s been after me to let him have the key. Says it’s more important for him to have it. And he has a point. But what if there’s a break-in in progress? The police department needs that master. So after two years of debating the issue, I decided to let Harvey have his way, but when I went to get the key, it wasn’t there.”

“Do you have any idea how long it’s been gone?” Cleo asked.

“Could have been weeks. Could have been months.” Jo smoothly executed a turn. “That’s the thing about a master key. It’s not something you use every day. We’ve never had a situation come up where we needed the master. But you never know. A town’s gotta have a master key.”

It had all seemed so easy in Portland. A missing key. What could be less threatening?

“I think that sneak fire chief took it and won’t admit it. He acted funny when I told him he could have it. Looked like a little kid with his hand caught in the cookie jar. ‘Don’t trouble yourself to get it now,’ he told me. And I said, ‘Better get it before I change my mind.’ And then, of course, it wasn’t even there.”

“Why wouldn’t he come forward if he had the key?” The whole thing was ridiculous. Cleo had landed herself in the middle of some petty little squabble. They needed a negotiator, not a psychic.

“Because Harvey Jamison is spineless and doesn’t want anybody to know he took it, that’s why. He’d rather the city pay a hundred thousand bucks to have all new locks put in than admit he took it in the first place. That’s the kind of person he is.”

“So you basically want me to prove that Harvey Jamison took the key?”

“That’s right. I tried myself. You know, clairvoyant stuff.” Jo waved her hand at the unseen. “But I couldn’t come up with anything. Guess I just don’t have it. I’ve been taking correspondence courses on reading runes and on telepathy. I know I can learn everything there is to learn, but if a person doesn’t have a sixth sense the way you do, it doesn’t mean anything.”

“Sometimes even with it you can’t find an answer.” Cleo needed to clarify that right away. “I’m not promising you anything.”

“Oh, I know. I may not have what it takes, but all the same I just had a feeling about you after I read what you did in California.” She took a long sip of Coke then settled the can back in the holder. “When did you first realize you were able to do things most people couldn’t do?”

A simple question. A straightforward question. One Cleo should have been able to answer. Should she tell her that she’d first studied psychic phenomena because she wanted to prove to herself that she had no ability? Because if she had that kind of power, then she should have been able to save Jordan.

For a while she’d been able to convince herself that she was nothing special. During her brief stint on a psychic hotline, she’d been wrong more often than right, garnering some unsatisfied customers. I’m a fraud, she’d thought gleefully. I don’t have a shred of power. But then there had been the child in California.

A dream. A horrible dream. A vision. Of a little girl bound to an iron bed in a dark, damp basement. There had been more. A house with plywood over the windows. A huge, misshapen tree.

She’d told the police about her dream. Using her descriptions, they were able to find the house, find the child.

Cleo had begged them not to mention her involvement to anyone, but when the little girl was found in the spot Cleo had described, somehow her name was leaked to the press. The police department scrambled, trying to honor Cleo’s request for anonymity, but somehow everything got turned around and soon her integrity was being questioned-which was better than being hailed as the next Jeane Dixon. Cleo so wanted to be the fraud Daniel Sinclair accused her of being.

Chief Bennett repeated her earlier question. Cleo sidestepped it the way she always sidestepped it. “I think everybody has psychic ability. They just haven’t learned how to tap into it.”

That seemed to be the answer Jo was looking for, because she immediately switched subjects-from psychics to Daniel Sinclair.

“He was the head of a hostage negotiation unit in California,” Jo explained, as if Cleo had asked about him. For some reason-maybe it was the small-town way-Jo seemed bent on filling Cleo in on things that had nothing to do with the missing key and were really none of Cleo’s business.

“He was good at what he did. One of the best, and I’m not just saying that because his mother was my friend. Not every hostage situation can go the way we want it to.” Jo slowed for a turn, waving to a group of kids waiting to cross the street. “Danny had a high success-to-failure ratio. One of the highest in the country, I believe. But then one time-I don’t know the details-two kids and their mother got killed.”

Jo turned down Main Street. They moved past barrels of red geraniums and park benches painted dark green to match the canvas awnings lining both sides of the street. Two young mothers stood talking in front of the post office, one with a baby on her hip, the other pushing a stroller.

“But, being Danny, he blamed himself,” Jo continued.

Cleo didn’t want to hear any more about Daniel Sinclair. Not because it was too horrible to bear; she’d seen horrible things, had lived through horrible things. No, it was because she didn’t want to know about him, about his personal life, his triumphs, his pain. She didn’t want to know him.

“Just shortly after that, Lucille died. Lucille once told me she wasn’t afraid of death, but she was afraid of what would happen to Beau if she died. So Danny moved back home to take care of Beau. But if you ask me, it was the other way around half the time. Danny was drinking. A lot. He’d stay drunk for days, and Beau would take care of him. So I offered Danny a job. It keeps him out of trouble most of the time, but he still goes on the occasional bender. Beau keeps me informed.”

To Cleo’s relief, they finally arrived at the police station, a one-story white building located next to the courthouse and across the street from the fire station. Jo swung the squad car into a parking place reserved for the chief of police. Then they made their way along a wide sidewalk, up a few steps, and through heavy double doors.

Inside, Cleo was introduced to Parker Reed, the secretary. “He keeps this place running,” Jo said.

And it was quite a place. In one corner was a potted palm that had grown all the way to the ceiling, had taken a turn, and was now heading toward a nearby window. In another corner were a recliner, a lamp, and a table with two potted and profusely blooming purple African violets. Underfoot were woven throw rugs similar to the rugs Cleo had noticed at the Sinclair house.

“I make these rugs in my spare time,” Jo said. “I take old clothes, old sheets, old blankets, even old plastic bread wrappers, and cut everything into strips, then weave it. I’ll show you my loom sometime.”

“Okay,” Cleo said vaguely.

Was it her lack of sleep that was making things seem so weird? First the creepy motel room and the bad dreams, now Jo and her police station that looked like an old lady’s living room.

“Danny’s office.” Jo flung open a door, revealing a cramped room with a single small window, a desk, a phone, and not much else-and, thankfully, no Sinclair. Next was Jo’s office, a more lavish and personal version of the front room. Mixed in with the clutter on her desk were small, cheap picture frames, the kind you could pick up at a discount store for a couple of bucks. On the wall were more photos, many of Jo herself shaking hands with this person or that person, none of them anybody Cleo immediately recognized. Something told her if she showed the slightest interest in anything in the room, she would end up getting a monologue about the item in question.

Jo crossed the room to a wall safe, dialed the combination, and opened the thick door. “Here’s where I kept the key,” Jo said, standing to one side in case Cleo got the notion to peer into the darkness.

“Does anyone else know the safe’s combination?” Cleo asked.

“You aren’t here to launch an investigation,” Jo said, seeming surprised by the direction Cleo’s mind had taken. “The obvious questions are my job. I just want you to concentrate on that key. I don’t want your head cluttered with extraneous details.”

“I’m simply trying to get an idea of what’s going on.”

“I want you to get some vibes from this vault, then we’ll go across the street and talk to Harvey to see if you pick anything up there.”

Never in her life had Cleo picked up anything from an inanimate object. There had been the missing little girl, but it had never required a conscious effort on her part. She’d never actively tried to get information. It had just come, unbidden.

Leaving the safe ajar, Jo went to her desk, sat down, pulled out a huge black ledger, wrote a check, and handed it to Cleo.

Five thousand dollars.

“Five thousand in advance, another five thousand if you come up with the key. Fair?” Jo asked.

Cleo carefully tucked the check into a pocket in the side of her bag. “Fair.” Oh, God. Why had Jo paid her now, when there was nothing more Cleo wanted than to get far, far away?

Cleo moved to stand directly in front of the safe, the dark, deep pit level with her face. She reached up and touched the cold metal of the door.

“Feel anything?” Jo whispered from just beyond Cleo’s shoulder, inches from her ear.

Startled, Cleo jumped, her heart racing.

Peering into the darkness, Cleo put a hand on either side of the safe and closed her eyes. Careful to keep her expression blank, she silently counted to twenty, all the while thinking about the five-thousand-dollar check in her bag. Five thousand dollars. In her mind’s eye, she pictured a home. Nothing lavish. She didn’t ask for much. Just a tidy room with waxed floors and sparkling windows that let the sun in. In her imagination, there were no cockroaches or creepy landlords or crackheads living in dark hallways. In her daydream, the sun was warm on her face.

She turned the corner and found herself in a kitchen. There, above a stainless-steel double sink, was a potted geranium, its red blooms cascading happily down the green tiled backsplash. Near the back door, sweaters and jackets hung from pegs.

Five thousand dollars would get her such a place, at least for a while.

Cleo let out a heavy sigh and slowly opened her eyes.

“Well?” Jo asked expectantly.

“I’m not sure.”

“Did you feel anything?”

“I need time to digest the images.”

Jo shut the heavy door and gave the lock a couple of spins. “Let’s go talk to Harvey. Maybe you’ll pick up on something there.”

They found Harvey polishing the fire truck. On the surface, he seemed like your average middle-aged guy. But when he began talking, it quickly became apparent there would be no sidestepping the issue. His lazy drawl might have been southern, but his unblinking, no-time-for-bullshit attitude was pure New York City.

“I didn’t take your damn key,” Harvey said, wiping his hands on a towel. Damn was pronounced dai-yum. Key was pronounced with a long a.

Jo went on as if he hadn’t spoken, introducing Cleo and explaining her position in the entire conundrum.

“Howdy,” Harvey said grudgingly. He probably would have been halfway polite under normal circumstances.

After the reluctant hello, he turned back to Jo. “You know I don’t believe in that bullshit.”

“You don’t have to believe. She’s going to do all the work. I want her to pick up any vibes you might be giving off.”

“Like a human lie detector.”

“You could say that.”

“You’re pissing off the whole damn town,” he told Jo. “You know that, don’t you?”

“That’s your opinion. Cleo?” She motioned for Cleo to step closer. “Stand in his aura.” She sniffed and made an arrogant face. “If he even has one.”

Take the money and run.

Cleo stepped closer.

Harvey wasn’t an especially tall man. Not much taller than Cleo, which would put him at about five-eleven. His eyes were very brown.

Jo put a hand to Cleo’s shoulder and shoved. Cleo took a stumbling step, and she and Harvey stood nose to chin. “Um, okay.” Cleo closed her eyes and counted to twenty. When the time was up, she opened her eyes and stepped back.

“Well?” Jo asked in a repeat of their earlier performance. “Get anything?”

“I don’t know,” Cleo said, putting a limp hand to her forehead. “I’m suddenly feeling very tired.”

“I’ve heard that can happen. That clairvoyance takes a lot out of a person.”

“I’m going to have to rest and absorb the information.”

“I understand.” Jo gave Harvey a final glare, took Cleo by the arm, and led her gently from the fire station.

Cleo looked back to see Harvey shake his head and return to his polishing.

They were crossing the road, heading back to the police station, when someone in a blue sport utility vehicle honked and waved, the vehicle swinging into a parking space in front of the courthouse.

“There’s Dr. Campbell.”

“ Burton Campbell?”

“You met him?”

“I saw his signs.”

“ Burton ’s done a lot for this town. Got a good head on his shoulders.” There was respect in Jo’s voice. It was the kind of likable awe reserved for those special few people who were just a little bit better than everybody else. It was the kind of reaction you saw in small towns. It was the kind of reaction Cleo’s mother had cultivated.

“He’ll want to meet you.” Jo flagged him down even though it was obvious he’d stopped to talk to them.

Dr. Campbell was dressed in an expensive-looking suit, his teeth bleached, his hair cut to perfection. He was a man selling himself with his Dale Carnegie handshake and his smooth, practiced greeting. Handsome and slick, he was the kind of guy Cleo avoided.

“Hello, Miss Tyler. Welcome to our little community of Egypt.” He held out his hand. Cleo had no choice but to take it.

His grip was just right, not too firm, not too limp, his fingertips like smooth, cool stones. And while he gave her arm a little pump, he looked directly into her eyes and smiled his winning smile, a smile that had poor Jo smitten even though he had to be twenty years her junior.

“ Burton is not only the mayor, he’s the best dentist in town,” Jo said, proud as punch.

The only dentist in town, Cleo recalled.

While praise for the good doctor rolled off Jo’s tongue, a black car cruised past. The vehicle was fairly new. Four doors, with Egypt Police Department stenciled on the driver’s side. At the wheel was Daniel Sinclair. He gave them a lazy wave, his bare arm and elbow hanging out the open window. There was a smile on his face-or was it a smirk?-as he took in their cozy little chatfest. Cleo gave him a feeble smile in return, wondering if he was thinking about the cavity thing.

Jo didn’t miss a beat. “Burt’s initiated so many new things in Egypt.” A few minutes earlier she hadn’t been able to stop talking about Daniel. Now she was waving to him as if he were a distraction. “He’s brought a new vitality to the town with his Revitalize Main Street project, the Downtown Business Organization, and the KKOD.”

The black car stopped at the intersection then moved on. “KKOD?” Cleo asked, trying to sound interested, but failing.

“Keep Kids Off Drugs. We hold meetings at the youth center where people bring the family and we talk to the kids and the parents about keeping kids busy so they won’t turn to drugs. Yep, Burton ’s brought a sense of pride back to Egypt.”

Dr. Burton Campbell was basking in her praise, smiling with an aw-shucks attitude. “I didn’t do it by myself,” he said. “Sometimes people just need to be pointed in the right direction.” He turned to Cleo. “So, are you free for lunch?”

His forwardness took her by surprise, and she tried to avoid reacting in an obviously negative way. “Actually, I thought I’d start trying to piece some things together.”

“You have to eat,” he said, still smiling. “There’s a little place about five miles from here where they have the best catfish. You can fill me in on your plans for finding the missing key.”

“Thanks, but I’d really like to just jump right in, if you don’t mind.”

His smile didn’t change. “Certainly. Maybe we can do it another time?”

“Yes. Maybe so.”

Give the guy a break, Cleo tried to tell herself. The only reason she disliked him was because he was a guy her mother would have adored.