Double Take

Cheney said slowly, “I don’t understand, Julia. Didn’t August Ransom claim he spoke to dead people?” Yes.

“Did the dead at least give him their names?”

“I can’t say, since his consultations were always private, and he never spoke to me about them, or to anyone else.”

“But you believe he spoke to the dead? Communicated with them, passed on messages to those grieving left behind?”

“He told me he’d spoken to Lincoln, and I believed him.”

She sounded so certain, so settled in her belief. He eyed her. He didn’t know what to think. He decided to leave what she’d said alone. She’d evidently bought into everything her husband had told her. He wasn’t going to make her defend him.

A horn sounded, and he focused on the road again. He finally saw the exit sign to Livermore. “I want to hear more about all this, but first, we’ve got about five minutes for you to tell me about Kathryn Golden.”

She said, “I think Bevlin’s wrong about Kathryn being in love with August. She’s too—together, I guess is the right word, too focused on what she is, to love someone like that. And besides, if she wanted him, why would she kill him? Why not me? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Maybe when she approached him one last time and he turned her down, she was enraged, made plans to get even.”

“She always has lovely fingernails. I can’t see her doing anything to endanger them, much less garroting him. Okay, that was a bit snippy, but the fact remains no way does she have the strength to garrote anyone.”

“Okay, you’re probably right. So she could have hired someone. I’m getting the picture here that you simply never considered her any sort of threat, that you might even like her.”

“I suppose I do like her, and you’re right, I never saw her as a threat of any kind. August loved me, I knew that. He never gave me cause to doubt it.”

Cheney chewed that over for a moment, then asked, “Do you think she’s really psychic? Like August was?”

“August used to say that many people who thought they were psychic simply overflowed with intuition. With those people he really believed did have psychic gifts, he said he pictured two big beakers—one to measure their actual psychic ability, the other to measure their ambition for material gain. He saw their beakers filled accordingly when he made a decision about them. He said Kathryn’s psychic beaker was more than half full, but her ambition beaker flowed nearly to the top. So she stepped over the line sometimes. But he said she was so smooth and charismatic, such an expert at reading people, she could make anyone believe she was communicating with their dead Saint Bernard.”

When Cheney pulled onto Raleigh Drive, a street that speared up a barren hill where the houses were large and set wide apart, he paused a moment, looking around. “The psychic medium business appears to be good to Ms. Golden.”

“She’s practically a regular on daytime TV, you know, some of the talk shows. She even had her own show for a couple of years. She’s written a couple of books and both did fairly well, as Bevlin told you. I read The Soul’s Search. It was actually good. The fact is, Cheney, though I’ve never disliked her, I have gotten the impression she thinks I’m an opportunist, that I married August mainly for his money. I suppose she thinks August was taken in, dazzled by my youth and beauty.”

“Do I hear a whiff of sarcasm?”

“Well, yes. Youth and beauty, give me a break.” Cheney looked at her high cheekbones, the bruise fading, her creamy white skin, and her pale green eyes, ever so slightly tilted at the corners, her mouth with its light coating of pale peach lipstick. He wondered if Kathryn Golden had a point.

Julia was saying, “I don’t know of any scandals in her past, nothing like that. She’s always been a little aloof to me. She did love August, though not, I don’t think, in the physical sense. She admired him as much as everyone did.”

She added as they pulled into the driveway, “I don’t like it that we didn’t call her, to tell her we were coming.”

“We know she’s at home, that’s enough,” Cheney said as they walked up the flagstone path to the front door. There were flowers everywhere, in beds lining the walk, in flower boxes, and hanging in baskets from thick black chains, in wild spills and vibrant colors, scenting the dry air with jasmine and violet. “We might learn something by catching her off guard. It’s an old trick. Hey, the door’s open, just like Bevlin’s. What’s with psychics?”