“Where does she work?”
“She doesn’t. Cynthia ishere, in the house.” I was still standing at the chest, staring at the empty carving station. “I’m in the dining room. There’s a Tiffany set, Colonial pattern—the carving utensils are all missing.”
“Baby—”
“Sebastian,” Cynthia said from behind, but her voice had taken on a somewhat deadened tone.
I turned, trying my absolute best to not come across as panicked. “Hey, Cynthia,” I said, more to alert Calvin that I wasn’t alone, before slipping my phone into my back pocket. I raised my hands to show the cloth gloves I still had on. “Don’t worry, no fingerprints on your Tiffany. I couldn’t help but take a peek. It’s a beautiful collection.”
She glanced at the open chest, at me, then nodded. She was holding her hands behind her back.
I forced myself to smile, but I felt like I was going to throw up. It was like being pinned in the bathroom with Pete White all over again, staring down the barrel of a Colt Walker revolver and realizing I was about to be shot. My muscles and skin scarred from surgery contracted at the memory, at the echoing crack of a gun going off in close quarters, at the hazy but still very real sensation of what it felt like for a bullet to tear through me. My palms were sweating inside the gloves, and the tips of my fingers had gone completely numb. I was scared out of my mind. There was no way she hadn’t noticed the change in my expression, my posture.
“I should go,” I managed to get out.
“How did you know?” Cynthia countered, a frantic flutter to her words. “Are you really as smart as they say?”
“Right now, I feel very, very stupid,” I clarified.
Cynthia slowly drew her hands forward. She wore what looked like expensive leather gloves and was holding a chef’s knife. “Why did you have to get involved?”
I held my own hands up in defense and said, “Cynthia, you’re making me nervous with that knife. How about you put it down and we talk?”
She shook her head and extended her arm, pointing it at me like one would a gun. “You know now. Youcan’tknow.”
“What do you think is going to happen if you kill me?” I took a very small step toward the packing materials. “Your housekeeper is right down the hall, in the kitchen.”
Cynthia shook her head. “I sent her out to pick up more wine.”
Great.
“Okay, well, how would you explain this to the police?”
“You attacked me. It was self-defense.”
“Cynthia. No one’s going to believe that, least of all my detective husband.”
Her face contorted a little. I think she was crying. “I never meant for all this to happen. It was an accident, I swear.”
Uh, sure. Sure it was.
“What was an accident?” I asked, taking another shuffle.
“Sandra! She’s been my spiritual advisor for three years. She saw a happy life with Chris and said I should accept his proposal. She’s received messages from my mother who’s passed. I loved her!”
“Then why’d you kill her?”
Cynthia let out a sob as she gasped for air. The knife was shaking in her hand. “I—I wanted her to come to my party. It’s a séance party, like what they did back in the day. But she refused. Said she didn’tdoparties and that her readings had to be done in her store, one person at a time. Why should it matter the location or number of people? I waspayingher.”
“You were the one who argued with her outside the shop,” I quietly confirmed.
Cynthia bit her lip and nodded. “And I… I started thinking… what if—what if she was a liar? I knew her and Brad had a falling out. She said it was over money, and that her husband was a greedy sonofabitch, and I believed her. But what if he found out she was a fraud?”
“They both were,” I said.
Cynthia nodded and her grip tightened on the knife. “I bought the two spiritoscopes years ago. Forgot all about them, to be honest. And then when I was having doubts about Sandra, I thought, I’ll ask her to use it at my next appointment. Dr. Hare proved mediums were real, so maybe I could as well! And it’d make me feel better. But she refused that too—said it was absurd of me to ask her to prove her connection to the spirit world after all the time we’d spent together. And I… I don’t know what happened. I got so mad I….”
“You brought the carving knife with you,” I pointed out, taking another step.
