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She was keyed up. Edgy. Nerves strung tight. After hanging her coat in the closet, she found her robe and cinched it tight about her waist. She lit a fire from kindling she’d stacked near the grate, then rocked back on her heels and watched the eager flames devour the paper and dry wood. As the flames ignited, crackling and hissing, promising warmth, Sheena curled up on a thick bed that Grace had sewn.
“Good girl,” she said, warming her hands as she spied the clock on the mantel, near the fading, framed photograph of her family. It was morning, a few hours before dawn, and the images of Regan Pescoli were still with her.
The fire burned bright, golden shadows shifting through the small living area in the house where she’d resided all her life.
“An onus,” she confided in Sheena, who was lying down, great head on her paws, eyes focused on Grace. No wonder she took the heat she did.
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Rod Larimer, owner of the Bull and Bear, an inn of sorts in town, had referred to her as “our resident looney.” And Bob Simms, the hunter who had killed the she-wolf twenty years earlier, had been known to say, “Crazy as a fruitcake. A real nutso. Should be locked up, if you ask me.” Manny Douglas, a writer for the Mountain Reporter, had once described her as one of “Grizzly Falls’s local color.”
Manny had kindly lumped her in with the likes of Ivor Hicks, who’d thought he’d been abducted by aliens in the seventies, and Henry Johansen, a farmer who fell off his tractor and hit his head only to claim he could read other people’s minds. Like you? she asked herself while staring at the flames.
Not all of the townspeople thought she was crazy. A few actually liked the whole clairvoyant thing, found it, and her, fascinating. Sandi Aldridge, the owner of Wild Will’s, was always kind, and Aunt Barbara, though disgruntled at having to move here to take care of her brother’s only surviving child, had always told her to accept the gift God had given her. Hah. Now Grace grabbed a poker and jabbed at the fire, causing sparks to dance and red embers to glow a little more brightly. Going to the Pinewood County Sheriff’s Department wouldn’t be pleasant. Not at all. Sheriff Dan Grayson wasn’t a fan and Pescoli’s partner, Selena Alvarez, seemed icy and remote. But then that woman had secrets, held them close. Grace was certain of it. And she didn’t like the idea of trying to convince Grayson, or Alvarez, or anyone associated with the police about her vision. She didn’t want to suffer the ridicule that was certain to be thrust her way.
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“What should I do?” she asked the dog and in that moment Grace heard her father’s voice, clear as a bell. “Be smart,” he advised gruffly. “Keep your damned mouth shut.”
But her mother, as she had in life, disagreed with her husband. “Don’t worry about what anyone says about you. A woman’s life is at stake. You owe it to her to tell what you know.”
“I don’t know anything,” Grace argued, feeling some warmth return to her toes.
“Don’t you?” Her mother seemed close enough to touch, but, of course, Grace saw no one, not even a transparent ghostly outline. Just heard voices. As ever.
Straightening, she picked up the picture from the mantel. Staring at the photograph of her family clustered on the front porch pulled at her heartstrings. But she quickly pushed aside any maudlin sense of nostalgia or self-pity.
Images of Regan Pescoli’s tortured face appeared again, and Grace drew in a deep, steadying breath. It was only a matter of time before she bucked up and faced the ridicule that was sure to be a part of confiding in the police.
“You know,” she said to the now sleeping dog,
“Sometimes gift is just another word for curse.”
Strike three.
Seated at her desk in her cubicle at the department, Selena Alvarez swiped at her nose with a tissue and glowered at her computer monitor. She’d called Pescoli on her cell, gotten no response, tried to reach her partner’s ex-husband, Luke “Lucky”
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Pescoli, but the guy wasn’t answering. Finally, she’d dialed Nate Santana again with no luck. Though Pescoli hadn’t confided the name of her most recent in a string of loser lovers, Alvarez was certain Santana was the man she’d been seeing. The guy was just Pescoli’s type: a good-looking drifter who’d rolled into town a few years back and had recently caught Selena’s partner’s eye.
When it came to men, Pescoli never seemed to learn.
Her first husband, Joe Strand, had been a cop who had taken a bullet in the line of duty, but there had been questions about his ethics. Pescoli had admitted to Alvarez that she’d married Strand, her college sweetheart, after learning she was pregnant and that there had been cracks in their marriage, affairs when they’d separated a while. Luke Pescoli, her sexy-as-hell but useless second husband, now owed her thousands in back child support. That was the problem with Pescoli, she picked men for their looks rather than their brains or moral character. Nate Santana was a case in point. The guy was the quiet type, with black hair, razor-sharp features, and piercing dark eyes that never reflected any of his thoughts. An athletic cowboy type with a whiptough body and cutting sense of humor, he appeared as ready to ride a bareback bronc as he was to spend all night making love.
Good for a fling, maybe. Definitely not suitable for a husband, which Pescoli had claimed she didn’t want anyway.
Alvarez blew her nose and told herself not to worry.
After all, Pescoli had called in. Again Alvarez replayed the message:
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