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“Is this funny to you?” Tean asked.
“You’d better believe it is, son. The whole thing’s a goddamn joke.”
Heather drew herself up. “It’s not a joke. And I’m not making things up. Did you know Missy and Yesenia had a huge fight yesterday?”
“They had a disagreement,” Kristin said.
Tean nodded. “Missy mentioned—”
“A disagreement.” Heather made a face. “I’ve never seen anything like it. I thought Missy was going to attack her right there—jump on her, go for the throat.”
Rod smirked and looked away.
“They were screaming at each other,” Heather continued. “Well, Missy was screaming. Yesenia was just Yesenia—talking the way she always talks, like she doesn’t care who you are or what you think. But she knew what she was doing. Everything she said, it wound Missy up more and more. She kept screaming and screaming.”
“Missy wouldn’t have—” Kristin tried.
“And when Yesenia finally left, Missy said she wished Yes was dead.”
Tean had known—and been married to—Jem Berger long enough to know embroidery when he heard it. “Is that really what she said?”
Heather flashed him a startled look. Her shoulders shrank. “Well, I mean, not exactly.”
“What did she say?”
“Oh, I don’t know. It was the same general idea. ‘The world would be better off without you.’ Something like that.” Her tone took on an edge. “I’d say that’s pretty much the same thing.”
“Not necessarily,” Tean said. “The world would be better off without any of us.”
“Rod got in a fight with Yesenia too.” Kristin’s cheeks were red, and the words tumbled out. “It doesn’t mean anything; people fight all the time. There’s no way Missy would kill Yesenia. Tean, you’ve known Missy forever. Tell them.”
“I think we’re jumping to a lot of conclusions,” Tean said. “Yesenia might be sick, like Rod said. She might have had a family emergency, and she had to leave.”
“Without telling anyone?” Heather said.
“And the police could be talking to Missy about any number of things. She might have had a death in the family; the police could be notifying her in private.”
“He didn’t look like he was telling her a cousin died,” Heather said. “He looked the way cops look when they bust you.” Color tinged her wasted cheeks, and she mumbled, “On TV, I mean.”
“I thought you were drawn here by psychic danger.” Rod’s voice lilted into mock-spookiness at the end. “Or maybe it was a vision, huh? That’s how you saw him?”
Heather glared at him.
With a chuckle, Rod said, “I guess I’d better go take care of things. While Yesenia is indisposed.” To Kristin, he added, “You feel free to step right up, miss, if you think I’m doing it wrong.”
Kristin opened her mouth, but Rod was already sauntering away.
“Tean?”
When Tean turned, Jem was jogging across the lobby—coming, Tean noticed, from the direction of the elevators.
Tean asked, “Where have you been?”
Jem opened his mouth, and then the expression on his face changed, and he asked, “What happened?”
The evasion registered at the back of Tean’s mind, but only distantly. He told Jem what he knew: Yesenia’s absence, Missy being taken by the police, Heather’s insinuations.
“I don’t really think she killed her,” Heather put in. “It’s the spirits, sometimes they—”
