“Intuition,” she said coolly.
She was really giving him the creeps now. Raine Tallentyre was either a consummate actress or a total nutcase like her aunt.
“Right, thanks, Miss Tallentyre. I’ll be in touch.”
Abruptly she turned on her heel, went back to the desk and picked up a pen. “I’m going to give you the name and number of someone you can call. Bradley Mitchell. He’s a detective with the Oriana Police Department. He’ll vouch for the fact that I’m not a likely suspect or a fraudulent psychic looking for publicity.”
He frowned. “You’ve been involved in situations like this before?”
“Yes.” She tore off the sheet of paper and handed it to him. “Call Detective Mitchell. He’ll explain. Good-bye, Chief Langdon. Good luck with the press conference.”
“How did you know about that?”
“There’s always a press conference,” she said, surprising him with a small, genuine smile. “Don’t worry, I won’t try to steal your thunder. In fact, I would be extremely grateful if you would avoid releasing my name and identity to the media.”
“No problem,” he said, meaning it. The last thing he wanted to do was give the press the idea that he was working with a psychic. That kind of thing would make him look ridiculous.
“Thank you.” She walked out the door, the long black raincoat swirling around her high-heeled boots.
He gave her a moment to leave and then he went into the outer office. Marge was at her desk. She was gazing over the rims of her reading glasses at the door through which Raine Tallentyre had just disappeared.
Marge was sixty-two years old. She had lived in Shelbyville all her life. She was his go-to source whenever he needed background on one of the local residents. He propped himself on the corner of her desk.
“What do you know about her?” he asked.
“Not much, really,” Marge admitted. “Vella Tallentyre bought the house here over twenty years ago. When Raine was a little girl, a couple of men used to drive her up here to visit Vella. Later, she came by herself. She sometimes bought groceries at the local store and filled up her gas tank but other than that, we never saw much of her. She didn’t seem to want to get to know any of us locals. I never even met her until today.”
“What about the caretaker, Ed Childers? He have anything to say about her?”
“Ed wasn’t much of a talker. But I ran into him at the post office one day not long before he died. He told me something about Raine that day that I never forgot.”
“What?”
“He said he saw a photograph of Vella Tallentyre once. It was taken when Vella was younger, in her early thirties. Ed claimed that Raine Tallentyre was a dead ringer for her aunt at that age.”
“No kidding.”
“The only other thing I ever recall Ed saying about the Tallentyre women was that Vella had a downright obsessive fear of fire. Made him install half a dozen smoke detectors. Kept lots of fire extinguishers in the house. Had those little window emergency ladders in all the upstairs rooms. She wouldn’t even allow a fire to be built in the fireplace.”
“Phobic.”
“For sure.”
Five
“Her name is Stacy Anderson,” Raine said into her cell phone. “They think she may be the latest victim of that freak the press calls the Bonfire Killer, the one that has been trolling among the prostitutes in Seattle and Portland.”
“Damn.” Andrew Kitredge sounded more resigned than surprised. “You can’t even leave town for a day without stumbling onto a murder scene.”
She almost smiled. Andrew was one of the few people in the world who was aware of her little eccentricity, as he called it, and took it in stride. His life partner, Gordon Salazar, was another who accepted her, voices and all.
Aunt Vella had understood her, of course, and her father, if he was still alive, would have considered her psychic side normal. But Judson Tallentyre died in a car accident when Raine was six and now Vella was gone, as well.
She had no other close blood relatives. Her mother died when she was a year and a half old. Judson Tallentyre, forced to surface from his precious research in order to deal with the nuisance of caring for a baby daughter, had asked his sister to move into the household. Vella agreed, taking Raine into her heart immediately.
Childcare issues resolved, Judson immediately disappeared back into his lab.
The day of his funeral had been a turning point in Raine’s young life. The small, sad ceremony was conducted in a gray, northwest mist. It was followed by what she had come to think of as the Night of Fire and Tears. She did not recall everything about that fateful evening but a series of frightening and disturbing snapshots had been forever etched in her mind.
A few months after the terrible night, Vella had sunk into the first of what would prove to be a number of long and extended depressive episodes. Aware that she could no longer care for a little girl on her own and terrified that the state would take Raine away and put her into the foster system, she turned to her best friend from childhood, Andrew Kitredge, and his partner, Gordon.
Andrew and Gordon never hesitated. They took Raine and Vella into their lives, assuming responsibility for Raine whenever Vella spiraled downward into one of her episodes. Somehow the four of them had formed a family, shielding Raine from the long arm of the state.
“You don’t have to make it sound like I do it deliberately,” she said to Andrew, trying to lighten the mood.
“I know you don’t,” Andrew said. “But you have to admit that your little eccentricities have a tendency to rattle nerves.”
“Okay, I’ll grant you that much.”
She had been rattling Andrew’s and Gordon’s nerves ever since the summer of her nineteenth year, when she stumbled onto her first crime scene: that of a woman who had been murdered by her stalker-husband.
She settled deeper into the chair, propped her stocking-clad feet on a hassock and studied the view out the window. It wasn’t quite six o’clock but night came early in the Cascades, especially at this time of year.
“Thank God that girl was still alive,” Andrew said. “I can’t even imagine what her family must have gone through after she disappeared.”
“She told Langdon that she doesn’t have any family, at least not one she wants to acknowledge. Evidently she’s been living on the streets for the past couple of years. The chief says that fits the profile of the Bonfire Killer’s victims. They’ve found three bodies so far, all young women with backgrounds like Anderson’s. One was from Portland. The others were from Seattle.”