Evans to Betsy (19 page)

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Authors: Rhys Bowen

BOOK: Evans to Betsy
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She turned to glare at him but said nothing.
“This might be a good point to have my sergeant read you your rights, Miss Harcourt, and to ask you whether you would like to have a lawyer present.”
Until now Emmy had been aggressive but composed. Now suddenly her face flushed. “Hey, wait a second. You don’t think I had anything to do with his death, do you? I loved him.”
“Of course you did,” Hughes went on smoothly. For once Evan was impressed. “But he married someone else, didn’t he? He left you behind in the States to face the music while he came to live in luxury in Wales. What more perfect motive for murder?”
“Bullshit,” Emmy said. “You British cops are really stupid, do you know that? If you really want to know the truth, we planned the whole thing, Randy and I.”
“Planned his death?”
“He wasn’t meant to die.” For the first time her voice had a desperate edge to it. “It was meant to be a stunt—a publicity stunt.”
“Go on,” Hughes said.
“Okay, this is what was supposed to happen. Randy was in deep shit at home. The feds were watching his every move. He decided to get out for a while. This Englishwoman had been calling his hot line and in talking to her he found out that she was a lady with a
tide and a stately home. He’d always dreamed of opening a New Age center someday and he thought this woman was loaded. She was also looking for a new guy in her life. Randy’s great at that kind of thing. He can have any woman eating out of his hand in seconds. He told me what he was going to do and I agreed. He said it wouldn’t be more than a year, two years, max. So he married her and then he found that she wasn’t loaded at all. She had the house and all these debts. She hadn’t been quite honest with him, it seemed.”
That was poetic justice,
Evan thought. Randy Wunderlich had been a little less than honest with her too.
“So now he’s stuck with this bloody great house and he’s just started work on the center but there’s no money to get it going properly. You need publicity to launch a project like that. So he decided we needed a crazy stunt to make headlines. If you want to know the truth, I thought it was a little too crazy, but once Randy gets an idea, it’s hard to stop him.”
“And what was this idea?” Hughes asked.
“He decided that he’d go missing and he’d make psychic contact with some complete stranger and she’d find him. Great story, huh? World-renowned psychic vanishes and is found through psychic message. The plan was supposed to work like this—he’d go down to meditate in a cave he’d found. He’d fall into a trance and only wake when it was dark. It would be hard to get out of the cave because the rocks were slippery by this time. He’d try and twist his ankle so badly that he couldn’t walk then he’d spend a miserable night in the cave, cut off by high water. In the morning his ankle would have swollen so that he couldn’t put any weight on it. So he’d have to sit it out and wait to be found—but he would send out psychic messages because he was getting desperate. One of them would be picked up by a young girl who would lead the search party to find him.”
“Wait a minute,” Evan interrupted, before he remembered that he wasn’t supposed to be in the room. “How was he so sure that Betsy would get the message and find him?”
Emmy gave him a withering stare. “We picked the right girl.”
“You detected her strong psychic powers?” Evan asked.
“We detected gullible and suggestible. We’ve done enough psychic work to know how to plant an idea in someone’s mind. You know—hypnosis. While I was working with Betsy, I suggested to her that she would have a dream and I told her exactly what she was going to dream about. The only thing was—she went to the wrong cave. And he was there. And he was dead.”
She covered her face in her hands and lowered her head. A great heaving sob escaped from her. Hughes shut off the tape recorder.
In the middle of that night, a storm broke over Llanfair. The thunder echoed, alarmingly loud, in the narrow confines of the pass. Lightning illuminated the mountaintops before more clouds rushed in to hide them again. Evan had woken in the still-unfamiliar room at the first rumble of thunder and had lain there, unable to sleep, counting the pauses between each flash and the following crash. Not more than a second or two. The storm was almost overhead and moving closer. Rain started drumming on the roof, almost drowning out the thunder. He was glad he wasn’t out in this one. A real drencher.
He certainly wasn’t going to be able to fall back to sleep until the storm was over, so he lay there, mulling over the events of the previous day. Emmy Court was being held in custody now, not having the funds to post bail. D.C.I. Hughes was satisfied that they’d got the right person, but Evan wasn’t so sure. He wasn’t sure what to make of her at all. Usually he was a pretty good judge of character but Emmy Court had got him stumped. Scheming. Manipulating. She showed no remorse about using Betsy so shamelessly. Apart from that one outbreak she had shown little emotion. Evan could easily imagine her dragging Randy Wunderlich to the sea cave and leaving him there to die if it suited her purposes. But then he though back to the night when they had found Randv’s
body. All the way down to the Sacred Grove, Emmy had seemed keyed up, but excited, like a child setting out on an adventure. She had tried to persuade Betsy that she was going to the wrong cave and then there was the anguished outburst: “He can’t be dead!” Surely there was true shock and despair in that wail. Randy’s death had taken her by surprise. But it was no use expressing his doubts to D.C.I. Hughes at this stage. Hughes would want a better suspect before he’d let Emmy Court go.
The thunder crashed, louder than ever before. It went on and on, growing in intensity. It took a few moments for Evan to register that the noise wasn’t thunder, but someone banging on his door. He grabbed his dressing gown and ran downstairs.
Betsy was standing outside the front door, wearing her anorak and nightdress, exactly as she had that previous night. She stared at him with terrified eyes and then flung herself toward him.
“Betsy, what on earth is it?” Evan asked.
“I’m so scared and my dad’s passed out, as usual, and I’m so frightened that the murderer will come and get me.”
Evan took her inside and shut the door. “It’s all right. Calm down. You’re safe now.” He took the trembling girl into the kitchen and sat her down. “Look at you. You’re soaking wet.”
“I know. I didn’t want to stay in the house any longer,” she said. “I thought I could hear someone coming up the stairs so I just grabbed the first coat and ran.”
“Take that wet coat off. My cardigan is hanging on the hook in the hall,” he instructed. “I’ll make you a cup of tea.” He put the kettle on and Betsy came back, her hair still plastered to her forehead. She looked like a lost orphan in Evan’s oversized cardigan.
She came to stand beside him, holding out her hands to the flame under the kettle. “I’m chilled right through,” she said. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me.”
“So tell me what happened,” Evan said. “What frightened you?”
“I had another dream,” Betsy said. “Only this one wasn’t clear like the other one. It was just that I knew someone was after me. It was someone in a cloak and hood and I couldn’t see the face but
I knew it was the real murderer. Then I woke up and the storm was horrible and I thought I heard noises outside my door. I was so sure it was the murderer come to get me.”
Evan patted her shoulder awkwardly. “You just had a bad dream. Nobody’s after you.”
“But look what happened last time I had a bad dream. It all came true!”
Evan poured the boiling water into the pot. “Betsy, there’s something you should know. It might stop you from worrying like this—” He paused, wondering how to phrase what he was going to say. “Betsy, all that rubbish about psychic ability, that’s all it was—rubbish. The police are holding Emmy Court right now. It seems she planned a hoax with Randy Wunderlich. They worked together at this psychic hot line in America, you know. He was going to disappear and some unknown person was going to find him through a psychic connection. They picked you. They set you up. You didn’t have a psychic dream. You were hypnotized. Emmy Court put those images into your head.”
Betsy was staring at him, a bewildered look on her face. “You mean I’m not psychic at all? I don’t have powers?”
“I’m afraid not,” Evan said.
“You really mean I’m not psychic after all? They only pretended I had powers?”
Evan nodded. “It was a cruel trick to play.”
But she did get the cave right
, he thought.
Was that just coincidence?
“But why did they do it?”
“Publicity, that’s all. They wanted to generate publicity for the Sacred Grove because it wasn’t going very well. They thought this kind of thing would capture the media’s attention.”
“That is so unfair.” Betsy’s voice cracked. “How could she do that? I thought she liked me. And I was so excited about my powers. I really believed I was special at last.”
“Look on the bright side of this,” Evan said. “The murderer has nothing to fear from you. You won’t be seeing his face in another psychic dream. You can’t give him away—or her away,” he added.
“Do they think that Emmy killed Randy?” Betsy asked. She picked up the mug of tea that Evan had poured for her and took a hesitant sip.
“They seem to. But that doesn’t mean that I do, Betsy. I really think you ought not to go to that place again.”
“But I want to. Even if I’m not psychic and they won’t be helping me to develop my powers after all. The people are nice to me, honestly. I really don’t feel I’m in danger there … except that …”
“What?”
“Something happened to me yesterday. I thought it was just a horrible accident—”
“What was it?”
“I got shut in the steam room by mistake. The steam came on and I couldn’t get out. I nearly passed out before Bethan and Michael came to rescue me. They said the door had stuck before and they didn’t seem at all worried. In fact, I get the feeling they thought I was being silly and hysterical.”
Evan looked at her sharply. “So who knew you were going to be in the steam room?”
“I’d just left Rhiannon, so she knew. But then anyone only had to look at the staff schedule to see that I was supposed to be cleaning the spa at that time. I almost didn’t make it to the spa. Rhiannon kept me doing other things. I had to rush.”
“I really wish you wouldn’t go back there, Betsy. Take that scare as a warning. If somebody does want to get rid of you, there are plenty of easy ways to do it at that place.”
“I’ll let them know about Emmy Court tomorrow and how she tricked me. It won’t be easy to admit that I’m just ordinary after all, but I’ll do it. When they hear that I’m not psychic, I’ll be safe, won’t I?”
“You’ll be safer if you don’t go back at all.”
“No. I’m being silly again. I’m sure that steam room thing was just an unlucky accident. Michael said the door had stuck before, didn’t he? And he was going to get it fixed right away. ‘Can you imagine how one of the guests would freak out if it happened to them?’ he said. He can be funny if he wants to, can’t he? A bit shy,
of course, but sweet. And Bethan’s nice too. Those two will take care of me.”
She took another sip of tea. “And you say you don’t think that Emmy killed Randy. Then that’s all the more reason for me to keep on working at the center. I can be your eyes and ears for you, can’t I? I’ve always wanted to help you with your work. Maybe I can track down the killer for you and you’ll get all the credit for once.”
“Betsy, you’re something else.” He ruffled her wet hair. “I’m going to get a towel to dry you off. You’re dripping like a wet dog.”
When he came back, Betsy was sitting on the chair, hugging her knees to her. She looked about twelve years old.
“Come here.” He flung the towel over her head.
“Ow,” she yelled playfully. “Let me out. You’re suffocating me!” She pushed the towel back from her face and looked up at him. One minute they were both laughing, the next she was somehow in his arms and he was kissing her. Her lips were icy but her mouth was warm and inviting.
“I’m sorry—” He broke away and stepped back from her. “I don’t know how that happened.”
“Don’t apologize,” she said, still looking up at him adoringly. “I liked it. I’ve been waiting a long time for you to kiss me, Evan Evans.” She slipped her arms around him, pulling herself close to him again. “Hold me. I’m still so cold.”
He could feel her slender body shivering. He wrapped his arms around her. “You should never have come out in this storm, you dafty.”
“I know. I didn’t stop to think. I was in a real panic again. Don’t make me go home again tonight. I’m scared of going back there alone.”
As if on cue the room was lit with blue light and a great crash of thunder shook the house. Hail bounced off the pavement outside.
“No, I can’t send you home in this.” Evan hesitated. Part of his brain was whispering that this whole thing might have been one of Betsy’s famous schemes. But he could feel her body shivering
against him. He glanced up the stairs. “All right. You can sleep in my bed. Come on.”
She allowed herself to be led up the stairs and scrambled into the bed, pulling the covers over her. “I’m still freezing,” she muttered.
“You’ll soon get warm. That Welsh quilt is terrific. Half a dozen sheep have been stuffed into that.” He grinned at her.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“I’m not rightly sure. I don’t have an armchair or a sofa yet.”
“Don’t go, Evan. Stay here with me. Come on, there’s room.”
Evan gave an embarrassed laugh. “Look, Betsy, I’m only human.”
“No, it will be all right, honestly.” She patted the bed beside her. “I just want to feel warm and safe.” She sat up, hugging the quilt to her. “I promise I’ll behave myself,” she said. “Honestly, Evan. I mean that.” She looked up at him, her big, blue eyes holding his. “Look, I know I’ve tried everything under the sun to get you to notice me, but now that I’m here and I could have what I wanted—I know you love someone else. It’s okay. I’m quite trustworthy. And if you really want to know and promise not to tell another soul in the whole world—I’m still a virgin. I’m not going to lead you astray.” She gave him a little smile.
Cautiously Evan climbed in beside her. He hoped that he was quite trustworthy too. He wasn’t at all sure of it. He was sure Betsy didn’t realize how many times he had thought about being with her and what it would be like. Now she was here and all he could think of was Bronwen.
“Goodnight, Betsy.” He leaned over and gave her a little kiss on her forehead.
 
He woke early to find himself alone in bed and wondered if he had dreamed the whole thing. Then the smell of frying came to his nostrils. He went downstairs to find Betsy in the kitchen, the tea already in the pot and eggs and bacon sizzling in the pan.
“Toast just popped up,” she called. “If you hurry up and butter it, the eggs are ready.”
He sat down to his best breakfast in weeks.
“I thought I’d better get going early, before too many people are about,” she said. “I don’t want to ruin your reputation.”
“What about yours?” Evan laughed.
“Me? Oh, they all think I’m a loose woman anyway. And what do I care? Let them think what they like.”
“Too late,” Evan said. There was a tap on his front door. He went to answer it.
“Oh, good, you’re up.” Bronwen breezed past him into the hallway. “I felt so much better this morning that I thought I’d come over and surprise you. Look, I’m walking again. Isn’t that wonderful?”
“Oh, yes,” he managed to say. “That’s wonderful.”
“Do I smell bacon frying, on a workday?” she demanded. “Evan Evans, what about that healthy diet you were promising. When I’m not around to keep an eye on you, you go—”
She broke off. Through the half-open kitchen door she had just caught a glimpse of Betsy in her nightdress, standing with a frying pan in her hand, looking trapped and guilty.

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