Sixth Sense (A Psychic Crystal Mystery) (17 page)

“Has that happened often?” Jack persisted.

“I don’t recall.”

“Reverend Coulter,” Katherine pleaded. “This isn’t a trial. I’m just trying to get at the truth. This child, this girl who was put up for adoption, she was born on my birthday. The papers were found in my father’s safe, and your signature is on them. My father is no longer here, and so I’m asking you again, what do you know about this document?”

“And I’m telling you, Miss Crystal, that I don’t know a thing about any adoption. I suggest you go back to your mansion and get on with your life.”

Kate stared at Jack.

“How do you know she lives in a mansion?” Jack asked pointedly.

The reverend cleared his throat. “It’s just a figure of speech.”

“I think you know more than you’re telling us,” Jack accused.

“Are you calling me a liar?” The reverend’s aura was agitated, and he looked about ready to boil over.

“Are you?” Jack’s eyebrows narrowed.

“I think the two of you had better leave. Get off my property, or I’ll call the sheriff. We don’t like strangers in our town.” The reverend stepped to one of his end tables and pulled a gun out of the drawer.

“I believe you are trespassing,” he said. “I would hate to have anything happen to such a nice young couple, but if you don’t walk out of here now, you’ll leave me no choice.”

Jack’s senses went on alert. “Come on, Kate, let’s go. The reverend is obviously hiding something, and we’re going to find out what it is. Maybe we should drop in at his church, start asking questions.”

“If you go sticking your nose in church business, you’ll regret it,” the reverend warned ominously.

“Is that a threat?” Jack posed.

“No, that’s a promise. You know your way out.”

Jack placed his hand on Kate’s shoulder and started to lead her out.

She refused to budge and confronted the reverend.

“I need that document back.”

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible.”

“Jack, do something,” Kate urged, turning to Jack.

“That’s the lady’s property,” Jack said. “You need to return it.”

“Not the way I see it. She handed it to me. You’re in my house, and now it belongs to me.”

“Kate, we need to leave. It’s obvious this man is not going to cooperate. We’ll get the document another way.”

“But Jack!”

“Don’t argue with me, Kate,” Jack said in a no-nonsense voice that defied disagreement. He led Kate toward the door, opened it, and guided her out ahead of him. The lock clicked behind them.

“Jack, why didn’t you stop him?”

“Six reasons: Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum revolver.”

“But you have a gun, too.”

“I didn’t want to start a fire fight. There are other ways of dealing with people like the reverend.”

“Do you have a plan?”

“I always have a plan.”

Jack peered through the window in time to see Reverend Coulter slide back the Chagall and place Katherine’s document in his safe.

“What did you see?” Katherine asked.

“Where he hid your document. In his safe, behind the Chagall you were drooling over.”

“I wasn’t drooling.”

“Salivating. Lusting after.”

“That painting is priceless. It’s one of a kind. And it’s a beautiful wedding scene.”

“Hmm.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means we need to get out of his line of sight and wait until he leaves his house.”

“How do you know he’s going to leave the house?”

“He’s afraid. That piece of paper has him spooked, and my bet is he’s going to meet with someone, someone who can give us answers. He obviously didn’t want us to make the connection between him and that piece of paper. He was wondering if he had covered all his bases.”

Kate and Jack got into the car, eased down the driveway, parked behind the cover of a tree, and waited.

Chapter Fifteen

Casa Spirito, Florida

Reverend Carter Coulter reluctantly set the newspapers down on his kitchen table. He couldn’t read enough about “Crystal Ball Kate.” It was easy to do. Her picture was plastered all over the tabloids and she was the hot topic on the Internet and all the TV talk shows. She had grown into a beautiful, quite remarkable girl. She was the picture of her mother—her
real
mother. And if she had half her mother’s spiritual talent...

He was going to have to pay the tempting Juliette another visit. It had been a long time, and he was hungry for another taste of her. Not that he couldn’t have his pick of willing young sensitives. They came to town,
his
town, in droves, looking for guidance, and he was all too eager to offer it. His wife was conveniently out of town for the week, and whenever she was gone, his juices started flowing again.

But as for the Crystals, in whose care he had entrusted his daughter, they had reneged on their contract. And they had paid for their indiscretion.

Reverend Coulter strode onto his backyard deck and surveyed his property. He owned the whole damn town and he commanded respect and generated fear. The story of the founding of Casa Spirito was legendary. And he was instrumental in perpetuating that legend. As head of the Board of Trustees for the Casa Spirito Spiritualist Society, he was a tough governor of the unincorporated community of spiritually-minded people. He owned all the land and buildings in the town, including the Casa Spirito Hotel, the Coulter Memorial Temple, the Healing Center, Bookstore, and Welcome Center, and he retained the huge fees and profits generated by the Society because of its federal tax-exempt status.

Anything that got done in this town had to go through him. Anything he wanted was his for the taking. All those innocent runaways, lost and searching, who came to his town were greeted by him with open arms, welcomed into his flock, woven into his web of influence, and eventually, and without much coaxing, wooed into his bed.

Just like Juliette, or whatever her real name had been before she came to Casa Spirito. He had sensed immediately that she was a strong psychic and spiritual healer, and he had taken the beautiful but naïve girl of seventeen under his expansive wing. Back then she had considered him charming. After all these years, apparently the charm had worn off.

He was married, with a family, when he’d first laid eyes on Juliette, but he knew he had to have her. The pull was magnetic. She was reluctant at first, but he had taken his time with her. He recognized her talent right away, and he convinced her they were kindred spirits, destined to be united, or some such nonsense about soul mates.

She was riveted when he’d spun the tale that his spiritual guide had led him to his destiny in Casa Spirito. And that she was
his
destiny, a destiny that could not be denied.

She was his Juliette. He was her Romeo, stuck in a loveless marriage. Star-crossed lovers. She had no money, no family to speak of. No doubt she was running from something or someone. He didn’t probe or ask questions. Frankly, he wasn’t interested in her past, just her future and what she could do, for him and to him. He’d generously set her up rent-free in an attractive house and shop on the town’s main street, a house with several spacious bedrooms on the second story—their love nest. And she had been eternally grateful. His investment had paid off. Psychic Juliette’s was one of the most popular and profitable establishments in town. And he got a healthy cut of her profits.

Their first coupling had been mind-blowing. So much so that he had forgotten to use protection. He craved her body and he had to have her again and again. He had never had another woman like Juliette before or since. Her innocence had excited him, and under his tutelage she had blossomed as a medium and as a lover. They had been happy until the day she had come to him and told him about the baby.

He still remembered that day. How could a seer of such talent be so irresponsible? Could she not have foreseen what was about to happen? How could she have allowed it? Her carelessness was inexcusable.

Amid a stream of tears and protests that she refused to give up her child, he fabricated a story that his spirit guide had warned him during a séance that danger would be the child’s destiny if they kept her. In the end, he convinced Juliette to give the baby up for adoption. He secretly arranged for the child to be sold to an Atlanta couple, Katherine’s adoptive parents, who couldn’t have a child of their own. The price was a hefty sum and a promise of silence. The father had been an attorney and, later, a respected federal judge. The judge’s career had been monitored closely over the years.

He had exacted the same promise of silence from Katherine’s real mother, because if it were discovered that he was nothing but a lecherous trance medium who had gotten an underage girl pregnant, his reputation would be ruined and the flow of money would abruptly stop. He had become too accustomed to luxury and high living to be run out of town penniless or worse.

If his congregants discovered that their leader, who claimed to adhere to the life-guiding Principles of Spiritualism, which preach eternal life and cleanliness of the soul, had, over the years, seduced and indoctrinated many of the young girls who wandered into the community, he would be ruined. And he would not allow that to happen.

He recalled watching Juliette nurse the baby for the very last time, the tiny hand clutching at her mother’s breast while she sucked furiously, before he snatched the newborn from Juliette’s nipple and tore her out of her mother’s arms.

“Mustn’t get too attached to Mommy,” he’d crooned, wiping his finger across Juliette’s milky breast and sucking the sticky substance off his finger as he cuddled the child. “Save some for Daddy.” It still made him hot every time he thought of it. It was at that moment he’d conceived his noble vision of propagating his own stable of psychics in his image.

Juliette never discovered what had happened to her baby, but he knew she continued to long for the girl. The only reason she stayed in Casa Spirito was in hopes he would eventually reveal the location of her baby. He’d teased her with hints of the whereabouts of the child, taunted her with scraps of meaningless information, strung her along magnificently over the years. Was she in San Francisco? Or Chicago? Or was she in New York?

He had warned Tyler Crystal repeatedly to keep the girl’s identity hidden from the world or he’d disclose to the authorities how the judge had bought his own child. And what did the man do? He’d allowed her to get tangled up in a high-profile news story, the crash of the Rivers jet, and then the case of the Sydney Strangler. Things had gone along so smoothly for so many years, and now Ty Crystal and his wife had allowed their daughter’s identity to be revealed.

If Juliette saw the papers, she’d know. Anyone in Casa Spirito with two eyes and half a brain, seeing the girl’s photo, would know who her real mother was, and then Juliette would put the pieces together and start snooping around. He’d had no choice but to tie up loose ends.

Now that he’d gotten a closer look at his daughter and was certain she was truly as talented as her mother, as the newspapers indicated, maybe there was a way he could use her. Reunite her with her “true” family, the family she’d never known. He could easily manipulate her. After all, she was just a woman, and women were naturally drawn to him.

Reverend Coulter went back into the kitchen and crumpled the newspaper pages in his fist. He was still exhausted just thinking about the long drive to Georgia and back.

It was a dirty business, but it was taken care of. There was no trace of his presence anywhere near the Crystals’ lake house. No airplane ticket, no hotel stay, no use of credit cards to give him away.

He walked into the library, poured himself a brandy, and replayed the events of the past weeks in his head. Endless hours in the car, tracking down the judge’s property. Not difficult with that tacky sign
Crystal Lake House
leading him right to their door. Then there was the matter of tampering with the brakes. Trailing the car around hairpin curves until he witnessed the judge’s car careening off a mountain road. The screams amid the burning debris—the judge and his wife had both survived the crash, barely, until the police arrived, led there by an anonymous 9-1-1 tip from a good Samaritan. Never let it be said he wasn’t a concerned citizen. He watched the couple being pulled out of the wreckage with the Jaws of Life.

His earlier warning to the judge must not have gotten through. He’d made a phone call, disguising his voice, “Crystal is fragile and easily broken.” Still, Crystal Ball Kate remained in Australia and in the headlines.

They’d had an agreement, and the Crystals had broken their end of the bargain. It was as simple as that. The reverend didn’t believe in second chances.

The brandy burned, sliding down his throat, settling his nerves. He reached for the bottle to pour another glass. Hands still shaking, he downed a third, until he regained control.

All he needed was a little sleep and he’d be in tiptop shape. The adoption episode was put to bed forever. His reputation and his considerable fortune remained intact.

Contemplating how he had gotten rid of the Crystals was making him hot. Too much adrenalin in his system to sleep now. Power always made him run hot. Maybe there was time to stop by Juliette’s and tempt her with his sudden vision that their daughter would soon be coming for a visit. Or maybe a short rendezvous with one of the younger devotees who was always willing and craving his attention. Or maybe both.

Chapter Sixteen

Jack and Katherine watched the sleek black Bentley careen out of the driveway and onto the road. The handcrafted motor car was driven by none other than the reverend. Jack waited a minute and followed.

“What if he sees us?” Katherine asked.

“He won’t. I’m a professional, and he’s not expecting us to follow him. We had a standoff and he thinks he’s won. So let’s see where the not-so-good reverend goes.”

Within minutes, the reverend pulled up to a storefront occupied by one Psychic Juliette.

“That’s the woman we met with,” Katherine said. “She’s involved somehow, and we need to find out why.”

“Drop me off around the corner. Then take the car back to the hotel. I’m going to see what I can find out,” Jack ordered.