Three Sisters (20 page)

Beatrice gripped the telephone tightly. “Clara, what’s the bottom line?”

“I’m sorry, Bea—but the automobile is your husband’s Corvette. And the GPS coordinates put the accident close to your home on the mountain.” The dispatcher advised that as soon as she had a unit available, she would send it to check on Mr. Turner, but that Bea should not be overly concerned. The Wye-Star alert was probably a false alarm, or at worst, Mr. Turner had bumped into something along the driveway that triggered the collision sensor. The reason he had not responded to the Wye-Star operator’s call was most likely because he had gotten out of the car to check the damage. By now he was probably walking back to the house. Miss Tavishuts would continue to ring the Spencer residence landline every few minutes.

“I’ve no doubt you’re right, Clara.” Beatrice’s heart pounded. “But just to be on the safe side, I’ll go home and find out what has happened.” She hung up, grabbed her small purse and sable coat, murmured an “Excuse me, but I must run” to Charlie Moon and Sarah Frank, and hurried out of her sister’s house.

The teenage girl turned big eyes on Moon. “What was that all about?”

“We’ll have to wait and see.”
I hope no one’s hurt bad.

Andrew Turner’s distraught wife was behind the wheel of her Mercedes, rolling along the rain-slick streets of Granite Creek. On her way out of town, she ignored two Stop signs and three traffic lights and came very near to running down an elderly pedestrian, who shouted curses at the luxury automobile and the careless driver. The wobbly-legged citizen also threw a half-empty bottle of red wine at the rapidly receding taillights, watched it smash on the wet pavement, then wept and cursed himself for such a foolish waste of tasty hooch.

For the first few minutes, everything went according to plan. Cassandra began with the usual reading of selected e-mails and letters from those viewers who lavished her with praise and offered unsolicited testimony to the accuracy of her “readings.” Quite a few provided descriptions of their own otherworldly experiences, some of which were highly interesting, even riveting. When this segment was finished, Cassandra introduced her “mystery guest,” and by asking Daisy Perika a few simple questions about herself, managed to put the tense woman completely at ease.

Then, the psychic got down to the serious business of blatant flattery. “You have quite a reputation as a necromancer.”

Startled, the Ute elder jutted her chin. “What do you mean by that?”

She is just precious.
“You are rather well known in southern Colorado as a practitioner of the arcane arts.” She laid it on thick: “Indeed,
famous
would be a more apt descriptor.”

Startled
was instantly replaced with
pleased. Me, famous?
Feigning modesty, Daisy shrugged off the praise.

Reading the shaman’s self-centered thoughts required no paranormal powers. “It is said that you commonly talk to those who have passed.”

Pleased
gave way to
confused.
“Passed what?”
Kidney stones?
But that didn’t make any sense.

Cassandra’s turn to be startled. “Uh…passed over.”

Daisy was getting downright annoyed. “Over
what
?”

The psychic’s face flushed a pretty pink. “Why—to the other side.”

The shaman cocked her head. “You talking about dead people?”

Relieved to have reestablished communication with her guest, the psychic nodded.

Unaware of the sensitivity of the tiny microphone pinned to her collar, Daisy muttered, not quite under her breath, “Well, why didn’t you just say so.”

Unlike the delighted audience (almost 9 percent of whom spat out their beverage of choice), the star of the show was unaware of this caustic suggestion. Cassandra flashed the engaging smile. “So, is it true that you commune with spirits of the departed?”

The Ute elder clarified: “I don’t so much talk to dead people as they talk to me.”
This is making me thirsty.
She reached for a water glass on the coffee table.

Cassandra waited with her rapt audience, who watched the old woman take a sip of atrociously expensive mineral water.

That sure hit the spot.
The spot burped. “Like I was saying, the haunts are the ones who like to beat their gums.” The aged shaman set the glass aside, scowled at memories of troublesome encounters. “Week in, week out—it never stops. Some old bag of bones slips up beside me when I go outside, pulls at my sleeve or nudges me with a pointy elbow. Start’s telling me her life story. And if I stay inside for some peace and quiet, they’ll come around my house, peck-pecking on the window”—she rapped her knuckles on the table—“or knocking on my door. Day or night, it don’t make no difference.” She fixed her pretty host with a gimlet stare. “Them dead ones never sleep.”

The TV psychic had become one with the audience. “They don’t?”

The expert on ghostology shook her head. “And they don’t mind waking live people up in the middle of the night. And once they get to running off at the mouth—and all they want to talk about is themselves—you can bet your britches they have plenty to say!”

Cassandra had no britches to bet, but she had a question: “Do you actually
hear
the voices—or do you simply
sense
their words?”

“Oh, I hear ’em all right—just like I hear you right now.” Daisy leaned forward, lowered her voice as if she was about to share a secret with this kindred soul: “Some dead people just whisper in my ear, others talk right out loud.” The cranky old woman grimaced as she recalled one of her pet peeves. “And lots of ’em don’t even speak English, or Ute, or even Mexican—just some foreign jibber-jabber. How am I supposed to know what they’re saying?” From her sour expression, it was clear that Daisy generally found these uninvited guests to be a great nuisance. Which she did. Dead people—especially those who came prowling about at night—were a plague. “Sometimes,” the shaman muttered, “they make me so damn mad I’d like to get my 12-gauge out of the closet and give ’em both barrels!” After a sigh, her mouth curled into a crooked little grin. “But it don’t help to shoot somebody who’s already dead.”

According to carefully conducted scientific research on what draws and holds a TV audience, violence is right up there with sex. Low comedy occupies the third spot.

The delighted television-broadcast executives were giving the old Indian woman a solid two out of three, which wasn’t bad. If Daisy got just a tad badder, it would be time to break out the pink champagne and party hats.

The star of
Cassandra Sees
sensed that she was on a roll. But what Daisy Perika definitely did not have was sex appeal, so Cassandra rolled with what she did have. Reaching for a blue-roses-on-ivory china teacup, the psychic said, “My goodness—it sounds like there are quite a few spirits residing in your neighborhood.”

“They don’t call it Spirit Canyon for nothing.” Daisy watched the young woman take a sip of tea. “The place is practically crawling with dead folks.”

The conversation might have continued more or less along this line, with Daisy stressing what awful pests ghosts tended to make of themselves, but the lady in charge decided to focus her guest on a specific experience. “Is there a particular spirit that you would like to tell us about?”

Daisy Perika, whose mood had tilted decidedly toward the positive side of the scale, considered telling a story or two about Nahum Yaciiti, her favorite of the lot. But somehow, it didn’t seem
right.
Nahum was far too special to share with a bunch of strangers. And besides, he didn’t hang around the canyon waiting for that Last Day, like those less fortunate spirits: The kindly old shepherd (who had been whisked away in a whirlwind!) had gone directly to that far, happy shore. She settled instead on another haunt: “Well, when I was a little girl, Uncle Blue Hummingbird was my favorite relative.” She added, with perfect innocence, “Especially after he died.”

Among the audience, more beverages were expelled from between the lips.

By now a seasoned pro, Cassandra Spencer managed to suppress even a hint of a smile. “Please tell us about him.”

The aged woman obligingly described how, so many years ago (but it seemed like just last week), the spirit of recently deceased Uncle Blue Hummingbird had appeared with the dawn, riding through the morning mists on the finest pinto pony she had ever laid eyes on. The tribal elder surprised her host by raising the profound philosophical issue of whether Uncle’s mount was the equine ghost of a once-living four-legged creature, or—and this was an interesting notion—was it a spirit pony that had never experienced the fleshly state? Daisy was about to state a firm opinion on the matter (firm opinions were the only kind she had) when she was interrupted by Cassandra’s sudden yelp.

Yes,
yelp.

This was not the sort of petite feminine squeak that might result from m’lady’s sitting on a pointy thumbtack, or (with thighs bare) on a metal lawn chair that was uncomfortably hot. Certainly not. But neither was it that spine-riveting sort of screech that causes a long-comatose patient to sit up in bed and inquire, “What was that noise, nurse?” followed by, “Is Mr. Reagan still in the White House?”

No. None of the above.

It was more like that delighted shriek a four-year-old makes when she opens a gaily wrapped Christmas box, finds a fuzzy little puppy inside, and gets licked on the nose.

Daisy Perika’s response fell somewhat short of delight (storytellers
detest
interruptions). But, audience-wise, Cassie’s yelp did the trick.

Tens of thousands of television-land devotees who had been hanging on Daisy’s every word were solidly jarred by Cassandra’s unexpected exclamation. The psychic’s head was half bowed, both hands clasping the teacup. “Oh—oh—one of the spirits is attempting to contact me!”

Far over the mountains and through the woods and down the east slope—in the city of Denver—the
Cassandra Sees
senior director muttered a colorful if sophomoric curse, grumbled, “Bet it’ll be another warehouse fire.” What he was hoping for was another cold-blooded murder. But not with some dope-pushing truck driver for a victim.
Maybe she’ll see somebody take a pot shot at a blind nun who spends all her waking hours working with crippled children.
If there had been a local chapter of the Grumpy Old Men’s Club, the TV executive would have been elected president by unanimous acclamation. But the old sourpuss was always pleased with the psychic’s impromptu performances, even when a mere arson was the subject of her visions.

Away to the west, across the lofty snowcapped peaks, another old sourpuss was not the least bit pleased.

Back in Cassandra Spencer’s Granite Creek home, within the dimly illuminated parlor that provided ample ambience for the spooky television broadcast, Daisy Perika observed her flighty host with a glare that could have curdled milk. Dairy-fresh, ice-cold, pasteurized, grade-A milk. What brought this on? Just this: When the tribal elder was retelling her favorite Uncle Blue Hummingbird ghost story for about the thousandth time—and to her largest audience ever—she did not appreciate a yelping female stepping on her lines. Daisy was way on the far side of irked. She was, to put it bluntly, chagrined. But sad to say, no one was particularly concerned about her feelings. Worse still, the Ute woman was no longer the center of attention; her flash-in-the-pan performance had been eclipsed by the star. A pathetic has-been, that’s what Daisy was.

Camera one had zoomed in on Cassandra’s face, which—if a viewer with modern high-resolution digital television had had the neurotic inclination—she (or he) could have counted every hair in the psychic’s neatly plucked eyebrows. Not to mention no small number of—No. In the interests of good taste, we shall not dwell upon
that.
If one views the subject under sufficient magnification, there is no such thing as a physically attractive human being.

A boom microphone had been lowered, the better to pick up Cassandra’s barely audible mumblings. Aware of this, she repeated what she had said, and louder: “At this very moment, someone is about to die. Someone who is very close to me.”
I wonder who it could be?

The only other person in the parlor did not wonder.
Uh-oh—my time has come!
Practically knee-to-knee with the visionary, Daisy withdrew, pressing her bent spine against the padded chair. Odd, what occurs to the doomed as they approach that final heartbeat. It dawned on the tribal elder that she was not prepared for her funeral. She had not purchased the new underwear and white cotton stockings. Or the pretty red shoes.

In the psychic’s dwelling, yea, in homes across the state and well beyond Colorado’s rectangular border, every viewer’s voice was hushed, every gaze locked upon the dark-haired visionary.

Cassandra appeared to be staring at the teacup in her trembling hands, but her devoted followers knew that she was looking into some unseen space
beyond
that mundane object. And they were quite right. “This is an extraordinarily talented, highly respected person—who is admired by everyone.”

Daisy’s face felt the heat of her self-conscious blush, which she countered with a humble thought:
Well, not
everybody.
There are maybe two or three mean people I can think of who won’t miss me when I’m gone. For instance, there’s
—

“Oooohhh!” Cassandra fleshed out this exclamation: “It is about to happen—Death has come to snatch the person’s life away!”

The tribal elder’s heart fluttered. She closed her eyes, tried to think of an appropriate prayer.
Dear God—please let me stay here just a little while longer
. This sounded selfish.
So I can help Charlie find himself a good wife
. Nice touch, but not enough.
And teach Sarah how to cure the sick.