Too Far Under (23 page)

“Sometimes,” I said. “But it’s different for
everyone. Did your Mom talk about what happened to her?”

“No,” Lacey said sadly. “I told her Angelica
thought someone pushed her under the water and we wanted to find
out about it, but she didn’t really answer me. She just said, ‘It’s
all about money. Some of them will do whatever they have to do to
get it. And the others don’t see what’s happening. It’s hard to see
through that fog.’ I asked her to tell me what that meant and who
she was talking about, but she didn’t answer.” Lacey stopped and
stared off into space, looking a bit forlorn.

“What do you think she meant about the
money?” I asked. “Do you think she was talking about your dad and
the will he’s looking for?”

“I don’t know,” Lacey said. “But Angelica
told me that Dad and Judith have been arguing a lot about money
lately. It sounds like his business isn’t doing well and he doesn’t
have as much money as Judith thought he did.”

“Was that all your mom said?” I asked gently.
“Did she disappear after she talked about the money, or did she say
more?”

Lacey shook her head and looked back at me.
“No she didn’t disappear right then. She started kind of humming
that Beatles song, 'Let It Be.' And then she said, ‘I love you,
Lacey, and I love Shane, and I love Angelica, and I know you’ll
look out for her. Keep Angelica safe. She needs you.’ She hugged me
again and it felt warm and wonderful. Then she let go, stepped
back, and looked me in the eye with a serious expression. She said,
‘My dad needs some help, too.’ After that she faded away.”

“I wonder what she meant about Vernon,” I
said. “Do you think your grandfather is in some kind of trouble?” I
remembered Tim Grosso’s warning that Glenna was probably ripping
off Vernon just like she had ripped off Tim’s father. But I wasn’t
sure I should mention that to Lacey.

“We all know Grandad drinks too much, and
he’s a little forgetful,” she said. “But aside from that I thought
he was doing okay.” She looked down at her notes for a minute, then
looked up at me. “Actually, I’m really confused about most of what
Mom said. Maybe Shane could help figure it out. Can you come with
me to Shane’s apartment?”

At first I was inclined to just send her off
on her own. But it was after 5:00 by then and I had no more clients
scheduled for the day and I was very curious about what Shane would
have to say. So I said, “I guess I could do that. But how do you
know he’ll be home?”

“Shane’s always home plugged into that
computer world where he lives. Let’s go in my car and I’ll drop you
back here after.”

Shane’s apartment was one of many in a large
complex in northeast Boulder. We parked in a visitor spot and
walked down a long sidewalk past a pool and a clubhouse. Judging
from the people I saw soaking up the late afternoon sun on their
balconies, beer bottles in hand, the complex attracted mainly young
college-student types. Lacey stopped at a staircase in a well of
one of the three-story buildings. “These building all look alike to
me,” Lacey said. “It took me a while to be able to find my way
around. Shane’s on the third floor of this walkup. I don’t know why
he lives here. He’s not a student, but he says it suits him, so I
don’t argue with him about it.”

At the top of the stairs a small landing led
to two apartments. Lacey knocked on the door of the one on the
left. No one answered, so she knocked again, more loudly this time.
“He’s probably on the computer with earphones as usual,” she said
exasperatedly. “Let’s try the door.” She turned the knob and pushed
open the door to what was one of the trashiest apartments I’d seen
in a long time. Pizza take-out boxes, beer bottles, and what looked
like hundreds of super-sized soft drink cups competed for floor
space with various bags and boxes filled with who knows what. The
light was dim, perhaps to obscure the mess or maybe so there would
be no glare on the screen of the oversized laptop that sat on a low
table next to an extra flat-screen monitor.

Shane sat on a pillow on the floor in front
of the computer, totally engrossed, and as Lacey had predicted, he
wore earphones as he typed away. He didn’t notice us until Lacey
walked over behind him and tapped him on the shoulder. I expected
him to jump in surprise or maybe show some irritation that we had
let ourselves in, but instead he kept on typing for a minute and
then turned around to look at us. “Oh, hey, Lacey, Cleo,” he said
languidly. “What’s up?” I wondered if his immersion in the game
kept him mellow or if he was stoned or on some kind of
tranquilizer.

The graphics on his computer screens showed a
futuristic city populated by thin shimmery characters darting
around and flying over buildings. In the middle, in an area that
resembled a town square, some of the characters looked to be
involved in a meeting or perhaps a contest. I was immediately
captivated and wanted to see more, but Lacey had different ideas.
“Shut that game off, Shane,” she said. “We have important news to
discuss.”

Shane turned back to his screen. “Sorry,
Lacey,” he said indifferently. “It’s not a good time. I’m busy. You
could have saved yourself some trouble by calling before you came
all the way over here.”

Lacey was in no mood to be blown off. She
yanked off Shane’s earphones and grabbed his shoulders with both
hands and twisted him around until she could stick her face in his
face. Then she shrieked at him so loudly that I feared for his
eardrums. “Shane, listen to me! I talked to Mom. She had things to
say to us.” Shane stood up facing her and moved her toward a futon
couch littered with papers.

“You don’t need to shout, Lacey. I can hear
you.” He pushed most of the papers off the couch. “Chill. And sit.
You too, Cleo. Have a seat and you can both tell me what happened.”
I joined Lacey on the futon and Shane moved his pillow to sit on
the floor facing us.

Lacey pulled the notes she had made at my
office out of her purse and stuck them in Shane’s face. “Look. I
wrote it all down so I wouldn’t forget.”

Shane pulled the notes out of Lacey’s hand.
“It’s all about money,” he read aloud. He looked puzzled. “What
does that mean? What’s all about money?”

“That’s just it,” Lacey said, her voice
rising again. “I don’t know.”

Shane looked down at the notes again, read
for a minute, then closed his eyes and sat silently. We watched and
waited. Finally he opened his eyes and spoke, wearily. “Let’s get
this straight, Lacey. You got Cleo to help you contact Mom, and it
actually worked, and all she told you was that people will do stuff
to get money? Oh yeah, and that you should take care of Angelica
and that Grandad needs your help. None of this is actually news.
Sounds more like a daydream than a contact with a spirit to
me.”

For some reason people seem to think they can
ask questions of a spirit and get targeted answers like they would
in a Google search. It’s hardly ever like that. More often, people
get a strong feeling of connecting with the dead person and then
hear some message—often one they find confusing. I didn’t want to
start into a lecture about it, so I decided to see what Lacey would
say.

“No, Shane, it wasn’t a dream. I saw her and
I felt her. She was there. And what I wrote down is what she said.
Now I need you to help me make sense of it.”

“So she sent you a message that it’s all
about money and you want me to explain that to you?” Shane asked
flippantly.

“This is not a joke, Shane,” Lacey said
sternly. “I need your help. Who do you think she was talking about
when she said it was all about money? And when she said some people
will do whatever they have to do to get money, and the others don’t
see what’s happening because it’s hard to see through the fog? We
have to figure out what she meant by that.”

“Okay, let’s say you did really see her and
that’s what she said,” Shane said cautiously. “Why do you think
it’s so important?”

“She said it right after I told her Angelica
thought someone pushed her under the water and we wanted to find
out about it,” Lacey said. “So I think she was saying that whoever
killed her was motivated by money. But that could be a lot of
people—the Scientologists inherited money, Dad inherited money,
which could indirectly be money for Judith. Faye got the gallery.
Even you and I and Angelica inherited money.”

“Sometimes these messages aren’t as direct as
they seem,” I said. “Just because she was talking about money,
doesn’t mean she was pointing at the ones who will inherit.”

Shane perked up and looked more interested.
Maybe thinking of the message as more complex was engaging his
gaming experience. “Right,” he said. “It may not be that simple.
She could have been saying that someone wanted her gone for reasons
connected to money, but not necessarily so they could inherit her
money.”

“Like who?” Lacey asked.

“Like Glenna. Before she died Mom told me she
was worried that Glenna was after Grandad’s money. Mom had even
talked to the DA about Glenna and she was trying to get Grandad to
dump her. Maybe Glenna knew. And that developer Hugh Symes that she
got into that prairie dog fight with. She was bringing a suit
against him that could have cost him a bundle if she successfully
stopped his project. And what about her drug-dealing former friend,
Tim? They had a fight and weren’t speaking. Maybe he was afraid
she’d turn him in to the police.”

Lacey threw up her hands. “Enough, Shane.
Stop. You’re adding to the confusion, not helping. Mom didn’t say
anything in the contact session about any of the people you
mentioned.”

“But Shane has a point,” I said. “We have to
consider everyone who might have a motive. Like I said before, we
can’t assume your mom’s message would be clear and easy to follow.
Spirits don’t usually talk that way.”

Lacey jumped up and began pacing around the
room, dodging piles of clutter. “Good grief, Shane, this place is a
mess. How can you live like this?” she asked as she dislodged a
pizza box from her foot. “Oh, never mind. Let’s get back to Mom.
With so many suspects, if she can’t or won’t give us a clear
message, what can we do?”

Shane had been gazing off into space, not
looking like he was paying much attention to Lacey. Then he turned
his head in her direction. “Sit, Lacey,” he said. “How can I think
when you’re roaming the room like that?”

Lacey returned to the couch next to me, where
she perched on the edge nervously clasping and unclasping her
hands.

“When a situation presents too many options,
a player needs to narrow them down and focus on the most promising
ones,” Shane said slowly. His steadiness was a marked contrast to
Lacey’s agitation. Probably years of experience had taught him to
ignore her drama.

But Lacey continued her rant. “This is not a
game,” she shrieked. “We’re talking about our mother here.”

“Games aren’t that different from life,
Lacey,” Shane said patiently. “If you want to get anywhere, you
have to think smarter than the other characters and you have to
make a plan to challenge your opponents.”

An intelligent, mature, perceptive
observation. In fact it sounded like something Pablo might say. I
decided I’d been underestimating Shane. I wondered whether he
applied this philosophy to his entire life, and, if so, how it
played out. Did it influence his long-term plans? But that was a
tangent I didn’t need to explore. I pulled my mind back to the
immediate situation. “What sort of plan do you have in mind,
Shane?” I asked.

“I’m thinking we could shake up the possible
suspects by leaking out something about Mom having told Lacey
someone murdered her. We add extra bait by saying Mom said that she
did make a new will and that it made some big changes. Then watch
everyone very carefully to see what they do.”

An alarm bell rang in my head. What if
Mirabel was actually murdered and the killer believed Lacey had
gotten new information from Mirabel’s spirit? Would Shane’s plan
put Lacey in danger? I decided to hear the whole plan before I
brought that up. “Do you have a list in your head of all the
suspects we’ll be watching?” I asked.

“There’s Dad and Judith,” Lacey said. “They
wanted Mom gone so they could get married and have her money. And
Dad thought he had convinced Mom to make a new will leaving out the
Scientologists. So he and Judith figured they’d get most of the
money.”

“And the Scientologists,” Shane said. “They
knew she wasn’t as committed as she used to be, so they probably
wanted her gone before she disinherited them.” Shane held up his
hand and began ticking off more suspects on his fingers. “There’s
Glenna. Mom was trying to convince Grandad she was ripping off his
money. There’s Tim Grosso. Mom knew about his marijuana growing
business and she was mad at him, and I think she threatened to turn
him in. There’s Faye, inheriting the gallery. There’s that
developer Hugh Symes. Mom was costing him a fortune with her
prairie dog crusade. Is that enough people to watch?”

“Do you think these people would believe your
mom actually talked to Lacey after she died?” I asked. “Most people
don’t believe in spirit contacts.”

“Maybe they will and maybe not,” Shane said.
“But if someone killed Mom, he or she might get pretty worried
about what Lacey knows about how Mom died, or about a possible new
will turning up.”

“Wouldn’t that put Lacey in danger?” I asked.
“If there is a murderer out there who thinks Lacey knows something,
that person might come after her.”

“I’m not worried,” Lacey said. “I’ve been
studying aikido for self-defense for ten years now. At my level, I
can handle whatever they’re likely to come up with.”

Spoken with the typical overconfidence of a
twenty-four-year-old.

“Unless they have a gun,” I said.