The cord ended around a hovering Bianca Hornberger, who looked annoyed by the inconvenience.
“So Larry and Bianca are somehow linked,” Riley said.
Images flashed before her, speeding up as they went. Bianca in her closet, admiring herself in the mirror. Stiletto shoes that had never been worn. Large sneakers hitting the pavement in a slow rhythm, labored breath coming in short, heavy bursts. She saw Front Street and the Bogdanovich mansion. Then the imagery flickered again, and she was looking at Grumpy Guy suspended over the town of Enola on the other side of the river. The stranger didn’t seem to find any levity in his levitation. He was flipping her the bird. The faces of Nick, Jasmine, Griffin Gentry, and Detective Weber flipped before her eyes like cards shuffling. Riley felt a rush of air, and the world around her exploded into sparkles.
She flinched as she felt the needlelike sparkling shards embed themselves in her skin.
“That isnotthe kind of expression one should have when performing a reading. That is the kind of face one makes when constipated,” her grandmother’s disembodied voice complained from somewhere outside the sparkly beyond.
“She only makes that face when it’s an intense vision. See? Her nose is twitching,” Blossom said from somewhere far away.
“Well, she looks ridiculous.”
Riley felt herself falling, falling, falling. Just before she hit the ground, she felt a jolt as she was yanked back into her own body for a jarring landing.
When she came to, she found herself face down in Gabe’s lap.
“Sorry,” she said, scrambling away from the man’s crotch. She got to her feet, her joints feeling too loose to properly support her.
“Well? What did you see?” Elanora demanded.
“I have to find Detective Weber,” she announced and then ran for the house.
12
8:54 a.m., Friday, August 14
Riley whipped her Jeep into a parking space directly in front of Little Amps, the hipster coffee haven on Green Street that she’d been avoiding. In all her years guzzling caffeine from this place, she’d never once snagged such a prime parking spot. Maybe it was a sign that she could officially return as a regular.
It wasn’t until she’d unclipped her seatbelt that she realized her spirit guides had nudged her here. She hadn’t texted or called to ask Detective Weber where he was or if she could meet him. She’d simply “seen” him having coffee and got in the car.
“You’re really getting the hang of this psychic thing,” Uncle Jimmy’s voice from the beyond said in her head.
Her dad’s brother had died a few years earlier. Riley had inherited his Jeepandhis ghost.
“Thanks, Jimmy,” she said. “Just don’t tell Grandma that or she’ll drag me out of bed even earlier.”
She climbed out and stuffed the keys in her still soggy shorts. She probably should have changed. Showered. She sniffed an armpit and regretted it instantly.
Riley burst through the door woman-on-a-mission style and spotted Kellen at a table in front of a window with an attractive older woman. He glanced up as she approached and was on his feet by the time she got to the table.
“What the hell happened to you?” he asked, giving her the once-over.
Riley looked down. She looked like she’d just wandered through a car wash.
“Grandma’s boot camp,” she said, waving away his concern. “I got something. Bianca Hornberger isn’t your only victim.”
Kellen took her arm. “What makes you say that?”
“I’ve got a where. At least I think. But I don’t have a who or a how, unless people can be killed by sparkling explosions.”
“I’m gonna need you to start at the beginning.”
“This looks like official business.” Kellen’s coffee mate gave Riley a look usually reserved for barefoot people on sidewalks asking for change. “I should go.”
She looked like the kind of woman who disapproved of a lot of things and demanded that her grocery store stock exotic organic produce. Her hair was cut in a sleek, stylish bob. She wore gray linen pants and an expensive-looking ivory tank.
“I’m sorry for interrupting. And for looking like this,” Riley said, waving a hand over her sweaty torso.
