Shattered Spirits Read online

  The next couple of months looked pretty damned bleak indeed.

  “Supper’s ready!” Brenda called from the open doorway, then turned and disappeared.

  “We’d better go,” Richard said and stood. He took the half-empty bottle from me and picked up and handed me my crutches. God, how I hated those damn aluminum sticks. That I had to depend on them for the next six to eight weeks made me loathe them even more.

  I made my way to the seldom-used dining room. The overly bright chandelier over the table scorched my retinas. “Where should I plop?”

  Richard shrugged. “Anywhere.”

  I plunked down on the next-to-last seat on the right side and somehow managed to maneuver my injured leg onto the chair where Richard’s wizened grandfather used to sit at the head of the table. Richard took the seat where his nasty grandmother had resided at the west end of the table. Brenda came in with Betsy on her hip once more, while Maggie hauled in the highchair. The baby’s chair went on Richard’s left.

  It took another couple of minutes to bring all the food to the table, and then the passing of bowls and platters commenced. Again, the conversation was virtually nil as we chowed down. I still couldn’t understand what was going on with Maggie, but maybe it was because the pain pill had begun to kick in.

  Something felt wrong—very wrong—but then everything felt wrong from the time the handlebars of my bike got snagged by that damn SUV.

  I had a feeling it was going to take an awfully damn long time for things to feel right again.

  3

  I didn’t catch up with Dave at the bar for another couple of days. I just didn’t feel like calling him. Thanks to damn Vicodin, I didn’t feel like doing much of anything except lying in that recliner with the TV on. The pills made me feel all gummed up, but going without them made me feel even worse.

  Maggie called me a couple of times a day, but seemed distracted—or maybe it was me who couldn’t focus. The days ran into one another with no real start or end.

  I waited until dinner that night to broach the subject so near to Dave’s heart; me checking out my replacement at the bar. That night, Brenda made scampi, but my stomach roiled at the thought of garlic, so my evening meal consisted of buttered slices of Italian bread and a bite or two of salad.

  “Are you doing anything tonight, Rich?”

  My brother’s gaze seemed focused on his plate, but he’d only been toying with his entrée. I don’t glom onto what he thinks or feels like I do with so many others, but I could tell he’d been preoccupied by something for days and that whatever it was had been eating at him. No doubt he’d kept it to himself to spare me, but I didn’t need coddling. Maybe we’d get to it later, but first I needed to placate Dave.

  “What have you got in mind?”

  “Dave’s pretty upset because Tom hired a woman to take my place at the bar.”

  “Male chauvinist pig,” Brenda muttered, and stabbed a grape tomato in her salad.

  “I don’t think so. Dave’s sister is a Special Ed teacher in the Iroquois School District and he couldn’t be more proud of her. He even speaks well of his ex-wife.”

  “Then what’s the problem?” Richard asked.

  I shrugged and offered a wry smile. “He said that woman gives off bad vibes.”

  “That I can understand,” Brenda said. She too had a smidge of what she called ‘the second sight.’ Not as pronounced as my own so-called gift, but enough to make even Richard a believer.

  “I wouldn’t mind a night out of harness,” he said.

  “Oh, yeah?” Brenda asked. So far, she’d been my primary caregiver, as well as taking care of CP and the house.

  “I’m not sure I could stay much more than half an hour,” I said, “but I’d like to go—if only to shut Dave up.”

  “Brenda?” Richard asked.

  “You don’t need my permission,” she said, but the three of us knew that wasn’t exactly true. Still, I was happy she wasn’t opposed to us having an abbreviated boys night out.

  It was just after eight when the two of us left the house and I wedged myself into the front seat of Richard’s Mercedes. It wasn’t comfortable because I had to recline the seat in order to accommodate my leg, but I hadn’t taken my scheduled pain pill because I wanted to be acutely aware of what was going on at The Whole Nine Yards. I’d probably be sorry about that decision, but I was also curious to learn about the person who had superseded me.

  Richard pulled up to the driveway in front of the bar’s parking lot and stopped. “Do you want to get out here?”

  Since it was easier to hobble an extra ten or twenty feet than struggle out of the car on my own, I shook my head. “Grab the handicapped spot in the lot and we’ll go from there.” I grabbed the red temporary parking tag Richard had acquired on my behalf, ready to hang it from the rearview mirror, but the spot was taken by an illegally parked Jeep. We ended up leaving the car two blocks out. He helped me get out of the car, handed me my crutches, and we started down the sidewalk.

  During the past two years, my schedule at The Whole Nine Yards had pretty much been in flux depending on Dave’s whims. He’d worked for our boss, Tom, for nearly ten years. Tips were better on the weekends, so Dave worked those evening hours. He also worked the more lucrative evening shifts on days when there were likely to be more customers. It wasn’t fair, but that was the way it was. If I didn’t have a wealthy brother who cut me tons of slack, I’d have been up shit’s creek.

  Then again, the sliding schedule had actually worked to my advantage, since I might have to call in sick if I got one of my skull-pounding headaches thanks to the mugging that had nearly killed me a little over two years before. But they’d diminished with the ever expanding span of time between them.

  A creeping uneasiness began to inch up my spine as we approached the bar’s front door. We could hear boisterous laughter and saw the bar was packed, which was unusual for a Tuesday night.

  “I’ll get the door,” Richard said, and held it open as I staggered up the steps and into the tavern. The joint was really hopping. All the stools at the bar were full, as were a majority of tables. Both of the big-screen TVs were tuned to competing baseball games, with the sound off and closed-captioning on, while satellite radio played adult-contemporary music booming from a stereo on a newly installed shelf on the western wall.

  “Hey, Jeff!” called my boss, Tom, from across the crowded room. He had to elbow his way through the mob to join us. “Hey, how ya doin’?” he asked, taking in my cast, brace, and crutches.

  “Better,” I had to practically shout.

  “Hey, Richard,” he greeted my sibling, who nodded in return.

  “Siddown, siddown,” Tom encouraged me, but we had to struggle to find a place to perch. Richard took my crutches and stood them against the nearest wall before he took his seat. “Let me get you guys a couple of beers. Be right back.” He turned and made his way through the throng once more.

  My mouth had gone incredibly dry and I felt a little queasy, but it had nothing to do with my fractured bones or psychic vibrations.

  “Wow,” Richard said, his expression subdued. “I’ve never seen the place so busy.”

  “Yeah. Me, either.” My gaze traveled to the bar where a pretty brunette with bared shoulders covered in lacy black tattoos stood in my usual spot, pouring Pilsner glasses of draft. She seemed to be keeping up with a conversation or two as she worked. She set three glasses of amber on a tray and handed it to Tom. Seconds later, he rejoined us, setting the beers on the table in front of us and taking one for himself. He sat down.

  “Can you believe this?” He grinned as he took in the crowded room.

  “Business sure has picked up,” I agreed, but it didn’t make me feel good.

  Tom positively beamed. “It’s all because of Maria.” He gestured toward the bar. “When she interviewed, she told me if I hired her she’d bring her clientele with her. Business is up over two hundred percent.”

  “You’ve made ot
her changes.” Richard indicated the stereo.

  “Yeah, and there’s more in the pipeline. Maria has lots of great ideas.”

  I took a look around the place and didn’t see one familiar face. Not even Tom’s cronies, whose ass cheeks had molded permanent dents in the padded bar stools over the years.

  “Doesn’t Dave usually work evenings?” Richard asked and took a sip of his beer.

  “Maria’s customers are night people. We haven’t closed the bar before two since she came onboard. We went to four on Saturday night.”

  I usually never had to work beyond one—or after Tom had closed the place if it emptied out before that.

  “I may end up hiring someone else in the evening when the traffic is heaviest.”

  I swallowed. Although the possibility had loomed, I now realized that my days working at The Whole Nine Yards were effectively over. I had no charisma. No one ever came to the bar because I was there—except the occasional visit from Richard or my friend, Sam Nielsen, from The Buffalo News—which was inconsequential compared to the business Maria attracted.

  Tom looked back to the bar and caught my replacement’s gaze. He raised his glass in a toast. She gave him a nod and her smile was positively predatory.

  I finally picked up my glass and immediately let go after getting hit with a stinging blast of—something.

  The glass shattered—splashing beer and hunks of glass everywhere.

  “Whoa!” Tom called, as a stream of the brew cascaded off the table and onto his lap. “Have you had a few too many already?” he said and laughed nervously.

  “God, Tom—I’m sorry!”

  There was nothing to mop up the mess, and Tom was already on his feet, heading for the bar to get some napkins.

  Richard looked at me critically. “What happened?”

  I had to swallow a couple of times before I could answer. “I felt something when I touched that glass. Something very not nice. Tom was the last to hold it, but it wasn’t his aura I was reading.”

  Richard’s gaze flicked to the bar and Maria and back again. “Touch a piece of it again.”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it was creepy.”

  “Touch it,” he insisted.

  “You touch it.”

  “Don’t be a wimp—touch the damn thing, and fast. Before Tom gets back.”

  I did, laying a finger on the biggest chunk of glass—hoping the shock wouldn’t be as great—and a shudder of revulsion cascaded through me.

  “What?” Richard persisted, but Tom had returned with a replacement beer and a fistful of paper napkins and mopped up the mess. They were embossed in gold with the name of the bar and a logo of a football goalpost with a ball sailing through it. Another of Maria’s bright ideas?

  Tom tossed the sopping napkins onto the tray that still sat on the table. Like Richard, he eyed me critically. It seemed as though he wanted to quiz me on what had just happened, but then he seemed to reconsider. I wasn’t even sure how to interpret what I’d felt when touching that glass. On more than one occasion Tom seemed to allude to my empathic—psychic … whatever it was—ability, but had never come right out and talked about it. He’d been damned kind to me during the past two years, but there was no way he was going to trade the jump in income to make a space for me, and I guess I couldn’t blame him. My misfortune—the accident—had been his very good luck.

  I forced a smile and grabbed one of the unused napkins, wrapped it around the glass and raised it, feeling heartsick. “To the future.”

  Tom’s eyes practically glowed as he clinked his glass against mine. “May it be lucrative.”

  Funny … I didn’t see much of a future for him at all.

  * * *

  “So?” Richard asked as he pulled away from the curb and looked for a place to make a U-turn. He didn’t have to elaborate.

  “That bitch who took my job is bad news.”

  Richard made a left into a side street, did a K-turn, and then drove up to Main Street and turned right. “Tom can’t fire you because of your accident. That’s illegal.”

  “But he isn’t going to want me back, either. Dave is already sweating bullets—worrying that he’s the next to go.”

  “What did he tell you the last time you talked?”

  “That he hates the bitch.” I shook my head. “He feels guilty about me getting hit by that SUV—and guilty because he feels relieved it didn’t happen to him instead.”

  “What do you think about that?”

  I shrugged—not that Richard could see. “It wasn’t his fault. It just happened.”

  Richard braked for a red light. “Let’s get back to the bitch bartender. What was it you felt when you picked up that glass?”

  That was a hard question to answer. “It’s not clear to me. I might have to think about it some more.” I paused. “Or not at all. I mean … I’m never going to work there again.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah,” I said sadly. “And once again I’ve become a giant turd of a problem to you, Rich, and I’m sorry. Goddamn I’m sorry.” I had to swallow a bunch of times so that I didn’t start bawling. Why the hell had I bought that stupid racing bike? Why the hell couldn’t I have just let well enough alone and kept plugging away? I gazed down in the darkness to where my cast resided, but couldn’t focus on it in the dim light and the blur of tears that threatened to overtake me.

  A hand rested on my shoulder. “Don’t be so damned hard on yourself,” Richard said kindly. “You know, we’re kind of in the same boat.”

  I took a ragged breath. “Oh, yeah?”

  He nodded. The light went green and he hit the gas. “I haven’t mentioned it to you, but, I’ve kind of been looking for a job.”

  “A job?”

  “Yeah. I’ve got a headhunter and everything. But the thing is—nobody wants me. I’m too friggin’ old.”

  “You’re not old,” I countered automatically, but the truth was at fifty his chances of getting hired at any place other than the likes of Walmart were against him.

  “Yeah, I’m not old—except to potential employers,” he said bitterly.

  “You—of all people—don’t need to work,” I pointed out.

  “Need and want are two different things.”

  “I thought you enjoyed your volunteer job at the hospital foundation.”

  “I do, but that’s five or ten hours a month—not nearly enough to keep me occupied.”

  “So what can you do?”

  We must have driven half a mile before he answered. “I was thinking….” He stopped again. We drove another couple of blocks.

  “What?” I demanded.

  “Just don’t blow me off without considering what I have to say.”

  “Which is?”

  “What do you think of the two of us going into business together?”

  I blinked. Talk about coming in from left field. “And do what?”

  “Consulting.”

  “On what?”

  “Cold cases.”

  I blinked again. “Cold police cases?”

  His gaze remained fixed on the road. “I’m not sure, but that might be a place for us to start.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Explain.”

  “Well, look what you did for Paula Devlin.”

  Paula had been one of Richard’s patients at the low-income clinic where he’d volunteered the year before. Her son had gone missing. He’d asked me to meet her to see if my insight might prove useful in finding the boy. Yeah—I’d found the kid in less than an hour, whereas the cops had been stumped for almost eight months.

  “And what roles do we play?”

  “Well, you’re a trained investigator. Your specialty was crime scenes. And you’ve got special insight. That could be a big plus.”

  “And what about you?”

  “I’m an experienced researcher. And I’m good at logistics.”

  “He said modestly,” I commente
d.

  “I’m well aware of my strengths and weaknesses. Yours, too.”

  Oh, yeah? “And where do we find clients? Hang out a shingle?”

  “We’d have to offer our services gratis for a while—until we acquire a reputable reputation—but I don’t see a problem.”

  No? I could see all kinds of problems, but I wasn’t about to mention them just then. “Sounds like you’ve put a lot of thought into this.”

  He braked for the red light at the top of LeBrun Road and flicked the car’s left turn signal—not that there was anyone around to see it. “I keep remembering what your friend Sophie told me.”

  Richard had met my psychic mentor once—and only once—the year before. She’d told him that the two of us were destined to work together. I hadn’t taken that to mean a financial alliance, since all the investigating I’d done since my return to Buffalo had been related to the weird vibes I’d felt, and most of the time were related to death and destruction. It wasn’t exactly fun to experience, and those flashes of insight often brought on painful consequences in the way of skull-pounding headaches. But … what else was I capable of doing?

  Richard never had to work another day in his life, but I knew it wasn’t just boredom that gnawed at him. He needed a purpose above that of being a husband and father. Having a purpose? I hadn’t had the luxury of that aspiration. Since the mugging, I’d downgraded my life’s goal to just making it through another day, another week, another month, another year.

  “What does Brenda think about this?”

  “I haven’t mentioned it to her yet.”

  “And why’s that?”

  It was his turn to shrug.

  I had a feeling she might not be happy with this great idea. After all, so far Richard had been a victim of repeated collateral damage due to my crime-fighting sprees.