Foods, Fools and a Dead Psychic, Maria Swan [reading list TXT] 📗

estate was concerned. With the Dumont’s horse ranch scheduled to close, and one of my own escrows, a small house I found for a young couple I met at the Doggie Day Care where we took Dior once in a while, and now this property in toney Scottsdale. Good. Kay had mentioned snowbirds visiting for Christmas and suddenly images arose of the Dolomites and Fongara, the mountains close to home where we used to ski as kids... my sister said it had snowed. Stop it, Monica. You can’t go home again. Focus.

My cell chimed. “Kassandra? What’s keeping you? Are we doing lunch? I’m starving.”

“It’s complicated,” Kassandra replied.

Huh?

“I’m feeling guilty about this morning and Sunny has been more than accommodating. I can’t leave the office.”

I started to protest.

“Shssh — let me finish. I called Safeway and ordered two pounds of chicken tenders, a pound of kale salad, rolls, butter, the works. Get in your car and park in their pick up slot. They’ll bring you the food. It’s all paid for. We’ll eat in the kitchen. I think there are only four of us left at the office,” she continued.

I had to catch my breath; part of me was pissed off she did all that food ordering without even consulting with me. The other part felt pretty good. I liked the Safeway chicken tenders and if Kassandra was right, we’d be eating and gossiping in about eighteen minutes.

“What happened? Cat got your tongue?” Kassandra again. I stood and stepped to the side. I could see her sitting at her desk, looking at me and laughing.

“Where is everyone now that you mention it?” I spoke while getting my purse.

“Double Wide.” She said. Ouch. Double Wide was the nickname we had for a new and very aggressive broker who swept into town two months ago, opened a brand new real estate office in a swanky glass and steel building, a rather unusual move in the conservative Arcadia neighborhood. And D.W., the initials of his name, kept doing elaborate open houses intended for poaching the top producers from other real estate offices. Word in our office was he had been courting Kay. Our Kay. So we called him Double Wide even if he really wasn’t. I only met him once. I thought he wore very nice Italian loafers and silk ties. And apparently his open houses were always catered. I made a note to ask Brenda what she knew about that.

Twenty minutes later Kassandra and I were slouching in the kitchen. She kicked off her shoes as we chomped furiously through our golden, crunchy chicken tenders.

“From now until January this place will be as quiet as a library,” she said.

“Never mind that, I want to hear about the search warrant. What is it the detectives are looking for? Did they mess up your house? What?”

“Monica, you watch too many cop shows. It isn’t like that in real life.” She scooped a generous helping of kale.

“Maybe, but I know you’re avoiding my question. Did you meet Miss Fortune at the Psychic Fair?”

Kassandra stopped, plastic fork in mid air, “You know about the fair?”

“Brenda told me.”

“Your aunt went to the fair? I never pictured her as a...”

“Noooo. She read about it in the paper and told me when they were showing Miss Fortune in the news. Stop playing stupid. Did you or did you not go to the fair and run into the poor, you know...”

Kassandra scowled, fiddled with her fork, just as she was doing the other day at North. “I hate this.”

“You hate your food?” She ordered it.

“No, not the food.” She stood and walked barefoot to the kitchen door, then stepped into the small hall and seemed to look around as if checking for someone listening. When she came back and spoke she didn’t sound like Kassandra at all, her voice low and her eyes restless. “You can’t repeat this to anyone, you hear me?”

I nodded. What else was I going to do?

“I had signed up for Miss Fortune’s séance and also for a tarot cards class. Both were on Saturday afternoon. I drove there early because I figured I’d get myself some lunch at the sports bar at the hotel. That’s where everything happens and this being the Christmas Fair, there were some big names. Now, while most of the mediums, astrologers and psychics are women, the big names, the big money attention getters, are usually men. They travel the circuit between Vegas gigs. One of the top Energy Therapists in the nation was in town, and I wanted to meet him without paying the big bucks. That’s why I went to the bar.”

“I don’t know what an Energy Therapist is. Anyway, did you meet him?”

“Energy Therapists work to rebalance your energy. That’s the short version. They usually have a medical background and they work with people, mostly women, who have emotional problems like insomnia, overeating, hormonal issues, and no, I didn’t meet him. I did however run into an old friend.” She rubbed her hands as if cleansing them, “I could sure use a drink.”

“You know we aren’t allowed to drink at the office. So who was the old friend? Miss Fortune?” A phone rang once, twice, it must have gone to voice mail.

She shook her head. “A ghost from the past.” She smiled. “A man.” Must have been a pleasant ghost.

“We drank and chatted. He’s a rep for a sports equipment manufacturer. He calls the East Coast home. Married with kids. Meanwhile, the séance I signed up for was over and done and I never showed up for my tarot card class. We couldn’t go to his room with all the cameras and the people who might know him, so we ended up at my place. He left early in the morning to go back to the hotel and make his flight. The end. Or so I thought. The other evening when the detectives came over to talk to me, they stopped by my condo first. One of the astrologers