Candice chuckled. “Hi, Jessica. It’s great to see you. And look who I brought along,” she added, turning to me.
And then it hit me: I’d read for this woman. Not recently, but somewhere in the past, I knew, I’d had a session with her. “Abby Cooper?” Jessica squealed. “I can’t believe you’re here! I’ve been dying to call you. Do you know that absolutely everything you told me three years ago has come true?”
I didn’t remember her session, but I couldn’t help smiling at how enthusiastic she seemed. “Hi, Jessica,” I said shyly. “It’s great to see you again.”
Jessica then turned to a completely stunned—and probably furious—federal agent and asked innocently, “Are they with you, Agent Harrison?”
Harrison was speechless and I wanted to laugh at his obvious discomfort. He simply nodded and Jessica waved all of us inside. Grabbing my hand and becoming serious again, she said, “I’ve wanted to call you for months, but I didn’t know if you got involved in things like this. I should have just listened to my own gut and made the damn call.” I was looking at her and scrutinizing her appearance. I remembered her face and her eyes, but something about her was throwing me off. “It’s the hair,” she said as if reading my mind. “It used to be blond, but Jeremy likes me as a redhead.”
I didn’t know who Jeremy was, but I assumed it was her husband and my mind whirled as I tried to remember her reading from three years before. I might as well have saved myself the effort. I had trouble remembering readings even an hour after I gave them. “We got married exactly when you said,” Jessica was saying. “You told me he was going to propose early in May and that we would get married on the beach. Jeremy surprised me with a trip to Hawaii at the end of April, and on the last day there, which was May second, he got down on bended knee and asked me to marry him. When I said yes, he was so excited that he arranged for us to get married the very next morning!”
As she talked to me, I smiled and nodded, barely resisting the urge to turn around and stick my tongue out at Harrison.
“We’re all so worried about Bianca,” she added. “I love that girl like she’s my own daughter, and poor Jeremy hasn’t had a good night’s sleep since she disappeared. Bianca’s mother has been a wreck too, and she’s been making our lives hell. Those two never did get along, and this situation has only made the tension between them even worse.”
I immediately lost all sense of humor as she reminded us about our real purpose here. “I’m so sorry,” I said carefully. “I can’t imagine how difficult it must be for you.” And I couldn’t imagine how much more difficult it would become once they learned that Bianca was dead.
Jessica led us through a dark hallway to the back of the house, which was large and spacious. The kitchen, breakfast area, and family room all opened up as one large space. Jessica gestured to a grouping of overstuffed chairs and two sofas. “Please make yourselves comfortable. Jeremy should be here any minute. He had to go to his office to put his name on a new bill he’s submitting, but he promised he’d be here. And Bianca’s mother, Terry, should be along soon as well.”
As if on cue the doorbell chimed and Jessica hurried off to answer the door.
Candice sat down with a flourish on one of the sofas, crossing her legs and bobbing one foot amusingly as she shot Harrison a look that clearly said, “Ha!”
Harrison took his seat in one of the overstuffed chairs and glared hard at the two of us, but he did not comment. I sat next to Candice and leaned in to whisper, “Did you know all along?”
“Not until we pulled up here,” she said. “I heard through the vine that Jess had married a representative, but I didn’t know his last name. This house was originally Jessica’s. She won it in the divorce settlement with her ex-husband four years ago, which was the case I worked on for her. Her ex was a cheater and a fairly crooked businessman. I dug up enough dirt so that she pretty much got everything she wanted in the divorce. And after it was official, and she was single again, I pointed her your way for a session. I remember she was pretty convinced she was never going to fall in love again, and you told her to hang in there, she’d be happily married within two years.”
“Damn, I’m good,” I said with humor, and Candice giggled.
“Not good enough to let her know that her stepdaughter would be abducted,” Harrison shot out from across the room.
I had no time for a comeback, because Jessica and another woman entered the room. “Terry,” Jessica said, “this is Agent Harrison and his associates Abby Cooper and Candice Fusco. I know both Abby and Candice from way back, and I’m thrilled that the FBI is utilizing them.”
When Terry turned to her quizzically, Jessica explained, “Candice is one of the best PIs in the business, and Abby is one of the most talented psychics I’ve ever been to.”
At the mention of this, Terry made a beeline for me and sat close enough to invade my personal space. Taking my hand, she asked desperately, “Can you see my Bianca? Can you tell me if she’s all right?”
And then, something really weird happened. I’m not normally a medium—someone able to communicate with the dead—but every once in a while I’ll feel the presence of a deceased loved one on the edge of my consciousness, and as Terry took my hand and pleaded for information, I knew immediately that her daughter had boldly entered my energy field. But letting her know that left me with a huge dilemma: How could I possibly tell her anything without letting her know that her daughter was speaking to me from the other side?
As if to remind me of his earlier warning, Harrison cleared his throat, and Terry looked at him as if catching something in the air. “Oh, God,” she whispered as she turned her eyes intensely back to mine, and I knew, even though I tried to hide it, that she saw my own sadness there. “Oh, no!” she moaned, her eyes welling up. “Please! No!”
Jessica gasped and her hand flew to her mouth as everyone came to a silent understanding. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered to Terry, but all color had drained from her face and huge tears began to slide down her cheeks.
“I knew it,” she choked. “I knew it the moment it happened. A mother can tell.”
For long seconds no one spoke while Terry began to sob. Finally I couldn’t take it anymore and I said gently, “Terry, your daughter is here with me right now.”
Terry gulped and her eyes pleaded with mine. She took a small moment to try to collect herself, then asked, “Is she all right?”
“She’s fine,” I reassured her. “In fact, she’s just sad that you’re going through all of this.”
“Tell me what happened to her,” Terry insisted.
I looked to Candice, who nodded, and then, reflexively, to Harrison. His expression was unreadable and I knew that Candice and I were likely going to pay for this later, although I could hardly see how any of this was my fault. I decided then and there to ignore him and focus on Terry and Bianca. “First let me make sure that I have your daughter, Terry. Mediumship isn’t my forte, so I want to make sure I’m correct when I tell you I can sense her.”
Terry nodded, her eyes wide and unblinking even as the tears continued to fall.
I closed my own eyes in concentration and asked for Bianca to prove to me that it was really her.“She’s showing me a book,” I began as slowly an image appeared in my mind. “The book is blue,” I added. “And it has pictures inside. . . . Hold on, let me take that back. I think what she’s showing me is a photo album and she keeps pointing to you and something about a birthday.”
Terry gasped, and I opened my eyes. “Does that make sense to you?” I asked her.
“She took up scrapbooking at college,” Terry choked. “For my last birthday she gave me a blue photo album filled with just photos of her and me, from when she was a little girl, all the way up to the week before she disappeared. It was the loveliest thing she could have given me.”
I swallowed hard. Facing this grieving mother, I was finding it incredibly difficult to keep my own emotions in check. After I felt I could continue
without losing it, I closed my eyes again and asked Bianca if she could tell me anything about her abduction or murder. “I’m asking her to show me what happened to her,” I said aloud, so that everyone would know what I was digging for. “She’s showing me a notebook. No. Wait. It’s not a notebook—it’s a journal. Do you know if Bianca kept a journal?” I asked, opening my eyes again.
Terry was trembling next to me and I could tell it was a struggle for her to speak. Jessica came over to sit by her and picked up her hand. “She did,” Jessica said. “Bianca was always writing in her journals. There are stacks of them upstairs even.”
I looked meaningfully at Candice, who said, “Is it all right if we look through them? There might be a clue in there that we can use.”
Terry hesitated briefly, and I knew she was concerned about her daughter’s privacy, even as she realized she no longer needed to worry about it. “Yes,” she whispered. “Of course.”
I focused back on Bianca. “Writing was her gig,” I said, feeling my way along the impressions Bianca was giving me. “Did you know that she wanted to be a journalist?”
Terry choked as she made a sound that was half sob, half laugh. “Her idol was Anderson Cooper,” she said. “She imagined herself working at CNN someday.”
I nodded. “Do you know if she was planning on doing an internship at a newspaper or magazine before she disappeared?” I asked.
Both women shook their heads. “She was only a freshman,” Jessica said. “She would have needed another two years under her belt to do that.”
Terry agreed. “Her plans for the summer were to come home and go back to the morning shift at Denny’s. She earned good tips and had her afternoons and evenings free.”
I furrowed my brow. Something Bianca was telling me was counter to what I was hearing from her mom and stepmom, but I let it go and asked her for more. I wanted specific details about her killer or the manner in which she died, but all I could sense from her about that topic was a slight choking sensation around my neck. I decided not to share that with her family. I felt it would be too upsetting. “She doesn’t really remember what happened to her,” I told them all instead.
“Do you know where she is?” Terry asked, her voice tiny and sad.
The image of a postcard flashed in my mind and I almost smiled, in spite of the somber mood. I opened my eyes while my mind whirred, rejecting the image that I was seeing. “What is it?” Jessica asked, looking at me intently.
“This may sound really weird,” I said honestly, “but have either of you ever been to this place way up north called Sea Shell City?”
Terry’s eyes became huge. “Yes!” she gasped, her hand flying to her heart. “Bianca loved that tourist trap! When she was little, and Jeremy and I were still together, we had a cabin up at Burt Lake, which isn’t far from there. Every summer we’d spend two weeks in August at the cabin and Bianca would cry and complain and whine until we agreed to take her to Sea Shell City. I think in her room at my house she still has a few of the conch shells she forced me to buy her over the years. That is so amazing that you got that detail!”
I smiled, surprised by the hit myself. “I know Sea Shell City well,” I said to her. “I spent two summers during college working in Traverse City, and a group of us went there just to check out how awful it really was.”
“So what’s the connection?” Candice asked, getting us back on track.
“Right,” I said, realizing I hadn’t gotten the answer to the specific question I’d asked Bianca. In my head I questioned her again about where to look for her remains, and again I was shown the postcard from Sea Shell City, but then I was given another image of a dock. I glanced at Terry and asked, “Do either you or Jeremy still own the cabin?”
“It’s my family’s cabin,” Terry said. “My brother, sister, and I each own a third of a share in it, so yes, I still own it.”
“Has anyone been there lately?”
Terry looked surprised by the question. “No,” she said after thinking about it. “My brother and his wife spent their vacation this year in Europe, and my sister has moved to Florida and hasn’t been there in two years. I was going to take Bianca this past August, but with her missing, I couldn’t even imagine going there without her.”
I looked at her and felt a wave of sadness for what I now knew I had to tell her. “Terry,” I said gently, “I believe that your daughter is somewhere close by that cabin,” and I remembered what I’d told Gaston, about Bianca’s body being near water.
Terry began to cry again and this time her sobs were all-consuming. Jessica wrapped her arms around Terry and tried to comfort her, even as her own tears fell. The awful atmosphere of the room was broken when a male voice demanded, “What’s going on here?”
Jessica glanced up at a man standing in the doorway looking around at all of us in alarm. “Oh, Jeremy!” she said desperately, and the rest of her sentence was caught in her throat.
Mr. Lovelace crossed the room quickly, his face stark and pale. Addressing Harrison, he said, “You’ve found my daughter?”
Harrison’s face held that same stony look. “Not yet,” he said before shooting daggers with his eyes at me and Candice.
Candice stood quickly and took control of the situation. “Mr. Lovelace,” she said calmly as she extended her hand. “My name is Candice Fusco. I’m a licensed private investigator and this is my associate, Abigail Cooper. I know Jessica from a few years back, and when I heard that her stepdaughter had gone missing, I knew I had to try and assist in any way I could. Abby and I believe strongly that your daughter may be somewhere in the vicinity of your ex-wife’s cabin, at Burt Lake.”
“Alive?” he asked, his voice filled with tension.
Candice’s lips thinned as she shrugged her shoulders once. “I don’t know, Mr. Lovelace, but until we search the property, we won’t be sure of our hunches.”
Jeremy looked again at the keening form of his ex-wife. “Why is she so upset?” he asked a little more gently, and I noticed that the question was largely directed at Jessica.
“Do you remember that psychic I told you about years ago, honey? The one that predicted all those things that came true for me?”
Jeremy looked at her in confusion. “Yes,” he said, again looking down at Terry.
Jessica pointed to me. “Abby is that psychic. And she’s just made contact with Bianca.”
Jeremy shook his head, and I knew he wasn’t grasping what that meant. “Mr. Lovelace,” I said to him, still feeling Bianca on the edge of my energy. When he looked at me, I said, “Bianca’s spirit contacted me.”
I didn’t know how Mr. Lovelace was going to react, but I certainly didn’t expect him to start laughing. Color flooded his face and he looked at his new wife in relief. “Oh, my God, Jessica! You had me scared to death! I thought you’d heard about some hard evidence or something.”
I would have let it go, I swear I would have, but Bianca began shouting in my mind and what I thought I heard was, Say “chuckles”! Without thinking, I repeated what was booming around inside my head, “Say ‘chuckles’ . . . chuckles, chuckles, chuckles.”
Jeremy immediately became serious. With large round eyes he looked at me and gasped, “What did you just say?”
I backed up a little on the couch, uncomfortable with his intense stare and Bianca still repeating over and over the word “chuckles.” “It’s not me,” I said weakly. “It’s your daughter. She’s yelling at me to say the word ‘chuckles,’ and I don’t know why, but she keeps pointing to you, then to herself, and I can’t figure out whether she’s talking about how you just started laughing or something else.” When Jeremy continued to stare at me in disbelief, I added, “I don’t think she’s talking about you, though. I think she’s talking about Chuckles as a name. Like maybe someone’s favorite pet was named Chuckles or something.”
Jeremy staggered to a chair and sat down heavily. Looking at Terry, who had regained a tiny bit of her composure, he whispered, “Did you t
ell her to say that to me?”
Terry shook her head and I could tell she didn’t know what he was talking about. “Don’t you remember, Terry? The nickname I gave her when she was ten and we took her to Sea World. She was laughing the whole time we were there, having a blast, and I started calling her Chuckles. Every e-mail, letter, or card I ever got from her after that, she’d sign it, ‘Love, your devoted daughter, Chuckles.’ ”
The room was silent for several long moments save for the occasional sniff from Terry. Her ex-husband sat dumbfounded in his chair, and my heart went out to him, but I wanted to wait and let him absorb the truth about what I was telling him. Finally, with moist eyes he glanced at me and asked, “What else does she say?”
The answer came immediately. “She says she’s happy you’ve quit smoking and that you’ve taken up jogging again.”
Jeremy blinked and he looked to Jessica, who gave him a small, sad smile. “It really is her,” she said to him. “You even told me last week when we were talking about how much we missed her that you just wished you could see her to tell her that you’d finally kept your promise and that you’d quit the cigarettes.”
“She knows,” I said to them. “And she’s relieved.”
“Can you tell her I love her?” Jeremy said, his voice ragged and pained.
I swallowed hard again even as my own eyes misted. “She knows that too,” I assured him gently. And then I felt Bianca fade away from me, like a tide from the beach. “She’s gone,” I announced.
The room fell silent and somber again. Jeremy finally got to his feet and walked over to his ex-wife. Lifting her up off the couch, he gave her a tremendous hug and she wept into his shoulder. Then, he backed away from her and held his hand out to his new wife, and she got up to stand next to him. Turning to Harrison, he said, “How soon can you get a team up to the lake to search the cabin?”
Harrison appeared taken aback, but as he looked around the room, I knew he wasn’t going to protest the request in the face of so much support for our side. “Give me the address and I’ll make a call,” he said, getting up. Terry gave it to him and he jotted it into a small notebook before excusing himself and stepping outside.