A Vision of Murder

  “Do you think he would go to his brother for help?” I asked, my spidey-sense tingling.

  Dr. Michaels focused on me and said, “James Carlier is a good man, who deeply cares for his brother despite his brother’s inability to return that feeling. In the beginning James came to visit Jean-Luke just about every week. Then something happened and James stopped coming, so although I’ve alerted James, no, I don’t think Jean-Luke would go to him.”

  “Do you know what happened?” Dutch asked.

  “No. I just noticed that James abruptly stopped his visits. But he did come to see Jean-Luke about three days before the escape, which was the first time he’d been here in several months.”

  “Three days?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “What was the date?”

  “Well.” Dr. Michaels paused, pulling her calendar close. “Let’s see. . . . I remember it was a Tuesday, because I had rounds in the morning, so it must have been on December twenty-ninth.”

  “Your birthday,” Dutch said softly, winking at me.

  “And the day we made an offer on the house,” I said, another chill traveling up my spine.

  Dr. Michaels looked confused, “Excuse me?”

  “Nothing,” Dutch said quickly. “Listen, I think we have everything here we need. Thank you for your time, Doctor,” Dutch said, standing up stiffly.

  “You’re welcome,” Dr. Michaels said, also getting up to walk us out.

  I stayed seated for a moment and looked quizzically at the doctor, something really bothering me about her energy. She and Dutch walked to the door, then turned toward me when I didn’t follow. “You coming?” Dutch asked.

  “It’s not your fault,” I said, directing my statement to Dr. Michaels.

  She gave me a half smile and answered, “It’s hard not to feel responsible when someone like Jean-Luke is on the prowl.”

  “Not about that,” I said, a message swirling with great intensity inside my head. “You tried to save her, but she wasn’t someone who could be saved.”

  Dr. Michaels’s face turned very pale and she stepped backward as if I’d just hit her. “What did you say?” she asked me, her eyes wide.

  “Your patient. The one who committed suicide. It wasn’t your fault. The wounds were just too deep, and there was nothing you could do. You didn’t fail her. . . . Life did.”

  “How . . . ?” Dr. Michaels asked me, her eyes misting.

  “Something I forgot to mention,” Dutch said quietly, his voice lowered with the heaviness that had filled the room. “Abby is a professional psychic.”

  Dr. Michaels snapped her head at Dutch, then back to me, her eyes still wide.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” I said again, the intensity of the message beating like a deafening drumbeat in my brain. “That’s really, really important for you to know, Doctor.”

  Dr. Michaels swallowed hard, and fought back the tears that were leaking down her cheeks. “Her name was Olivia,” she said after a moment. “She was a lovely girl who’d been kidnapped and raped repeatedly by a Detroit gang when she was fourteen. She never moved beyond the event, despite my best efforts. She was a patient here over the summer, and we all thought she was well enough to go home, but yesterday I heard from her father that she had committed suicide last weekend.”

  I shook my head sadly. “It wasn’t your fault,” I repeated. “You’ve got to believe that, I can’t tell you how important it is. There’s an opportunity in your energy for you to throw in the towel, and your guides are insisting that you reconsider this. There are so many patients that you have helped, and so many people left to help that if you quit now you really will be doing all of them a disservice.”

  Dr. Michaels’s jaw dropped, and it took her a moment to speak. “Abby, is it?”

  I nodded.

  “I had been thinking of quitting. With Jean-Luke’s escape and Olivia’s death . . . well, let’s just say it’s been a difficult month.”

  I nodded again, the message about it not being her fault finally subsiding in my head. Good, she’d heard and listened. The rest was up to her, but at least I’d done my part.

  “We should go,” Dutch said discreetly, looking at me proudly.

  I shot him a shy smile and got up from the couch, and we walked back through the corridors in silence, Dr. Michaels leading the way.

  We paused in the lobby to shake her hand and as I pumped her palm she leaned in and said, “Thank you for what you said, Abby. I needed to hear it.”

  I winked at her and grabbed Dutch’s arm and we left the hospital.

  On the drive home Dutch said, “Nice job.”

  “She needed to hear it.”

  “I know, that’s why I’m tellin’ you, nice job.”

  I gave him the full grill and kept driving.

  “That, however, does not mean I’m going to let you out of my sight now that I know Jean-Luke’s got you as his next target.”

  My left side felt heavy as he said that and I turned again to look at him. “Whaddya mean?”

  “It’s obvious after you’ve been attacked twice that Jean-Luke’s got you in his sights.”

  Again my left side felt thick and heavy. I shook my head from side to side and replied, “No . . . it’s not me he’s after.”

  Dutch looked askance at me and said, “You could have fooled me.”

  “I know what it looks like, but that’s not syncing up with my radar. Jean-Luke’s got someone in mind, but it’s not me. And there’s a connection to the box that we found, but for the life of me I can’t figure out what he’d want with it.”

  “He must have been after the notebook inside.”

  Again my left side felt thick and heavy. Again I shook my head and said, “Nope—wrong again.”

  Dutch sighed, exasperated, and asked, “Well, then what’s your spidey-sense telling you he’s after?”

  “Not sure . . .” I said as a picture began to form in my mind. I followed the image and watched as a familiar swallow circled the puzzle box and landed on top. The swallow then began to tap on the crest etched into the wood. I blinked as I focused on the road for a minute, finding it hard to concentrate on my driving because of the intensity of the image swirling in my mind. “Hold on,” I said and pulled into a fast-food restaurant.

  “Awesome,” Dutch said as we rounded into Burger King. “I’m starved.”

  I smiled as I pulled forward into a space. He didn’t know about the image in my head. “Why don’t you go in and get us something to eat,” I said. “I need to make a few notes about something.”

  “Radar buzzin’?” he asked.

  “Yep.”

  “Here,” he said, handing me his notebook and pen, “use this if you want. I’ll be back in a few,” and with that he got gingerly out of the car.

  “Don’t eat the fries before you get back!” I called as he shut the door. My boyfriend’s idea of “sharing” a meal involved wolfing down his own french fries before making it back home, then resorting to pinching half of mine.

  Dutch smiled and saluted, then limped into Burger King. After he walked away I closed my eyes and focused again on the image playing inside my head. Again I saw the swallow flying in a circle above the puzzle box, and coming to a rest on the lid. The bird tapped three times on the crest, stopped, then tapped three more times.

  Weird . . . I thought and jotted down the image. I vaguely remembered the crest on the top of the box. It had something to do with an eagle holding a rose with a shield in the background. I wondered suddenly who the crest belonged to. There was a feeling of royalty associated with it, and again I shut my eyes. I focused my radar and saw the image of Julie Andrews in her famous scene walking the hills and singing her heart out. I opened my eyes and scratched my head. The crest had to do with Julie Andrews?

  Left side, heavy feeling . . .

  I scowled. Again I closed my eyes and focused, and again I saw Julie Andrews in the hills singing. My eye kept going to the hills surrounding the ima
ge, the grass seemed greener and richer than I remembered from the movie, and then I had it. It wasn’t about Julie Andrews; this was about the land itself. The crest was connected to Austria.

  Right side, light and airy feeling . . .

  “Jackpot,” I said just as the passenger side door opened.

  “I swear I didn’t eat any fries yet,” Dutch said as he got in. Liar, liar . . . pants on fire . . .

  I smirked as I took the bag away from him, “Right . . .” I said and chuckled.

  “What’s jackpot?” he asked as he got settled, scooting his rubber doughnut underneath his bum, and his breath coated with the smell of hot potato.

  “The crest on the top of the puzzle box. It’s Austrian.”

  Dutch screwed up his face in a, “Huh?”

  “You know,” I said. “The crest on the top of the puzzle box? It has something to do with this whole mystery. And there’s a connection to Austria.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Julie Andrews.”

  Dutch scratched his head, opened his mouth to ask a question, then shut it just as quickly. Finally he said, “Okay, Edgar, whatever you say. Let’s get home and look at the crest.”

  We got home a little later, the fries half gone but our burgers still intact. After getting indoors we parked ourselves on the couch and unloaded our meals. Dutch unpacked an extra burger, plain without condiments. “What’s that for?” I asked as I saw him open the lid and remove the bun.

  “Here, Eggy,” he called to my pooch drooling by my knee.

  I smiled broadly at him as the gesture took me by surprise and touched me. Dutch was always taking care of me in small ways that added up to a larger sense of comfort. As Eggy wolfed down the patty, I leaned over and gave Dutch a big slurpy kiss.

  “What’s that for?” Dutch asked, a grin on his face.

  “That? Oh, that wasn’t from me,” I said. “That was from Eggy.”

  “Well then,” Dutch replied, “remind me to get him the whole Happy Meal next time.”

  I chuckled and went to the kitchen and retrieved the puzzle box. Bringing it over to the couch I sat down and ran my fingers over the crest, tracing the shape of the eagle, the rose, the nest and the shield. “What do you think it means?” I asked, picking up my own burger and taking a bite.

  “Not sure. Why don’t we take a digital of it and e-mail it over to T.J. He’s into all this European history stuff.”

  I nodded at him while I chewed. That felt right. “Has T.J. been able to get anything for us yet?” I asked, reaching for my Coke.

  “Nope, he’s been busy with his classes. He says that the beginning of the term is always the roughest, but he’ll have time to look into the notebook later in the week.”

  “Cool.” We ate in silence for a minute when my intuition buzzed in. “Check your voice mail,” I said to Dutch.

  “Huh?” he asked through a bite of burger.

  “Your voice mail, you have a message,” I said matter of factly and reached for Dutch’s business phone, which he’d brought in earlier from the study and left on the coffee table. I handed it to him and returned to eating my burger.

  Dutch shook his head at me and clicked the ON button of the phone. Sure enough there was an interrupted dial tone that even I could hear. “Told you so,” I said, smirking in spite of myself.

  “Someday you’re going to have to teach me how you do that.”

  I shrugged my shoulders and munched on a fry while he hit the speed dial to his voice mail. After a moment he got up and went to his coat where he’d left his notebook and pen. Bringing these back to the couch he sat down and began to write quickly. When he was done he pressed a button on the phone and clicked it off.

  “Who was it?” I asked.

  “My buddy Peter.”

  “The one from Interpol?”

  “Yep. He’s got something for us on our guy Jean-Paul.”

  “Well call him!” I said excitedly.

  “Can I eat my burger first?” Dutch whined.

  “You can have the rest of my fries if you call him right now,” I said. I was too impatient to wait.

  “Gee, all three of them?” Dutch asked sarcastically, looking at my cardboard container.

  “Please?” I asked, fluttering my eyelashes and giving him a Bo Peep smile.

  Dutch rolled his eyes, took a rebellious, huge bite out of his burger and dialed the number he’d written on the pad of paper. When the other end picked up he set the phone down and pressed the button for speaker so that I could join in on the conversation.

  “Hey Pete!” Dutch called, his mouth still full of burger.

  “Dutch?” came the reply.

  “Yeah, sorry to put you on speaker but Abby’s here and I know she’d like to hear what you’ve found out about our man Jean-Paul.”

  “Nice to meet you, Abby,” Peter said.

  I smiled, because it was obvious Dutch had talked about me to his friend. “Hey, Peter. Nice to meet you too. So what can you tell us?” I said.

  “You don’t waste time do you?” Peter said good-naturedly.

  Dutch chuckled. “She’s a little anxious to put this one to bed.”

  “No sweat. Okay, here’s the scoop. Jean-Paul Carlier was born in Lyon, France in 1905. His father Jean Carlier owned a small café there until he died in World War I, and Jean-Paul and his mother took over the café. Jean-Paul married Avril Loisclair in 1935 and they had one child, a boy named Paul.

  “When France fell to Germany in 1940, Jean-Paul became part of the French Resistance, and played an integral role in obtaining identities for fleeing enemies of the Reich. Mostly these were people of power and influence who were resistant to Hitler’s regime, and as German occupation swept across Western Europe, many of these families relocated to Lyon and were given a chance to fly under the Gestapo radar, mostly due to Jean-Paul’s underground resistance efforts. After the war he was awarded several medals and commendations from the French government for his role in the Resistance, and was well known throughout Lyon as a hero. Then shortly thereafter in 1945, Jean-Paul moved to the United States to set up a jewelry shop where he worked until his death in 1990.”

  I listened to Peter with furrowed brows. This man was a hero? My radar wasn’t buying it. Something was wrong with this picture, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was.

  “So that’s it?” Dutch asked after Peter had finished. “There’s nothing else on this guy? No smoking gun or skeleton in the closet?”

  “Not that I could find, but then, we’re talking records that are sixty-plus years old, pal. At best, they’re sketchy.”

  I shrugged my shoulders and looked at Dutch in an “I give up” way. There was nothing here that was going to help us with our case.

  Dutch nodded and said into the phone, “Thanks for your help, Peter, I appreciate it.”

  “No sweat. Hey, I’ll be stateside in a couple of months, want to grab a beer?”

  “You buyin’?” Dutch chuckled.

  “Don’t I always?”

  “That’s because the Euro is so strong against the dollar. It costs you less,” Dutch joked and Peter laughed. “Sure, pal, come on in and you, me and Abby will all go out for a night on the town.”

  I smiled, happy that he had included me and nudged Dutch’s knee playfully.

  “Talk to ya,” Dutch said and clicked off the phone.

  “That wasn’t much help,” I said gloomily.

  “Just because the guy did a few good deeds doesn’t mean he wasn’t capable of some pretty bad ones,” he reasoned.

  I nodded and yawned, feeling the effects of a very long day.

  “Come on, Edgar, let’s get you to bed,” Dutch said, standing and gathering up all the wrappers and bags. I watched him clean up with a smirk on my face.

  “You take good care of me,” I said after he’d thrown out the trash and come back into the living room.

  “Someone’s got to,” he said seriously.

  “Then I’m glad
it’s you,” I said, taking his hand and following him up the stairs.

  Chapter Ten

  The next morning I was up early, and headed downstairs without waking Dutch. I had woken with a start this morning when I remembered Candice’s folder and that I had promised to tune in on it. I wanted to get to it while I was sure I wouldn’t be disturbed.

  I found the folder on the kitchen table, and after heating up a cup of tea I sat down and pulled the file close. Inside was a large envelope that I opened first and from which I pulled out three large pictures. The first was a photo of a woman, in her early to midthirties. She had shoulder-length wavy brown hair, perfectly styled in a way that complimented her beautiful features. She had soft brown eyes, a narrow nose and highly arched brows. Her energy, however, held no beauty whatsoever.

  The more I looked at her photo, the more I knew this woman was up to no good. Abruptly, I grabbed a sheet of paper from Dutch’s notebook in the living room then returned to the kitchen table. I sat down, closed my eyes and focused.

  Almost instantly an image came into my mind’s eye; it was of the woman in the photograph and as I watched she put a mask over her face. The mask was white and somewhat faceless. After a moment the mask was removed and a new face was revealed, one I recognized. The face was Liza’s. My eyes snapped opened and I stared again at the woman’s photograph. What was the vision trying to tell me? Had this woman been murdered too? I looked at the woman’s photo again. There was no flat, plastic appearance to the image, which told me the woman was still alive and well. Intuitively, however, I felt a connection of some kind between the woman and Liza, but I wasn’t sure what. I wrote down on the piece of paper everything I had seen and moved on to the next photograph.

  This was a picture of a man who appeared to also be in his early to midthirties. He was handsome in a rugged way, with a bold square jaw, broad shoulders, thick wavy brown hair and nice eyes. His energy wasn’t nearly as distasteful as the woman’s, but there was a hint of something underhanded. I closed my eyes and followed my intuition as I focused on his energy, and right away I got the image of a triangle. I looked at the triangle and noticed one corner held a wedding ring. Ahhh. He was married and having an affair with the brunette. Men could be so stupid sometimes.