Unseen by Nancy Bush Page B

She rode her bike all over the place and knew more about the town’s gossip than was probably healthy. Like some forgotten memory, Gemma recalled that Charlotte had learned things about people, things she’d then told Jean, who had used them in her predictions. That betrayal had pissed Charlotte off.
    If someone like Edward Letton were after Charlotte, Gemma would have no qualms about running the bastard down. She could remember the emotion—the fury—that had consumed her as she banged out of Lulu’s that day. She’d followed him to his home…no…place of work?
    “Where’s the car?” she asked aloud to the empty room. She’d looked in all the outbuildings on the off-chance it was there, but there was no sign of it.
    Tossing the mail on the front table, she extracted her bank card. She was using an older purse that had nothing in it but two tubes of lipstick and a stack of ballpoint pens. She dropped the bank card into it and decided it was time to buy a new wallet.
    “And where’s my purse? And who dropped me off at the hospital?”
    It was extremely frustrating— extremely frustrating—that she couldn’t recall those facts.
    The phone rang and Gemma hesitated before answering. “Hello?”
    “It’s Sally, Gemma, dear. Thanks for calling me back.” Her tone added the word finally , though she didn’t say it. “When can I have my appointment?”
    Sally Van Kamp. Gemma had been forced to return her call, then had been thrilled when the woman’s answering machine had clicked on, giving her a chance to bob and weave. She had no interest in giving the woman a reading. None.
    “Hello, Sally. I just wanted to let you know that I’m not scheduling any appointments right now,” she began regretfully.
    “What? You can’t be serious. Jean, rest her soul, has been gone for nearly a year, and you’ve put me off and put me off. Your mother would never have treated me like this!”
    “I’m recovering from a—car accident. I just got out of the hospital,” Gemma said tightly. Okay, it was almost a week ago but Sally didn’t have to know that.
    “Oh.” She was momentarily flummoxed. But then she swept on, “I’ll bring you over some of my chicken casserole. Just the thing. Perk you right up.”
    “You don’t have to—”
    “Oh, my, my, yes, I do! I’ll see you this afternoon.”
    She clicked off and Gemma was left holding the receiver. She didn’t want to deal with Sally. She didn’t want her time used up. Before she started work at the diner she wanted to finish a few things. Threads left untied.
    With that in mind she headed upstairs to her bedroom and the research books with their underlined passages.

    The Laurelton airstrip was a narrow line of hard soil, mowed grass, and a Quonset hut terminal, if you could call it that, painted white. Flags snapped in a frisky breeze, and the sun glared down, a fierce, yellow eye.
    The smell of burned flesh caught on the breeze as Will climbed from his patrol car and Barb got out of the other side. Burned, putrefying human flesh. Barb wrinkled her nose in distaste as they circled past a state patrol car and the Quonset hut, and headed in the direction of the group of vehicles clustered around the back of the airstrip.
    A fire truck stood off to one side and several men and one woman were looking down at a black tarp, presumably the body. Around them was an area of burned field grass. The fire had luckily been extinguished before it could do greater damage.
    “ME was on the other side of the county,” Barb said. “Don’t see him yet.”
    They approached the group. The state patrolman’s name was Evans and he shook Will and Barb’s hands. He introduced the other man—gray-faced and looking about to faint—as Freddie Delray, an airplane mechanic, and the woman, middle-aged, heavy-set, and sharp-eyed, as Maggie Long-worth, the Laurelton Airport’s resident everything. She didn’t seem particularly moved by the burned body or the god-awful stench, but