My vision blurred, black circles overlapping black circles.
“She got herself murdered,” he said. “But before it happened, she left me a note. It said, ‘Tell Ellie Winter to find me.’ Now, what do you think that means?”
I couldn’t answer. I was lowering slowly to the paving stones in my garden, my knees giving way almost gracefully, the wineglass clinking to the ground and rolling away. George Sutter said something else, but I didn’t hear it. I had raised my arms and locked my hands behind my head, squeezing my arms over my ears, blocking out the world and everything in it. I closed my eyes and felt the cool silk of my dressing gown against my cheek, and I never wanted to get up and feel anything else again.
CHAPTER TWO
“I suppose I made a hash of this,” said George Sutter as he stood awkwardly in my kitchen. “I didn’t foresee that it would upset you quite so much.”
I was seated at the table, where he’d ushered me to get us out of sight of the neighbors. I blinked my dry eyes and felt the world come slowly back into focus. “It was something of a shock,” I said.
“You seemed quite distressed.” He stayed standing, close to the door to the back garden, as if my emotion was contagious. And though his expression was as controlled as ever, I thought I saw a hint of disapproval. “I didn’t know you were friends.”
“We weren’t.”
He waited, but when I didn’t elaborate, he said, “You were in the same business, and I know how competitive Gloria was. You were rivals?”
I looked up at him. “I find lost things,” I said. “Gloria was a spirit medium, communicating with the dead from the other side.”
“Soldiers, yes,” he said.
“That is not the same business,” I told him firmly. “Not at all.”
He frowned. “If you say so. But you knew each other?”
“We were acquainted.” I felt in control enough now to force the words through my lips. “When did she die?”
“Last night.” He looked away, his lips thinning. “She was at one of her . . . sessions. A ghost hunt in a house.”
I shook my head. “Gloria didn’t do ghost hunts. She did séances. In the privacy of her own rooms. Are you saying she was on location?”
Now he looked confused. “She was at some sort of session, or so I was told.”
“At a private home? With a group of others?”
“Yes.”
I digested this. “And what happened?”
The misery I’d glimpsed in my sitting room came over his face again. “Someone stabbed her,” he said, his voice flat. “A single wound to the heart. Then he dumped her body in a nearby pond.”
I set my hands on the kitchen table, feeling the coolness of the wood on my palms. I took a shaky breath.
Sutter finally grasped the second kitchen chair, the one my mother had always sat in, and lowered himself onto it. “What about the note?” he asked me. “‘Tell Ellie Winter to find me.’ What does that mean?”
I looked at him for a long moment. “You don’t know much about what your sister did for a living, do you?”
He regarded me steadily back. “We weren’t close.”
“Gloria told me her family disowned her,” I said. “After her other brothers died in the war.”
His control had returned, and now I could tell he was choosing his words carefully. “There were three others, yes.”
That explained the shadow I’d seen over the little boy with the soldiers. Three brothers, all of them dead in the mud of France. Gloria had almost never spoken of it. “You two were the only ones left, and you weren’t speaking.”
He showed no flicker of emotion. “My parents disowned Gloria when she took up her . . . profession during the war. Taking money from people and pretending to talk to their loved ones. It was ghoulish—she made a living from grief. It cut my parents to the bone. After our brothers died, it was too much for them to forgive.” His tone implied he agreed with this wholeheartedly. “And, of course, she simply had to be so . . . showy. Going to wild parties with her lovers, getting her photograph in the papers. It was shameless. She never cared about the rest of the family, never cared about anything but herself. She never once asked our family for forgiveness. Having a good time was the only thing that mattered.”
Perhaps he was right. I never did any of those kinds of things, of course. Not anymore. Not ever again.
George continued. “Last year our mother died, and our father is now in a hospital for the elderly. Age has taken his faculties. Neither one of them had spoken to Gloria in years.”
I didn’t give him the usual expression of sympathy; something told me it wouldn’t be welcomed. “So now she’s dead,” I said, “and you’re all that’s left.”
“In any meaningful sense, yes.” His gaze rested sharply on me. “But you didn’t answer my question. What does the note mean?”
I took a breath. “Finding people is what Gloria did,” I said. “It is the term she used. You’d go to her to find your husband, find your son.”
He looked at me in disbelief. “Among the dead,” he said. “Find them on the other side.”
“Yes. Those who died in the war were her specialty.”
“Specialty.”
“It takes effort,” I explained. “The exact soul you’re looking for may not be there, may not hear you calling. It may be wandering lost. In that case, Gloria would find it. And then she’d communicate with it.”
“And you believe all of this?”
“Gloria,” I said carefully, “had a great many satisfied customers.”
George grunted. “And can you . . . do this thing? Can you find her?”
I felt a brief note of panic as I thought of the sign next to my front door. “Mr. Sutter, I told you. That is not what I do.”