The Unquiet - J. D. Robb [99]
“You and, uh, Ms. Smith-Jones . . .”
“Who?”
“Krystal.”
“Who?”
“Your physical therapist, Grandfather. Except she isn’t, is she?”
“Hm?” Charlie stuck his nose in his brandy glass.
“Don’t you think it’s time to level with me?”
“About what?”
“Krystal! I’d like to know exactly what your relationship to her is.”
“Why?”
Oliver pressed all his fingers against his forehead. “I want to know. I just would like to know. Is it a secret?”
If he wasn’t mistaken, Charlie was trying not to laugh. “Okay, okay, okay. What she is, is she’s my advisor.”
“Your advisor.”
“Spiritual advisor, you could say. In a way. Spiritual and emotional. Also social.”
“Social?”
“You’re a direct kinda guy—so’m I. I’ll sum Krystal up in one word for you, Oliver. She’s my friend.”
Maybe, maybe not. One thing Oliver now knew she wasn’t: a horse thief. If he’d been wrong about that, what else had he been wrong about?
Only one way to find out.
“Krystal? It’s Oliver Worth. I need to speak to you. Would you call me when you get this message?” He thought of adding something softer, something placating. Hope you’re well, or Sorry about our last meeting. Or Boy, was I a jerk. But, no; he didn’t really know anything for certain. This was an exploratory call, not an apology. Yet.
He shouldn’t have been surprised, then, when she didn’t call back.
THIRTEEN
Nine hundred and twenty, twenty-five, twenty-six, twentyseven, twenty-eight. Nine hundred and twenty-eight dollars and . . . a lot of change.
Was that good? It didn’t seem like that much. Molly surveyed the odds and ends left over from her yard sale in the dwindling light of late afternoon. There was hardly anything left, which was good—less to donate or throw away—but if she’d known the detritus of her whole life was going to sell so quickly, she might’ve raised her prices.
Nobody had bought the crystal ball, she saw as she hauled the scanty leftovers onto the front porch; not even for a measly five bucks. She’d give it back to Aunt Kit, except Aunt Kit was so mad at her she probably wouldn’t take it. (“Why didn’t you tell me you were losing your house? Why?” Excessive embarrassment didn’t seem like a good enough reason, so Molly had no answer.) She guessed she’d keep it, then, find room for it somewhere in the tiny efficiency on Colesville Road she’d be moving into tomorrow. Right after the sheriff auctioned off her house.
Oh, her sweet little house. Almost bare now, between the yard sale and Craigslist, and yet it still felt like home to her. Walking through the echoing rooms to the kitchen, she vowed not to cry—she’d done some of that, not much, yesterday, and it hadn’t helped. “Bricks and wood and glass”—it was practically a chant now. It didn’t help either.
The phone in her pocket rang. The psychic line—good; someone else she could deliver the news to personally.
“Hi,” said Donette, the woman with the cheating husband. She had a new story of suspicion and treachery; Molly listened to it with the phone propped to her ear with her shoulder while she heated a piece of pizza in the oven and drank milk from the carton—she’d packed all the glasses.
“Donette,” she said at the end of the familiar monologue and her own customary advice (leave him), “I am glad you called this evening, because it gives me the chance to tell you—I will not be able to speak to you again.”
“Excuse me?”
She had different stories depending on the client. Some people wanted to hear she was going on to bigger and better things, some people wanted to hear just the opposite. She used her intuition. For Donette, she said, “I am starting a brand-new life. Scary, yes, but also quite exciting, I think. Freeing. But I will miss you—you are one of the ones I will truly miss.” Strange, but true.
“But you can’t quit. Madame Romanescu—what’ll I do without you?”
“You will listen to the words I have said,” so many, many times, “and you will put them into action, dear one. Bravely. You will lose all your fear. I see it so clearly: Like me,