Hear No Evil Read Online Free Page A

brows in an expression that might have been sympathy or merely resignation. “Did you have luggage checked aboard?” he asked.
    She nodded. “If it didn’t get thrown out for ballast.”
    “Why don’t you go clean up,” he said. “You’ve got blood on your lip and your blouse. I’ll wait for your luggage. It won’t be here, but I’ll check for it.”
    “Won’t be here? Why?”
    “It’ll be lost,” he said matter-of-factly. “Luggage coming to Endor always gets lost. We’re sort of the Devil’s Triangle that way.”
    “Devil’s Triangle,” muttered Eden. “That’s how I remember it, all right.”
    If he felt she had insulted his hometown, he didn’t show it. He gazed toward the luggage carousel, as if it were far more interesting than she was.
    Absently he reached into the pocket of his wind-breaker. “Jessie wrote a note. I’ll let you read it in private. The ladies’ room is that way.”
    Not bothering to look at her, he offered her a somewhat crumpled envelope. She took it reluctantly, careful not to let her fingers touch his. A queer sense of foreboding twisted in the pit of her stomach.
    Inside the rest room, she couldn’t bring herself to open the envelope immediately. She set it on the shelf over the row of sinks and stared at herself in the mirror.
    Sleeplessness had carved dark circles under her eyes. Her skin was pallid, and her lower lip was as swollen as if a wasp had stung her. The front of her silk blouse was flecked with the scarlet of her own finely spattered blood.
    So what?
she thought, splashing cold water on herface. She was back again in this despised town, supposed to baby-sit a niece she hadn’t known existed until this morning, and so far her only ally in this mess was Smiley out there, the patron saint of lost luggage, who seemed bitter over something, possibly everything.
    She washed her face, brushed her limp hair, and halfheartedly applied a swipe of lipstick to her upper lip. She didn’t bother trying to clean the blouse, it was ruined, she knew.
    Full of a sense of impending disaster, she forced herself to pick up Jessie’s note and open it. From childhood she remembered that Jessie didn’t write greetings or endearments; she wrote orders, made pronouncements, issued proclamations.
    The paper glared yellowy beneath the flicker of the fluorescent lights. Eden read Jessie’s familiar scrawled misspellings with growing disbelief and distress.
    I have never askt you for help or Money and I aint about to do it now but what I askt is you do your Duty. Blood is thicker than water
.
    I need you do two thing for me. One you take Care of that Baby. Its the leest you can do for your Sister
.
    Two you take Care of my phone Bidness until I get Home and to do it myself You know how to do it and you are the Only one who can. Its the leest you can do for Me and I dont askt no more of you than That
.
    My list of Steady Callers in the file box. Tarot and such is in rite desk drawer. It hurts my heart to know my callers is trying to get to me and can not do it. It is like watching Money
wash down the sink Now you hook up fast as possbel. There is more I will tell you latter
.
    Your Grandmother Jessie Maye Buddress

God’s gifted Spiritual Adviser
    Anger rose in Eden like a jet of lava. This was why Jessie wanted her? This was why she
needed
her?
    Watching over Mimi’s daughter was one thing—Eden even felt a certain reluctant responsibility for the child.
    But Jessie had spent over half the note detailing how she wanted Eden to take charge of the damned psychic hot line—because money was going down the drain. Money! No mention at all that Mimi might be in some sort of trouble.
    Eden resisted the desire to rip the note to shreds and flush it down a toilet. For somebody who was supposed to be “sensitive”—endowed with psychic powers—Jessie was the most insensitive creature Eden knew. No wonder she had driven off first her daughter, then both granddaughters.
    Yet at the