Touchy and Feely (Sissy Sawyer Mysteries) Read Online Free Page B

?’
    ‘Yes. I know you think that I’m nine parts doolally, but they’ve never been wrong yet. They told me six months before you proposed to Jean that you were going to meet an auburn-haired girl and marry her, and they told me that she really loves you. They also told me that your father was going to pass over, and when , almost to the day, even though I never told him, God rest his soul.’
    ‘Momma, you can’t let a pack of cards decide how you’re going to live your life! It’s insane!’
    ‘You make your living out of insurance, don’t you, and that’s all odds and predictions.’
    ‘The difference is that I use statistics , not magic.’
    ‘Oh, yes? And Exxon Valdez to you, too.’ Sissy took hold of his sleeve and pulled him back into the living room. ‘Take a look at these two Predictor cards. Go on, look. I turned them up this afternoon.’
    When Trevor wouldn’t look, she picked up the card with the two men huddled under a large umbrella, and held it up to his nose. ‘Les Deux Noyés,’ she said. ‘The Two Drowning Men. This card predicts sudden and unexpected death. The men are trying to shelter from the downpour, but it will do them no good.’
    She held up the other card, of the man and the boy in the graveyard, in the snow. ‘Les Visages Endeuillés. The Faces of Mourning. This card predicts that dozens of people are going to die. Dozens! As many people as snowflakes.’
    Trevor gently took the cards from her and laid them back down on the coffee table. ‘Momma, this is nothing but hocus-pocus.’
    ‘You can say whatever you like, Trevor. But you mark what I’m telling you. Something terrible is going to happen round about here, very close by, and I could be the only one who’s aware of it. How do you think I’d feel, if I was sunning myself in Florida, and I heard that people in Litchfield County were dying like flies?’
    Trevor opened his mouth and then he closed it again without saying anything.
    ‘You do understand, don’t you?’ said Sissy. ‘My talent . . . it gives me a great responsibility, too.’
    ‘So what exactly is going to happen?’ Trevor demanded. ‘An earthquake? A plane crash? A SARS epidemic?’
    ‘I can’t tell you, Trevor. Not yet. I’ll have to read the cards again; and then again , probably. As this terrible thing comes closer—whatever it is—the cards will be able to give me much more detail.’
    ‘Momma—even if you’re right—what can you do about it? You’re a sixty-seven-year-old woman with angina.’
    ‘I don’t suppose I can do anything much, my darling. But at least I won’t have run away.’

The Ghost of Christmas Yet-to-Come
     
    S teve walked across the filling-station forecourt with an awkward hobble. He had pulled on his boots too quickly and his right sock had bunched up under his instep. Doreen followed him, zipping up her coat. Two patrol troopers were already here, red-nosed and nervous, as well as four or five people who looked like passing motorists, and a pair of truckers, and a boy with a moose-like nose wearing a shiny blue Sunoco windbreaker.
    The victim was lying on his back with his blood frozen in a zig-zag pattern aross the concrete. A light fleece of snow covered his chest, and snowflakes clung to his eyebrows. His eyes were still open and he looked vaguely mystified, as if he couldn’t understand why he was unable to get up.
    Steve looked down at him, and then circled around him, tilting his head one way, and then the other. He was a big man, six foot four, with wiry black hair and a rough-cast face, with deep-set eyes and a nose like a pug, but he moved with considerable delicacy, as if he were following waltz steps painted on the ground.
    One of the troopers approached him, wiping his nose with the back of his glove. Steve took out his badge and held it in front of the trooper’s face, too close for him to focus. ‘I’m Detective Steven Wintergreen, in case you were wondering. This is Detective Doreen