Page 56 of The Bride Wore White

She dropped into the big reading chair, crossed her legs, and gripped the padded leather armrests with both hands. “No offense, but that really does sound like a job description for a private investigator.”

“Maybe, but there’s one big difference between a private investigator and me.”

“What?”

“I charge a lot more.”

Chapter 25

Thanks, Raina,” Jack said. He kept an eye on Prudence while he spoke into the phone. “I’ll take anything you can get on that private school. As for Tapson, I’d really like to know where he was before he arrived in San Francisco and proceeded to collapse in Madame Ariadne’s reading room. No, that’s all for now. I appreciate the help.”

He hung up the phone and folded his arms on top of his desk. Prudence had not moved during the course of his conversation with Raina. Instead, she had watched him steadily. He knew she had been trying to decide just how much to tell him.

“Everything, Prudence,” he said.

She raised her brows in silent inquiry.

“All the stuff you left out when you told Luther and me that Tapson was alive when the ambulance took him to the hospital. I want to know everything.”

“The problem with telling you the truth is that I doubt very much if you will believe me,” she said.

“Try me.”

She drummed the fingers of both hands on the arms of the chair, and then she started to talk.

“Tapson was mad,” she said. “Dangerously so. I knew that as soon as he touched the crystal bowl I occasionally used in my readings.”

“You saw his madness in the bowl?”

“No, I sensed it. I was touching the bowl, too, you see.”

“The bowl makes a difference?” he asked.

“Crystal is an excellent conductor of psychic energy if you know how to use it.” She raised her fingertips to the pendant at her throat. “I can pick up dream energy when I touch someone physically and open my senses, but I don’t like to do that.”

“The intimacy problem,” he said.

“Yes.” Her eyes darkened. “It’s a very... disturbing experience.”

“I understand,” he said. Because, he realized, he did understand. Whether or not he wanted to comprehend her meaning was another question. He had never believed in the old saying that ignorance was bliss, but lately he had begun to wonder if it might be true, at least in some cases. “Go on.”

“I realized immediately that he intended to murder me.”

She stopped and waited. He knew she expected him to tell her she was either lying or a victim of an overactive imagination. What she did not realize was that he had known she would say something like this, and he was prepared to believe her.

“I know how it feels to be very certain that someone is going to commit murder,” he said.

“Right. Because of your crime tree method.” She hesitated and then started talking in a cool voice that made it clear she did not expect him to believe her. “I used the crystal to reverse and destabilize the currents of Tapson’s dream energy. That’s when he collapsed. I called for an ambulance. He was unconscious but alivewhen they took him to the hospital. I found out later that he died sometime during the night. And that is all I can tell you.”

“But you believe you caused him to collapse,” Jack said, wanting to be certain. “Tapson did not keel over from a very convenient stroke?”

“No,” she said. Ghostly shadows appeared in her eyes. “I’m very certain that I’m the one who sent him to the hospital. But I don’t know if I killed him.”

?That evening Jack poured two glasses of wine and watched, fascinated, as Prudence used a large wooden spoon to lightly pound the fresh abalone steaks into the desired state of tenderness. There was a pile of fresh asparagus on the tiled counter, waiting to be washed and trimmed. A loaf of fresh bread stood at the ready.

“You look like you know what you’re doing,” he said.

She paused her pounding to pick up her wineglass. “Does that surprise you?”

---