several T-shirts, a little box of sand complete with stones and a rake for relaxation, and a baby alligator head. Along with two antique looking, frozen-faced dolls.
Eyeing the ghoulish merchandise, Bentz thought it was high time his wife started expanding her psychology practice. Time to get out of this shop of weird artifacts and start talking to people with problems.
“Hey.” Olivia spied Bentz as he tried to move out of the way of the customer, a bag-toting woman who bustled past a display of oyster-shell art on her way to the door.
“Hey back at you.”
Olivia grinned, that same smile that could stop his heart. “What’re you doing here? Slumming?”
“Looking for a hot dinner date.”
“Moi?” she asked coyly, pointing an index finger at her chest.
Frowning thoughtfully, he pretended to look her over, head to toe. “Yeah, I guess you’ll do.”
“Nice, Bentz,” she said with an easy laugh. “I guess you’ll do, too.”
“Damned straight.”
“The male of the species, always so humble,” she said to Manda as she clocked out. That done, she crossed the shop and gave her husband a quick kiss on the cheek. “What’s this all about?”
“You asked me what was going on and I thought it’s time you knew.”
Her smile faded. “Should I be worried?”
He hesitated, wanting to reassure her. But in the end he decided to play it straight. “Not really. At least not yet and not about our relationship, but there is something pretty weird going on.” He spied her umbrella by the door and snagged it, then, taking the bend of her arm, escorted her out of the shop. Rain peppered the sidewalk and coursed through the gutters. Artists, tarot readers, musicians, and performers quickly covered their wares with plastic tarps or folded up their tables for the day before scurrying for cover.
Bentz opened the umbrella and held it high over Olivia’s head as they dashed along the sidewalk. Rain slid down his back as he tried like hell to avoid both puddles and pedestrians. A bicyclist raced by, cutting in and out of traffic. A horn blasted and somewhere a horse whinnied nervously.
In a second the shower turned into a downpour.
Half-running to the restaurant, the cane hooked on his arm, Bentz felt the familiar pain in his hip, a constant reminder that he wasn’t a hundred percent.
The shoulders of his jacket and hems of his pant legs managed to get soaked despite his efforts.
Olivia was laughing, her eyes sparkling with wicked delight at being caught in the storm. “You’re soaked,” she said as they reached the doorway of the restaurant.
“That’s because I was being gallant and keeping you dry.”
“Which I appreciate. Thanks.” She winked at him. “I’ll return the favor sometime.”
“Yeah, right.” Beneath the cover of a striped awning, Bentz shook the rain from the umbrella, then held the door for her. Inside, tiny lights were strung from the open rafters, appearing like stars overhead, and the walls were paneled with warm reddish wood complementing areas of exposed brick.
A hostess led them to a far corner where they were seated at a window table. Outside the rain continued to pour down, gunmetal-gray clouds huddling over the city, water running wildly in the gutters. Inside, beneath lazy paddle fans a waiter brought water and menus, then lit the single candle before promising to return.
“So, about what’s happening,” Olivia prodded, once they were alone again. “Why do I have the feeling I’m not going to like it?”
“Because you’re a very smart woman.”
“Mmm.”
“And you’re some kind of kook psychic.”
“Whom you love,” she reminded him.
“Right.”
“Make that adore.”
“Now you’re pushing it.”
“You’re avoiding the subject.”
“Waiting for the right moment,” he said, eyeing the menu and not bringing up Jennifer until after they ordered. Once the waiter had retreated again, Bentz laid it all out. He started with the moment he’d woken up in the hospital and felt the drop in temperature before witnessing his dead wife in the doorway. He told Olivia about the other sightings as well. Finally, he admitted to spying Jennifer again just off the veranda a few days earlier, then just recently receiving the marred death certificate and photographs.
With each of his confessed sightings, Olivia became more and more serious. “I don’t understand,” she whispered, her gaze seeking his. “How? Why?”
He handed her the copies he’d kept and watched her face turn ashen. “I wish I knew the answer to that.”
“Jennifer’s dead.” She glanced up at him for confirmation.
“Yes.”
“There was a suicide note, you made the ID on the body.”
“I know.”
“Then…?”
“An imposter, probably.”
“Or…your imagination.”
“Don’t think so.” He tapped the pictures with a finger. “These are real.”
“Or someone faked them.”
“That’s possible.”
“Rick, she’s not alive!” She cleared her throat and leaned back in her chair. “Did you…have you told Kristi?”
“She was there when I woke up and she thought it was hallucinations from the drugs or aftereffects from the coma. Said it was all a ‘bad trip.’ I didn’t want to upset her, so I haven’t mentioned it again. Neither has she.”
But then his daughter was caught up in writing her book and planning her wedding. Kristi didn’t want to think that her father had lost his marbles. Because, even though now he was certain he was being tormented by an outside force, he also suspected deep inside that some of his visions of Jennifer had been conjured in his mind.
Maybe outside influences had tripped a latch in his brain and, though he was loath to admit it, he didn’t know what was real and what was a figment of his imagination.
“She hasn’t seen these?” Olivia motioned to the photos.
“No.”
Slowly letting out her breath, Olivia stared at the marred death certificate, then the pictures once more. Her eyebrows pulled together to form little lines in her forehead and her full lips twisted in revulsion. “This is really sick.”
“Can’t
