women were all young. They were all of similar height and weight, but with different coloring. All Caucasian, though. They had all been fully clothed, no sign of molestation.
They had all been found with a silver pentagram on a silver chain lying on their breasts. Cause of death appeared to be the same: throat slit by a double-edged blade that was six or seven inches long. The crime scenes had yielded no clues. No footprints, not even near Carly’s body. The killer must have taken the time to obscure them. No gum wrappers, beer cans, condoms or wrappers, not even any cigarette butts. No evidence that anyone had used any of the crime scenes for anything at all.
Frustrated, he picked up the photographs of the medallions. They were similar—and very much like the one Devin had—but from the photos, he couldn’t even prove that they’d been made by the same designer.
He stood. He wanted to see the medallions again. It was time for a trip to the evidence lockup.
* * *
Somehow Devin managed not to drop the mayonnaise. She groped toward the counter and set it down, never taking her eyes off the apparition still standing just inside the kitchen doorway.
“Come on now, Devin, dear,” Aunt Mina’s ghost said. “You didn’t think that a loving aunt would leave you so easily, did you, child?”
Aunt Mina sounded both sincere and worried.
A thousand responses ran through her mind. They ranged from, “You almost made me waste good mayonnaise” to a scream of pure astonishment. Or terror.
No, not terror. How could she ever be afraid of Auntie Mina?
Maybe she was just hallucinating, she told herself. After all, she’d recently discovered a dead woman. She was still not herself.
“Auntie Mina.”
The words came out like a croak.
“Make some tea, dear. That always helps everything.” Aunt Mina smiled broadly. “I’d be delighted to help you, but frankly, I’m just learning this ghost stuff. Manifestation isn’t easy. And I did die when I was over one hundred. But the good thing is that nothing hurts. Nothing at all.” Her smile faded. “I think I’m here for a reason, Devin. I think I’m here to help you.”
Devin was shaking. She walked forward and reached out to touch her aunt. She felt a slight chill in the air but nothing more.
“You can’t touch me, child,” Aunt Mina said sadly. “Don’t you think I wished I could stroke your hair last night? Try to soothe you?”
“You know what happened?” Devin asked.
“I saw the face at the window,” Aunt Mina said.
“A face at the window?”
“You weren’t looking or you might have seen her, too. You heard her, though—and then you found her. I haven’t managed to leave the house yet, but I did try to stop you from going out, but...well, you are the child I helped raise. Kind and compassionate. So you went in search of her. And when you came back with that officer, I figured out what had happened.” She shrugged. “And you did turn on the television and your computer.”
She might have died at a hundred and one, but Aunt Mina had known her electronics.
Devin’s knees felt wobbly. She wasn’t sure she could make tea without breaking something. She swept past the great-aunt she couldn’t touch and made her way to the parlor, sinking down on the sofa.
She was imagining things.
No, Aunt Mina had followed her.
Poe squawked. He flew over and tried to light on Mina’s shoulder, then ended up fluttering to the ground in confusion.
“Poe, my poor Poe,” Aunt Mina said.
“I’ll get him,” Devin muttered. She rose and scooped up the bird, who flapped agitatedly for a second and then settled into her hold.
The damned bird was seeing the same apparition!
“I can’t stay long, my dear. I haven’t mastered the skill yet, though I’m getting better and stronger every day. I practiced speaking when you were out, but...I had to pray that you would hear me when I finally showed myself. Not that I doubted you for a minute. Not really. After all, last night you heard the dead. And once you hear them...well, dear, I’m afraid you can’t just turn them off.”
Devin stood stroking the bird and staring at her aunt. Suddenly tears welled in her eyes.
“I loved you so much,” she said. “Still love you, of course.”
“Love lasts forever,” Aunt Mina told her. “And I love you, too. So very much. Since I never had children of my own, you are, in spirit, my child. Not to take anything away from your lovely mother, you’re just my child in a different way. And your books! They’re getting better and better. I’m so proud of you. What are you working on now?”
Devin told her, and Aunt Mina clapped her astral hands. Then she looked down and sighed. “The house is locked up tight?”
“It is.”
“Good. Oh dear, I’m fading already. Well, at least now you know I’m here.”
“Auntie Mina...?”
Too late. Aunt Mina was gone. And, Devin realized, darkness was falling quickly and she was still standing by the love seat, stroking the raven.
* * *
The night shift was on; the evidence room was quiet.
An Officer Buckley was manning the desk while Rocky sat at another desk in the back, studying the three medallions.
It had taken some doing to find the first. While Jack had been looking into the old case, he hadn’t gone so far as to request the medallion, which had been misfiled and hard to locate. After half an hour of studying the three pentagrams on their silver chains, Rocky shook his head.
Having them right there in front of him didn’t tell him anything that the photographs hadn’t. None of them carried an artist’s mark, which was what he’d been hoping to find.
Had they been designed by the same person or not?
He couldn’t tell. But he did know that he was going to have to get to know Gayle Alden and find out if she really was Sheena Marston, not to mention whether she’d created these pentagrams as well as Devin’s.
At nine o’clock he locked up the medallions in their boxes and got ready to head back to his hotel.
Since he knew he would be plagued all night if he didn’t, he called Devin Lyle.
“I’m just checking on you,” he admitted immediately. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“Not a bit, thank you. And I’m fine,” she told him.
He hesitated. He should just hang up. He’d checked; she was fine. But he took a chance.
“I’d
