Page 39 of Water's Edge

He shrugs a little, indicating he’s not interested. He says, “I heard she was tending bar in Port Townsend. I don’t know the name of the place.”

“That’s good,” I say. “I can find out where.” I motion for Ronnie to sit. I take a place on the couch, leaving room for him. Hoping he will sit and not clam up. “Did your daughter go to college around here?”

He sinks into the other end of the couch and thinks for a minute.

“She was brilliant, Detective. Had a future ahead of her. Then something happened. I don’t know what. She wouldn’t say. She came home. I guess law school wasn’t for her. She said she couldn’t see being a lawyer and called them all assholes. She had never used that kind of language in her life. She was angry all the time. And needy. Always needy. I knew something had hurt her, but…”

I wait. He isn’t really talking to me. More like he is replaying a tape of the past. A memory that he had to speak to make it real, or to let it go.

“I didn’t have a close relationship with Leann. Her mother could get her to open up. That was their thing. But her mother was gone by the time she came back. Left. That was when Leann gave college up for good. I blamed my ex. I didn’t know the problem wasn’t school or her mother. It was here with her. Honestly, she never made good choices.”

“Did you have a disagreement?” Ronnie asks, and I shoot her a look. A rule in investigations is that only one person does the questioning. I don’t want him to get defensive and stop talking.

Ronnie gets the hint and becomes invisible.

“Oh, we had a disagreement, I can tell you. Before she left for school, she bummed around the party circuit. There were strong words. On both sides. I convinced her she needed a career. Something substantial to make her mark in life. She wasn’t interested in making anything of herself. Then, when things got bad between her mother and me, she agreed to go to college. I had to pull some strings. Expensive strings. But she got accepted and left for school. I don’t know if she agreed to get away from the arguments or if she actually saw reason.”

He puts his hands together and grips them, closes his eyes, and seems to be repeating some mantra or something, but he’s just moving his lips. No sound. He stays like that for a while. Long enough for me and Ronnie to exchange a quickWTF?look.

He opens his eyes and notices I’m watching him. “I was making contact. Asking for guidance.”

Oh, please, I think.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” I say.

His face takes on a smug expression. “Do you know what a soul contract is, Detective Carpenter?”

I shake my head, not remembering if religious confusion is one of the stages of grieving.

“A soul contract,” he says patiently, “is an agreement we have made with other souls before we are born.”

I blink. I have no idea where this is going.

“The contracts have a purpose. They teach us important lessons that we choose to learn before we can reach reincarnation. I don’t suppose you believe in reincarnation?”

This is all crazy talk to me, but I want to keep him talking.

“I do.”

I look at Ronnie and she’s nodding her head also.

I’m all but certain he doesn’t believe me, but he continues anyway.

“Leann was so much like her mother. They didn’t believe in anything spiritual. Anything good that happened was pure luck. Not the result of making a soul contract. They could have looked around at all the things I’ve provided for them and seen they were wrong. This wasn’t all my doing. I was merely a conduit for my future transition.”

This kind of nonsense is beyond the pale, but I listen to be polite and to encourage something of use to come out of his mouth. I just want to get some facts about his daughter so I can make a soul contract with her killer and prepare them for reincarnation.

“I can see you don’t believe,” he says. “It’s okay. Not many do.”

All of this likely has something to do with the purple Warrior Priestess T-shirt. Maybe he feels guilty about being wealthy. Maybe his will stipulates he’s to be buried with his yacht and a gold guard dog. He’s just lost the only part of his family that hasn’t divorced him. Doesn’t appear to matter to him. It does to me.

“It doesn’t matter what I believe,” I tell him.

That is the correct answer. He smiles. “That’s right. It only matters what I believe and what I do.”

I use that pause to get back on track before he starts talking to the other side again.

“What were the specific arguments about? Between you and Leann. Money? Religion? The pending divorce?”

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