Page 25 of A Midsummer Night's Ghost

That wasn’t exactly complimentary either.

“I do know what is relevant,” I said. “But I’m not here to sabotage your investigation. I’m supposed to be helping, remember?”

It was a dubious concept and I understood their reluctance to have a spiritual medium offering opinions of a brutal homicide case, but still, no need to be insulting.

“You can’t help us,” Smith says. “Unless you’re secretly a forensic anthropologist.”

I gave Jake a look. I tried to tell him no one would take me seriously here. They hadn’t when I was an evidence tech for a very short time five years earlier so they certainly weren’t going to now.

“Just give it a shot,” Jake told them. “We’ve got nothing to go on and it’s been six months.”

Yanking the photo back from Jake, I decided to take charge of this disaster. “Let’s go into one of the conference rooms. I want to sit down.”

With that, I held my head up high, tossing my red (ish) hair back over my shoulder and started walking in my heels toward what I thought might be an open room.

I ruined it though by glancing back over my shoulder. Smith wasn’t getting out of her chair. She wasn’t even looking over in my direction, but at a pile of papers on her desk. Cox was staring at my butt. Jake was grinning at me like he was proud of me or amused. Maybe both.

“Detective Smith, are you coming?” I said loudly.

Several detectives looked up from their desks, curious.

Debby Smith sighed and rose to her feet, grabbing her phone. “Because I have nothing to do at all today so sure, let’s waste my time.”

Cox stood up too, but he seemed more enthusiastic. He grabbed his phone and a file folder. “Just give me a name,” he said. “Just somewhere to start. I believe in you, Bailey. Our little station psychic.”

“That’s me.” I yanked the door open and was faced with the sight of a detective interviewing a crying woman. “Whoops. Sorry.”

I let the door float closed and turned to Jake. “What now, Detective Marner?”

Jake gave me a grin.

Oh, boy. I knew that look and it was not office friendly. I shot him a “behave” look back.

He went two doors down and pulled it open. “After you.”

Once we were all seated around a small round table in a room mostly filled with file cabinets, I asked, “Tell me what you can about the case.”

“Deceased female found behind a trap house. COD asphyxiation. Identified as Patricia Jackson, age forty-seven,” Cox said. “This one got under my skin because she’s got five kids and twelve grandkids and by all accounts was just working and taking care of her family. She was a home health aide and did food delivery as a side gig.” He pulled a map out of his folder and slapped it down. “She lived here.” He put his thumb on the map. Was last seen here. She dropped off McDonald’s at this house.” He pointed again. “According to the data from the app. She sent a picture of the food on the porch to the customer via the app and they confirmed to us that they saw her drop it off and drive away heading west. At that point, she took another order request but never picked up the food at the restaurant.”

“Rally’s,” Smith said. “So between here and here she disappeared and was suffocated with a plastic bag.”

I cleared my throat. “Okay. I’m going to do something weird and please don’t look at me and be all judgmental. I’m going to call Patricia forward and see if she’s still with us.”

“Is this like a seance?” Cox said, leaning back so far in his chair it made a screeching noise on the floor. “I’m a God-fearing man. I don’t know about this.”

“What the hell did you think it was?” Smith demanded. “You’re the one who called her our little psychic.”

“Yeah, but I thought psychics just look at a picture and images appear in their head. I don’t know about calling on dead people.” He nervously straightened his tie.

“It’s not a seance. It’s like…talking to a deceased relative when you’re at their grave. It’s conversational.”

Cox pulled a cross on a necklace out from beneath his lavender dress shirt. He fingered it, clearly nervous. “Okay, go for it.”

Smith gave him an amused look. “You are a paradox, dude.”

“Don’t “dude” me.” Cox rolled his eyes.

Jake was scrolling on his phone like he’d lost interest. Or maybe he was trying to prevent me from feeling nervous with three sets of eyes on me.

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