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be in touch.”
    Abruptly she turned on her heel, went back to the desk and picked up a pen. “I’m going to give you the name and number of someone you can call. Bradley Mitchell. He’s a detective with the Oriana Police Department. He’ll vouch for the fact that I’m not a likely suspect or a fraudulent psychic looking for publicity.”
    He frowned. “You’ve been involved in situations like this before?”
    “Yes.” She tore off the sheet of paper and handed it to him. “Call Detective Mitchell. He’ll explain. Good-bye, Chief Langdon. Good luck with the press conference.”
    “How did you know about that?”
    “There’s always a press conference,” she said, surprising him with a small, genuine smile. “Don’t worry, I won’t try to steal your thunder. In fact, I would be extremely grateful if you would avoid releasing my name and identity to the media.”
    “No problem,” he said, meaning it. The last thing he wanted to do was give the press the idea that he was working with a psychic. That kind of thing would make him look ridiculous.
    “Thank you.” She walked out the door, the long black raincoat swirling around her high-heeled boots.
    He gave her a moment to leave and then he went into the outer office. Marge was at her desk. She was gazing over the rims of her reading glasses at the door through which Raine Tallentyre had just disappeared.
    Marge was sixty-two years old. She had lived in Shelbyville all her life. She was his go-to source whenever he needed background on one of the local residents. He propped himself on the corner of her desk.
    “What do you know about her?” he asked.
    “Not much, really,” Marge admitted. “Vella Tallentyre bought the house here over twenty years ago. When Raine was a little girl, a couple of men used to drive her up here to visit Vella. Later, she came by herself. She sometimes bought groceries at the local store and filled up her gas tank but other than that, we never saw much of her. She didn’t seem to want to get to know any of us locals. I never even met her until today.”
    “What about the caretaker, Ed Childers? He have anything to say about her?”
    “Ed wasn’t much of a talker. But I ran into him at the post office one day not long before he died. He told me something about Raine that day that I never forgot.”
    “What?”
    “He said he saw a photograph of Vella Tallentyre once. It was taken when Vella was younger, in her early thirties. Ed claimed that Raine Tallentyre was a dead ringer for her aunt at that age.”
    “No kidding.”
    “The only other thing I ever recall Ed saying about the Tallentyre women was that Vella had a downright obsessive fear of fire. Made him install half a dozen smoke detectors. Kept lots of fire extinguishers in the house. Had those little window emergency ladders in all the upstairs rooms. She wouldn’t even allow a fire to be built in the fireplace.”
    “Phobic.”
    “For sure.”

Five
    “H er name is Stacy Anderson,” Raine said into her cell phone. “They think she may be the latest victim of that freak the press calls the Bonfire Killer, the one that has been trolling among the prostitutes in Seattle and Portland.”
    “Damn.” Andrew Kitredge sounded more resigned than surprised. “You can’t even leave town for a day without stumbling onto a murder scene.”
    She almost smiled. Andrew was one of the few people in the world who was aware of her little eccentricity , as he called it, and took it in stride. His life partner, Gordon Salazar, was another who accepted her, voices and all.
    Aunt Vella had understood her, of course, and her father, if he was still alive, would have considered her psychic side normal. But Judson Tallentyre died in a car accident when Raine was six and now Vella was gone, as well.
    She had no other close blood relatives. Her mother died when she was a year and a half old. Judson Tallentyre, forced to surface from his precious research in order to deal with the