Itsy-Bitsy Spider Read online

  Only she was stronger now. Her abilities clearer.

  Even three and a half years later, whenever she heard about missing children cases, they broke her heart. Or, if little children came into her tent, her heart stuttered in pain—her loss of Reese still so damn hard to fathom. One didn’t get over such a tremendous loss easily.

  Initially after Reese’s death, she had seen grief therapists, three to be exact. Spending her grocery budget on this new expense seemed to be the wiser choice. Yet everyone grieves in their own way. None of the counselors were quite right for her. Two were men, so Queenie had sought out a third, a woman. But still, she wasn’t a mother. Funny but the very institution that had never really accepted Queenie had provided her with free counseling after her son’s death. And the police department shrink had been by far the best fit. Still, it didn’t last for long. Meeting at the police department and reminded of all her losses—Reese, Kirk, her work with the police, her confidence in her gift—wasn’t conducive for a proper psychological and emotional healing.

  So Queenie sought out some spiritual help. She spoke with two rabbis, a female Methodist preacher, a Catholic priest, a Baptist minister and some nondenominational church leaders. Each were of some solace when she was in their presence, but nothing stuck. Nothing helped afterward.

  There was no training for this. No way to rid herself of the guilt that ate incessantly at her soul. She’d promised to look after Reese, but she’d failed. She’d have done anything for her son to get that second chance to keep him safe. To give him a future … In the back of her mind, she wondered, Had she spoken to Kirk back then, would he have been interested in being a father? Would he have helped? Only she’d been a mess when they had split. An unstable mess.

  That was the last memory he had of her. And she’d been too terrified that he’d take away her son. Afraid she was unfit to be the mother of his child. … Maybe he’d have been right. But she’d tried. Dear Lord, she’d tried. And Kirk didn’t know how much she’d changed. He didn’t know how much joy having her child in her arms had brought her. How it had turned her life around so much so that she’d finally started looking after herself.

  She shook off her memories, focusing on the present. Her gloomy tent. The absence of the curious messenger spider. She looked around for him quickly one more time. No luck. Then she stepped out of the doorway to her tent and took several deep breaths.

  Behind her a voice called out. “Hey, are you opening up early today?”

  She glanced over at Brutus the Strong Man and tossed him a bright smile. “Nope, certainly not. I came in early to see if I needed to clean up.”

  The lie came smoothly to her lips. One of the things she didn’t like about her current lifestyle was the secret she kept and her need for subterfuge. If she were to tell any of them that she hoped her deceased son was alive, they would look at her as if she were ready to be locked up. How could she explain? But the mother genes inside her wouldn’t be silenced. Reese was a reality she wouldn’t give up.

  Brutus walked in her tent, looked around and said, “What possible cleaning could there be?” He glanced at her sideways. “You look like shit.”

  She glared at him. “Your manners haven’t improved.”

  “Why the hell should they?” He gave his big shoulders a shrug. “Nobody gives a damn what we do here. You know that.”

  At those words, she had to nod. “Isn’t that the truth?”

  “Did you eat?”

  The question came out abruptly. Brutus, for all his size and the rough look to him, was really a caregiver. His methodology might leave a little to be desired, but he cared. “I had a banana.”

  He fisted his hands on his hips. His muscles bulged, and the cords in his neck stood out. “Get your ass over to Betty and make sure you get some food.”

  “I doubt I could keep anything down,” she admitted. “I had a really rough night again.”

  “Are you pregnant?”

  She gave a bitter laugh. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Any number of guys here would love to be with you,” he said. “You don’t have to be alone if you don’t want to be.”

  She wondered at the truth of that. She gave a quick nod. “Maybe I’m just not ready.” She brushed past him, trying to avoid contact.

  But he reached out and grabbed her hand. “You can’t always be so isolated,” he growled.

  Visions of his world came, images of Betty and him together. At least they were happy images, joyful images. He released her hand, and she gave him a gentle smile.

  “You don’t know the truth,” she said quietly. “Some things can never be shared.” And she walked farther into the sunshine. But she wondered at her own statement. She’d have sworn she could have shared anything with Kirk. But she’d chased him away—something she’d regretted ever since.

  Inside, she admitted she’d hoped he would return, but it wasn’t to be. And, as she thought about the condition she’d been in, it made sense that he hadn’t. She’d been a wreck and likely to take down everyone close to her.

  Comparing the inside of her dark tent to the outside was almost symbolic of her world. So much of her life was caught up with everybody else’s pain, everybody else’s problems. She had to escape that darkness when she was left alone with everybody else’s worries and fears.

  She walked briskly toward Brutus’s trailer that he shared with Betty. They’d been together as a couple for a good dozen years. It wasn’t the first time Queenie had had to knock on Betty’s door for food. Queenie should have some money coming in, but she would use it now to hire another detective to do another search. She didn’t know how the heck to get the type of research she needed. Who the hell knew anything about psychic message-delivering spiders? And where had that little bugger gone anyway?

  “There you are, child.” Betty was massive. But her smile was just as big, and her heart outsized both of them.

  Queenie sighed. “Brutus sent me over. He says I’m not eating enough.”

  Betty was wise beyond her years. Although only in her mid-thirties, she had the air of an eighty-year-old about her. “You probably told him you had eaten something to hide the fact that you had nothing, right?”

  “How is it you always know?” Queenie grumbled. “I thought I was supposed to be the psychic.”

  “Oh, you’re psychic all right. You just don’t want anybody to know you’re the real deal,” Betty said with a big laugh. And, when she laughed, all her chins waggled and her arms moved as if they were alive.

  It was fascinating. And so very different than Queenie’s skinny frame.

  Betty laughed again and said, “I wish I could give you twenty pounds.”

  Queenie admitted in a soft voice, “I wish you could too.”

  Betty pushed the trailer door open wider. “Come on in. We’ve got leftover pancakes from breakfast.”

  “Pancakes. I haven’t had those since I was here last week,” Queenie said, attempting a joke.

  “Maybe I made a few extra in case you wanted to stop by. I heard you had a bit of a rough day yesterday.”

  Her mouth full of flapjacks, Queenie shot her a sideways look but stayed quiet.

  “You know you can’t hide anything around here.” Betty settled her bulk comfortably on the big bench across from Queenie. Betty picked up a coffee carafe and filled a cup. She pushed it toward Queenie.

  Queenie stared at it, wanting it almost as much as she did the flapjacks. She took a breather from inhaling the food and lifted the hot brew, inhaling the aroma. “You make the best coffee.”

  “And you might even get a second cup if you tell me what the hell went wrong yesterday.”

  “Who said anything went wrong?”

  “Well, Carlos went looking for you when the line at your tent was at least ten deep, and he couldn’t find you. At one point he was ranting and raving because you weren’t doing your job.”

  Queenie winced, a motion she tried to hide but knew Betty would have caught it
anyway. “Yeah, well, I had a couple rough moments there.”

  “Care to share?”

  Deliberately Queenie cut a big stack of pancakes and shoved it in her mouth. If nothing else it gave her a chance to think. Nobody pulled the wool over Betty’s eyes. She was good. But she came from the heart, and that made it even harder to bluff. “Which part? The spider that created visions in my fake crystal ball or the young boy who will die in three days or that last guy I spoke to who had murdered a woman,” she finally said, her voice low.

  Betty gasped and leaned forward. “Really? Did you get any murder details?”

  Queenie shook her head. “Not really. Just a woman floating at one end of a lake caught in the weeds under the surface. But her property is there. It borders the lake itself. This guy was trying to buy it. He asked me if he would get it, and that’s when I saw her, and I told him that he already knew the answer to that question. He got really, really angry and pulled the poor little boy he was with out of the tent. But he left an air of evil, and I just couldn’t stay afterward.”

  Betty stared at her, wordless.

  Queenie took the moment to eat another large bite.

  “And what’s this about a spider?”

  That was much harder to explain. But typical of Betty to move right along to the next topic. Queenie finished the flapjacks, picked up the coffee, took a big sip and sat back with a happy sigh. “I’m not sure what’s with the spider. But there was a spider, and it reached up and touched my crystal ball. And you and I both know that nothing makes the inside of that ball change. But this time the inside of my crystal ball swirled with a white cloud. That last man, the murderer, was going to kill the spider, but I saved it. Then, after the man left, I was trying to flick the spider off. The whole time it’s as if he was looking at me – communicating with me, and I thought I heard a little boy in my head calling out, Mommy, Mommy.”

  A call that had nearly crippled her. But that part wasn’t something she could share.

  “Honey, you’ve got to stop following those missing kid cases,” Betty said. “They’re killing you.”

  Of course Betty didn’t know about Reese. Queenie took a deep breath. “I know. I know that, but it’s hard. So many people are in need out there.”

  An odd silence followed as Betty continued to study Queenie. She had hoped Betty would be satisfied with what she had heard so far. The trouble was, Betty had the natural curiosity of anyone and some of the sight herself. “Did you recognize the child’s voice?”

  Queenie gave her a bitter smile. “No. It’s never that easy, you know? No names ever come, no dates, no locations. Wouldn’t it be nice if I could go to the cops and say, Hey, there’s a murdered woman in the lake up at so and so. Here’s the longitude and latitude coordinates. You want to run up and grab her? And, by the way, the guy who murdered her is standing beside me with a little kid.”

  Her tone was bitter. She’d been through this time and time again with Betty. But she at least understood and had seen the struggle Queenie had gone through.

  “Well, you can’t just run away again,” she said comfortably.

  That stopped Queenie in her tracks. “Run away?”

  “Honey, you work at an amusement park. Off the grid from the real world. You’re either looking for something or running away from something.”

  “Maybe it’s both,” Queenie said. She reached across and refilled her coffee cup. She stared down at it. “It still doesn’t change the fact I feel like I have to leave soon.”

  Betty sighed. “I wish you wouldn’t.”

  Queenie’s mind immediately said, I wish I didn’t have to. “I’ll try to stay and make it work,” Queenie promised. “But you know it yourself. When you get that feeling that you’ve got to go, then you’ve got to listen.”

  “You’ve got friends here,” Betty said. “You can get cheap food, a place to stay if you need to. This is home.”

  “What kind of a home is it though, for me?” Queenie asked, her voice gentle. “You have Brutus. I don’t have anyone. As a future, this isn’t a whole lot to look forward to.”

  “That’s just part of what you’re running away from. You came to the amusement park world to get away, not to arrive here. Brutus and me, we’re here because we want to be. You’re here because you don’t want to be somewhere else,” Betty said quietly. “Maybe you need a change of attitude?”

  “Or maybe just a whole new life would be nice too.” She smiled, giving herself a good mental head shake to smarten up. “As usual your cooking is divine.”

  Betty gave a big belly laugh again. “You can hardly say that. You come here so starving that I don’t think it would matter what I fed you. You just want the food to fill that small stomach of yours.”

  “At least it’s awesome food, so I get the pleasure out of that at the same time.” Queenie gave her a big grin. She leaned closer and said, “Did Carlos say anything more?”

  Betty shook her head. “No. Haven’t even seen him this morning.”

  “Good. I’ll head back to my tent and open up and will be there extra long today. If I’m making lots of money, he might forget about yesterday.”

  “Tell him that you were sick. But don’t ever tell him about that murdered woman.”

  “Right. I know. He’d start selling my services to the police and take a cut for himself,” Queenie said. “And I did that for free for long enough.”

  “Would you do it for money?” Betty asked curiously.

  Queenie stopped in the act of getting up from the bench seat. “I don’t know. It’s easy to say no in theory, but, when you’re starving, money can make all the difference.” She straightened, walked over to the kitchen counter and placed her plate and cup in the sink.

  “Don’t bother washing them,” Betty said. “I’ve got to wash up the others anyway.”

  Queenie turned to look back at her friend and smiled. “You’re a good person.”

  A peculiar look came over Betty’s face, no longer with any hint of laughter. “I’m not, you know?” she said. “I was at one time, but I took a wrong path too. I did some things I’m not proud of. And now? Well, now I try to live my life the best way I can, but I know that those mistakes will always be there.”

  Queenie stared at Betty for a long moment. Queenie didn’t know if she should ask more questions or not. It was the first time Betty had ever really opened up about the other areas of her life. So many of the people here had secrets. Then people everywhere had secrets. Including Queenie.

  She walked over, squeezed Betty’s shoulder and said, “I think the best any of us can do is be the person we want to be, should always have been, from this moment on. I don’t know if there’s forgiveness in this world. I’ve seen so much of the ugliness that I hope a great big pit of black lava awaits for those who have been complete assholes. But, since so many of them got a free pass instead, I’m afraid they’ll get another pass if there’s a life after this. So I can only focus on this moment and hope all the rest takes care of itself.”

  “You say the right words, girl,” Betty said. “But I don’t think you’re following your own advice. You’re so caught up in the past that you can’t see the future right in front of you.”

  Queenie walked to the trailer door, cast a glance back and said, “No, maybe not. But I am trying.” And she went out and closed the door.

  Moving slowly, Queenie walked back to her tent. Her bad night preyed on her, but, now that she’d had some food, the world didn’t look quite so rough. And it was foolish. She was certainly capable of feeding herself, but some days she just didn’t care. She hated to think other people pitied her. But she’d lost her trust in people a long time ago.

  *

  Kirk’s phone rang just then. It was the intake desk out front. “A young woman here says her mother is missing,” Sandy said.

  “And?” he asked gently. “Is that a current case or an open case?”

  “Neither,” she replied. “But I think she feels like nobody
will believe her. Which makes you the perfect guy for her to talk to.”

  At the hard click on the other end of the phone, he sighed and replaced the receiver. “So Sandy’s trying to give me a woman who can’t find her mother.”

  “Ha, ha,” Peter said. “Glad Sandy likes you and not me.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Kirk said. Standing, he reached for a notepad. “She seems to pigeonhole these people and send them in my direction. I don’t get it.”

  “And yet you always do really well with her assignments.” Peter smirked. “Maybe she’s psychic.”

  Kirk snorted. After spending enough time with a real psychic, it was pretty hard to miss it in other people, but he didn’t think he’d ever seen it with Sandy. Then again, maybe some psychics knew how to hide their abilities. Where Queenie seemed to run on the edge, her abilities completely overwhelming her, Sandy would be the kind of person who would run her day and allow the abilities in only if and when she felt she was ready. He walked out to the intake area and talked to Sandy, getting the daughter’s name. Lee-Anne Jenkins. He called out for her.

  A young woman stood, clutching her hands together, and walked toward him. He judged her age to be somewhere around her late twenties. He held the door open for her. “Let’s go where we can talk.” He led her into one of the small interrogation rooms and motioned at the chair for her to sit down. “Now what can I do for you?”

  “My mom,” she said quietly. “She’s missing. Has been missing for weeks.”

  He thrummed his fingers on the notepad. “When did you last hear from her?”

  The young woman winced. “About three weeks ago.”

  “How often do you speak?”

  “We used to talk once every few days to a week. Then we had an argument, and I told her that I wouldn’t call her until she decided to be a little more amiable.” Tears came to the young woman’s eyes. “But I didn’t mean it. I was just so angry.”