Nine Lives (Lily Dale Mystery #1)(43)



“When you say everything,” Bonnie asks, “what do you mean?”

“We did hours of phone interviews, and she answered any questions I had. She even let me listen to recordings of her readings.”

“She recorded them?” Bella is taken aback. “Do you mean . . . on a tape recorder?”

“No, she likes to say she’s high tech. She has an audio recorder hooked up to her laptop. After the session, she’ll e-mail you the file,” Kelly explains.

“Did you have to sign a release, then, so that she could share those tapes with other people?”

“A release?” Kelly laughs. “It doesn’t work that way. At least, not with Leona or any of the other mediums I’ve seen here.”

Maybe it should, Bella thinks. This little refuge might consider itself immune to the litigious nature of the rest of the world, but it isn’t hard to imagine someone—not Kelly Tookler—slapping Leona with a lawsuit for sharing an audiotape without permission.

“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone back and listened to my readings,” Kelly says. “Every time I do, I pick up on something new.”

Bonnie nods. “Same here. It’s so hard, when you’re sitting there getting a reading, to keep track of every detail that comes through.”

“I used to try to write it all down,” Eleanor says, “but that can be distracting. It’s much easier to just have the medium record the session for you. That’s why so many of them do it. Sometimes, messages only make sense later, when you’ve had a chance to go back and listen and really think about it.”

When you’ve had a chance to make the vagaries fit and convince yourself that your dead loved one came through after all?

Naturally, Bella doesn’t say that aloud. They all seem so earnest, so trusting and na?ve.

All but Fritz, the guileful fly on the wall, with a barely discernible glitter of doubt in his black eyes.

Fritz is an outsider, just like she is. It’s obvious he doesn’t buy any of this. But he’s not letting them see his skepticism because he needs their cooperation for his book.

And Bella isn’t letting them see hers, because . . .

Because in this moment, maybe I just need the companionship. I need them. All of them.

Who cares that they’re an eclectic bunch of strangers or that she’ll never see any of them again after the weekend? It’s just nice, for a change, not to feel as though she and Max are all alone in the world. It’s nice to feel as though they belong.

Even here.

Still, she squirms when the conversation meanders to the local dating scene—or lack thereof. Kelly asks whether Bonnie had seen a handsome man she’d spotted at last night’s message service, and then again riding his bike past the house this morning. Bonnie doesn’t seem interested, but that doesn’t stop Kelly from speculating about whether he’s available and who else around here might be.

The short answer, according to the others: no one. Apparently, there is a dearth of single, straight, available men in the Dale.

“What about you, Bella?” Kelly asks. “Do you date? Are you interested in—”

The doorbell rings.

“Be right back,” Bella says, hoping the subject will have been dropped by then.

She hurries into the front hall, opens the door, and is startled to see Doctor Bailey standing on the porch.

He, too, looks surprised. “Isabella? What are you doing here?”

“Good question,” she says. “I was just wondering the same thing.”

He blinks. “I thought you were just passing through, returning the lost cat to the owner.”

“I thought I was, too, but—it’s a long story. I did get your message, by the way,” she adds. “But I haven’t had a chance to call back. Sorry.”

“I just wanted to make sure the cat got to where she was supposed to go. After you left, I realized that it was irresponsible of me to give out that information and send you on your way with her. But I was worried about the puppy, and I hadn’t slept in a few days, and . . . I guess I wasn’t thinking straight.”

“It’s okay. I got Chance back here just fine.”

“Good. I’m sure her owner was relieved. I thought I’d better come over here because I tried calling her, too, last night and today, but the voice mailbox was still full.”

“Right. That’s because she, um . . .”

Oddly, Bella’s first instinct is to search for the right phrasing. But there’s no need to mince words now, is there? Doctor Bailey isn’t one of them—the Spiritualists who phrase conversations about the dearly departed as if they’d momentarily stepped into the next room.

Why mince words?

“The thing is . . . Leona died.”

His dark eyebrows furrow. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“So was I. It sounds like she was a wonderful person.”

“You never met her, though.”

“No.”

“And you’d never been to Lily Dale before. You’d never even heard of it.”

She can’t tell whether it’s a statement or a question, but he pauses, waiting for her to acknowledge it.

“No,” she says again, wondering if that’s a gleam of suspicion in his brown eyes. “I was just passing through, remember?”

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