Eli sighed. “This is damaging your progress, Bill.”
“I guess I’ll have to work harder to make sure that doesn’t happen. And I hope you’re still willing to work with me.”
Eli made a face. “What else am I going to do? Drop you? Just keep doing the exercises I gave you last night. Maybe something will sink in.”
Shannon nodded. He felt a jolt from his cell phone that had been put on vibrate, took it from his pocket and frowned as he read the caller identification information. “Mrs. Pauline Cousins, Portland, Oregon. I don’t know her.”
Eli shifted his chair so he was looking out the front window. Exaggerating an insulted look and letting a coolness chill his voice, he said, “Go ahead and answer it. I’ll just sit back, drink my chai and enjoy the many pleasant sights of Boulder. At least those that care to walk past me.”
Shannon answered the call. At first there was nothing. “Bill Shannon speaking,” he tried again.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” a woman’s voice said. It had a high pitched, nails-on-chalkboard quality to it. “This is Pauline Cousins. I would like to talk to you about hiring you.” She cleared her throat and added, “Would you have any time to meet with me this afternoon?”
“I think so. Do you mind telling me what this is about?”
There was a long pause. For a moment Shannon thought he had lost the connection. Then in a shaky voice, she said, “My daughter. Melissa. She joined a cult, something called the True Light. It’s been six months since I’ve heard from her. The police can’t help me. I need to know that she’s okay and that nothing has happened to her.”
“Pauline, are you in Boulder now?”
“I flew in last night.” There was another long pause before she continued, her voice now halting and breaking up between words as if they had a bad connection, which Shannon knew they didn’t. “I-I’m there now-at their complex, but they won’t let me see her. Th-They won’t even let me know if she’s alive.”
“Pauline, are you staying in Boulder?”
“At the Best Western.”
“Go back to your room and call me when you get there.”
There was the sound of her sniffling, then, “I will. Thank you.”
Shannon was still frowning as he slipped the phone back into his pocket. He caught Eli peering at him, his heavy eyelids half-closed, belying the curiosity that shone on his long face. “Taking yet another case?” he said.
“Maybe. The woman who called wants me to check that her daughter’s okay.”
“She’s missing?”
“Probably not. It sounds like she joined a cult. Something called the True Light. Did you know Boulder has cults?”
“Do dogs have fleas?” Eli straightened himself in his chair as his eyes narrowed and a seriousness hardened the muscles along his jaw. “For whatever reason Boulder has over the years attracted its share of megalomaniacs. They’re able to set up shop here and convince disenchanted college students and similarly disenfranchised transients and locals that they’re the voice of God. From what I’ve heard, there were some real doozies that operated in the seventies and early eighties, where the leaders would use their disciples, how should I say this delicately, to get their rocks off. I haven’t heard about the True Light yet.” He paused, thought about it, then added, “If you want, I’ll see what I can find out about them.”
“That would help.”
“I’ll call you when I find something.” Eli shifted in his chair, rubbed a thick hand across his jaw, said, “If you feel like talking about it, you can tell me about those two students.”
Eli was trying to be as blase as he could about it, but Shannon could see the interest shining in his half-closed eyes. He had to bite his tongue to keep from laughing. For all of Eli’s protestations against his taking on investigations, he would still always want to hear all the details, which Shannon was more than happy to share with him. Not only did Eli provide a good sounding board, but at times offered insights and observations that had helped Shannon solve past cases.
“So far I don’t have much,” Shannon said. “I did get a strange email from Taylor Carver’s faculty advisor at the university, saying that his murder didn’t surprise him. At this point I’m waiting to see if he can provide more details.”
Eli raised an eyebrow at that. “It sounds like you need a face-to-face chat with him.”
“Yeah, that would be nice, but the guy’s spending the summer hiking in the Andes.”
Straight-faced, Eli said, “Sounds like an ideal opportunity for you to take your beautiful ex on a well-deserved vacation. I’ve heard that the Andes can be close to a spiritual experience.”
“Yeah, well, I could lead an expedition through South America looking for the guy. Or I could just be satisfied with the mountains we have here in Colorado and in exchanging emails with him.”
“A few weeks backpacking in the Andes might help you get back on track with your out-of-body work,” Eli stated defensively, his expression more serious.
“Lesson six,” Shannon said, “always look for ulterior motives, even in the most innocent sounding suggestions.”
“What’s this nonsense about lesson six?”
“Nothing.” Shannon let the grin he was fighting show through. “I ran into a fellow Red Sox fan yesterday and gave him a few lessons in being a private detective.”
“They win one stinking World Series in eighty-six years and you get deluded fans everywhere popping out of the woodwork. It’s like a bad zombie movie from the fifties. Night of the brain-dead Red Sox fans. The government desperately needs to develop a vaccine before it spreads any further.”
“I thought you didn’t believe they won last year. That it’s all some sort of mass hysteria?”
“All the same, mass hysteria or government hoax, it’s causing this epidemic to flourish.” Still with his deadpan expression intact, Eli added, “After one day on the job that’s all you’ve come up with?”
“No, not all,” Shannon said. “Something’s up with Carver’s family. I met with the mother and kid brother yesterday. Some very weird vibes, along with that they’re more concerned with winning a civil suit against Taylor’s landlord than seeing his murderer get caught. Also there were several new and expensive items in their house that they claimed he bought for them before he was killed. We’re talking thousands of dollars. I’ll have to find out if they had any life insurance on him.”
“Could the police tell you that?”
“They could.” Shannon smiled thinly. “But they’re not being very cooperative. I met the lead investigator. He seemed like a decent enough guy, but he wasn’t going to share any information.”
“Not surprising,” Eli said, nodding grimly. “They seem to have developed a persecution complex, at least that’s how it looks in the papers. But to be fair to them, they’ve been taking quite a beating. So the obvious question begging for an answer is how did a college student come up with the money to make those types of purchases? When I was in school all I could afford every night for dinner was hotdogs and beans or macaroni and cheese. I was lucky if I could scrape together enough money to buy a new pair of sneakers every year. And back then they didn’t cost the same as a stereo system.”
“Yeah, it sure points to drugs, doesn’t it? The one thing the police were willing to share with me was that they’d found nothing to indicate drugs were involved.”
“If not drugs…?” Eli let the question hang, then a spark flashed in his eyes as he looked at Shannon. “Something interesting that you said, and I quote: ‘seeing his murderer get caught’. Do you have any reason to think that only one person committed these murders or was this a subconscious conclusion that you made?”
Shannon thought about it, shook his head. “I have no way of knowing yet how many people were involved.”
“Then something from your subconscious made you say that.”
“Maybe, but I don’t think so. More likely it was only careless word usage on my part.”
Eli waggled a large sausage-sized finger at Shannon. “Bill, don’t ignore your intuition. And remember, there are no such things as accidents.” Flashing a sheepish grin, he pushed himself out of his chair and moved towards the restroom. “Which reminds me. I’d better return one of these chais before I prove myself wrong about accidents. The problem, my friend, with having a prostate that has swelled to the size of a watermelon. Same time tomorrow?”