“No, thanks.” Polite, but direct.
Amanda Lee didn’t seem surprised when he didn’t say anything more. He was obviously waiting for her to take her leave.
When she began to head for the door, I was a smidge surprised. Surely she had more than this up her sleeve. And… yup.
She made a delicate show of sucking in a breath as she passed by me.
“Oh my,” she said.
Gavin slowed his steps, giving her a curious glance.
Amanda Lee seemed embarrassed as she said, “Pardon me, Mr. Edgett, but… well, my friends back home say I’m eccentric, so keep that in mind. However, do you have some paranormal activity in this house?”
My essence nearly flipped upside down. What the hell?
Gavin seemed just as stunned while she continued.
“Maybe it’s nothing, but I’m known for my psychic moments, and you have something out of the ordinary going on here. Haven’t you noticed?”
I could tell he was about to say she should get lost. As for me, I was about to pinch the fucking shit out of Amanda Lee like the world’s most furious poltergeist. What was she up to?
She wandered closer to where I was hovering near the sitting room’s doorframe. I slid up the wood like water going against gravity.
She said, “Its presence is stronger in some places than others. Is there a certain room where there are… odd… occurrences?”
He paused, his gaze going hard. I thought he was thinking about his bedroom in particular, but he wasn’t about to confide in this near stranger.
Ultimately, he only shook his head. “I haven’t noticed anything, Ms… .”
“Dantès. Alicia Dantès.”
The last name sounded familiar. I couldn’t say why, though. Frankly, I wasn’t in an analytical mood as I spread over the ceiling, waiting until Amanda Alicia Lee got her ass out of here so I could follow and read her the riot act.
Brusquely, Gavin walked through the foyer and to the door, which he held open for her.
Once outside, Amanda Lee put on a concerned face, then opened the purse she had slung over her shoulder and extracted a pad of paper, plus a pen.
“Mr. Edgett, I sense disquietude in you. So I say this in all earnestness—if you find that whatever is in your home is bothering you or escalates its activity, please feel free to contact me.” She handed him the paper. “I’ve encountered the supernatural before, and I know how disturbing it can be. Now, I’ve never dealt with activity on a large scale, but there’s certainly something here, and I’d be glad to help, even if it’s only to call up friends who do contend with matters of this nature on a regular basis.”
“Thank you, Ms. Dantès.” He didn’t seem impressed by the flaky psychic who’d just bashed into his life. “I’ll take care of the clothing for Farah.”
Alicia Actress paused, her smile fading, and I knew it was only a matter of superior self-control that kept the real Amanda Lee from revealing herself.
But then she turned on that lemonade smile again. “I appreciate your help. So sorry to bother you.”
As he closed the door, I slipped through. She strolled to a Mercedes I’d never seen before—a rental?—in the circular driveway, where a fountain splashed in the middle. I didn’t have the chance to see how Gavin reacted or if he threw away the paper she’d given him, because I was already beelining for her car.
Her windows were open, like she’d expected me and wasn’t going to make my grand entrance any harder than it had to be.
Once I was inside and she started the engine, I let loose. “Are you insane, pointing out that there’s a ghost haunting the house?”
“Not remotely,” she said, reverting to her regular speech pattern.
She wheeled around the driveway and down to the gates, which automatically opened for her. Farah had probably left “Alicia’s” name for Constanza.
It was only when we were off-property, driving oh so casually as she slipped off her glasses with her free hand, that she continued.
“I knew you were going to be in that mansion, and I joined you because I had to.”
“You had to?”
“I’ve been busy while you’ve been away, Jensen. We need to catch up with each other.”
Oh, like we hadn’t had a huge fight the other night or something.
“Alicia,” I said, “I actually had everything under control. But with you barging in like that, I’m not so sure now.”
She seemed interested. “And how far have you gotten with a confession from the killer?”
I refused to tell her about last night with Gavin and the phone that wouldn’t die. But I did say, “I’ve gotten far enough to think that Gavin didn’t murder Elizabeth.”
Amanda Lee squealed over to the side of the road, where bird-of-paradise plants waved in the aftermath of the dust from the tires. When she glanced at me, she was on fire.
“What did you just say?”
“Gavin told me he didn’t kill her.”
Her breathing was getting choppy. “Then if he didn’t, who did?”
That was a conversation stopper. It was like a boulder had crushed the car, and us with it.
As we both cooled down, she started surveying me, like she was just now noticing that I had a mite of color left over from my latest fake Dean encounter. Yeah, like I was going to tell her about that.
She must’ve gotten my nonverbal cue loud and clear, because she lowered her voice, an attempt at calm. “After you left, I didn’t know what to do. I’m not even sure I moved from the pool house floor for hours. But all the while, I wished you would come back.”
“Because I’m your fetch-it girl.”
“No. Among other things, I wanted another chance to earn your trust. And that’s what I’m doing now.”
“By crashing the haunting? Awesome plan, Amanda Lee.”
“Just hear me out.”
I stared at her. She seemed utterly sincere, but I still couldn’t bring myself to believe that.
She deftly loosened the clasp of her old, heavy bronze necklace, doffing it and tossing it into the backseat. She breathed a sigh of relief.
“I spent all of my time after you were gone in meditation, scrying into crystals, gazing into a crystal ball, everything you can think of. And finally, I got something. Two visions.” She leaned her head back against her car seat. “They were tangential, but it was as if someone somewhere was showing me a way to finish what we started, and I realized that all our previous plans weren’t good enough.”
Was she thinking it was Elizabeth who had contacted her and was making her reevaluate how to go about the haunting? That would explain the guts she’d displayed, coming into the Edgett house and meeting the person she hated the most when, before, she’d wanted to stay completely undercover.
I closed what I had for eyes, torn about telling her what fake Dean had said about Elizabeth moving on. But even though he’d been right about Wendy showing Gavin my pictures, I didn’t trust him way more than anyone. So I kept the news to myself for now.
Amanda Lee said, “In the first vision, I saw Farah at that Locksley Foundation dinner, even though I wasn’t actually there. I heard her talking about fashion to a group of women, and when she mentioned her favorite designers, this new plan came to me.”
“A plan to fix her up with a Chanel.”
“Yes. I’ve had a collection in storage that I felt she might be interested in—”
“Part of that inheritance of yours?”
“My mother’s. The dresses are valuable, but there’s nothing I wouldn’t sacrifice for Liz.”
“So you called Farah yesterday, pretending to be a personal shopper.”
“More of a stylist, and I was able to set up a meeting with her so she could look at the clothing. She’s a tough sell, though, and she wanted to think about it, but about an hour later, she called, wanting to bargain for them. And since Farah doesn’t have an office, or a job besides working for different charities, I told her I would make a delivery to her home today, whether she was there or not. Honestly, I was hoping she would be in instead of her brother.”