Free Thirty-Three and a Half Shenanigans by Denise Grover Swank Page B

Tell your aunt?”
    “Yeah . . .” She sat back in her seat, lost in thought. “But I’ve got a bad feeling about all of this. If she left Billy Jack’s, why didn’t she call Aunt Thelma? She always tells her when she has a breakup.” She shook her head. “Something’s not right.”
    “Well, like I said, I’m meeting Joe this afternoon. Maybe he can help.”
    “He’s with the sheriff’s department. You’re wasting your time and your breath if you tell him about this.”
     

     

Chapter Seven
     
    After I dropped Neely Kate off at the courthouse at one forty-five, I had little time to spare before my meeting with Joe. And after trying to eat Neely Kate’s tofu mess, I was starving. I decided to stop by the Burger Shack to pick up something to eat.
    I wasn’t all that surprised to see Eric Davidson behind the counter when I walked in. He was one of the five guys responsible for a string of robberies before Thanksgiving, including the bank robbery in which my deposit bag was stolen. He’d been at the auction, and while I’d been there, too, he had no idea I was the Lady in Black. Still, I hesitated at the counter long enough to get his attention.
    “Hey, you’re that woman from church.”
    My eyes widened in mock innocence. “What?”
    “I thought I recognized you when you came in a couple of weeks ago, but your friend did all the talking.” He looked worried. “You’re the woman who said that . . . strange thing.”
    I shrugged, then shook my head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I hoped I was convincing enough to get him to let it lie. I’d had a vision and blurted out to a group of four malcontents from Jonah’s support group that they were gonna rob another place. Things could have gotten ugly if Joe hadn’t intervened.
    His eyes narrowed. “Yeah . . . I think you do.”
    I considered turning around and running, but two things stopped me. One, I’d look guilty if I ran. And two, I was hungry.
    I rubbed my forehead. “I wasn’t myself that day.” I leaned closer. “I hadn’t taken my medication.”
    He took a step back, wariness on his face.
    I straightened. “I want a hamburger with fries.” I shifted my eyes back and forth a couple of times. “And could you hurry? I’m late in taking my medication today, and I feel kind of strange, if you know what I mean.”
    He quickly rang up my order, staying back from the counter. As he started to bag my food, I suddenly wondered what had happened to Mick Gentry, the large-animal vet who’d killed Norman Sullivan, the Henryetta Bank loan manager who’d been one of their co-conspirators, but had decided to rat them out. Mick had made the news when he disappeared the weekend after Thanksgiving. Had Skeeter disposed of him, or had he really run off as the police suspected?
    Eric handed me the bag, still keeping his distance.
    And that’s when I felt another vision slam me with more force than usual.
    I was sitting in the front seat of an old car. The passenger door opened, but I stared out of the windshield instead of turning toward it.
    “Is it set?” the guy next to me said.
    “Yeah.”
    “Let me know if you have any problems.”
    “Yeah.”
    The vision faded, and I was suddenly back in the Burger Shack. “Everything is set,” I gushed out.
    “What?” he asked.
    Usually a vision came and went, but a fuzziness had lingered in my head this time, and I stumbled backward. “See? I better go take my medication.”
    I hurried out to the truck and set the forgotten food next to me, then drove the short distance to the nursery, anxious, though for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why. I was more upset over my vision than Eric was over me having it.
    Joe’s car wasn’t in the lot, and neither was Violet’s, and no one was manning the few Christmas trees we had left in the lot. I could have gone inside, but I found myself staring out the windshield at the building instead. What had I seen, and why was it so ominous?