Free Three O'Clock Séance: An Inspector Rebecca Mayfield Mystery (The Rebecca Mayfield Mysteries Book 3) by Joanne Pence

mirror over the sideboard behind him.
    Rebecca looked around. She found herself standing, facing a mirror. Sandy, too, was looking at it, his face white, his eyes frightened. She glanced down at the candle. It was considerably lower than when she last remembered looking at it. “What happened?” she asked.
    He spun towards her. “Are you all right?” he asked.
    “I’m so sorry! Did I fall asleep? Why are we standing here?”
    “I believe you nodded off, and then had a nightmare. You suddenly stood up. So much for my charm,” he said with a small laugh. “Time to head back to the city, I’d say. But now that you’ve seen all this, please tell me you’ll come to a séance at my office tomorrow night. I promise you, you will not fall asleep.”
    Rebecca felt strange. Had she really fallen asleep so easily? That wasn’t like her. He mentioned a nightmare, but a person usually remembers nightmares, and she remembered nothing. She looked around and a felt a sudden chill, the sort her mother used to say meant someone was walking over your grave.
    “I can’t believe I fell asleep,” she said.
    He chuckled nervously. “Probably too much sea air. You may have caught a chill. Anyway, yesterday you asked about the Sandoristas,” he said. “Well, the séance will be an opportunity to meet some of them. Say you’ll attend. You’ll be my guest.”
    Sandoristas … yes, of course. “I’ll be there,” she said.
    “One more thing. Do you”—he swallowed hard—“do you now see anything in the kitchen, or perhaps in the mirror?”
    “In the mirror?” Whatever was he talking about she wondered. Yet, as she looked at it, she felt that, if she could take a cloth and rub the mirror hard—as if cleaning a window—she might clear the way through the mirror and see …
    “No,” she said quickly. “I see nothing at all.”
     
    o0o
    Richie finally got away from Claire Baxter, and once in his car, tried to reach Rebecca by phone. She didn’t answer, which wasn’t unusual when she was working. He drove to Homicide. Her SUV was in the parking lot so he went up to see her. Calderon and Benson were there working a murder-suicide. From them, he learned Rebecca had actually left work early that day.
    That was a puzzle. She never left early.
    More of a puzzle was her SUV—leaving it meant someone had picked her up there at work. But who?
    He tried again to reach her by phone. Same lousy results.
    Some months back when he first met her and thought she’d be an interesting date, she often ignored his calls. He couldn’t say he blamed her. So, he got over it. Mostly, he got over her. Or so he thought. But then, things got complicated.
    He called a guy he knew in the SFPD’s Civic Center precinct where Rebecca’s latest boyfriend worked, and asked if Ray Torres was on the job that night. He learned Torres was cruising around in his patrol car at that very moment, his partner by his side.
    For some reason, her dating Torres didn’t bother him—or, not a whole lot, at least. But the thought of her with that psychic …
    Could she be with Geller again tonight? Was she getting to like him? Or maybe feeling something even more serious?

 
    CHAPTER TEN
     
    In Homicide the next morning, Rebecca was surprised to learn Richie had shown up the prior evening looking for her. Since he left no message, she assumed he must have wanted an update on her investigation. She had nothing to tell him, and no time for him today, in any case. She would be spending a good chunk of the day in court waiting to testify. She was almost glad of that because, when she did see Richie-the-fixer, she had questions for him which could lead to some unpleasant answers.
    When she got back to her desk in late afternoon, she found a half dozen messages from Agent Seymour. All he wanted was to know if she’d contacted Richie and if she’d learned anything about Claire Baxter. She told him she’d get back to him if or when either happened.
    By the time