Free Hear No Evil by Bethany Campbell Page B

looked parchmentlike, and her spine, usually ramrod straight, was slumped into a curve.
    But she toyed with the tarot deck, expertly shuffling and reshuffling. Autumn sunshine spilled through the window, twinkling on her myriad rings and bracelets.
    “I’m sorry for all this trouble,” she muttered. “You wanted to go hunting, I know.”
    Owen put his hand on her bare arm and was surprised by the coldness of her flesh. “It’s no problem,” he said. “You need rest.”
    “I’m fine,” Jessie insisted, dealing the cards out in the form of a cross.
    She frowned. “
Damn
, but I didn’t want that moon card popping up. Ain’t that a fine cup of tea?”
    Owen knew better than to argue with her. “I should go,” he said and patted her arm. He thought of bow-hunting in the woods. He thought of Cosette’s in Tulsa.
    She looked up at him, fixing him with her extraordinary eyes. “No—wait. You said you’d watch out for Peyton. Can I hold you to that?”
    His stomach knotted with distaste. But he said, “I’ll keep looking in on her. You can hold me to it.”
    “I worry about Mimi. There’s a man mixed up in it, I can feel it. I don’t want him turning up
here
.” She laid down another card and shook her head. “Speak of the devil, and here he is. Hello, goatface. Stay out of my grandbaby’s life.”
    Owen suppressed a wry smile. It was Jessie’s style to talk back, even to the devil.
    She didn’t smile in return. “There’s something I ain’t told you. I ain’t told nobody.”
    A presentiment of trouble crept over him, and he said nothing, but waited for her to go on.
    Her face somber, she said, “If something happens to Mimi,” she said somberly, “and something happens to me, too—Eden’s got to take that child. She’s got to. It’s her duty. You got to make her understand that.”
    Owen’s muscles went taut. “Jessie, you’re going to be fine. And we’ll find Mimi.”
    She leaned against the pillows tiredly. “Tell Eden I said that. Please.”
    “That’s between you and her, it’s not my place to—”
    “When has she ever listened to me?” Jessie said bitterly. “Please just tell her. Please.”
    Jesus Christ, what am I getting into?
he rebuked himself. But Jessie suddenly looked so wan and weary that she frightened him. A muscle twitched in his jaw. “I’ll mention it to her. Is that good enough?”
    “It’ll do,” she said.
    “Jessie, you’re tired. I’ll go. You can rest.”
    She waved her hand weakly, a gesture for him to stay.“Not yet,” she said. “There’s one more thing. That woman yesterday, in that car. I told you I couldn’t remember much about her. She was so
middling
—middling in her age, her size, everything.”
    “She had brown hair going gray, you said.”
    “Middling brown,” said Jessie. “Going middling gray. But I remember one thing about her.”
    “Good. It may help.”
    “She was wearing a T-shirt,” Jessie said. “It was faded and had a picture of a car or truck on it. It said ‘Ness Ford,’ or ‘Ness Chevrolet.’ ”
    “You’re sure?”
    “I remember because of the Loch Ness monster. Maybe it was ‘Ness Hudson.’ ”
    “Jessie, they don’t make Hudsons anymore.”
    “Anyway,” Jessie said, “it was Ness. Or it could have been Loch.” Her eyes fluttered shut.
    Shitfire, Jessie
, he thought,
you’re worn out. I never would have believed it. Life has worn you out
.
    He swung the bed tray with its half-dealt cards out of her way. “Rest, it’s an order,” he said softly. He decided that while she was in the hospital, he’d call Alvin Swinnerton at GuardLok and have a security system put in her house, an improvement she’d always refused.
    He turned and left the room. The hallway smelled of lotion and antiseptic and the stringent odor of well-scrubbed loneliness.
    He didn’t relish going back to Jessie’s house. He felt repelled by the child and attracted by the woman, and disliked both reactions.
    He decided to