Three O'Clock Séance: An Inspector Rebecca Mayfield Mystery (The Rebecca Mayfield Mysteries Book 3) (3 page)

Richie shook his head. “I think she was just someone having a smoke. Anyway, now I see the future.”

“You do?”

“It has you and me, together, working on the cold case you were talking about. Time for a trip to Homicide.”

She shook her head at the thought of allowing him to work a cold case with her. Sandy wasn’t the only one around who was delusional.

CHAPTER THREE

Rebecca saw nothing illegal or fraudulent in Geller’s act. It was pure theater, a performance—a  magic trick—and  not a particularly clever one. The people who believed in him did so because they wanted to and perhaps found it comforting. Sandy was a good performer, throwing out questions, ideas, and images at such a fast pace that the people listening were overwhelmed. He never said anyone should “believe” anything—he carefully kept saying what “he” saw or heard or felt. It was up to the audience to decide how much credence to give to his remarks.

Richie drove to Homicide and parked in the employee lot of the Hall of Justice, a massive gray, bland building devoid of design that took up one side of Bryant Street between Sixth and Seventh. They rode the elevator to the fourth floor where the Homicide bureau was located.

The department was empty. Only the night lights were on, casting a dim florescent glow over the large room, one bulb flickering.

Rebecca didn’t bother to turn on all the overheads since she had a lamp on her desk, the one she used when she worked long into the night. She switched it on now.

“Why don’t you tell me all you know about Sandor Geller and his Sandoristas,” Rebecca said as she sat and began thumbing through her files of open cases.

Richie slid the guest chair to her side to better see what she was looking at. “My mother told me it all started with her best friend Geraldine Vaccarino. Geri, as she’s called, had a sister, Betty, who was quite a bit older. She lived in Los Angeles, had never married, and was estranged from the family. Geri didn’t know until about a year after it happened that Betty had died.”

“What was Betty’s full name?” Rebecca picked up a pen.

“Elisabetta Faroni.” He spelled out Betty and Geri’s full names for her. “After getting over the shock of her sister’s death, Geri started to think about Betty’s money. I don’t know if you’ve had much experience with Italian families and money, but believe me, Geri would have started to think about it by the next day, if not sooner. She wondered where Betty’s money and belongings had gone. She especially remembered an antique sewing machine from the old country that had been their mother’s. It was built into a fancy wooden cabinet, and used no electricity. The sewer worked a pedal under the machine.”

“I’ve never seen such a thing,” Rebecca said.

“If a person had one of those in good working order these days, it’d be worth something, so Geri started to look into it.”

“Uh huh.”

“And since Betty died intestate, you know, without a will, Geri couldn’t find anyone who had any idea of where the money went. The landlord said he gave her things to Goodwill after no one claimed them for several months, but who knows?”

“So how is Sandor Geller involved?” Rebecca asked.

“Because one minute, Betty had money and savings, and the next, she didn’t—or so it seemed to the family. One of Geri’s sons drove her down to Los Angeles where she talked to Betty’s neighbors to see what they knew.” He took a deep breath, and his next words were spoken with a conspiratorial edge. “Geri learned that Betty had been introduced to Geller by a friend of hers who had gone to his séances for years. And then, one day, that friend was found dead. Betty was inconsolable.

“That, and family hints and silences, make me think she and her girlfriend were more than just friends, if you get my meaning. But my mother’s generation rarely talked about such things, especially about family. Still, my suspicion could explain Betty’s estrangement from them. Anyway, Geller calmed her down and let her talk to her friend during a séance. Betty claimed they spoke of things only the two of them knew about, but you’ve seen how clever Geller is suggesting something and letting his prey fill in the missing parts.”

Rebecca was taken aback. “Prey?”

“Damned right,” Richie said. “This guy took advantage of a lonely old lady, gained her trust, and took her money. Betty had become a confirmed believer in Geller’s abilities, and ended up broke.”

“Or,” Rebecca said, “you can look at it from Geller’s viewpoint. People pay him money to take part in a séance. It’s not up to him to go into their finances to be sure they can afford his sessions.”

“True. But that’s where this gets really weird. After Betty spent all her money on Geller’s séances, she told a neighbor he was helping her with expenses.”

Rebecca was stunned. “Geller gave her money?”

“Yes. And, she told the neighbor he’d done the same for her friend who’d died—the one who had introduced her to Geller in the first place.”

“Could it be he’s a good man who felt bad that the woman went so far overboard? Maybe, once he found out, he simply wanted to help.”

“Yeah, he’s a real prince among men.” Richie apparently couldn’t sit and stare at paperwork any longer. He got up and paced. “I’m telling you, something’s wrong. But that’s all background. It’s what’s going on now that worries me.”

“Which is?”

“A few months ago, Geri learned Geller’s now in San Francisco and she went to see his act. She kept going, and now she’s convinced Carmela to join her. They claim they’re going just to be entertained, but I don’t buy it.

“Then, last week, Carmela and Geri went to a funeral of one of the women Geri would sometimes see at Geller’s séances. The woman supposedly had money, a nice house in the Marina, but she died alone, suddenly, and her funeral was practically that of a pauper. She had no family or anything, and her whole life revolved around her séances with Geller. She was, in fact, one of the very first Sandoristas in San Francisco. All in all, to me, her story sounds too similar to Betty Faroni’s to be a coincidence.”

“Now I remember!” Rebecca opened a file cabinet drawer, rifled through it, then pulled out a folder and put it on her desk. “It’s not a cold case, because it wasn’t even a case.”

She looked through the papers, then stopped at one of them and read it over quickly. “This is it. The deceased, Neda Fourman, was eighty-nine years old and had a heart condition. When the building manager found her dead in her apartment, we were called in. I remember Bill Sutter, who was working the scene with me, finding pamphlets about life after death, séances, and a group called the Sandoristas. At first he thought she was involved in Nicaraguan politics—as in San
-din-
istas. It was actually pretty funny.”

At Richie’s expression, she said, “Death-cop gallows humor, what can I say?”

He grinned at that, and then stood and leaned over her shoulder to look at the file with her.

“Anyway,” she continued, “the M.E. checked her over and we ruled it a death by natural causes.”

“I see,” Richie murmured as he skimmed through the paperwork.

She found his nearness unsettling, and scooted to one side. “I have a couple of contacts in the LAPD, and I’ll see if they saw anything at all questionable about the deaths of Betty Faroni and her friend. They might even have something on Geller.” She shut the file, and he straightened. “Time to go.”

Richie drove her back to her apartment, and then walked her to the door by the garage that led to the breezeway. There, he stopped.

“Good-night, Rebecca,” he said. “Thanks for looking into all this.”

She nodded. “No problem. You’re being a good son, looking out for your mother’s friend.”

“I look out, as much as I can, for everyone I care about,” he said, his voice and eyes soft.

She quickly unlocked the door, and then stepped into the breezeway before she faced him again. “Good-night. I’ll let you know if I find out anything.”

She shut the door and waited until she heard the Porsche’s engine start, and then, with a sigh, she headed for her apartment.

CHAPTER FOUR

The next morning, Richie picked up his phone to call his friend Shay, aka Henry Ian Tate III, aka HIT-man, with information about Neda Fourman: age, address, and date of death. He’d gotten the data as he leaned over Rebecca in Homicide last night. Thinking about being that close to her, alone, the lights dim … it had been all he could do not to pick up where they’d left off some months ago in his living room, the first and only time he’d ever seriously kissed her. He might have given her a peck on the cheek in greeting or whatever from time to time, but that day, in his living room, now
that
was a kiss.

Hell. Who knew he’d have such thoughts while in a Homicide bureau? His friends would snicker.

He had realized back then that he was starting to fall for her and broke it off. She was the type of woman a guy could get serious about, which made her the last type he wanted in his life.

And since she’d made it clear she didn’t care to ever get serious about him, things were cool between them. Cool in the good sense.

That was why he was able to ask her to help him find out about this modern day Harry Houdini. They were simply friends and this was strictly business, quiet nights in Homicide notwithstanding.

He made the call. Shay picked up, and Richie gave him the information. He didn’t even need to say what he wanted done with it. Shay would know. Talk about psychic—the guy was spooky, and it wasn’t because of any mind-reading ability.

Shay liked to say the moniker “HIT-man” referred to his prowess as a computer hacker, but he was also a deadly shot, military-sniper level, and he owned a battery of fire arms. Rumor had it he had an MBA from the Wharton School of Business. But then, there were a lot of rumors about Shay, including that he’d been in the CIA. Richie was one of the few people who knew the truth—he and Shay had been friends for years—but at times Shay’s eyes held such icy coldness that even Richie wondered if there weren’t parts of the story he didn’t know.

The one thing Richie was certain of, was that Shay was too damned smart to be doing hacking, or worse, for a living.

But right now, it was Shay’s hacking skills he needed. Shay would be able to find out things about Neda Fourman’s life that not even Homicide could learn. And if “call me Sandy” had anything to do with it, Shay would find that out as well.

o0o

That same morning, Rebecca went through her notes about Neda Fourman. The review confirmed that there was no reason for her and Sutter to have questioned Neda’s death as anything but natural. She was simply an old woman who’d had a heart attack.

Rebecca called her contacts in the Los Angeles Police Department to find out what she could about Betty Faroni’s death. There again, a heart attack, no question about it. They also had nothing on Sandor Geller.

Rebecca wondered if she really wanted to pursue this, or just drop it. On the one hand, she had no case. Despite what might or might not have happened in Los Angeles, Neda Fourman’s death appeared as natural as any elderly person’s with a heart condition. And for that matter, so did Betty Faroni’s.

But, what if Richie was right? There could be four old ladies all biting the dust a wee bit earlier than nature intended: not only Neda Fourman and Betty Faroni, but also the unnamed woman Richie simply referred to as “Betty’s girlfriend,” and, possibly, the woman with the funeral fit for a pauper last week.

Although she was probably wasting her time, Rebecca picked up the phone and got through to Geller’s secretary—a woman who sounded awfully cheerful for someone who worked around séances and, supposedly, the dead. Rebecca set up a meeting with Sandor Geller at 5 p.m. to discuss Neda Fourman who, at least, had once been her case.

At the appointed time, she went to his suite of offices in a Victorian-style house on Octavia Street near Vallejo. With its dark blue, purple and white gingerbread facade, a turret, and gabled windows, it looked like the perfect place to hold a séance.

The interior appeared to have been completely renovated. Despite the Victorian furniture and faux oil lamps, it was set up like an office suite. The young, teeth-achingly perky receptionist led her from the parlor/reception area through a long corridor. On the left she passed open double doors that looked in on a generous room with a sofa, comfortable chairs, a large round table, and floor-to-ceiling bookcases filled with thick, serious-looking tomes. She wondered if Sandy held his group sessions there.

On the right, a row of offices gave insight to the size of Geller’s business. Answering phone calls, emails, and requests for private meetings and public appearances seemed to require a couple of people full time, plus a bookkeeper.

All this was quite amazing for someone who held public performances at what was essentially an old, run-down theater smaller than many high school auditoriums.

At the end of the hall, the receptionist had her enter Geller’s surprisingly sterile office, with a desk, and a small sitting area with a leather-covered sofa, chair, and coffee table. One modern painting filled with red and yellow lines and squares hung on a wall. As she took the chair by the sofa, the receptionist offered tea or coffee. She chose coffee.

Some ten minutes later, the doorknob turned, and Sandor Geller walked in. He was casually dressed in jeans and a blue pullover. She stood. As they introduced themselves, she saw he was older than he had appeared on stage where he wore make-up, with freshly washed and blow-dried hair that flopped youthfully about. Now, she could see age lines on his face, as well as weariness and redness in his eyes.

After preliminary pleasantries, he sat down on the sofa. “So tell me, Inspector, what can I do for you?”

She had to admit that even bloodshot, there was something intriguingly intense about his blue-eyed stare. “I’m looking into the death of a woman named Neda Fourman. Does her name mean anything to you, Mr. Geller?”

“Call me Sandy,” he said, and then his face took on an expression of benevolence and dismay. “Ah, yes. Neda. She was a complete delight. An older woman, rather sickly, as I recall. But she died many weeks ago. That can’t be why you’re here, can it?” Then, as if he’d just been goosed, he sprang to his feet. “I just realized—you’re in homicide. That doesn’t mean there was something suspicious about her death, does it?”

She all but gawked at him. Was this guy always acting? Never before did a person she was interviewing need to remind himself that she was in homicide. “If there was nothing suspicious, I wouldn’t be involved, Mr. Geller.”

“Call me—”

“Sandy,” she said quickly.

He sat again, his eyebrows knitted as if he were greatly troubled, and his voice barely above a whisper. “You aren’t thinking she was murdered, are you?”

She didn’t bother to answer. “What can you tell me about Ms. Fourman?”

“There’s not really a lot for me to say. She was sweet, never married. But there was a man she had pined over for most of her life. Unfortunately, he had a wife, and so she simply loved him from afar. He was rather young when he died, only sixty, and she wanted to know if he had ever thought of her.”

Rebecca was sure she knew the answer, but still asked. “Had he?”

He smacked his hands together as if in prayerful joy and with a face filled with compassion said, “Oh, yes. I was able to contact him and we learned that he had been quite in love with her, but he never felt he was good enough for her. That was the reason he never acted on that love.”

“When you say you ‘contacted’ him, you mean …?”

“Yes. On the other side.”

“I see.”

“It was all quite sad.” Sandy looked almost as melancholy as he had on stage. “But once she learned how he’d felt, it actually made her happy. She knew she hadn’t spent a lifetime being foolish.”

“So she saw you once and you were able to do all that for her?”

He chuckled. “Oh, Inspector! I can tell you know little about mediums. Think of it this way. Suppose, in an ocean filled with drops of water—for that’s easily the number of spirits floating about out there in Heaven, or The Great Beyond, or the Wheel of Life, or whatever you want to call it—someone comes and asks you to find one particular droplet. It would be impossible, wouldn’t it?”

She nodded.

“Well, the good news is that the person doing the asking already has formed some sort of a connection to that particular spirit. Think of it as a thread, a very thin thread, between their subconscious. It’s my job to take hold of that thread and carefully pull it towards the person, doing my best not to break it. But often it breaks, and then we have to establish the connection once again another time.”

“So her thread broke over and over?” Rebecca asked.

He laughed again. She was growing really sick of all his guffaws. “It sounds so crude when you put it that way. I’m afraid it did take awhile to connect with him, but once his spirit came to her, through me of course, how very happy she was. She came back a number of times simply to meet with him again.”

“I see. And what was his name?”

At that, Geller sent a text to his secretary to find the Fourman file and bring it to him.

“While we’re waiting for that information,” Rebecca said, “tell me about the Sandoristas.”

This time, his chuckle turned into a loud belly laugh. Something was seriously wrong with this guy. “A fellow who came to one of my group sessions in Los Angeles first used the term, and it stuck. That’s all.”

“But people join the group.”

“They do. In great numbers. Very great numbers. Since I can’t do everything, it’s basically a self-help bunch. We have a monthly newsletter, and a number of local chapters throughout the country. Members get to know lots about each other while in the sessions, and before you know it, many become friends, sharing good times and bad with each other as well as each other’s spirits. It’s really quite remarkable.”

“I would say so,” Rebecca muttered.

“Yes, and it gets even better when their spirits become friends with each other as well. So now, people in the group know that their loved ones have company in the afterworld.”

“Sounds like a party.”

He began to laugh again, but abruptly stopped as he realized she was being sarcastic. “You aren’t a believer.” His voice held not only dismay, but also peevishness.

“I’m afraid not. From what I’ve seen working Homicide, I think it’s just fine that some murderers end up as nothing more than dust. And good riddance to them.”

“That, my dear Inspector Mayfield, is what Hell is all about.”

“Touché,” she said.

He smiled and studied her a moment. “You intrigue me. You're a student of death, I'm a student of what happens after death. If you’re free, I would love to carry on this conversation over dinner. I have a favorite French restaurant just a few blocks from here, and if you could accompany me, I would be most overjoyed.”

He was on his guard here in the office, clearly acting, and she wondered if he might be more relaxed and open away from it. Also, talking to him did bring back some of her latent interest in psychic phenomena. “Overjoyed?” She couldn’t help but tease at his use of the word. “How can I say no to that? And it is almost dinner time.”

He gave her a broad, deep-dimpled smile. “Wonderful. It’s also the cocktail hour, so I hope you’ll consider yourself off duty by the time we get there.”

“That’s very possible,” she said.

Just then, his secretary stepped into the room and handed him a folder. 

He looked perplexed a moment, and faced Rebecca. “Ah, what was it I was supposed to look up for you?”

“The name of the man Neda Fourman spent her life in love with. The one whose spirit came to her.”

“Oh, yes. Poor old Neda.” He opened the folder and flipped through several pages. “Here he is, Kenneth Neary.”

She jotted down the name, and then closed her notebook. “Done.”