Double Take

this beautiful house with me.”
    “A thousand bucks an hour? What a racket.”
    “A racket? Maybe, but—”
    “But what?”
    “Come on back to August’s study. I’ve got lots and lots of tapes, of August and Wallace, even a few of Bevlin on TV. Also some of Kathryn Golden, another psychic medium. You’ll want to speak to her too. Let’s see what you think after you’ve seen them.”
    “I’m trying to keep an open mind.” Yeah, like I’m going to believe in spirit communication. Not in this lifetime.
    “The mediums—do they see themselves as something like priests—the great connectors between those left behind and those in the beyond?”
    “Something like that. The Beyond is just one name for the afterlife. August always called it The Bliss, Wallace calls it The After. I’ll give you one of the books August wrote.”
    “And one each of Tammerlane’s and Wagner’s.”
    She nodded. “Yes, and Kathryn Golden too. Come and watch the videos and tell me August isn’t for real, Cheney.”

CHAPTER 22
    ATLANTA, GEORGIA
    Monday

    David Caldicott lived on Lily Pond Lane in Buckhead. His hundred-year-old wooden house, set back from the road, was funky, no other word for it, with its pale blue and bright yellow paint job, seven bicycles lined up on the deep front porch, and a good dozen glorious old magnolia trees pressing against the house on all sides, making it one glorious fire hazard. Yet the big house fit in nicely with the other well-tended homes on either side. It was the charming one, the one that drew the eye and a smile.
    They knew he was home, but had decided not to call him first. This was to be a surprise.
    A young girl, nicely tanned, wearing short shorts and a halter top, her hair in a ponytail, opened the door and stared at them. She was chewing gum. She blew a lovely big bubble and popped it, splatting it over her mouth and half her face.
    Dix said, “How old are you?”
    She gave him a huge grin through the bubble gum, pulled it off her face and suddenly she didn’t look like a teenager anymore. “Goodness, I love you, whoever you are. I’m thirty-three. You did think I was really young, right? If not, please lie. My ego needs a boost right now. David’s being a real jerk and I’m ready to drop-kick him out the window except it’s his damned house.” She shrugged. “Come on in. You want to see him, right?”
    “Right,” Ruth said. “I’m Special Agent Ruth Warnecki, FBI, and this is Sheriff Dixon Noble.”
    They badged and shielded her as she popped another bubble, looked startled, then shook their hands. “Hey, I’m Whitney Jones. You here to arrest David? Was he smuggling violins from Russia? A stolen Stradivarius maybe?”
    “Not that we know of,” Ruth said. “No, we need to speak to him about another matter. We’ll keep the smuggling in mind, though.”
    “I know the FBI has this stolen art section, right? He’s guilty as sin, I know it. David! Come on down, you’ve got cops here to speak to you or arrest you, or something.”
    Ruth laughed, couldn’t help herself. “What’d he do, Ms. Jones?”
    “He was supposed to cook out steaks with me last night, but he got caught up in a jam session with some of the other musicians in the orchestra, played in this sleazy dive, and forgot.”
    “A real jerk, all right,” Dix said. “You want me to knock some of his teeth loose?”
    “Nah, I couldn’t French kiss him then. No, I’ll get him where it really hurts—he loves sex and that’s easy enough to withdraw from his diet. He’ll be going cold turkey.” She laughed and waved them into a living room filled with an assortment of eclectic furnishings, from a huge overstuffed red velvet brocade Victorian sofa to a heavy, highly ornate, nearly black Spanish chest that looked to be five hundred years old, with every year showing on its highly shined battered surface. Dix supposed David Caldicott used it for a chair since there was a twisted retro hippie table with a chipped lava lamp sitting next to it. Persian carpets covered the banged-up oak floor, many of them so old they were nearly in tatters. Paintings and photos covered most of the walls—highly romanticized pre-Raphaelite copies and dozens of photos, all of them of famous composers and performers going back to daguerreotypes from the nineteenth century, showing men with bushy whiskers, wiry beards, and fanatical eyes.
    Sunlight poured through the wide front windows, the only spot where a huge