Double Take

in. That’s what Soldan’s best at.”
    Cheney said, “That’s called a cold reading?”
    “Yeah, as opposed to a hot reading, which is fraud, you know, getting information about people without their knowledge before the fact.”
    “So,” Cheney said, wanting to sit down but not about to fling himself onto one of those beanbags, “this Soldan is a con artist?”
    “Maybe.”
    “And Kathryn Golden?”
    “She’s good-looking, you know, and uses that well. But I can tell you for sure she’s a psychic. I’ve seen her fall into a vision and I know it was for real. She told Wallace once that he’d left his jockey shorts in Violet’s backpack. She was this young woman Wallace was seeing at the time. I thought Wallace would belt her, especially since he didn’t know if he really had left his shorts there. And Kathryn’s about the best I’ve seen at reading people, especially those who don’t realize what she’s doing.”
    Julia said, “But you think she made that up, you know, to tease Wallace?”
    “Hey,” Bevlin said, “in this business you can say you spoke to Oswald and who’s to say otherwise? You can look at a photo of Sonny Bono, claim he’s singing all over heaven wearing bell bottoms, that he hated being a politician but he really loved skiing and just look where that got him. Or you can say that when John Jr. hit the water, his mom Jackie was first in line to welcome him into the light, whatever. Again, if all you’re interested in is entertaining, or getting an emotional response, there’s little to stop you. Who’s to say you’re making it up?”
    Anyone with half a functioning brain, Cheney thought. He was feeling the mire creeping up to his knees. Time to refocus. “You think Kathryn might have murdered Dr. Ransom because he refused to leave Julia for her?”
    “Nah, Kathryn wouldn’t ever be into that sort of thing. Also, she knew August really loved Julia, so there would never be a question of his leaving her for any other woman.”
    He smiled at Julia. “No, August wouldn’t have left you even if the famous Madame Zorastre from nineteenth-century Prague had come back and offered herself. August really admired Madame Z, as we refer to her. I never heard him say that about any other psychic. Hey, he’s probably met her by now, don’t you think?”
    “Why not?” Cheney said.
    Suddenly Bevlin walked away from them and over to the big front window. He looked down. “I thought so,” he said over his shoulder. “My fuzzy old doll’s here and I’ve got to convince her that her husband wants her to listen to what his son has to say about this trust scam. Please find out who killed August, Agent Stone, and keep Julia safe.”
    Cheney and Julia passed the fuzzy old doll on the stairs going back down to the street. She paused, a little bird of a woman dressed in frilly pale blue. She looked them both up and down, and slowly nodded. “I can see that Mr. Wagner has helped you. You’re wonderfully attuned to each other. How lovely to be young and want to bundle all the time. Now it’s going to be my turn. Mr. Wagner will be so pleased for me—I’m going to marry my sweet young man.” And up the stairs she went, her step light, her pink scalp showing through her fluffy white hair.
    “Oh dear,” Julia said. “This isn’t going to make Bevlin’s day.”
    “Or Ralph’s. I feel like I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole. Bundling? Didn’t that go out in the eighteenth century?”
    “No, it never does.”

CHAPTER 31
    Xavier Makepeace stood at the window of his hotel room in downtown Palo Alto and sneered down at the people scurrying about like pointless lemmings, none of them going anywhere, none of them worth anything. He imagined picking up his Kalashnikov and mowing a wide swath down the middle of that unending noisy herd, thirty rounds so fast it made your teeth sting. It would put all those useless cretins right out of their misery.
    His Kalashnikov, his favorite assault rifle, was cheap and simple, and it never let him down. He always spoke its full name, liked the way it flowed on his tongue when he whispered it aloud, not the ridiculously shortened AK-47. Too bad he’d had to leave it tucked it away in his home in Montego Bay. But still, he enjoyed thinking about how it would feel to spray bullets from his open window—he could almost hear the screams, suck in the smell of terror, and the odor of gunshots and death. It always revved him like nothing