Trapped (A Jenny Watkins Mystery Book 5) Read online

  “Sure,” Zack replied. “Why wouldn’t it?”

  Jenny made a disapproving face, although her voice returned to its playful nature. “You didn’t take enough time to think about that. It was a serious question that required consideration, but you didn’t give it any.”

  “Okay, I know what this is,” Zack said, waving his finger. “I’ve heard about stuff like this before from my friends. This is one of those damned-if-I-do, damned-if-I-don’t situations.”

  “What are you talking about?” The double doors slid open, and the couple walked into the airport.

  “You’re upset because I answered too quickly. But if I’d paused and thought about it before I said anything, you would have taken that as doubt, even if I had said yes.”

  Jenny considered his argument before conceding, “You’re probably right.”

  “So either way I’m totally screwed. But I’m telling you the answer is yes, I want to marry you, baby or not.”

  Jenny couldn’t help but smile. “But you didn’t propose until you found out I was pregnant.”

  “But that doesn’t mean I hadn’t thought about it.”

  Nerves surged within her as she glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. “You’d really thought about it before that?”

  “Sure,” he said. “I’m thirty now, and things were going really well, so yeah, I’d toyed with the idea a little bit. I just figured I’d wait until your divorce was final before I asked you, because at the time there was no reason to hurry.” He didn’t look at her as he put his arm around her.

  This moment made Jenny want to scream, Yes, yes, yes! Yes, I’ll marry you! But she knew she couldn’t allow her emotions to get the best of her. She’d been down this road before, and she’d learned first-hand just how horrible a seemingly-promising romance could become. Simply knowing that his proposal was genuine was not a reason to accept it.

  But what would be? What was she going to need to see from him before she’d agree to say yes?

  Distracting herself with logistical matters, Jenny searched the signs until she found Ingunn’s flight, and she and Zack took seats on a bench while they waited near the baggage claim. Their conversation dealt with the fact that their relationship had consisted largely of airports and funerals, much more so than the average couple. Soon Ingunn’s flight status changed from on time to arrived, prompting Zack and Jenny to stand up and move closer to the hall through which she would inevitably enter.

  An elderly man being pushed in a wheelchair with a tall orange flag was the first to come through. Then a second gray-haired woman in a wheelchair emerged, after which a third orange flag came into view. “Good grief,” Zack said. “That’s a lot of wheelchairs for one flight.”

  “The plane’s from Florida,” Jenny noted.

  Zack made a face. “Oh yeah. I guess that makes sense.”

  After the parade of wheelchairs came through without a spark of recognition from Jenny, a lone woman with white hair came walking around the corner, carrying a small suitcase. Her stride was determined, her pace faster than some of the younger people around her. Jenny immediately knew it was Ingunn.

  With a smile Jenny approached her. “Amma! So nice to finally see you in person.”

  The woman set down her suitcase and studied Jenny up and down. Placing her hands on Jenny’s shoulders, Ingunn whispered, “You do have the gift.”

  “Yes,” she replied with a smile, “I really do have it.”

  The woman hugged Jenny in a surprisingly tight squeeze, causing Jenny to make a face in Zack’s direction. For an older woman, Ingunn sure was strong.

  Ingunn let go of the embrace, and Jenny announced, “Amma, this is my boyfriend Zack. Zack, this is my grandmother Ingunn.”

  Ingunn cupped Zack’s face. “A handsome one, eh?” she said. “You can call me Amma, too. Everybody calls me Amma.”

  “Nice to meet you, Amma.” Zack shot Jenny a knowing glance.

  Ingunn stepped back and straightened out her clothes before picking up her suitcase again.

  “Here, let me carry that for you,” Zack posed with an outstretched hand.

  “Nah.” Ingunn made a dismissive gesture. “It’s not heavy. I’ve got it.”

  Feisty, Jenny thought. Her mind immediately went back to Elanor, whose fiery personality was not enough to overcome a body that had ultimately failed her. Ingunn, it seemed, had the physical spunk to match the personality. Jenny felt a sense of pride—that was her grandmother carrying her own suitcase—but she also felt sadness that Elanor couldn’t have enjoyed similar health at the same age.

  Deep down inside, Jenny missed her friend dearly.

  “Okay, well I guess we’ll get the rest of your luggage,” Zack said, snapping Jenny out of her temporary sadness.

  Ingunn raised her small suitcase and patted it. “This is all I brought. I pack light.”

  “Alrighty, then,” Zack said with an amused glance in Jenny’s direction. “To the car we go.”

  After small talk about the quality of Ingunn’s flight and the lines at Miami Airport, Jenny brought up their interesting afternoon as they pulled out of the parking lot. “I might like to stop at the crime scene on our way back, if you don’t mind,” Jenny concluded. “Maybe you’ll be able to offer some insight that I couldn’t get.”

  “Eight bodies?” Ingunn said. “And the letter T?”

  “That’s all I’ve been able to come up with,” Jenny confessed.

  Ingunn nodded. “I’ll take a look.”

  “I don’t know if you have the same issue I do,” Jenny began. “I have difficulty getting readings when there’s too much commotion. And as we were leaving, the media was arriving in droves. It will most likely be a circus by the time we get there.”

  “Get me close,” Ingunn said, “but not too close. I might be able to get something.”

  Jenny sat back in her seat, confident that she was in very good hands. “I think I can do that.”

  As soon as they exited the highway and headed down route two-fifty-seven, Ingunn declared, “I’m getting something.”

  “Already?” Jenny asked. “The crime scene is still about fifteen minutes away.”

  Ingunn remained silent, which Jenny respected. As they continued down the road, Ingunn declared, “It’s fading. We passed it.”

  “Passed it?” Jenny asked with surprise. “We haven’t gotten there yet.”

  Ingunn shook her head. “No, we passed it.”

  Jenny searched for a spot to turn the car around, but the remote road offered few opportunities for a three-point-turn. Eventually she found a dirt driveway she could pull into, and soon she was headed back toward the highway.

  Jenny drove slower this time, much to the dismay of the driver who had approached very quickly from behind her. The passengers of Jenny’s car were silent as they got closer to truck stop alley, until Ingunn directed her to pull into the first truck stop on the right. Once in the parking lot, Jenny started to feel her own senses buzzing, leading her to a remote parking spot in the back row.

  Ingunn and Jenny both got out of the car and absorbed their messages. “There’s something significant here,” Jenny noted softly, “but I don’t feel fear.”

  “Agreed,” Ingunn replied. “Whatever bad things happened to those people didn’t happen here.” She closed her eyes and kept them that way as she pointed to a parking space. “There was a small blue car there.”

  “I’m getting that capital T again,” Jenny said. She found it intriguing that two psychics standing next to each other could receive such different messages.

  Ingunn opened her eyes, indicating to the others that her vision was over. “So who do we tell about this?”

  “I imagine the police are still milling around the crime scene and will be for days,” Zack said. “I’m sure we can still catch them there.”

  “If we can get close enough,” Jenny noted. “At this point it is probably pure chaos.”

  Chaos turned out to be an understatement. J
enny couldn’t even get anywhere near the crime scene; as soon as she turned off the main road a police officer stopped her, asking her for her reason for being there.

  “I found the bodies,” she said, “and I have some more information for the police.”

  “Mmm-hmm. Sure you did,” the officer said. “If you’ve got anything to tell the police, you can call a tip into the station. You don’t need to be here.”

  “He’s right,” Ingunn said. “You don’t need to be there.”

  Unsure what Ingunn had meant by that, Jenny decided to accept her statement at face value. “Okay,” Jenny said pleasantly to the officer, “I’ll just call the station later.”

  This time managing a three-point-turn, Jenny reversed the car and ventured back out onto the main road.

  “Why don’t we need to be there?” Jenny immediately asked her grandmother.

  “There’s too much going on,” Ingunn said, waving her hand around.

  “I understand,” Jenny replied sincerely. They headed back to the Heritage Inn, where once again Ingunn carried her own suitcase into the building.

  Jessica’s desk was unoccupied as they walked in. “Let’s see if we can find her for you,” Jenny said to Ingunn. “If not, you can take a load off in our room for a while.” Jenny clammed up uncomfortably for a moment; she had introduced Zack as her boyfriend and then just gave away the fact that they shared a room. At moments like this she wished she was married to Zack.

  Ingunn seemed unfazed. She looked curiously around the room for a moment before saying, “Someone is upset.”

  Jenny looked at her with disbelief. “You’re picking up on that?” She hadn’t felt it herself.

  Ingunn set her suitcase down and strode intuitively up the curved stairwell. Turning right at the top of the steps, she walked with purpose toward the Statesman Room where Jenny and Zack had been staying. The couple followed her, keeping their distance to respect her abilities.

  “He resides mostly in here,” Ingunn said, pointing at the door.

  “We think his name is Andrew,” Jenny whispered.

  A gust of wind came from nowhere, causing a shiver up Jenny’s spine.

  “No,” Ingunn said, turning to look at her granddaughter. “I’m quite certain his name is Samuel.”

  Chapter 5

  “This is friggin unreal,” Zack said with disbelief.

  “Are you sure?” Jenny posed to Ingunn. “I’d gotten the name Andrew before.”

  “He made it very clear,” Ingunn replied curtly. “His name is Samuel.”

  Jenny thought about her previous visions for a moment. So far the voice had said two names and showed visuals of two people in rooms other than the Statesman room. Perhaps the spirit was really named Samuel, and he was referring to two other people who went by Andrew and Elizabeth.

  “Do we need to go back out to the cemetery and look for Samuels?” Zack asked.

  Jenny considered that question before saying, “The cemetery didn’t give me much other than last names that may or may not have been false leads. Maybe we should focus on the inside of the house until we figure out what’s going on.” She turned to Ingunn. “Did he say anything else?”

  “No,” Ingunn declared, walking past Zack and Jenny to head back downstairs. “It was brief.”

  Jenny smiled; Ingunn was certainly a no-nonsense kind of woman.

  Faced with little choice but to follow, Jenny and Zack started down the steps as well. Jessica must have heard them come down because she emerged from a back room to greet them, looking pale as a sheet.

  “What’s the matter?” Jenny asked quickly. “Are you okay?”

  “It’s terrible,” Jessica replied, seeming almost lost. “Have you heard about what they found off the highway?”

  Jenny made a face. “I’m familiar with it, yes.”

  “They’re up to twelve bodies now. They think most of them are runaways from up and down the east coast.”

  Twelve. The number sickened Jenny.

  Jessica continued, “Somebody’s been preying on these girls and dumping their bodies off the highway, right up the road from here.” She shook her head. “This is positively awful.”

  “If they find that blue car, they’ll find their guy,” Ingunn said matter-of-factly.

  Jessica glanced up at Ingunn with silent awe.

  “Jessica, this is my grandmother, Ingunn,” Jenny said, although she was sure the introduction was unnecessary after that comment.

  “You know who did this?” Jessica whispered. She looked like she could faint.

  “No, but he drove a blue car.” Ingunn noticed a string hanging from her sleeve and pulled it off with a yank. “But so do a lot of other people, so it’s not a lot to go on quite yet.”

  At a loss, Jessica simply looked back at Jenny.

  “We drove past the crime scene,” Jenny explained, “and we have a theory or two about who is involved.”

  “Don’t sell yourself short,” Zack said, turning to Jessica. “My girlfriend here found the bodies. She’s the one who led the cops to them.”

  “You found them?”

  Jenny nodded modestly. “Yes, I was led to them. Somebody pulled me in that direction...One of those victims obviously wanted to be found.” Furrowing her brow, Jenny added to Jessica, “You don’t look well. Do you need to lie down?”

  “Just a seat,” Jessica said, walking past the crowd to a small couch in the lobby. “And maybe a glass of water.”

  “I can get that,” Zack suggested. “I’m the least useful person here.” He disappeared off in the direction of the kitchen.

  Sitting down on the sofa, Jessica announced, “Yes, that’s a little better.”

  “I’m glad,” Jenny replied. “I don’t want to upset you.”

  “You’re not upsetting me at all. What’s happened just down the road…that’s upsetting.”

  Ingunn chimed in. “Would it make you feel any better to know we have a name to go along with your presence here at the inn?”

  Jessica looked confused. “I thought his name was Andrew.”

  “It doesn’t appear that way,” Jenny explained. “I think Andrew and Elizabeth were the names of the people I saw in my visions, but the spirit himself seems to have a different name.”

  “He goes by Samuel,” Ingunn announced.

  Zack returned with a glass of water. “Here you go,” he said, carefully passing it over to Jessica.

  She drank from it quickly. “Thank you, Zack,” she whispered when she finished her sip. “That does help.”

  Jenny continued the conversation, asking Jessica, “Does the name Samuel mean anything to you?”

  “Samuel…” Jessica repeated. Looking back and forth between Jenny and Ingunn, she declared, “I’m afraid not.”

  Jenny tried to mask her disappointment while she thought about who this Samuel may have been. Suddenly a notion occurred to her. “Wait a minute…what about the children?”

  Jessica looked surprised. “The children?”

  “Yes, the children. You have mentioned the first names of the homeowners who had lived here in the past…but what about the children? Is it possible that Andrew, Elizabeth and Samuel were siblings who lived here with their parents?”

  Zack looked at Jessica with wide eyes. “Do you have any record of what the kids were named?”

  Placing her hand on her chin, Jessica seemed to think hard for a moment. “Maybe…I can certainly check on that. Come to think of it, I may even have one better.” Forgetting her previous uneasiness, she hopped off of the couch and disappeared quickly into the office.

  Jenny looked at her boyfriend and grandmother. “I wonder what that was about.”

  They didn’t have to wait long to find out. Jessica returned awkwardly carrying what appeared to be a sofa-size painting wrapped in a blanket. Zack quickly noticed her struggle and took the painting off her hands, setting it down gently on the floor while Jessica removed its covering.

  The image, which appeared to be
from long ago, showed eight well-dressed children in various rigid poses around a couple that she presumed to be their parents. The children seemed to range in age from the mid-teens to the smallest child, who was just a toddler. Jenny’s eyes scanned the picture until they fixated on one of the older daughters and what appeared to be the oldest son.

  “That’s them,” she whispered, pointing to the two familiar faces. “Those are the people I saw in my visions.”

  “Yeah, but who are they?” Zack asked.

  “This,” Jessica said as she looked intently at Zack, “is the Davies family.”

  A brief silence hung over the group as the implications of this latest discovery set in. “Well, then,” Ingunn began in an emotionless voice, “it looks like we may have our answer.”

  “Do you think Samuel is one of these children?” Jessica asked.

  “I can’t say for sure,” Jenny began. “From what I understand of my abilities, I can only see what the spirit saw, so this Samuel person has to be someone who had access to Elizabeth and Andrew while they were sick. The spirit may not necessarily be one of the other children, but it could be a housekeeper or a slave or something of the sort.”

  “Or a doctor,” Zack noted.

  Jenny shrugged. “Or a doctor. But whoever this person is, they clearly have an unresolved issue that is causing them to linger.”

  “And it has to be a powerful one,” Ingunn noted. “When spirits can make themselves known to people without the gift, that means they are very passionate about something.”

  Jessica looked concerned. “I wonder what that issue could be.”

  “I imagine it involves the two sick people,” Jenny noted. “I don’t know why else I’d be shown those scenes.”

  “Samuel cared about those people,” Ingunn declared bluntly.

  After some silent deliberation, Jenny noted, “I guess that makes it more plausible that Samuel was one of the siblings.”

  “So you’re saying it’s possible that this spirit is a child?” Jessica asked with disbelief.

  “Not necessarily,” Ingunn clarified. “Even if Samuel is one of those children in the picture, that doesn’t mean he died as a child. It could be that he lived well into adulthood, and he’s just dealing with some unrest that stems from this house.”