Dave Zeltserman - Bad Karma

“Have a good run?”

She was wearing one of his T-shirts as a nightgown and had a bowl of fresh fruit and granola in front of her alongside another bowl she had prepared for Shannon. Sitting there without any makeup and her long black hair mostly a mess from getting out of bed, she still took his breath away. He stood for a long moment before sitting at the table next to her.

“You’ve got my heart pounding faster now than when I was running up Flagstaff,” he said.

She laughed at that.

“You find that funny, huh?” he asked. “We’ll see how funny it is when you try explaining to the paramedics why I collapsed clutching my chest and why the big smile stretched across my face. Although one look at you and I think they’ll understand.”

She reached out and took hold of his good hand. “You didn’t answer my question,” she said.

“It was a good run. I needed it to clear my head.” Lifting her hand to his lips, he kissed it quickly. “This breakfast looks great, by the way. Thanks for putting it together.” He mixed some honey into the granola and took a spoonful of it, making sure to include some of the raspberries and blueberries she had added. “I’m going to have to get some business cards made up,” he said. “Maybe I’ll call myself the Crunchy-Granola Detective.”

She laughed again. “Hon, I don’t think it matters how much granola you eat or what type of metaphysical studies or new age classes you take. I don’t think you’d ever fit the definition of crunchy-granola.”

“You don’t, huh?”

“No, I don’t think so. If I’d made hardboiled eggs for breakfast instead, that would’ve been a better fit for you.”

“So I’m just a hardboiled egg?” he asked, a wry grin showing.

She placed a small hand on his cheek and caressed his skin lightly. “You’re definitely a tough guy,” she said. “You’d have to be to survive what you did. So why the funny mood this morning? What’s going on?”

“I guess nothing. When I saw Eli at the Center yesterday, he asked me to try to figure out why I’m still doing detective work, and you know, it’s a pretty good question. It just seems to be opposite to what I’m trying to do with my life here in Boulder.”

“I think you’re overanalyzing this,” she said. “Whatever the reason, it doesn’t matter. Whether it gives you purpose, a way to help people, or whatever. Personally, I think it’s because you’re driven to put bad guys away. But again, it doesn’t matter as long as you’re getting satisfaction from it.”

Shannon was going to recite Eli’s long-standing arguments about how it was interfering with the dream work and out-of-body experiences he was trying to induce, but decided against it. Instead, he took her hand from his cheek and gently kissed each small white knuckle before letting go.

“I forgot to ask you,” Susan said, her eyes sparkling, “how was the game?”

“It was fun. Sox won it in the ninth. I couldn’t quite get into it, though. I think I was distracted by this case.”

“I could’ve told you that would happen,” she said. “Whenever you take a case, your mind’s always churning away working on it. And it doesn’t stop until you’ve solved it. There’re times when I’ll look at you and know you’re a million miles away fitting together all of your clues and planning out your next move.”

“I guess I get preoccupied sometimes-”

“Sometimes?” A lightness danced in her brown eyes. “Try always, my darling. But that’s something I love about you, the passion you show in everything you undertake.”

They ate quietly after that. Susan tilted her head to one side as if an earlier thought just came back to her. “Did Eli end up going to the game with you?”

“Nah, he couldn’t stomach the idea of paying money to watch the Sox beat up on a last place team. It’s too bad. It turned out to be a pretty good game. I ended up going with one of the victims’ neighbors.”

“Really?” Susan asked, her face scrunching up into a puzzled look. “That sounds kind of odd.”

Shannon smiled. “Not really. It turns out he’s from Boston and had an extra ticket for the game. He knew I was from Boston also so he invited me. And in this crunchy-granola town, how likely is it you’re going to find someone willing to take an extra ticket for a ballgame?”

“Sounds like a friendly guy.”

“Yeah, he is.” He winked at her. “You’d like him too. Passionate about his baseball. I just hope he didn’t kill his neighbors.”

Susan’s eyes widened. “You don’t think that’s possible?”

“I don’t think it’s very likely, but he did tell me there were some noise problems with them. Anyway, I should be able to cross him off quickly. I’m going to need to talk to more of the neighbors and see if any of them had problems also. But, as I told him last night, lesson two, leave no stone unturned.”

With a thin smile, she asked, “What’s that about no stones?”

“I’m schooling him in the art of being a detective. That was just one of the many pearls of wisdom I shared with him. By the way, I ran into Ed Poulet and Jimmy Mason at the game.”

“You’re joking?”

“Nope.”

“Of all the people from back home for you to run into,” Susan said, wrinkling her nose.

“It wasn’t bad. They acted as if we were long-lost pals.”

“I just bet they did!”

“They did. Believe it or not it was kind of nice seeing them, and in a way, it gave me some closure. Of course, I don’t think I’d want to make a habit out of it.”

“I hope not,” Susan said, laughing. “So what are your plans?”

“First, I want to cross my new baseball buddy off the list. Then talk to more people and see where it leads. Also, I’m thinking I’m going to have to take a trip to Kansas and visit the dead girl’s family.”

“If you have to go…”

“I’ll try to make it a one day trip. Maybe see if I can schedule it for tomorrow. With some luck I can fly out there and be back in time to take you out for a nice dinner.”

“Well, I guess as long as it’s a nice dinner,” she said, exaggerating her pout.

Shannon checked the clock on the wall and saw he still had twenty minutes before he was to meet Eli. The clock was one of the nice touches Susan had added-made from a ceramic plate that had been painted with a barnyard rooster on it. He gathered up the dishes and, after putting the tea kettle on for Susan, washed them and laid them out to dry. After the water boiled, he packed a tea ball with the Darjeeling brand that Susan liked and started steeping it in a cup of hot water.

He caught a glimpse of Susan watching him, her eyes half-closed, a warm and contented look relaxing her face.

“You meeting Eli this morning?” she asked.

“Yeah, I have to leave in a few minutes. Although seeing you like this, I’m thinking it wouldn’t be a bad idea to be late again. And this time more than twenty minutes late.”

She laughed, showing the delicate soft curvature of her throat. “If only,” she said. “I have work I need to do, and my homeopathy group is coming over at eleven so I’ll be busy through lunch. But let’s plan a nice dinner together.”

Shannon nodded. He felt a dryness in his mouth as he watched the playful half-smile forming over her lips. “I don’t want to interfere with your work,” he said. “But would you mind asking one of your patients if I could meet with him? The one who acts as a psychic for the police, helping them find dead bodies?”

Susan thought about it, nodded. “I’ll ask him. But he never mentioned anything about being able to communicate with the dead, only about being able to see people as they’re close to death or have just died.”