Read Online When The Spirit Moves You (The Jeff Resnick Mysteries) by LL Bartlett - Free Book Online

Jeff Resnick's curiosity is piqued when he sees a sign advertising psychic readings. At first he's sure the medium is a fake, but then his funny feelings lead him to suspect that a murder has taken place in the dilapidated house where Madam Zahara holds her readings. Just who died and how? And why is Jeff compelled to look for bodies buried in the medium’s yard?
     
     
    When The Spirit Moves You
    A Jeff Resnick Story
    By L.L. Bartlett
     
    Copyright © 2011 by L.L. Bartlett ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously--and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is purely coincidental.
     
    Other Print & Electronic Books by L.L. Bartlett
     
    The Jeff Resnick Mysteries
    Murder On The Mind
    Dead In Red
    Cheated By Death
    Bound By Suggestion
    Short Stories :
    When The Spirit Moves You (A Jeff Resnick Mystery)
    Bah! Humbug (A Jeff Resnick Mystery)
    Cold Case (A Jeff Resnick Mystery)
    Abused: A Daughter’s Story
     
    * * *
    This short story takes place after the Jeff Resnick novel DEAD IN RED.
     
    When The Spirit Moves You
    A Jeff Resnick Story
    By L.L. Bartlett
     
    I’d passed the hulking, ramshackle house every few days for the last three months on my way home from my girlfriend Maggie Brennan’s house. The yard hadn’t seen the services of a lawnmower or weed whacker in quite some time. But it was the glowing pink-and-green neon sign that seemed to call to me: PSYCHIC $10.
    Since I got whacked on the head with a Reggie Jackson baseball bat last winter, I can sometimes sense people’s emotions. And sometimes I know stuff about them, and it’s usually not good. I don’t consider myself a psychic. No way. In fact, I’ve come to view that as a dirty word. But being mugged by a couple of teenage thugs changed me. Slammed my brains into my thick skull—mooshed them up a bit—and . . . now I’m not the same as I was before. Not the same at all.
    It was all still pretty new to me, and I wasn’t sure I always trusted the feelings—insight—that came to me. I mean, I did—and I didn’t want to.
    But that day I had an extra ten-dollar bill in my wallet and I decided—why not test it? If the person advertising such a trait was for real, I might find a kindred spirit. If not—okay, when you’re broke, ten bucks is a lot of money, but I had a roof over my head, a part-time job and, thanks to the generosity of my older half brother, I was nowhere near starving. Maybe it was the neon that seduced me on that hot August afternoon when I found myself pulling into the gravel drive.
    The sign on the lawn said “For Entertainment Only,” but I was pretty sure the gullible would expect something more than that. And why was I so intrigued anyway? My friend Sophie Levin was like me. The old Polish lady didn’t like the word psychic either. She read auras—or as she put it, she “saw colors” and then knew things.
    I looked through the car’s passenger-side window at what once might have been a lovely home. Hard times had fallen on the old two-story house. Was it supposed to be a poor man’s Tara? The Corinthian columns that held up the porch roof were rotted at the base. Flaked paint chips the size of oatmeal cookies hung from the weathered clapboards. A rusty Buick LeSabre with current plates sat parked at the side of the house. Apparently psychic-for-hire was not a particularly lucrative proposition.
    I got out of my car, my footsteps crunching on the gravel as I made my way to the porch steps. They creaked under my feet. Were they rotted enough to collapse or should I trust them to hold my weight?
    They held.
    The porch floorboards groaned under me as I shifted my weight and raised my hand to knock on the old screen door. A woman’s voice called out. “I’ve been waiting for you. What took you so long?”
    The words were