A Fatal Glow

Book 2: Odessa Jones Mystery

by Valerie Wilson Wesley

Genres: Supernatural suspense

Synopsis

Sometimes even good luck can mean bad fortune. For Odessa Jones—reluctant psychic, part-time caterer, full-time realtor—an elegant affair turned deadly threatens her reputation, and her life . . .



Recently widowed Odessa Jones is sure the exclusive catering job she's scored from wealthy businessman Casey Osborne will propel her catering career into the big leagues. So when Dessa's pesky second sight warns her that Osborne is bad news, she ignores it. She wishes she hadn't when he drops dead at his brunch after sampling her homemade preserves. Osborne's death is declared a homicide. Dessa and the friends who helped her cook are considered suspects . . .



To clear her name and find the truth, Dessa delves into Casey Osborne's life. Everyone from his sinister business partner to his tormented ex-wife has reason to kill him—and the opportunity to do it. With the help of her spirited aunt, loyal coworkers, and mischievous cat Juniper, she desperately searches for answers. Until a second murder leads Dessa down a frightening path filled with insidious hidden agendas—and someone poised to change her life forever.

Release date: February 22, 2022

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 224

Sample

There was no whiff of nutmeg, the usual warning that death is heading my way. No signs from “the gift,” that unreliable second sight that graces (and I use the word loosely) the women in my mother’s family. No disturbing colors or sounds. I only heard my late husband’s voice quoting, oddly enough, those well-known lines from Macbeth:

Darryl’s voice usually comes at the end of a dream when I’m going through a rough spot or missing him more than usual. So why this morning? I glanced up from my laptop, as two men in suits that cost more than my monthly mortgage strolled past my cubicle into Tanya Risko’s office. The younger was wickedly handsome; the older just looked wicked. His skin had a yellowish cast to it, a problem for a dark-brown-skinned man, and although he was built like an aging prizefighter, the ring had definitely won the last round. Risko Realty, where I work, is a cut-rate real estate firm. Tanya, the owner and my boss, inherited the business from a vicious man brutally murdered in the room where the two gentlemen were headed.

“Wonder what that’s about,” muttered Vinton Laverne, who worked in the cubicle next to mine. Our work spaces were narrow and separated by low plastic boundaries, making it easy to keep your eye on what folks were doing and poke your nose where it wasn’t meant to go, something at which Vinton, a thin, dapper man, solemn as an owl, was adept. He also had a tart, endearing sense of humor that could turn bitter on a dime. When I first joined Risko Realty, he’d carried a gloomy gray glimmer that finally disappeared. He was happier now; everything about him had changed, including the glimmer.

Glimmers are something only I can see when certain people enter my space. A gift from the gift, you might say. They can be as hazy as a shadow or as bright as a colorful aura; they often give a hint of what to expect from a stranger or a clue into who that person really is. Yet they can change for better or worse depending upon what life has served up. My aunt Phoenix, an expert on glimmers, charms, spells, and all things weird and extrasensory, said that we who see glimmers give them our own interpretation so it’s not only what you get from a person but who you think that person truly is—which complicates everything. Yet seeing glimmers, coupled with the ability to sense, hear, and smell things other folks can’t, is what makes me unique, along with a silver streak of hair that occasionally appears on the left side of my head.

“If you want my guess, I’d say there’s something going on between one of them and our little Tanya. Maybe both of them?” said Vinton with a naughty wink that brought my attention back to him. Vinton, Tanya Risko, Harley Wilde, and Louella Jefferson had all become family to me now. When I began working at Risko Realty more than a year ago, there were eight of us; now we were down to five. Terrible things had happened to us in the past, and we’d healed together, just as a family does.

Louella was our youngest member. She had a sweet baby face with rosebud lips, wide, expressive eyes, and skin as smooth and dark as bittersweet chocolate. She’d gone through rough times and they’d toughened her up, but there was still a gentleness about her. The first time I saw her, I was taken aback by her glimmer that was such a shocking shade of violet it made me want to cry. Things were better now. She still fought demons (one that would haunt her for the rest of her life), but she was trying to do the best she could, to make a way for herself in real estate. Risko Realty was a new beginning for her, as it once had been for me. Usually, she had an easy smile that popped whenever she lifted her head, but the sight of these two men had wiped it off; something had shaken her to the core.

“Everything okay?” I asked. Louella stared straight ahead, her gaze following the men as they headed into Tanya’s office; then her eyes dropped down to the laptop on her desk. Were they part of her past? I knew Louella hid parts of herself that she considered shameful and tucked away trying to forget. Her old glimmer swept over her, then disappeared in nearly the same instant, and that worried me. Vinton couldn’t see what I saw but knew that something was wrong.

“Do you know these two guys, Baby Doll? Did they do something to hurt you?” he asked, his voice protective and concerned. When he liked you, Vinton gave you a nickname. Mine was Sunshine, Louella’s Baby Doll.

She shook her head, avoiding his eyes.

“Then why won’t you look at me?”

She glanced at him, then answered his question, her voice close to a whisper. “Yeah. I know them both. Red says the old one stole his daddy’s land and won’t give it back. I know the young one from back in the day. Red knows him from those days, too.” Red was Louella’s fiancé and the father of Erika, her eight-year-old daughter. He was part of her past and now her future. Although I hadn’t met him yet, she claimed he had come back into her life to redeem them both. I wasn’t so sure.

“Louella, that can’t be true. Charlie Risko stole Red’s daddy’s land,” I said, stating something that we all knew now. As I spoke, I touched the talisman I wear around my neck. It’s a blue lace agate on a leather string that once belonged to Rosemary, my mother, and was given to me last year by Celestine, my other “gifted” aunt. The mere mention of Charlie Risko’s name called for serious spiritual protection.

“I know,” Louella said, avoiding my eyes. “But Red doesn’t feel that way. He feels different.”

The vroom of a motorcycle caught my attention before I had a chance to ask just what that difference was, and my friend late-as-usual Harley Wilde bounced into the office, with a spring in his step and carrying the late-morning latte grande he never failed to bring me. Settling down in his cubicle, he pulled the lid off his coffee, blew on it, and sipped loudly.

Harley was younger than me by nearly two decades. We weren’t related by blood but had become as close as kin, connecting us in ways that surprised us both. He tried to maintain a “gangsta” swagger, but it concealed a joyful spirit, caring nature, and quick grin that put even curmudgeons at ease. He’d served a stint in Afghanistan and was left with a limp and invisible wounds he never talked about—at least not to me. Like all of us here, he was building a new life, working hard, and, in his case, attending the local community college trying hard to earn a degree.

“Do you-all know who that old guy is?” he said, placing the coffee down next to his laptop and nodding toward Tanya’s door. “He’s been around for a while. His name is Casey Osborne, one of the richest men in town, in all Essex County, for that matter. I saw him drive up in his black Cadillac while I was standing in line at Starbucks.”

“He doesn’t look that old to me,” Vinton said defensively. I silently agreed; the man was roughly my age if you added a few years. “But I do agree that Cadillacs age you. They went out with minks.”

“I hope Tanya’s being careful.” Harley picked up his coffee again, took another sip. “She said something to me last week about finding a new business partner and making some new investments. Hope it’s not with that guy.”

“He’s not in the Mob, is he?” Genuine concern crossed Vinton’s face.

“No, he’s too smart for that, but the young one, the guy who is with him? I don’t know much about him, except his name, Tyler Chase. I’ve seen him hanging with guys you don’t want to cross. The kind of dudes who would sooner cut your throat than say hello. He’s a hustler, been a hustler since he got out of high school, and I do know a hustler when I see one. I’ve seen enough of them in my day.”

“Yeah, like in the mirror,” Vinton said teasingly, which made Harley scowl but then chuckle good-naturedly. “You’re right about that old man. Been there. Seen that. You’d think Tanya would have learned how to watch her money around men who mean her no good. She should know better by now. We all should have learned that lesson,” he said more to himself than to any of us. Vinton shook his head and gave a somber sigh; Louella closed her eyes as if blocking disturbing thoughts. I kept mine to myself.

Lively laughter and loud talking poured from Tanya’s office, filling our small space with boisterous sound, bringing my aunt Phoenix’s words to mind. Just plain piggish. That was what she called big men who took up more food, drink, or space on buses and in life than they were entitled to. And these guys with their noisy presence and boisterous laughter struck me as just that. I didn’t know who they were, but there was something not quite trustworthy about them. Or maybe it was simply Darryl’s words coming back to me as they had. Yet with the exception of Louella, Harley knew Tanya longer and better than any of us. Maybe he knew more than he was saying.

I’m still not sure what to make of Tanya Risko, who had certainly changed in the year I’d known her. She’d inherited not only Risko Realty from Charlie Risko, her horror of a husband, but also his ill-gotten property and shady investments that made her a very wealthy woman, quite different from the battered young soul I’d first met. She was a good-looking girl, tall, thin, stylish with an obsession for rich ladies’ clothes that cost a workingwoman’s weekly salary. Her skin was tawny brown, darker or lighter depending on the time she spent in the sun. She slipped with ease into any world she deemed fashionable—be it white, black, or brown—to bask in the glory of being young and rich in a town where most folks were neither.

“Us widows need to stick together,” Tanya had said to me the day after her husband’s death, which knocked the stuffing out of me and took me a full minute to catch my breath. Yet Tanya was also capable of generosity, paying for the funeral of a coworker who had taken her own life. When we’d met, Tanya had seemed a dreamy girl-child saddled with an abusive husband and low self-esteem. I was glad to see she was coming into her own, but I wasn’t quite sure what that “own” meant. So I stirred her carefully with a long-handled spoon, as Aunt Phoenix would put it—well enough to mix but not get burned. The girl had no glimmer as far as I could tell, which according to my aunt didn’t necessarily mean that something was missing. But two men whom she’d been intimately involved with had met sudden violent ends. Some folks might simply call that bad luck; I hoped that was all it was.

I thought of that now as she left her office chatting and chuckling with the older of the two men. Louella dropped her head low and stared at her hands as they approached. Vinton impishly whistled “The Imperial March” from The Empire Strikes Back. Harley, cool as ever, leaned back in his chair sipping his coffee. I forced my lips into an uncomfortable smile.

“Casey, this is the lady I was telling you about. Here she is, working hard right in my little office, can you imagine that? Well, anyway. This is Mrs. Dessa Jones and she is a chef and the owner of D&D Delights, and I know she would love to cater your classy brunch for next Sunday. She’ll be doing me a big personal favor, won’t you, Dessa?” Tanya’s voice, sweet and chirpy, made me fear the worst. She grabbed a chair, pulling it into my cubicle so the man could sit down. “Casey told me he thinks he knew you from high school, that you knew his wife, so I guess you-all go back. Listen, I’m going to leave you to talk business. Thanks, Case. Thanks, my dear Mrs. Jones. And don’t let him shortchange you,” she added with a wink.

Tanya had added the “Mrs. Jones” bit in the little-girl voice she pulled out when she needed my favor or support; apparently, she needed both. The wink said the man had money, a not-so-subtle reminder that I hadn’t had a sale in two months. It also said she was offering me a chance to fix my broken water heater and I’d better not blow it.

“Glad to be of service, Mr. Osborne,” I said. Despite the warmer weather, I couldn’t forget those cold showers. I’d complained so often that Vinton had finally offered me his, and I’d taken him up on it yesterday morning.

Casey Osborne raised his eyebrow slightly and studied me like a bird contemplating a wriggling caterpillar. “It’s too damn tight in here,” he said, shifting his weight around in my small space to show how uncomfortable he was. “These damn cramps are about to kill me even with all those meds I keep getting, don’t do nothing but make me want to sleep.” He paused for a moment to yawn loudly. “You really don’t remember me, do you?”

I looked harder, noticing again his pale, sweaty face, and I tried to imagine him younger and thirty pounds thinner. He had an odd smell about him, too, and I wondered if the gift was trying to tell me something.

“Well, I know Tanya said that I knew your wife, but—”

He threw back his head and laughed, louder than he needed to as if I’d said something funny. “Wow! You really don’t recognize me, do you? You don’t remember the kids in high school shouting my name from the stands during those games? They called me Case then. Like ‘stay on the case, Case.’ Stay on the case . . .” He kept repeating the phrase as if that would jar my memory.

“Oh, yes,” I said, studying him again, as everything about those miserable years came back in a rush: the high school I hated, the kids who hated me, and Case, the king of the place—who had just squeezed his hulking frame into my tiny cubicle. “I knew your wife, Aurelia,” I added, remembering her part in my unpleasant history.

“Ex-wife! Shook off that mean, crazy witch as soon as I could,” he quickly corrected me. “My new wife is Mona, pretty name, pretty girl. You wouldn’t have known her; she’s younger than the two of you,” he added unnecessarily. I nodded absent-mindedly, but my mind had gone back to Aurelia, the first one, a few years older than me, who had been my only friend, and had never been crazy or evil as far as I could remember.

I spent a year and a half at Grovesville High. My father was between jobs, and my mother worked as a librarian in a nearby town. We stayed with Aunt Phoenix until we could find an apartment. She’d just bought her tiny house and filled it with hanging herbs and other plants that made my father sneeze and my mother’s eyes water, which made her look like she was always weeping. I’m not sure if it was the high school, my mother’s tears, or being a moody teenager that made my life so unbearable. I suspect Aunt Phoenix with her eccentric ways didn’t help.

And that was what endeared me to Aurelia, who was also saddled with an offbeat (to put it kindly) aunt who had recently moved to Grovesville from the Dominican Republic. Aunt Dahina would pick Aurelia up after cheerleading practice with the haughty airs of a 1930s movie star in her ancient, fume-spewing Oldsmobile that smelled up the road. Aurelia must have recognized a kindred suffering spirit in me and took me under her wing, no small thing for a senior to do for a freshman, particularly since Case Osborne was her boyfriend. I didn’t like him; I knew that the moment I met him. I never understood what Aurelia saw in him, but it must have been something big, because they stayed together after high school and eventually married.

“So how is Aurelia these days?” I asked because I honestly wanted to know.

He answered with a shrug. “See as little of her as possible. Been divorced for years. I’m working on getting full custody of my son as soon as possible.”

I studied him closely when he said that, thankful she was no longer with him, but also realizing that nothing about him had changed. Even his glimmer was the same as it had been in high school, although at the time I didn’t know what it was because nobody bothered to explain. My mother avoided mentioning our gift, and Aunt Phoenix kept her knowledge to herself. Casey Osborne’s glimmer was a bluish brown, a disconcerting shadow that made me instinctively pull away from him just as I used to. Except now I knew what it was.

He had been a nasty teenager full of so much arrogance it left no room for anything else, including Aurelia, who worshiped him like a god. And she wasn’t the only one. Casey Osborne ran the school; his prowess on the football field made up for his cruelty to other students. He collected young girls’ hearts like football trophies, lying and cheating to get his way. His callous indifference drove one poor teenage girl to suicide. Or so it was said. Her death dimmed his star for a week, but nobody held him responsible and after the initial mourning period was over the girl was quickly forgotten. It seemed to make no difference to Aurelia at all, which I never understood. It certainly did to me, and that must have shown on my face.

“I see you remember me?” he said, grinning wildly, misinterpreting my expression. “So I went from high school, big-time scholarship to college, into business, where, I guess folks would say, I made some killings,” he added, answering a question I hadn’t asked.

“No doubt.”

He gave me a crooked, curious smile, then moved on. “So the wife, Mona, will be calling you with details about the brunch, okay?”

I said nothing for a beat, then remembered the chill of this morning’s cold shower. “Okay.”

“One thing the wife will probably forget to tell you, though, is about my son. She’s beautiful but forgetful. Lacey is seriously allergic to nuts, walnuts, peanuts, nuts period. He will definitely b. . .