Our Red Hot Romance Is Leaving Me Blue by Dixie Cash

you?…Is there something you want to tell me, babe?”
    The only sound he heard was the mantel clock’s ticking. No voice. No whisper. Nothing. If Rachel wanted to reach him, if she thought he needed help, why didn’t she answer him now?
    Should he call his brother-in-law and tell him that his kid sister might be trying to talk from the grave? John Patrick had always been supportive and understanding, but how would he react to hearing that information?
    These were the kinds of thoughts, if revealed, that could leave people whispering about you and your sanity all of your life and beyond. Justin thought of his parents in Midland. How would they react to a rumor that their only son, their pride and joy, was a kook who talked to ghosts?
    The one thing supporting this extreme notion was that two women who were professional detectives had seen the same thing he had. They wouldn’t, couldn’t discredit him without casting a shadow on themselves. He would wait for their phone call tonight and hope they wanted to help. At this point, what other option did he have?
    He walked back into the kitchen and looked again at therefrigerator door. The message was still there. Not a letter out of place.
    D E PLZ HLP JUSTIN
    D E. Domestic Equalizers? Was the message directed to the two women detectives? “Damn, Rach,” he half whispered, moisture stinging his eyes. “You always thought about what was best for me. Are you still doing it?”

five
    I nside Debbie Sue’s kitchen, she sat at her yellow, cracked-ice Formica kitchen table, phone in hand, trying to locate Isabella Paredes, whose last known whereabouts, according to Edwina, was El Paso. A hastily thrown together tuna casserole baked in the oven. Buddy would be home soon and Debbie Sue was mindful that he might have had nothing to eat all day but fast food.
    Edwina sat on the opposite side of the table with a game of solitaire laid out before her. She sharply snapped three cards from the deck that rested in her palm, careful to protect the stars-and-stripes paint job on her talon-like acrylic nails. As many years as Debbie Sue had watched Edwina at work in the beauty salon, she still hadn’t figured out how she ever got anything done with those fingernails.
    “Can you spell that, please,” a voice in the phone said, recapturing Debbie Sue’s attention. Debbie Sue was more impatient than a hornet in a bonnet, but she managed to speak slowly, “P-A-R-E-D-E-S.” Covering the receiver with her hand, she said to Edwina, “Where in the hell do they get these people? I can’t understand her, she can’t understand me. I might as well be calling Yugo-fuckin’-slavia.”
    The operator came on the line again and glory be, she had the number for Isabella Paredes.
    “Yes, ma’am,” Debbie Sue said, turning her attention back to the business at hand and jotting the number on a notepad.
    “Thank you. Yes, you have a good day too.” Disconnecting, she waved the piece of notepaper in the air triumphantly.
    “Got it!”
    Concentrating on her game, Edwina barely looked up. Her lack of enthusiasm was damned annoying. “Ed, did you hear me?”
    “I’m not deaf,” Edwina said, moving cards from one stack to another with the tips of her fingernails.
    “She’s there. In El Paso. Or at least, she has a number there.
    “That doesn’t mean she’s still alive. Even if she is, she must be in her eighties.”
    “Calling her was your idea, wasn’t it? You keep running hot and cold on this. Why is that?”
    Edwina looked up from her card game, an earnest expression on her face. “I don’t know. I get excited thinking about the case, but then I start worrying.”
    Debbie Sue knitted her brow. She left her chair, moved to a chair adjacent to Edwina’s and took the cards from her hand. “Look at me, Ed. Are you afraid she might tell you something personal again?”
    Edwina returned her gaze. “Maybe.” She relaxed against her chair’s padded back and sighed. “My life’s never