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“Asher’s busy.”

“And I’m not?”

“You answered your phone, didn’t you?”

“I nearly didn’t.”

“Nice. I love you too.” I made an exaggerated kissing noise, loud enough that a builder across the road looked over. “Not you,” I called, pointing at the phone. “My boss.”

Kendrick wasn’t technically my boss, but as the longest serving and most intense member of the psychic department, the rest of us treated him with a certain reverence. Apart from when I used him as a glorified doorman.

I spent the time while I waited for him getting into the right state of mind for work. One happy, carefree Baxter coming up. Glad to be alive and full of the joys of spring.

Chapter Two

Lake

“Oh. My. God!”

“You don’t need to be so dramatic about it,” I insisted. I might have been calm on the outside, but inside I was struggling to make sense out of everything.

Verity closed her eyes for a moment, then reopened them in a way that screamed she was hoping to see something different. “Not be dramatic,” she said, her voice so high-pitched I imagined dogs within a mile radius of my house sitting up and cocking their heads. “He’s cleaned you out.”

“He hasn’t cleaned me out.” I waved an arm limply at the living room, which had been a lot less empty a few short hours ago. “There’s a sofa, isn’t there?”

“He took your TV.”

I shrugged. “I hardly ever watched it.”

“He took the pictures off the wall.”

“Were there pictures?” It was an unconvincing attempt at being offhand, given the three darker rectangles where the sun hadn’t faded the paint. “I needed new ones anyway.”

When she headed upstairs to the bedroom, I remained behind to say a silent prayer. If luck had been on my side today, I would have been alone when I returned home to find that Carl had not only left, but had helped himself to a few things on the way out. Although, if luck had really been on my side, he wouldn’t haven’t robbed me and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

“Oh. My. God!”

Well, that didn’t sound good. I braced myself for more bad news. “What?”

“He took your bed.”

A trip upstairs confirmed he had indeed taken the bed, leaving nothing but an empty space behind. Verity’s gaze narrowed on that space. “You should hoover under your bed more often, you scruff.”

I had to admit there were more than a few dust bunnies lurking there, but I could hardly have foreseen an eventuality where the bed was there in the morning and gone by the afternoon.

My sister shook her head. “You know what this means, don’t you?”

“That he found a place to stay.”

She shot me a dirty look. “It means he organized a removal van, that he had help, and that he planned this ahead of time.”

I opened my mouth to rebut the hastily drawn theory, realized I couldn’t—not a single damn part of it—and closed it again. The best I could manage was, “If he had a removal van, why didn’t he take the sofa?”

Verity laughed. “Because it’s not worth taking, numbskull. It was second-hand when you got it, and how many years ago was that?”

“A few,” I admitted.

Verity strode over to the fitted wardrobe and flung the doors open. It was only half-full. “Please tell me you’ve been Marie Kondo-ing the place?”