LITMIR.BIZ

      Closure for Betty Beets came a little quicker. Two days after she reported her husband missing, she waltzed into a funeral home in Segoville, Texas, chose a white casket lined with blue satin, and picked out a cemetery plot. The next week, she asked that a memorial service be held for her late husband. His family dismissed the idea because they were still looking for his body.

      In desperation, people turned to whatever means they could to find Captain Beets. One source was psychics. They more or less appeared, with no one taking credit for calling them. Although the sheriff’s office was blamed for hiring at least one, they firmly denied that they had.

      One psychic, a four-hundred-pound woman in her sixties, began orchestrating her magic near the site where Jimmy Don’s boat had been found. She stood at the water’s edge with her eyes closed, inhaling the lake air. Then she asked to be driven to Glen Oaks, where Beets still owned a pretty, frame house painted robin’s egg blue. The pleasant three-bedroom, two-bath home had a “great room,” which consisted of a combined den, living room, and dining room, all braided together to form a large room where Jimmy Don had loved to entertain.

      The home nestled under soaring oaks across the street from the lake, so after visiting the house, the psychic strolled over to neighbors fronting the lake. On the neighbor’s dock, she squeezed her massive frame into a chair near a spreading magnolia tree, and tried to sense Beets’s presence. After much deliberation, she declared that he was in the water with brown moss on his face. A current siege of Hydrilla, a greenish-brown, moss-type plant held areas of the lake hostage, and the newspapers ran continuous stories about the problem. Any psychic worth her salt could have learned that from the local press.

      A Dallas newspaper reported on another psychic, a short, matronly woman from Georgia who had coal-black hair. To see visions, she also closed her eyes and then gently rocked back and forth as she concentrated. After that, she returned to the lakeside search headquarters and stroked a photograph of Captain Beets. She saw him buried somewhere near a castle, adding that he had sand on his face.

      The Coast Guard, eager to try anything to find Beets, slowly cruised the shoreline with her on board looking for a castle. They discovered one house on the lake built of stone with turrets at each end of the roof in castle fashion. The eager men docked their boat and went ashore to investigate the structure and its grounds. The puzzled owner let them examine her yard, but they found no freshly turned earth or any indication of a grave. With their attention directed on dwellings at the water’s edge, the Coast Guard overlooked Betty Beets’s wishing well that may have symbolized a castle.

      Beets’s two nieces, Jackie Collins and Diane Hodges, piled into their car and drove to Arlington, Texas, just west of Dallas. They had heard about a psychic there, and found her in a small eerie house that smelled of incense. Her head was wrapped in a silk scarf, turban style.

      Without their mentioning their uncle, the psychic said, “I see that you have a relative you’re worried about. It’s someone who’s lost that you’re trying to find.”

      When they heard her accurate description, they immediately hauled the woman back to the lake. There she asked questions and walked through Beets’s home in Glen Oaks. She fingered his clothes and touched his comb and sunglasses. Then she walked to the water and for a long time stood staring at the lake.

      Finally she revealed, “He’s not in the water.”

      Diane and Jackie, thinking that meant their uncle was still alive, grinned enthusiastically, but their enthusiasm faded as the psychic continued.

      “I see a young man in a white shirt. He’s in a struggle with a woman.” The psychic frowned and placed her fingers to her temple. “He’s near the water, but I’m afraid he’s in a grave.”

      Diane and Jackie glanced at each other through tear-fogged eyes. After a few moments of digesting the psychic’s words, they swamped her with a stream of questions, but she could give them nothing specific about their uncle’s whereabouts. However, she did tell them something that later would send chills through their young bodies: “Mr. Beets will be found on July 8, 1985.” She had the day and year right, and only missed the month by one.