I had to get out of here. I grabbed the nearest piece of cloth I could find—a hand towel—and used it to get a better grip. As I threw myself against the door, bracing so I could leverage the knob with more force, a high, thin shriek echoed, and deep laughter pounded in my ears. The energy blocking the door swept away and I yanked it open and raced into the hallway.
As I thudded down the stairs I wanted nothing more than to scream, to wake Randa and get her out of the house, but I didn’t want to scare her. I barreled into the living room, trailing a mist of water behind me. Just as I saw that Randa seemed safely asleep, a brief wave of laughter echoed behind me and strong hands pushed against my back, sending me flying across the room to land on the floor near the sofa. My shin slid along the edge of the coffee table, hard, scraping a long gash into the leg, and my knee managed to smash right against the corner. A gut-wrenching wave of pain sent me face down to the floor, where I stayed.
Startled, Randa woke and sprang into a sitting position, staring at me with that cool, unwavering gaze that made her such a formidable foe on her school’s debating team. “Uh… are you okay, Mom?”
I lay plastered against the carpet, butt in the air. After a moment, I managed to catch my breath and pushed myself up. My breasts were covered with tiny flecks of dirt. The thought that maybe I should vacuum more often ran through my head before I could clear my mind.
Miranda crawled out from under the covers, dragging her quilt over to cover me. She knelt beside me. “Mommy, you’re bleeding—should I call 911?” A look of concern spread across her face.
I didn’t want to scare her, didn’t want to tell her that a ghost had knocked me senseless, but it was either that or let her think I was going nuts. I shook my head and pushed myself into a sitting position, wincing as I tried to straighten my leg. “No… no… just bumped my knee. The cut stings, but it’s superficial. I think I’ll be okay. How about you? Are you okay?”
She gave me one of her you-really-are-out-of-it looks. “I was resting, like you told me to. What’s going on?”
I used the coffee table for leverage and forced myself to stand up. The room wobbled a bit but settled down as I limped over to sit on the sofa, wrapping the quilt around me. My knee protested the moment I put weight on it and was turning a serious shade of blue. The scrape down my shin was bleeding. Lovely. With my luck, I’d probably dislocated something.
“Uh… the ghost—the nasty one who followed Susan’s spirit—was in the bathroom with me. I was scared that you’d get hurt, so I came running down to check on you. I guess I don’t make such a great athlete, huh?”
She raised one eyebrow in her best Mr. Spock imitation, and a smile spread across her face. Here I was hurt, and my daughter was actually laughing at me. “Mom, I could have told you that years ago.” Then she seemed to comprehend what I’d said, and her smile faded. She nervously twisted the blanket in her hand. “Is it still up there? Is the ghost here now?” She stared at me, begging for me to answer her next question with a yes, I can. “Mom, you can stop the ghosts from doing what they want, can’t you?”
I pressed the back of my hand against her forehead. Her fever was about the same. I didn’t want to think about what she’d say if she knew I thought that the spirit might be responsible for her illness. “I don’t know, honey. I’m trying. Okay, back under the covers while I go clean up.” I gently tucked the quilt back over her. “Do me a favor, Ran. Don’t go to sleep, okay? Wait till I come back down before you nod off?”
“I don’t think I could go to sleep even if I wanted to.” She scrunched into the corner of the sofa and hugged Mr. Sanders to her chest.
I limped over to the stairs. It never occurred to me before what a wonderful invention the railing was, but I was grateful for it now. By the time I hauled myself to the top, I began to think I had seriously wrecked something.
I cautiously pushed the bathroom door open. The mist was gone, vanished into whatever ozone hole mist disappears into. “Anybody here?” I kept my voice low so Miranda wouldn’t hear me. As I turned the corner to face the mirror, I saw my image—studded with carpet dirt and little bruises. Across the face of the mirror, across my reflection, someone had written in the steam. The steam was gone, but the words were still readable. A delicate hand had written, “Help me!” This was too much. Not only did I have a frantic ghost on my hands, but also Mr. Big & Ugly had taken it upon himself to terrorize everyone in sight—Susan, me, my family, and my friends. Enough. He was playing hardball, and he was going to find out just who he was playing it with. That is, if I could figure out how to beat him at his own game.
* * *
Chapter Twelve
WITH A BACKWARD glance at the house, which now loomed ominous and brooding, we headed out to the doctor’s office. Miranda was fine, he said, she had a little cold and needed to rest. I, on the other hand, wasn’t in great shape. My sprawl had left me with a severe bruise on my knee and rug-burn abrasions from my breasts to my shins, as well as the cut on my leg. I wasn’t going to be running any marathons for a week or two.
I pulled up in front of Ida’s house and turned to Randa. “I’m sorry I have to go in to the shop. I forgot all about the drawing.”
She patted my arm. “It’s okay, you’ve had a rough morning.” She gave me a sneaky grin. “Besides, Mrs. Trask makes the best oatmeal chocolate chip cookies I’ve ever tasted.”
I kissed her head and made sure she got inside okay, then headed for the shop. Frieda Halston won the raffle, and almost knocked over a display of teacups and saucers. Quick reflexes on Cinnamon’s part saved the day, but I was in no mood to stick around after we managed to get Frieda and her new teapot out the door.
Before I left the shop I bit the bullet and made arrangements for Lana, one of Cinnamon’s friends, to come in on Thursday and Friday. It wasn’t the ideal solution—I really should be working during the Christmas push—but there was no way I could handle the holiday rush at the store and evict my ghostly visitors at the same time. After finalizing that Lana would help during the rush hours on both days, I put in another call to Murray. As I tapped my fingers on the countertop, waiting for her to answer, I could feel a tension headache working its way into my neck. Ibuprofen, I’d give anything for a couple of ibuprofen. When she came on the line I spilled out the morning’s events.
Before I could ask for help, she offered to take Kip and Randa for a few days. “My schedule is nuts, but with my aunt here, she can help watch out for them. They like White Deer, so there shouldn’t be any problem.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. Knowing they were safely out of the way would allow me to focus all my attention on exorcising Mr. B & U. With both Murray and White Deer keeping track of them, I’d feel a lot better.
I was still searching for a bottle of Advil when Harl called. She had managed to dig up some info from Karri Banks. I grabbed a pen, ready to jot down what she found out. “What did she say?”
Harl snapped her gum. “Karri and Susan went to school together. They were in the same class. Karri was hesitant at first, but since Susan’s dead, she agreed to talk to me.”
“Good going.” Once again I marveled at Harlow’s ability to worm her way into any social gathering and walk away with a pocketful of news.
“I asked her if Diana had been notified of Susan’s death. She said she wasn’t sure, so I fished around. Turns out there are some interesting skeletons in Susan’s closet, and nobody knows whom they belong to. It seems that Susan ran off when she was seventeen. She was crazy over some guy but wouldn’t tell anybody who he was. Nobody heard a word out of her for a couple of years and then suddenly she shows up again—very pregnant.”
“I take it with Diana?”
“Yeah,” Harl said. “And within a few weeks Susan married Walter.”
I thought for a moment. “Then is Diana even his daughter?”
“Rumor has that up for debate, but he is on the birth certificate. Bernard, Walter’s stepfather, gave his seal of approva
l to the marriage—baby and all—but Walt’s mother was heartsick. Karri said Eunice wouldn’t even go to the wedding.”
“Weird. So they have the baby and—”
“From the beginning, the marriage seemed a little rocky. At one point Susan told Karri that she’d made a terrible mistake but that she couldn’t talk about it. By the time Diana was six, Walt and Susan sent her to boarding school. Over the years, they shunted her from one school to another. I guess she only came home for Christmas and Thanksgiving. When Diana turned eighteen, apparently she told her parents to go to hell and took off on her own.”
“Any chance Karri has Diana’s address?” I crossed my fingers.
Harl snickered. “O mighty leader, ask and receive. Actually, Karri said she tucked it away somewhere, that Susan gave it to her at one point in case anything should happen. Apparently she didn’t trust Walter to bother getting in touch with Diana.”
“Weird way to treat your own kid.” I could never treat my children like that.
“Yeah, I know. Anyway, Karri’s going to look for the address and let me know when she finds it.”
I asked Harlow to call Andrew and fill him in. I would tell her about this morning’s little debacle later on. Luck held, leading me to a bottle of pain relievers in the back room, and I popped a couple before heading out to pick up Randa. We swung by Kip’s school and nabbed him before he got on the bus. He noticed the brilliant colors purpling my knee. I told him I’d tripped and hurt myself, and left it at that. Randa remained helpfully silent, appeased by the promise that as soon as they came home, we’d go pick up a Christmas tree—a big blue spruce.
The kids seemed excited over the prospect of a few days at Murray’s. Randa gave me a knowing look, but Kip was preoccupied making sure he had his Game Boy and cartridges. As they packed everything they’d need for the next few days, they chattered away about how good it would be to see Sid and Nancy again. Kip wanted to get a snake but both Randa and I nixed the idea.
“A snake would try to eat the cats,” Randa said. She gave Samantha a last tummy rub and begged me to watch over the furbles. I crossed my heart and promised to keep both Mama and babies in cat bliss while they were gone.
Murray’s shift started in an hour, but she was prepared to take time off if White Deer didn’t arrive before she left. I felt bad about interrupting her work, but she told me that she had plenty of leave time accumulated and she would call in with a “sour stomach.”
“They need me, but they can wait a couple of hours if they have to. White Deer is on her way; she’s past Bellingham according to her last cell call and should be here within half an hour.” We tucked the kids into her guest room and left them watching some sort of holiday special on the television in there. Murray fixed herself a sandwich and some espresso. “Do you want a shot?”
“Nah. It’s too late, and I’ve had too little sleep. One drop of caffeine and I’ll be a basket case tomorrow morning. Tea would be nice, though.”
She fixed me a cup of Wild Berry Zinger and added honey and lemon. “I told my aunt enough so that she knows the general situation.” She settled into the overstuffed chair she kept in place of a table in the breakfast nook. I curled up in the matching recliner opposite her. “White Deer won’t pry unless you offer her information, and even then, she’s sticky-handed about giving out advice. So, what are you going to do?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea.” Things were so up in the air that I wasn’t sure what was going to happen. I just hoped none of us would be standing directly beneath when Mr. B & U came in for a landing. “Meet Walter? See if we can contact Diana? Exorcise a demon? I guess most of all, try to make sense of this whole mess.”
Murray absently stirred her coffee. “So Susan piggybacked in an astral nasty. You have to be careful with spirits, Em. My people know a lot about them—we take them seriously. More seriously than most of you psychics do.”
Astral nasty. I shuddered. Nasty was the word, all right. Etheric stowaways were like parasites, feeding off of energy. “I thought I could deal with them, Nanna taught me how, but I’m in over my head on this one. And I’m still not sure what to make of Susan. I think she might be hiding something; she took a lot of baggage with her when she died.”
“Walter didn’t kill her, Em. He has an airtight alibi. I checked over it again, and there’s no way he could have been in that house.”
“Does that mean that he couldn’t have had anything to do with it? There might be somebody else involved, or maybe he masterminded the whole thing. Anyway, Susan gave us the right lead to get information about Diana. Do you happen to have her address? Are you guys supposed to notify her that Susan’s dead?” And, I thought, how much would Murray tell me before warning me to back off?
She laughed. “Still digging? I don’t think anybody from the department has been in touch with the girl. Since this was an accident, it’s not our policy to notify family members unless there’s nobody else to do it. Walter’s her father; it’s his responsibility to inform her. I didn’t even know about Diana—Walter sure didn’t mention her when we talked to him. Most of us in the department are transplants, you know—none of us lived here back when Susan was young.”
I took a quick sip of the tea. “We can go see her without the cops getting mad at us, right?”
“Of course you can visit Diana. There’s nothing illegal about it—just don’t tell her you think Walter killed her mother. That could get you into trouble if he wanted to push the issue. So the family is estranged to the point of where he didn’t even mention having a daughter? It may seem abnormal to us, but people with as much money and power as Walter and Susan usually play by their own rules. Just remember, Susan’s death was an accident… or suicide. Her spirit’s either confused or trying to play tricks on you.”
It was clear that as far as Murray and the Chiqetaw police were concerned, the case was closed. Evidence cleared Walter, his alibi held, and I knew Murray well enough to know that she would get cranky if I hounded her on the subject. I pushed the cup away and reached down for my purse.
“You heading out?”
“Yeah, I should. I ache all over. When Mr. B & U slammed me against the floor this morning, it really jarred me up. I’ve hired somebody to help Cinnamon out at the shop the next couple of days, so that’s taken care of, but there’s a lot to do, and I’m not sure where to begin. Gotta buy Christmas presents tomorrow, for one thing. Andrew and Harl are due over tomorrow evening, so I’ll probably go shopping in the morning. That is, if the damned ghosts decide to leave me alone tonight.”
“Sleep here. You’re welcome to stay over along with the kids. Why put yourself in danger?” She reached forward and put her hand on my arm.
I choked up, welcoming the comfort of her generosity. The offer was tempting. I swallowed one last mouthful of tea. “Thank you, babe. I wish I could, but if I stayed here I’d be admitting defeat. Also, Samantha and her kittens are alone in the house. I have to watch over the fuzzies as well as my own chicks, you know? Okay, I’m ready to shove off. Tell White Deer thank you for me.”
I popped in to give Randa and Kip good-bye kisses. After giving me a hug that I never wanted to end, Murray escorted me to the door.
“Take care of my babies—they are the most precious gifts in the world I have.”
“You think I don’t know that?” She looked at me as if I were crazy. “Get moving, drive safely, and call me when you get home. I want to make sure you get there.”
I GAVE HARLOW and Andrew quick calls and we all touched base and made sure we were on the same wavelength. We agreed to meet the next day—Wednesday—during the afternoon. Andrew wanted to come right over when he heard what had happened and I was tempted, but I also knew that I needed a good night’s sleep. I wouldn’t be able to close my eyes if he stayed with me. His presence had far too strong an effect on my underutilized libido. I promised to call if anything happened and made up the sofa bed after hanging up. I wanted a fast retreat out the door if M
r. B & U decided to pay me another visit.
The whispers started the minute I turned out the lights. They went on all night, echoing through the house. I curled into a little ball on the sofa; the cats snuggled uneasily around my feet. My slumber came in fits as I tossed and turned, skirting the edge of consciousness. Once I woke up and thought I saw a bright light go skittering across the ceiling, but then as I shook my head and rubbed my eyes, it disappeared and I wasn’t sure if it had been the remnant of a nightmare or if it had been real. With a shiver, I turned to press against the back of the sofa, and pulled the covers over my head. By morning I had managed to eke out enough sleep to leave me groggy but functional.
Unwilling to step into my shower so soon after yesterday’s fiasco, I used the downstairs bathroom, but I still had to go upstairs to get dressed. I hesitated a moment before opening the door to my room. Everything felt out of place, though nothing had been touched, and I had the eerie feeling of being watched the entire time I got dressed. I hurried as fast as I could and decided to eat breakfast out.
After a quick stop at Starbucks for my special—a triple grandé iced mocha, organic milk, no whip—I gave the kids a call to say hello. They were fine, they missed me and I missed them, but they sounded like they were having fun.
I hit the only mall in town, elbowing my way through the crowds at the local Target and Bon Marché like Moses parting the Red Sea. I had promised the kids Christmas this year, and damn it, we were going to have one. Shopping for them was easy—sweaters and an astronomy program that Randa wanted, a high-powered telescope to blow the dinky one she had out of the water. Kip would be happy with video games and a selection of Transformer and Harry Potter action figures.
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