Waltz Macabre

by Mary Bowers

  The forensic scientists were walking around us now and one of them gave me a look to see if he needed to take a professional interest in me. When he saw that I wasn’t dead, he lost interest and walked over to where the skeleton lay.

  I felt like getting up then, and the doctor didn’t seem to mind. She watched me like a hawk, but once I was steady on my feet, she seemed satisfied and told me to take it slow.

  “I don’t think I want to take a look after all,” I said to nobody in particular. Then I looked at Michael. “Did you see him?”

  “Yes. Not much left to see, I’m afraid. I think we’re all done here,” Michael said. “We’ll leave it to the experts. Let’s all go back to the house and sit down.”

  He took me tenderly by the arm and guided me in the right direction. In a moment, I felt a tentative touch and saw that Ed was slipping his arm through mine, supporting me on the other side.

  “Hey, doesn’t anybody want to be my hero?” Carlene said behind us. “I might faint too. You never know.”

  Michael grinned and turned his head. “Are you feeling faint, Carlene?”

  “No, darn it. But I know where to find a couple of big strong men when I do.”

  Michael just smiled, but Ed tensed up. I leaned in close to him and whispered, “Don’t worry. She’s only kidding.”

  “Oh good.”

  We made it to the house without further incident.

  * * * * *

  Carlene only stayed in the house with us long enough to satisfy herself that I was really okay. She had brought Zippy (she had just christened him that, for obvious reasons) back to the kennel and locked him away while talking to 911 on her cell phone, and she wanted to reassure herself she’d fastened the door of Zippy’s suite securely.

  I could tell that she was feeling a little smug. I had always been the strong one, nearly six feet tall, determined to get things done and not taking any nonsense from anybody. I was the one who faced all the crises and fixed all the problems. But not on that day. Carlene had managed to keep herself together after stumbling over a skeleton while she was alone in the woods, while I fell in a dead faint before I even saw anything.

  After she left, I relaxed in a recliner and let myself be fussed over by Michael. Ed was just standing around by then, regarding us, looking nervous, knocking his glasses around while trying to straighten them and generally not being needed by anybody. I couldn’t understand why he didn’t just leave.

  Even Michael began to look at him expectantly, but Ed seemed to be waiting for something, and he just stood there. It took me quite a while to figure out why, but eventually, I got it.

  Bastet was not happy. She was pacing around the room glaring at me and making strange growling noises.

  “She’s just worried about me,” I told Ed when I finally noticed. “She always does that.”

  Michael did a double-take, since Bastet had never done that before, but he didn’t say anything.

  “She’s unhappy,” Ed said, watching the cat as if she might spontaneously explode. “It’s obvious, even to someone who is not animal-intuitive, like me. She’s angry, and it’s becoming apparent that she is angry with you, Taylor. As a matter of fact – I’m going to go out on a limb here – I believe your fainting spell had something to do with your familiar, here, stopping you before you could approach the remains.”

  “Her familiar?” Michael said.

  “Never mind him,” I said quickly, “Ed was obviously disturbed by the sight of that corpse.”

  “I never saw the corpse,” Ed told me. He stood his ground and focused on Michael. “A familiar, in folkloric terms, is a spirit that guides a person, and such a spirit often assumes an animal form.”

  There was a moment of silence. I sank into a dismayed little heap in my recliner and abandoned the effort.

  Meanwhile, Michael was pondering. Then he spoke, slowly. “Taylor said something about this to me once, but we didn’t really go into it, and I never brought it up again because I know she’s not comfortable with it.”

  “You see!” Ed said, with the elation of a man who is rarely understood. “Michael agrees with me.”

  “I didn’t say that,” Michael said quickly.

  I gave Ed a dampening look. “It was during a moment of confusion. I was groping for answers. Michael certainly does not agree with you, right, Michael?”

  “I didn’t say that, either.”

  Silenced, Ed and I sat there, waiting. After careful consideration, Michael said, “As I understand it, Ed, your theory is that Bastet, here, came to Taylor in the first place because she found a human with whom she had a connection.”

  “Exactly! You comprehend me perfectly,” Ed said. “There was a mission, and together, Taylor and Bastet succeeded. Obviously – unmistakably, at least to me – the entity inhabiting this creature finds her relationship with Taylor, here, to be a perfect union.” He hunkered down on the edge of the sofa and goggled at Michael through his glasses. “You see, Taylor, here, is an open vessel – an unoccupied mind –“

  “Excuse me,” I interrupted, only to be patronized with a tiny smile.

  “She is a woman intent upon her own mission in life – saving animals. Her every thought, her every action, her every dollar –“

  “You can say that again,” I muttered.

  “– is dedicated to her animal shelter. She ignores the other 98% of her brain.”

  I started to get up, growling, “I need a glass of wine.” Michael steadied me with a gesture, watching Ed all the time, fascinated, and I gave up and oozed back into my chair.

  “So what you’re saying,” Michael said, “is that Bastet, here, found an open vessel and sort of poured herself in and took over?”

  “Not exactly, but close. She found another spirit that was simpatico, and attached herself.”

  “They’re a team,” Michael stated, summing it up.

  Ed was nodding vigorously, I was groaning pathetically, and Bastet had stopped prowling and set herself before us, watching Ed and Michael in turn as each one of them spoke. She does that. Like she’s watching a tennis match, only she can hear what you’re saying and understand it while the ball goes back and forth. I hope that’s not too garbled. It’s the only way I can describe it, and I’m gonna go with it.

  I gave Michael a cynical look and was disturbed to see that he was taking it seriously. I sat there hoping he’d deliver a punch line, but instead he said, “Well, that explains a lot.” He sat down.

  “You’re kidding, right?” I said.

  “I am absolutely serious,” Ed replied.

  “Not you,” I snapped. “I know about you. Michael, you’re a skeptical, rational man. You’re a lawyer, for goodness’ sake. The only one around here that Bastet wants to be familiar with is you. I don’t get the feeling that Bastet even likes me that much, but she’s always mooning around after you.”

  “The relationship between a person and his or her familiar is a complicated one,” Ed began in his lecture-room voice. I silenced him with one of my looks.

  Michael was still working it out. “You’ve got to admit it yourself, Taylor, it was kind of odd the way Bastet just showed up and got into the middle of things.”

  “If you’d like to see about a hundred other familiar things that just showed up and got into the middle of things, I can take you out to either the cattery or the kennel; your choice.”

  “No, Bastet was different,” he insisted.

  “You see?”

  “You stay out of this, Ed. And by the way, Mr. Darby-Deaver,” I said, unnerving him by zeroing in on him, “aren’t you supposed to be concentrating on another problem? The haunting at The Bookery?”

  “What haunting at The Bookery?” Michael asked.

  “I’ll explain later,” I told him, before going back to Ed. “Bastet has nothing to do with Barnabas’s ghost. And now that I think of it, I never got to tell you what I was doing about Teddy.”

  Ed had forgotten all about Teddy, and he got a pained
look on his face. “Good grief. Teddy.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ve got him all sorted out, or at least I will have. I’ve got a haunting for him, at a nice little bungalow in town.”

  “You do?”

  “Not really, but he’ll believe anything. Remember that lady whose body was uncovered on the beach after Hurricane Matthew? Everybody had been looking for her.”

  “Alison Wickert,” Michael said, sitting down. “What about her?”

  “Teddy and I are going to investigate. Not that there’s really anything to investigate, but it’ll keep him out of the way for a while.” I sat back, feeling pretty proud of myself.

  I thought Ed would be pleased, but he just sat there staring at me, looking blank. In fact, he wasn’t just blank, he was beginning to look furtive. “Ed? What is it?”

  “Um, there may just be a modicum of truth to what you’re saying,” he said slowly.

  “You’re kidding,” I said.

  “Perhaps just a modicum. I haven’t whittled it down yet, but I’ll get back to you when I do. Well, I’ll be going now.”

  “Sit down. What do you know about that woman’s house?”

  “Did you know that her mother was a medium?” he asked.

  “I didn’t even know she had a mother.”

  “Oh, yes.” He simpered. “Don’t we all? The mother’s name is Wanda. Remember I mentioned to you that part of the reason I couldn’t help Barnabas was that I was already working on something? There have been disturbances at Wanda’s house. She’s the one who actually owns it, and her daughter came to live with her after retiring from the teaching profession. Wanda had been sensing abnormal activity before her daughter’s body was even found. Naturally, she had been channeling her own talents in that direction, but after the body was found, she decided she needed assistance from a pro.” He stopped and stared at me. “You knew. You’ve never even been to that house, and you knew.”

  “Now, Ed, don’t get carried away,” I said, but he was quivering and shooting glances back and forth between me and Bastet. “I was just looking for something to distract Teddy.”

  “I was going to put Barnabas’s problem first, since his entity is so destructive – it’s a poltergeist,” he said in an aside to Michael. “And Wanda has been frustratingly vague. But with this new development, perhaps I should reassess my priorities.”

  Alison’s mother. Well, that explained who Rita’s client was. Apparently Wanda had covered all the bases, normal and paranormal. And unless Wanda was a little nuts, there really was a haunting. I closed my eyes and gave up.

  “Please, Ed, I’ve still got a headache and I’m not up to this. Could you save your theories for another time?”

  “Of course, of course, of course, my apologies. I would never willfully upset you, you know that, I’ll just be leaving now, but before I do, I beg of you, would you tell me just one thing?”

  “And then you’ll leave?”

  “I’m halfway to the door already.”

  “Okay what do you want to know?”

  “What’s the last thing you remember before you fainted? Did you hear a voice? See a vision? What?”

  “I just –“ I was going to tell him I’d just fainted, but actually I did remember something. The lava lamp effect. Oozing trees and bushes and the forest floor coming up at me fast. And since I was in a forest, a haze of green. Forests are always green, right? Green, the color of Bastet’s eyes, the color of my own eyes, the color I kept seeing everywhere the first time that Bastet had shown up.

  I was fully prepared to lie about it, but Ed was already onto me.

  I started to talk, but he held up his index finger, stopping me, knowing I was about to prevaricate. We locked eyes. We stared. He waited.

  “Everything turned kind of . . . green.”

  He lifted his head in edification. “Significant. I think. What does it mean to you, the color green? What does it represent?”

  “It means we were in a forest and everything was green,” I said flatly.

  Ed looked at Michael. “Would you call that area of coastal scrub ‘green?’”

  “It’s kinda brown right now. And the ground is mostly sand.”

  I got up grandly. “I answered your question, Ed. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m tired. I’d like to go to bed.”

  “Of course, of course, of course. I’ll be in touch. You have a nice little nap and we’ll talk about it later.”

  “Whatever.”

  As soon as he left, Michael turned back to me. “What haunting at The Bookery?”

  “Oh, that,” I said, exhausted. “It’s what brought up the whole story of Phoebe Carteret in the first place. I couldn’t talk about it in front of Myrtle this morning. Barnabas wants to keep it quiet.”

  I gave him a brief synopsis, got him all intrigued and bubbling over with questions I was too tired to answer, begged him for mercy and staggered off to bed.

  Chapter 9

  I felt much better when I woke up again, around 7 pm. I could hear things banging around in the kitchen and knew dinner was being prepared, and the savory fragrances wafting around reminded me that it had been a long time since my sketchy lunch with Teddy, (he had a way of spoiling my appetite). I was starving.

  I threw some water on my face and zhizzed my hair and stood for a moment staring into the bathroom mirror wondering why I let Ed get to me like that. It was bad enough that I’d fainted. I wasn’t about to let Ed take over and create chaos.

  I put my objectives in order. One: Get a grip on things. Two: Settle the only real problem confronting us now: Barnabas’s ghost. Because even I had to admit, something was going on at The Bookery, and it needed to be dealt with. That would be Ed’s job. He was the paranormal investigator, not me. Three: Alison Wickert? She was murdered. Not my problem. Leave it to the police. That’s why we pay them so lavishly – to catch bad guys. Four: Alison Wickert’s hypothetical ghost. Get Teddy on it. Easy as playing with a kitten. I’d dangle a fluffy toy in front of him and he’d be happy again. But I was not going to get sucked into the actual ghost hunt. Five: Figure out a way for Rita to accidentally get a load of Dan in his running shorts. Two such lonely people shouldn’t be left to their own devices. They’d die single. I knew romantic incompetence when I saw it, and Dan and Rita both had it. Six: Get a grip on things.

  By far the most interesting item on the list was Rita, Dan and the running shorts. Everything else would be somebody else’s job, once I got them organized. I began to feel like I was back in charge.

  Then I went down to dinner and ate like a lumberjack.

  * * * * *

  Whenever I get tangled up in Ed’s world, things in my own world get shoved aside. I’d have liked to sit down with Michael and watch a movie after dinner, but I had a ton of work to do in the office. I walked into the pleasant little room at the northeast corner of the house, shut the door behind me and took a nice long breath.

  I loved my office. It was a part of the mansion that hadn’t been remodeled past the point of keeping its old-world charm. The ladylike little fireplace, charmingly framed with handmade tile, was never used anymore, but the room wouldn’t have been the same without it. The French doors lining the two outer walls gave onto the night and reflected my image back at me, but the near-full moon was rising, shining on the river, affirming that the real world was still out there. I settled at my desk and booted up my computer.

  Now I was going to get to work. I’d blown off the whole day on other people’s problems. Really, I didn’t know how I let myself get so involved in those things.

  Well actually, this time I did know. It had all started with Barnabas. Just the thought of what the poor man was dealing with brought a morbid atmosphere close around me. The darkness of the night and the golden glow of my little desk lamp filled the office with the half-alive mood of Barnabas’s parlor. And the music that had stayed with me since he’d played it still trudged beneath me, like the heartbeat of something that was slowly dying.

&n
bsp; I snatched up the phone. I really should have checked on Barnabas before this.

  He answered quickly.

  “How are you, my dear?” he asked before I could say the same thing to him. “I heard you were unwell today.”

  “Really? How did you hear that?”

  “Edson reported to me, after collating some of the readings he took today, and he told me that you were, well, battling against this thing in your own way. I hope that it won’t have a harmful effect on your health, Taylor. I didn’t anticipate that, or I’d never have called you.”

  “Oh, Barnabas, you’re not to blame. I just fainted, that’s all. I’m fine. I guess I’m not as tough as I like to think I am. Ed told you that I was walking through the woods and thinking I was about to see a corpse at the time?”

  He hesitated. “Let’s not dwell on such things. You’re better now, I trust?”

  “Like a lion. Actually I called to see how you were doing. Are you feeling better, now that Ed is on the job?”

  “Oh, I’m doing well,” he said unconvincingly. “Of course, this morning, before Ed arrived, there was a contretemps in the kitchen. You should have taken that cup, Taylor. I’m afraid I won’t be able to give you tea in it again.”

  “It’s broken?”

  “I’m afraid so. A little open shelf I kept Grandmother’s cups on in the pantry collapsed this morning, just as I was reaching for it. All broken. All of them.”

  Delicate bone china – nowhere near heavy enough to collapse a shelf that had been basically painted into the wall over the years.

  “That’s just evil,” I muttered. “Are you feeling any better about things, now that Ed is helping you?”

  “Very much. Yes, I’m feeling much better now. Thank you so much for getting him to investigate. I’m sure everything’s going to be all right now.”

  He was overly-cheery, and I felt like a traitor. He’d come to me for help, not Ed. I looked helplessly at the moon and tried to think it over. I just couldn’t get involved in this.

  “I’m sure Ed is going to figure it out. Do you want me to come over?” I was immediately drenched in dread. I didn’t want to go there.