“I thought you were asleep.”
“Not after I heard that.”
I shrugged, pulled a strand from her cheek. “Just talking to myself, really.”
“Talking about screwing yourself?”
“Telling myself to screw off.”
“Why?”
“I do that sometimes.”
“Oh.”
“What--?”
“Nothing. I thought maybe…I didn’t miss anything last night, did I?”
“Miss? No.”
“Sure?”
“Katie?”
“Yes?”
“You’ll remember it if we do. I’m pretty sure you’ll remember that.”
“Pretty sure, huh?”
“Yes.”
She offered a wry smile. “Cock sure?”
“You have a way with words.”
“You too.”
“I tend to dangling participles.”
“Not at the moment you’re not.”
“Damn. You can feel that?”
“It’s what really woke me.”
“Sorry.”
“Sure you are.”
The doorbell rang, about twenty feet from us.
Byron rushed in from the kitchen, fully dressed, cell phone to his ear. “Are you guys up?”
“Elliot is.”
He grabbed Katie’s mattress, hid it behind the sofa. “Well, take it upstairs, huh? That’s my real estate agent at the door!”
Fifteen minutes later, brushed, shaved and clothed, we came back down the long staircase to find Byron still on his cell phone and the real estate lady just leaving.
Byron shut the foyer door. In a moment there was a distant pounding sound from the front yard. “Mrs. Jennings is putting up the For Sale sign,” he turned to us wistfully.
“You’re selling the place already?” from Katie.
Byron, on his cell phone, held up a wait-a-second finger to her. “Hi—it’s Byron again. Third message. You showing the kids Fisherman’s Wharf again? Please have Donna call me when you get in, huh? It’s…important.”
He put away the cell.
“Still in Sacramento with her parents, I hope,” I said.
“I hope so too. Yes, I’m selling the house, Katie, hopefully sooner than later. We need the money.” He looked meekly at us. “Afraid I’m going to be a little late with—“
“You don’t have to pay us,” Katie overtook him.
“Don’t be silly.”
“I’m not. We’re fine. Right, Elliot?”
Byron turned to me.
“Elliot’s okay,” Katie assured him, “I already paid him.”
I rolled my eyes. “In your dreams.”
“That too.” She sniffed the air. “How long have you been up, Byron? Did you drink all the coffee?”
“Didn’t make any. I make lousy coffee.”
“What about Liz?” I asked.
Byron looked meek again. “Um…still asleep? Maybe…?”
This time I closed my eyes. “She didn’t come home last night, did she?”
Byron winced. “Oops.”
I threw up my hands. “Christ. The guy is twice her age!”
“Really, Elliot,” Katie pushed past me toward the kitchen, “not twice! Where does Donna keep the coffee?”
* * *
“This is really good!” Byron said at the table. “What’s your secret, Katie?”
“Old family recipe,” Katie said, sipping across from him, “handed down through generations. It’s called Folgers.”
“It’s mountain grown!” I told them. “That’s the richest kind!”
They stared blankly at me.
“Mrs. Olson? The old TV commercials?”
They stared blankly at me.
“Virginia Christine? ‘The Mummy’s Curse’? ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’?”
They stared blankly at me.
“You two did have a childhood, right?”
“So you’ve really put the house on the market,” Katie said to Byron.
“Not just the house. Everything in it.”
I looked up from my cup. “Not—“
He nodded. “Antiques too. All of them. All I can sell, anyway. Everything goes.”
“Making a new start?” from Katie.
“Making it up to Donna. Or trying to, anyway. If she’ll have me.”
Katie put a hand on his arm. “That’s sweet, Byron. And if she won’t, I’ll have you.”
“He’s broke,” I told her, “remember?”
“It’s okay,” she batted her eyes. “I don’t care!”
“No charge?” I exclaimed.
“Just this once,” Katie cooed.
“Thanks for taking my situation so seriously, guys. Shall I lie down so you can kick me too?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said, “we can kick you sitting up.”
“Byron,” from Katie, “aren’t you being a little hyperbolic? Donna’s crazy about you! Anybody can see that, right, Elliot?”
“I can see it.”
“It’s not just Donna,” Byron sighed, sitting back, “it’s the kids too. Well, Natalie, anyway. I think Nathaniel has grafted himself to Elliot’s leg…”
“Hey,” I scowled, “I paid good money for that!”
“You needn’t have, I really think he prefers you,” Byron sulked.
“Now you’re just being an asshole,” from Katie.
“I have been an asshole, Kate! A selfish, self-involved, preoccupied first-rate asshole!”
“Come on,” I said, “there’s nothing first-rate about you.”
“I mean it!” he shouted as he banged the table. “Well, those days are over! I’m getting rid of all this worthless crap! This junk I’ve collected over the years to make myself feel like a hotshot! Starting today I begin devoting time to the now, not the past—to the real treasure right in front of me all these years--my family! And the woman I love! Wherever and however she wants to live!”
Katie sat back in her chair, a hand over her heart. “Wow,” she said.
“Gee,” I said.
“Wow,” Katie said.
“That was nice, Byron,” I said.
“Wow,” Katie said.
“I think Byron heard you, Katie,” I said.
Byron reached back for his wallet, laid a small stack of bills before Katie and me. “I really want you guys to have this. For all you’ve done for us.”
“Byron—“ I began.
“It’s okay,” he smiled, shaking his head, “already made some antique sales.”
There was a single knock at the door and the real estate agent entered with a host of perspective buyers.
The house was a good as sold.
Our adventure was at an end.
* * *
“Not yet it’s not,” Katie told me while Byron redialed his wife in Sacramento, helped Mrs. Jennings show the house and dealt with the first-arriving antique buyers all at the same time, “there’s still the case of the missing Liz.”
“I could brain her!” I seethed.
Byron caught my eye, put away his phone, accepted a check from an elderly woman for a bronze copy of a Remington cowboy statue and came over to us. “She’s not missing,” he said. “That was Mr. Adams on the phone. He’s bringing over some antique buyers at ten, plus some stuff of his own he thinks maybe I could sell, plus some wild-eyed brunette in a peasant skirt named Liz something.”
“She spent the night with him!” I shuddered.
“How shocking,” from an un-shocked Katie, “well, Elliot, you’ll just have to ground her, that’s all!”
“This isn’t funny,” I muttered.
“No. It’s cute! So why don’t you enjoy it a little along with your mother.”
“Because she’s my mother! And I don’t…”
“…want an old man for a stepfather?” Katie pretended to assess my left temple. “Oh, dear, is that a gray hair I see trying to sprout.”
“Shut-up.
<
br /> “In his 30’s,” she clucked, “and still not married…hmmm…”
“There’s no shame in being gay,” Byron told her.
“You shut-up too.” I told him back.
The doorbell rang. Mrs. Jennings let another gaggle of prospective buyers come in.
“Let’s take a drive,” Katie took me aside, “we’re in the way.”
“Back to Austin, you mean? Shouldn’t we pack first?”
“We need to talk about that, Elliot.”
“You hate the way I pack. You want to pack for me.”
She gave me a look. “Does Rita pack for you?”
“Is that why we’re going for a drive, to talk about Rita?”
She pushed past me. “Get in the rental, Elliot. I’ll drive.”
* * *
As we neared the silvery, skinny (way too skinny) length of the Coronado Bridge, I turned to Katie from the passenger seat. “Whatever it is you want to talk about, I’m sure it’s not worth considering suicide over…”
Katie drove on silently.
“Katie--?”
The rental entered the steep swoop of the way-too-narrow bridge.
“Katie--?”
Katie powered toward the middle, the highest point. She slowed the car.
Right next to the suicide prevention sign.
“Hey, hey! I was kidding about the suicide thing! What the hell are you doing?”
She pulled the car to the way-too-skinny shoulder and braked, shutting off the engine.
“Goddamnit, will you say something? Is this about Rita? You know I’m phobic about heights.”
“Among other things. What is that, number fifty on your phobia list?” She opened the door.
“It happens to be number three! Number two is obstinate women!” I opened my own door, took one dizzy look down at the impossibly far away water below and jumped back in the car. “Katie, come back here! Where are you going?”
She slammed her door, walking casually to the way-too-short rail. “Over the side!” she called.
“That isn’t even remotely funny!” I cringed behind my window. “Get in here! I’m going to be sick.”
“Sorry, I’ve made up my mind!”
I tried to open the door but it kept shutting again in my face. I was drenched in a cold sweat. “If this is some shit about facing my fears, it isn’t working!”
“Too bad! It’s your fears or coming to my aid! Your choice!”
I willed myself out of the car, stood on legs of Firestone rubber. “This isn’t fair!”
“All’s fair in love and war.”
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
“If you really loved me, you come to my aid.”
“If you think I’m going to laugh at this later—“
“Okay!” She hiked up a leg and sat on the narrow rail, hauling her handbag after her, “over she goes!”
I tried to get my legs to move forward, one at a time, like the Frankenstein monster learning to walk. “You’re a sadist!”
“Does that mean you love me?”
“I…I’m…I…”
“—said the always articulate college prof.”
“What are you trying to prove, Katie?”
“You took basic science! If you drop a bowling ball and a feather at the same time from a great height, which hits the ground first? Or in this case, the water?”
I got my left leg to lurch forward an inch. “If—like your brain—they’re in a vacuum, they land together!” Got my right leg to lurch forward an inch.
Katie, balanced atop the rail, reached into her shoulder bag.
“Katie Bracken, do not throw a feather, a bowling ball or anything else over that rail!”
“I’m not,” she rummaged around, “you are!”
“I’m what!”
She glanced absently over the side. “Hey. Is that a shark fin down there?”
I staggered toward her, a drunken marionette. “I swear to God if you don’t come down off that rail I’m going to push you!”
She dug deep in her bag, finally pulling out the carpet ball, and held it up to me. “You first!”
“What are you doing?”
“You’re doing it. Come on…three more feet and you’re to the rail…you can do it, Elliot!”
“I can’t!”
“You can.”
I picked up my left leg in both hands and shoved it toward her. “I hate you…”
“I know. Two more feet…you’re doing great.”
An RV swished by us, its gust backwash pushing me toward Katie’s outstretched hand, pant legs flapping. Where is a cop when you need one? my mind screamed.
“Great. Now reach out…take the ball.”
“I just want you to know there is nothing the least bit scientific in this approach to curing phobias!”
“Just reach out slowly and think of Marcie Lane.”
“Who?”
“60’s female recording artist? Johnny Get Angry?”
“Johnny what?”
She began singing, actually rocking on the rail! “…I wanna brave man, I wanna caveman—Johnny show me that you care really care formeeee…”
“You’re insane!” I gasped.
“Hey, I didn’t write it. Take the carpet ball…”
I took it, hand vibrating visibly.
“Now,” Katie smiled, and made a tossing motion over the side with her head.
I threw the carpet ball off the bridge.
Katie watched it fall…all the way to the water.
She sighed. “And that nasty thing won’t be haunting anyone’s little boy again.”
“I really hate you,” I said tonelessly, “I really, really hate you for making me do that.”
But she caught my hand before I could pull it away, and yanked me into her arms.
“Watch out!” I cried.
She pulled me close. “Shut up and kiss me.”
“No. I hate you.”
“I’ll settle for a hate kiss.”
I put my arms about her.
There was a screech of tires behind us.
We turned and saw a fat, elderly couple leaning anxiously from the seats of their big Harley motorcycle.
“Don’t do it, kids,” the woman pleaded, “you’ve got your whole lives ahead of you!”
TWENTY-THREE
To top it all off, Katie made me drive off the bridge back to the Sandersons’ house, a white knuckle ride all the way.
“We need to talk,” Katie said, watching the bay out her side window.
“I’ll never talk to you again! Never!”
“I’m serious, Elliot…”
“You’re serious? Look at my hands, Katie! Look at my hands on the wheel! There is no blood in my hands, Katie!”
“But you made it to the rail. All by yourself.”
“White! White as death! Do you see any blood in my hands?”
“And you have to admit that was the most thrilling kiss of your life.”
“The most asininely reckless!”
“I’m not comfortable with this, Elliot…”
“You!”
“…with leaving the case this way. Unsolved.”
I managed a rigid glance at her. “We did solve it! Basically. The nursery is no longer haunted, Liz said so!”
“Yeah, but—“
“The clock is back at the Del, the carpet ball is at the bottom of the bay, and Nathaniel Sanderson is out of harm’s way! What more do you want?”
“The rest of it…”
“The rest of what? You did your job, Katie. The rest of what?”
She watched the passing houses absently as the Sandersons’ big Victorian came into view. “Whatever’s still missing…”
I started to say something, then glimpsed Mr. Adams’ old panel truck parked in front of the house.
“I’m going to wring her neck,” I muttered under my breath.
“You’re going to be happy for her!” Katie snapped. “She’s i
n love, Elliot, probably for the last time! Give her that! She gave you life! Now, you give something back!”
I huddled admonished behind the wheel, eyes straight ahead like a naughty school kid.
Wow, I thought.
* * *
Byron was on his cell again when we walked in, still attempting fruitlessly to get through to his wife in Sacramento.
The house was filled with people of all stripes: house hunters, antique collectors, probably more than a few merely curious neighbors. Mrs. Jennings, the real estate agent, danced from room to impossibly graciously large room with sweeping theatrical gestures, basically letting the house speak for itself. Queen Anne fan or not, the house was certainly one of a kind, you had to admit that. I’d no doubt Byron would fetch a good price for it even in the current down market. He’d get his money back, all right. The question was, I thought—watching him replace his cellular down-heartedly—would he get Donna back?
Where in the world was she? Where, in fact, were her parents?
And Natalie? And Nathaniel?
Liz came running across the living room into my arms, beaming roman candles out of her pores. “I spent the night with Adam, Elliot!”
“That’s great, Liz, I’m so glad you didn’t sleep on a park bench.”
“Don’t you think that’s deliciously decadent, dear? I mean for a woman my age!”
“I think it is for a man his age.”
“He’s a wonderful lover, Elliot!”
“I really don’t want to hear abou—“
“That great!” Katie said, hugging Liz. “Good for you!”
Liz held her arms excitedly. “What about you two? Did Elliot give it to you?”
Katie snorted a laugh into her hand. I stomped my foot. “Liz! Mom!”
She turned innocent eyes to me. “I mean a ring, dear. You did ask her, didn’t you?”
“Mom…Liz…look…”
“He’s still living with his ex-fiancé, Mrs. Bledsoe,” Katie told her gently.
“Well, I don’t see what difference that makes! You mean he wants all three of you to live together? Is that the plan, dear?”
Katie gave her a quizzical look. “I’m not sure, actually.” She turned to me. “What is the plan, Elliot? Dear?”
I took my mother’s arm. “The plan is to get you back to Austin and Myra Breckinridge here back to Cincinnati!”
Katie crossed her arms. “Have a good time. I’m not ready to leave yet.”
I stopped in my tracks--stopping Liz with me.
NIGHT CHILLS: A Bracken and Bledsoe Paranormal Mystery Page 22
