by Etta Faire
“You look especially beautiful tonight. Gordy-pie is missing out,” he said, making me roll my eyes and smooth out my black sweater and skinny jeans.
He scanned the room. “Has Bessie seen the displays yet?”
I looked around before whispering into the curtain. “She’s not coming. If you’d have bothered to show up earlier, you could maybe have helped me talk her into it.”
“Let me remind you; I am a new apparition. When I ride on the living, I have to do it in low energy mode. She’s much more experienced.”
“She decided to stay at the Purple Pony.” I whispered out of the side of my mouth to the curtains beside me.
“You told her about Sir Walter, didn’t you?”
I nodded, almost forgetting to whisper now. “But only because she had a right to know.”
I looked out the window at the parking lot where, not too long ago, horses and “motor cars” had been lined up around lanterns.
Poor Bessilyn. Apparently, love wasn’t any easier to handle after death.
Rosalie and Paula had ditched their scowls and had their client-smiles back on by the time dinner and cocktail hour had rolled around. They both greeted one perfectly manicured older woman in a thousand-dollar black outfit after another, just like they were besties at a slumber party.
Christine’s mother-in-law was there, a woman in her 70s with a tanned, “still enjoys the lake” face and a skeptical smile. She introduced herself as Amelia. “I’ve been a member of the women’s club for fifty years,” she said. “I’ve never seen anyone do more for a member.” I didn’t tell her I wasn’t doing this because Bessilyn had been a founding member of the women’s club in its early years. I couldn’t tell anyone the truth about why I was doing this. I hardly knew myself.
But I did know pretty much my whole paying audience consisted of women’s club members, so I played it up like that was why we were all here.
When I was alone, I stared at Bessie’s display, noticing the description had been altered to question if she’d been murdered, and I gulped, wondering how I was going to figure things out without her being here.
“She was beautiful,” someone said behind me, a shaky, frail hand pointing to Bessie’s portrait photo next to the description that began “A Suffragist With a Heart.” I turned.
“Technically, I wasn’t invited to the cocktail hour,” Mrs Nebitt said, raising a glass of wine at me.
“I won’t tell a soul,” I replied. “But you let me know if you need a refill. I happen to know the crazy medium working tonight.”
She looked lovely in her pale blue dress, fluffy white hair in curls. “Are you ready?”
Just having someone ask me such a question made my stomach flop. “Every time I turn around, more and more people come in.” I was nervous, but I was also getting better at doing seances too. The first one I’d done months ago with Rosalie had been a dud. Shelby Winehouse’s fiancé told me as much. I hadn’t charged for that one, but I was pretty sure he was close to asking for his gas money back.
And honestly, I could see why the mediums of yesteryear used vaudeville tricks in their seances, making tables shake or pretending to levitate by jumping at the right moment. It was incredibly hard to make the dead seem interesting if you didn’t jazz things up a bit. Without props and extras, seances were a lot like having a pretend friend. The other people in the room could do little more than watch you talk to yourself. So now, I always made a point to narrate every side of the conversation I was having with a ghost and I always asked the ghost to show their presence by moving something or flicking the lights. Something any ghost, no matter their power level, could usually handle.
Paula Henkel plowed through the crowd like a first responder in a crisis, carrying a Ziploc bag with a disintegrating yellowish orange folded paper in it.
“Mrs. Nebitt,” she said, turning her attention to the librarian beside me. “I’m so glad you could come, and you’re early too. Complimentary guests aren’t supposed to arrive until 9:00.” Paula’s eyes drifted down to the librarian’s glass. “Enjoying your cocktail?” She over-enunciated every syllable.
“I’m trying,” the woman said, downing her wine, making me like her even more. “It’s a little dry. One might even say it’s ‘unpleasantly bitter’. I’m going to find the waiter to see if you have beer.” She waddled off.
“Be sure to try the bacon-wrapped things,” I called after her. “They’re delicious.”
Paula pushed her lips together, holding the plastic bag high in the air so it was in front of my face. “You’re paying for her.”
I cocked my head to the side. “You know, it’s the strangest thing. I’m suddenly feeling ill. I think I should go home.”
Paula’s lips drained of their color. “This seance had better be good,” she said through clenched teeth. “Or there won’t be a next time.”
“It will be good,” I said. “But next time, the five complimentary guests you invite from town will be invited to the dinner and cocktail hour too. We treat our locals like family around here, even if they’re family we don’t always like. Got it? Now is that Sir Walter’s police report?”
I went to snatch the bag, but Paula pulled it back. “Wash your hands before you open this, and no food or drink. I’m probably going to add all of this to Sir Walter’s display case soon. I’m only giving it to you so you can confront Sir Walter with the information tonight.” She handed it to me. “In other words, make it look real.”
Jackson, who had been snickering off to the side the whole time, followed me over to a lit table in the back.
“Paula has been going around telling people not to talk to the main medium until showtime,” he said. “Now I know it’s because she thinks you’re full of parlor tricks and that you’ll accidentally give the strings away.”
“Doesn’t surprise me,” I said, a little too loudly, then looked around to see if anyone was watching me talk to myself. I wiped my hands on my black skinny jeans and opened the bag.
The paper was fragile. It felt almost like a thin breakable silk. The writing was almost too faded to read, done in a ridiculously loopy kind of cursive. Jackson read over my shoulder.
“I told you Walter’s suspicious,” I whispered under my breath to the ghost sitting next to me. “This is not the way it happened that night. He’s lying, and I’m going to confront him with it.”
“Oh, good plan,” my ex-husband said in his trademark snotty tone. “I can hardly wait to hear you explain to a room full of honored guests how you absolutely know Sir Walter was lying in this police report from more than 100 years ago because you were there that night, taking notes.”
“I’ll make it work somehow. And you’d better make an appearance if this thing gets dull. I don’t think Bessie’s showing up. And I can’t guarantee Sir Walter’s even here. So, flick the lights, rattle some chains or something.”
“That’s a little too trite for an English professor, don’t you think? And where would I find chains last minute, anyway?”
I looked up. Rosalie motioned for me to join her at the main seance table. I folded the paper up and tucked it back into the bag. “Show time.”
Everyone’s eyes were already on me as I made my way across what used to be the dance floor, secretly glad Paula had forbidden anyone from talking to me during cocktail hour. The whole place went quiet. I could hear every click of my still-too-tight boots, clunking along the wooden dance floor.
Paula didn’t look at me. She gently set a large glass fish bowl full of tickets on the table.
“I found out they paid $30 per raffle ticket,” Rosalie said in my ear, nodding like I should do something about it. “And we know that’s all extra. I’m so mad I could cuss.”
“Don’t,” I said. “Our reputation’s on the line and she’s not worth ruining it for. Not even one damn. These ladies are not that kind of audience.”
I couldn’t help staring at the bowl Paula was currently swishing her hand around in, trying to gues
s how many raffle tickets were swirling around with it, trying to times everything by $30. I stopped myself and took a deep breath.
Stop caring about petty “living” problems. You have a ghost to cook here.
“Put your mics on,” Paula instructed, pointing to the clip-on kind that news crews always wore. My hands fumbled like they’d forgotten how to work. Things were too ritzy for me. There was too much pressure…
Paula smiled at the close to one hundred people in the crowd, her white-blonde hair shimmering in the dim lights over the dance floor, like a spiky disco ball. “All right,” she said. Her voice echoed over her mic and the applause died down. “Who’s ready to have a good time? We have three premium spots. This first one is the best. The person will be sitting right between our two mediums so they’ll be able to see all the action up close, maybe keep these ladies honest,” she laughed. “Doubtful. And this very enviable spot goes to…” She pulled out a name. “Caleb Bowman.”
“Oh shit,” I said into my mic.
Chapter 17
Strings Attached
The room was dark except for the dim spotlight hitting the table and the candles lit around us. I tried to look at Rosalie before we started, but Caleb was in the middle of us and he stuck his face in the way, bugging his beady eyes at me, making them almost look normal sized. He whispered so low my mic couldn’t pick it up. “I am going to expose you for the fraud you are. Better hope I don’t see you moving this table.”
My heart raced, but not as fast as Caleb probably wanted it to.
“I’ve done some extensive research for tonight’s seance,” I began into my mic, trying to keep my voice low and mystical. “This lobby, the exact spot where we’re sitting at right now, was the main room of Bessilyn Margaret Hind’s birthday party. Just upstairs was where she died. Was it suicide or was it murder? That’s what we will find out tonight.”
“It was suicide,” Caleb said, this time loud enough for the mics to pick up. “I read the police report myself.”
“Oh, Sheriff Bowman. You of all people should know the police in Landover County don’t always know what they’re talking about,” I said, playing to the audience, who laughed right where I wanted them to.
I opened the Ziploc and carefully laid the paper out on the table. “I have the exact police report right here that we will be asking Sir Walter Timbre about. In case you don’t know, he was Bessilyn Hind’s fiancee just before her death, and the heir to Crown Frozen Vegetables. This paper may prove he is also a liar.” Little old ladies in the back craned their necks to get a better look.
“It will be on display soon,” Paula chimed into her mic from her spot at the table. “I’ll keep you all posted, just sign up for my newsletter.”
Seances were different than a channeling in a lot of ways. Channeling was a ghost taking over your body. Seances were you nagging whatever ghosts were in the room to have a conversation with you, whether they wanted to or not. You never knew who was going to show up, or if they were going to be angry about being conjured. You might get a ghost who’d ridden in on a human that night, or you could get the ghosts haunting the place you were doing the seance in. Those were the ones I was going after, at least at first. I’d probably end with all that sentimental “Mom loved it when you wore her pearls to Hamilton” garbage.
I picked up one of the items Paula had placed on the table, a metal bell hanging from a loop that was on a stand. “This is a spirit bell,” I said, holding it up, almost rolling my eyes. She’d certainly done her homework. The bell was usually a parlor trick, though, an easy way for mediums of old to ring when the lights were off in an attempt to trick their audience. “Spirits sometimes ring a bell when they want their presence known. Tonight, we are hoping to conjure up as many guests from Bessie’s birthday party in 1906 as we can. I have heard the Landover Bed and Breakfast is haunted by many. If you noticed the two display cases, those are the two we will try to talk to first.”
I led the group in a breathing exercise, which was really just for show, and then asked for Sir Walter. “Please make your presence known. We welcome you here as a member of our party.”
After a few moments, the spirit bell clanged loud and clear, and a gasp fell over the crowd. Jackson was sprawled across the table, flicking it. “I couldn’t resist,” he said, his head resting on his hand.
I ignored him. “Yes, yes. A lot of energy here… Sir Walter, is that you? I’d like to ask you about the night of Bessilyn Hind’s death.”
Nothing happened, except for Caleb chuckling to my left.
“Sir Walter,” I added, trying to make the ghost angry. An angry ghost was a communicating one. “I know your police report is nothing but lies,” I said. “And I implore you to come to the table and defend yourself.”
The table shook, the candles flickered, one spilled over, its wax running across the tablecloth, dangerously close to the police report. I snatched the paper up before anything could happen to it. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” I said. “Trying to get rid of the words you said that night. I’m guessing because I was right when I said they were a lie and Bessie hasn’t seen them yet. Let me read straight from the police report so Bessie knows what I’m talking about. She’s here too, you know?”
That was the part I was probably going to have to fake. Bessie’s response. No biggie, though. I was there that night. I knew everything that Bessie would probably say. Sir Walter would know I was lying about her being here, though, but no one else would.
I coughed, pulling the paper up to one of the candles so I could see it better, but not so close Sir Walter could burn it.
“The witness’s account as he remembers it exactly on that day: Sir Walter Timbre, 40, heir to Crown Vegetables, last saw the deceased at her birthday celebration at approximately 9:00 on the night of Friday, September 14, 1906.
“Mr. Timbre says it was at this time when the two engaged in a heated argument, whereby Miss Hind ran into the woods and Mr. Timbre followed. She begged him not to call off the wedding, but he did not comply. Miss Hind then took his hat and threw it into the woods. Mr. Timbre promptly left the party. When asked why he attended the party in the first place, he responded that the deceased had begged him to come.
“Shortly thereafter, Miss Hind was found in her room with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to her heart. The door was locked and there was no sign of entry.”
A loud crash rang through the room as all three of the large windows in the back of the lobby blew out at once; glass shattered and clanked onto the porch in the front. The audience screamed as a cool night breeze blew around us now. I thought I saw Caleb Bowman’s face grow deathly white. The bell was next. It rang at first then shot across the room, swooping just above the patrons’ heads in the crowd. It hit the back wall, clanging to the floor somewhere.
“Lies,” Bessie said. “Come out and show yourself, you coward.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. She did come. Yay for guilt.
I repeated Bessie’s words back to the crowd, and I heard a couple of women say, “You go, girl” in response.
She went on, shouting at her ex-fiancé. “Did you really tell the police in an official statement that I begged you not to end our engagement? I begged you! No wonder I get no respect as a women’s rights leader!”
I felt his presence before I saw him. “Walter’s here,” I told the crowd. They gasped.
“Bess, I’ve waited so long to talk to you about this.”
“Oh really,” she said, incredulously. “Then why have you been hiding from me for years when I call to you?”
Walter looked different than he had at Bessilyn’s birthday party. He was older and thicker, but still handsome. “The police officer said those things. I merely agreed.”
Sir Walter was a strong ghost, but meek. I could tell by how colorful and lifelike he seemed, hovering over toward Bessie. I filled the audience in on what was going on and they all swooned when I described Sir Walter because I still emphasized the h
andsome parts.
“You were my true love,” he said. I repeated it.
“Then why on earth did you kill me? And remarry the next year…”
My audience was all on the edge of their seats. The lovers’ spat. The murder. It was my best stuff.
“No. No,” he said. “The report is a little bit of a lie, sure. I was merely saving face over what happened that night, but I didn’t… I couldn’t… You killed yourself. We heard the gunshot.”
“I’m sure you heard the gunshot. You were the one pulling the trigger.” Bessie liked to throw stuff when she was angry. A wine glass this time.
“Bessie,” I said, and I knew she could hear me. “I’ll have to end this session if it looks like you’re going to hurt someone. This is a safe setting for you two to have your argument.”
The audience booed me. Even though a cool autumn breeze was blowing through the broken windows at this point, apparently, the audience wanted more destruction.
I looked over at Paula. Her eyes were wide, round almost. She looked from one side of the room to the next then back again, like a dazed animal.
Bessilyn continued. “After our argument where you begged me to come back to you, saying all sorts of lies about how you didn’t care what other people thought… you snuck around the back of my house, up to my room where you murdered me with my own gun. Your hat was never tossed into the woods. It dropped when you dropped it there.”
“I can assure you, Bessie, I did not. I would never hurt you.”
“Poppycock!” Bessilyn lifted the table. It levitated for a second before tilting. The police report fell into her hands before I could say anything. Then it floated in midair above the crowd. They screamed and gasped, craning their necks to see if there were strings. Caleb stood up, stumbling into someone’s table as he followed the paper across the room, eyes fixed on it. He grabbed it from Bessilyn who snatched it back.
Sir Walter was silent. I knew he hadn’t left, though. I could still feel his energy.
