Dark & Disorderly

by Bernita Harris

  I turned my bracelets. The garnets gleamed like eyes. “And if we forget that control, lose it, can’t perform our duty, we suffer.”

  He took my hand again and pushed a bracelet up my arm so that the scars showed, touched them lightly and circled my wrist with thumb and forefingers.

  “Lillie, why didn’t you leave him?”

  “You shouldn’t read without permission, Sergeant. It’s a bad habit,” I said evenly and tried to tug my hand away. “It doesn’t matter why I didn’t. I’d given my word and made my promises at the marriage altar. I’m very conventional and old-fashioned and uptight about things like marriage. He begged me. Because of provisions in his uncle’s will. He promised it wouldn’t happen again, and it didn’t. He went for different things. Sheer stubbornness? Pure stupidity? I was considering divorce though.”

  “Tell me about this will.”

  “If we divorced within a year of marriage, the bulk of his uncle’s estate reverted to charities, all but the house and cash accounts. It doesn’t matter now.”

  “What if one of you dies before the year is up?”

  “The survivor inherits. If you’re looking to pin a money motive on me, Sergeant, you can forget it. I have enough in my own right.”

  “Is it survivor complacency that leaves you so calm and collected after these narrow escapes? That’s a highly dangerous attitude to assume, Lillie. I’ve wondered if that is what’s at the root of your disinclination to cooperate with this chance to flush them out. Or are you just hiding behind the dead?”

  He loomed to his feet. Stood with his legs apart, thumbs hooked in his belt, waiting. He was right, in a way, about the first thing. The body adjusts to the demands on it. So does the mind.

  “‘I have not heard the banshee at morn walking by the fields of the orchard, or in the midst of the lonely, lonely night,’” I quoted into the silence by way of answer.

  “A song, a legend. A talisman of words. That’s a frail assurance, Lillie.”

  “Legends have come to life, Sergeant, or have you missed that? If you have, what are you doing in your job? Anyway, it’s all I’ve got and more than I’ve had from you. I think I mentioned a number of flaws in your vague plan. You’ve never countered them, yet you seem to expect me to go along with it like some trusting, mindless moron. Anyway, I think it’s pointless. I think they—he, whoever—know I’m alive. With a Talent or a gifted psychic on my tail that’s quite possible. Did you ever think of that little hitch? Did that creep say anything? And instead of wasting time with this crap psychoanalysis, why aren’t you down at the cop shop seeing what he has to say?”

  “He’ll keep.”

  “Really. I hope they don’t stash him in a cell in the old courthouse.”

  He went ramrod stiff.

  “Lillie, you have to trust the department and myself to do our job.”

  “Then do it, Sergeant. I intend to show up at work Monday morning and do mine. Meanwhile, I have laundry to do and a porch to scrub and groceries to buy and a window to fix. Those needs are realities too. Thank you for the first aid. May I see you out?”

  The door shut with an impressive slam. Another piece of glass from the broken window tinkled to the floor. Good riddance.

  I carried pails of water to sluice the blood off my porch before I got down to business with a scrub brush, reminding myself, once again, that I had to stop thinking of him as “Johnny” in my mind. Distance. I needed to create mental distance. He was “Sergeant Thresher” and I’d do well to remember that.

  When I duct-taped a square of cardboard over the broken pane I realized I must also refrain from blurting out intimate details. It invited invasive questions, raised bad memories and sent the wrong message.

  When I rinsed out my tracksuit and hung it over the back railing to drip, I decided I was a weak-minded idiot, too easily seduced by appearances, by my own callow idealism. It was never going to happen. No Champion would emerge from the mists of time. I could stop anytime looking for a hero.

  I didn’t go shopping for food. Instead, I choked down another egg and toast. That night I dreamed I fled on a narrow path beside a steep ravine, slipping and falling, along a ridge strewn with round quartz boulders, while a bean sidhe wailed by the river below and beat at blood-soaked linen, while something dark and shapeless followed me close behind. This time it was Johnny who stood above me and laughed.

  I woke crying.

  Anxiety dream. Very vivid.

  I opened all the drapes wide to the morning. To hell with hiding. I needed sunshine, not shadows.

  Though it was Sunday, I phoned the insurance agency again and left a long message. In the process I apologized for my late notification of my “accident,” saying I had been too exhausted and too shaken by the ordeal to follow up sooner. I made no reference to the police recovering my car. Let them think I was oblivious to it. I probably would have been if Thresher had not shown up in my backyard.

  After dithering over whether to use taxis in the future or rent another vehicle, I decided it was safe to rent. They wouldn’t be so stupid as to sabotage a car I drove a second time, not after the police fuss and fury. I decided to arrange, if I could, for the exact same make and color, just for spite. Until things were sorted out, I’d do a short-term rental.

  My thirty-five dollars, which surely I had tossed on the porch floor, stuck out from under the front cover of the phone book.

  On impulse, I went to the door. A box filled with grocery bags from the supermarket blocked the stoop. Deli stuff: Black Forest ham and sliced beef and turkey breast, containers of potato salad, pasta salad, fruit salad, coleslaw, a loaf of French bread, Gouda cheese, Gruyère cheese, pâté, two kinds of gourmet crackers, a bottle of dry red wine, a bottle of pale sweet white.

  The street was empty, but from the prints in the dew on the porch I knew the box had been placed here not long ago. From the size and tread of those pug marks, I thought I knew who had placed it. What I didn’t know was whether the groceries represented an apology, a reminder or a promise. Which, thinking of Greeks, annoyed me to no end, but didn’t stop me from hauling the box inside, lugging the box to the kitchen and putting the contents in the fridge.

  Nor did it stop me from going back to the kitchen and filling a plate with salads and cutting a sandwich for breakfast. Or going back for seconds. Trojan gifts be damned, I was hungry.

  In fact, I pigged out all day, but I didn’t touch the wine.

  I filled the rest of the morning with chores like vacuuming up the dust from under the sofa. That afternoon I took possession of an identical compact, blue as Johnny Thresher’s eyes. The agency delivered.

  That afternoon I heard the church bells toll for Bobby Secord. Later a piper standing on a knoll in Willowbank Cemetery would play “The Flowers of the Forest” as they lowered him down. Bobby once said that his mother was a McCrimmond, and he had never liked “Amazing Grace.”

  He had always wanted to be a cop. I wondered if on some lonely shift, a constable on patrol might find Bobby riding beside him. If some officer in a tight situation might find an unexpected backup. It would not surprise me. And he was one ghost no one had better ever, ever exorcize.

  That evening, watching the sun do a curtsey to the day with gentle dignity, I decided that it was past time I made a trip to Deadman’s Point to do some psychic investigation myself. To date, Nathan’s ghost had never haunted this house. Maybe he wandered there. Maybe Nathan’s ghost would have some answers.

  Before I tucked it away for safekeeping in the crystal compote in the china cabinet, I stared at the curse stone for a long time, trying to determine if there was malice within the stone.

  26.

  I heard the commotion as soon as I slipped in the back door of the town hall Monday morning early.

  “…warned you before about sneaking in here and snooping around! Put those down!” Ted’s voice, parade-square volume.

  A nasal voice answered, too low for me to hear the words. Barbara, I thought,
from the front office. I hotfooted down the hall on little cat’s feet.

  “I don’t give a rat’s ass what you thought, what you heard, woman. In addition, until we have confirmation, you’re not touching her desk or her work files. Now get your fat ass out of this office!”

  “You mind your mouth and mind your own business, Ted Dempster, and stick to your parking meters. There’s bound to be personal information in her files. It’s a standard precaution to secure privacy. And my ass isn’t fat!”

  “It sure looks fat with your head stuck up it as usual. Privacy, my round, red, rosy rectum. You’d likely blat out anything you find to that delinquent son of yours and set up the next poor bugger who takes this sorry job. And who appointed you anyway?”

  “I’m taking charge of any disks too. I’ll have to get a box for her junk. After all, it’s pretty certain…”

  “That won’t be necessary,” I said, pushing the door wider and stepping inside. “I’ll look after those files myself. I don’t understand why you would want them or why you’re rooting though my desk.”

  Barbara Brennan it was, bent over, busy scrabbling though my desk drawers. She turned at my voice, turned white, then the color of her hair, then blotchy.

  “Good morning, Ted,” I said over my shoulder. “Glad to see you back at work. Hope that nasty slash from the riot bomb is better. What’s the fuss about? Has my job been terminated or something? If so, no one’s informed me of the fact.”

  Ted turned pasty, slumped in his chair and let his head fall back, his arms dangling. “Lillie. Thank God.”

  Barbara squeaked. “You’re supposed to be dead, drowned!”

  Not termination notice gossip, then. Just my creek experience. I jerked the sliding pile of folders from her red fingernails before they spewed on the floor.

  “Really? I don’t feel like a ghost. Where’d you get that idea?”

  “I saw it on the television news, they said…” Barbara gasped, kneading at the front of her pink blouse and edging sideways from me toward the door.

  Ted’s color returned. He sat forward and grinned.

  “You shouldn’t believe everything you hear on television. And you certainly have no business touching my files, no matter what you’ve seen. And you have no business ever going through my desk,” I said, letting anger curl around the edges of my words. “Let me remind you I’m a consultant on contract and not a town employee. Further, I sometimes deal with sensitive material, so I’ve a good mind to report you for breach of confidentiality. What’s going on here anyway, Ted?” I banged shut the desk drawers before I sat down to bring the computer online.

  When I didn’t hear her leave, I swiveled my chair and decided to lay it on even thicker.

  “Let me tell you, Mrs. Brennan, if I ever end up dead, drowned or otherwise damaged you are hereby warned that any material in this office pertaining to my work would be considered pertinent to a subsequent and immediate homicide investigation. Is that clear? You wouldn’t want to be charged with obstruction of justice, would you? Especially since you apparently have connections with one of the rowdies present at the riot at the old courthouse. It wasn’t common knowledge I intended to go there the other day. In light of that fact, I find your interest in my desk acutely suspicious.”

  She fled in a clatter of high heels down the hall.

  Ted got up and closed the door, leaned against it and said, “Nosy, scavenger bitch. That’s telling her… Geesus, Lillie, but I’m glad to see you, though it gave me a turn when you walked in the door. For a minute I thought you were a ghost for sure. What gives? I saw the TV news too. Shook me bad. The wife too. Didn’t want to believe the worst. That was your car they hauled out, wasn’t it? Were you in it? You’ve damage on your forehead, I notice, and you walked in like you were stiff.”

  “Not related. Yes, I ended up in the creek, crawled out, sopping wet, got a lift from a Good Samaritan and came home. How’s your hand?”

  “Damned sore. Does the big guy know you’re all right? Recognized him on the TV too, in spite of the scuba gear, all grim and ‘no comment.’ Thought he was going to take the head off one newshound—you know how his eyes get, or maybe you don’t—anyway, knew a sniper with eyes like that once. Colder than an ice floe off Baffin Island.”

  So Johnny had been diving in that dark creek. He hadn’t mentioned it.

  “Yes, Ted. The sergeant knows. He came by the next day. Since I seldom turn on the TV, I didn’t know there’d been a big search until he came to the house. A bit embarrassing, really, all that fuss, but I decided the best thing to do was to carry on as usual. I can’t think why the station hasn’t put out a correction.”

  “The word will soon get around. I bet Barb’s on the phone right now, squawking and pissing. Could have been a correction and I missed it. I was out most of yesterday. Search team for a missing kid. Geesus, Lillie. How’d it happen?”

  “The steering went on the hill—and the brakes.”

  Ted rubbed at his chin, his eyes narrow. “Did they, now? You’re lucky you made it out, lady, with the water so high and all. There’s a deep pool below the bridge there at normal levels. I’ve fished for salmon there. Odd thing to happen, for both to go at once.”

  “I thought so, not that I know anything about cars. Tell me, Ted, what do you know about Kevin Cornett?”

  “Cornett, eh? Real estate. Wheeler-dealer. Owns a lot of rental housing. Bit of a slum landlord. I’ve had to issue notice a few times on property standards. He’s not in good odor with Planning, I’ll tell you that. Blew into town a couple of years ago and bought up property. He’s one of the numb nuts in the Businessman’s Club. Word on the street is that he’s been in a bit of a financial bind since he branched out into property development, stretched himself too thin. Wasn’t he buddy-buddy with your husband? I used to see them going into the Inn for drinks, along with that ne’er-do-well, Charlie Cowan. Heard they were all old college buddies.”

  “I believe so. Nathan mentioned him quite often. He was one of Nathan’s VPs in ASP. Ghosts tend to make tenants nervous and to lower property values, I suppose.” I flipped through the pile until I found the folder. “I don’t know Cowan though.”

  Ted snorted. “You don’t want to. No decent woman does.”

  “The reason I asked is because I’ve a case here from three weeks ago—a referral from the Business Improvement Association—one I’d never got to process and I need to clear it up. A haunting on River Road. Number 19 River—or 1945 River under the new numbers. He’s listed as the owner of record. Do you know the place? Can you tell me anything about it?”

  “That one. Sure do. Cousin of my grandfather built that place back in the twenties. Story was he made his money running rum during Prohibition. Used to be a gazebo in the back lawn and steps that led down to a private dock on the river. Practically country until the town expanded after the War. It was run as a bed-and-breakfast concern up until three, four years ago. Nice views, nice old place, or was, before they widened the highway. Turned into flats and offices now, prime real estate. Don’t tell me old Cyrus Dempster is haunting the place after all these years.”

  “Doesn’t sound like it. The request says it’s a female, but maybe he was a hellion in other ways, or the specter’s connected with a later owner.”

  Ted cleared his throat.

  “Is there more I should know about the property or about Cornett, Ted?

  “Don’t know about ‘should’ but can’t do any harm. Now, anyway. Word on the street is that Cornett swings both ways.” Ted shifted his gaze to the ceiling and added his usual caveat. “Just gossip, you understand.”

  Maybe Nathan had swung both ways as well. I hadn’t thought so, but what did I know? “He sent a positively extravagant flower arrangement,” I said in a neutral tone and turned back to my desk to run the address through the various databases again. Nothing new or different popped up. I also checked out several amateur Web sites that collected ghost reports.

  Ted fidgeted a
t his desk, coughed and cleared his throat several times.

  “Ah, Lillie? I just remembered the accident was out that way. I don’t know how you feel and all, but it might not be a good idea for you to go alone. If you need someone to come along with you, sort of like backup, for support…me or the wife…”

  “Ted, thank you. I appreciate that. But sooner or later there is bound to be a case on that road and this one’s past due. I’m going out later this morning to get it over with. I’ll be fine.”

  “If you’re sure. Well, I must be off on my daily jaunt up and down the streets of our fair town. Just you be careful. Christ, I’m glad you’re still alive and kicking.” He patted me on the shoulder when he went past.

  I reread the request carefully. The description of the apparition struck me once again as generic—or classic—depending on one’s point of view. A woman in white flitting through the rooms, sometimes sobbing, sometimes just drifting by. The summary came off more like an excerpt from Ghostly Tales. Not unusual by itself; people often related their experiences in unconscious imitation of historical sightings.

  On occasion, property owners arranged for a ghost to be imported or activated to get rid of tenants so a building could be renovated and rents increased. Tenants sometimes used the same ploy to get out of a lease. The only way to determine if the claim was contrived or fake was to go out there.

  No time specified for the sightings, but because the first floor was given over to offices I assumed they occurred during daylight. Another reason why I hadn’t been eager to attend the place that night, the availability of master keys notwithstanding.

  I laid the file aside to write up the report on Friday’s cemetery exorcism and fired it off to Planning. Before I shut down the computer, I also changed my password.

  Then I went out into the sweet, soft day in search of Nathan’s ghost.

  I didn’t find him.

  I didn’t find the prototype White Lady either, or the slightest indication she’d ever appeared at that address.