Spirit Seeker

by Joan Lowery Nixon

  “I’m so sorry, Holly,” the voices went on.

  “Just be thankful you weren’t there!”

  “I’m glad nothing terrible happened to you.”

  “He didn’t do it,” I said to each of them through a smothering haze. “He didn’t do it!” I practically shouted.

  Then Sara shoved her way toward me, put an arm around my shoulders, and walked me the rest of the way to class. “Don’t get mad at them,” she said. “They don’t know.” She smiled and gave my shoulder a squeeze. “We’re going to show them. Right?”

  I took a long breath and felt the bubbling boil inside me melt down to a simmer. “Right,” I said.

  As we settled into our seats opposite each other in lit., I leaned toward Sara and said quietly, “Have you got your family’s Jeep today?” I live just a few blocks from school and usually walk the distance, but Sara lives farther away. Either her father drops her off and her mother picks her up, or she gets to drive the family’s old Jeep.

  Sara nodded. “Need a lift home?”

  “Do you have time to take me to the Garnetts’ house?”

  Her mouth fell open, and before she found words to fill it, I quickly outlined the plan.

  The moment I’d finished, she asked, “What good will it do to look through Mr. Garnett’s computer? What do you hope to find?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “But maybe there’ll be enough about his business deals to give us an idea if one of them isn’t as legal at it should have been.”

  “Can’t you ask your dad to do this?”

  “Sara,” I said, “Dad is so sure that Cody is guilty, he’d probably insist that checking out Mr. Garnett’s computer records would be a big waste of time and wouldn’t lead anywhere.”

  Sara pursed her lips as she thought. I told her about the movie that showed a detective attending a funeral, and that caught her attention. “I saw that,” she said, “and the funeral scene in the rain was really creepy. But we’d have to know who was who to make it work.”

  “We could listen in. We could ask questions.”

  “Spy?”

  “Whatever you want to call it.”

  She thought a moment. “Do you want to go to the house right after school?”

  “If that’s okay with you.”

  “I guess so. Okay,” she said.

  The bell rang, and we got down to business. I have no idea what we studied during lit. or during the rest of the day. All I could think about was what I hoped to accomplish.

  Monday. 2:55 P.M. When Sara parked the Jeep in front of the Garnetts’ house, the street was empty. The “large lovelies” stood proudly and silently apart. Glenda Jordan’s house retreated under its umbrella of leafy green. And the Arlington house squatted with shades covering its glass eyes, so withdrawn that it ignored the yellowed newspapers that lay on the walk and against the front door.

  Sara stared at the ornate lead glass in the Garnetts’ front door. “Are you really sure you want us to go in there?” she murmured.

  “Yes,” I answered.

  “I feel like this isn’t real, that we’re on a TV show.”

  “It’s not TV. It’s real. Sara, we’ve got to do it for the sake of justice.”

  Sara didn’t move. “Don’t you feel it?” she whispered.

  “Feel what?”

  “The staring, Holly. I know it’s weird, but I feel like somebody is staring at us.”

  Chapter Nine

  I’m the one who’s supposed to be supersensitive to things, according to that clairvoyant neighbor I told you about,” I said, glad that Sara didn’t know how hard I was working to keep my voice steady. “You’ve just seen too many movies. Come on. If the key’s where Cody said it would be, we’ll go in the back door.”

  Reluctantly, Sara followed me to the garage. The Coke can was in place, and the key dropped into my hand.

  The dead bolt lock on the back door must have been kept oiled, because it slid open smoothly. The door opened without a sound, and I stepped into the kitchen. Without thinking, I automatically tucked the key into my pocket.

  Even though the air conditioners had been kept running, the house smelted musty and stale, with the tang of a pine-scented cleaner around the edges. Somebody—probably Frank—must have already tried to clean up the living room. My imagination went into high speed, and I had to take a deep breath to keep from gagging. I waited for Sara to join me, then shut the door firmly. The dead bolt slid into place.

  “It’s awfully quiet in here,” Sara whispered.

  “We don’t have to whisper,” I told her. I spoke normally, but my voice banged against my ears and bounced off the white-enameled kitchen cabinets, smudged now with fingerprint powder. “Come on. Cody said to follow the hall that leads from the den. His dad’s office is the first room on the left.”

  “The den? It’s not …?”

  “No. They were murdered in the living room.”

  We stepped silently through the den, then entered the hallway.

  “Should we turn on lights?” Holly whispered.

  “No. It’s daylight. We don’t need lights.”

  “But all the drapes are closed. It’s so dim in here.”

  The door to the office, which faced the front street, was open. It wasn’t a large room, and file cabinets against one wall made it even smaller. A computer sat squarely in the middle of a bulky, cherry-wood desk, its printer off to one side.

  “I’m going to open the drapes,” Sara said and reached for the cord. As sunlight streamed in and the room brightened, she gave a sigh of relief. “Okay,” she said. “What next?”

  I turned on the computer and waited until it came up with a menu. Sara leaned over my shoulder, watching. I hadn’t worked with this brand of computer before, but it wasn’t long before I had the feel of it and had reached Mr. Garnett’s list of documents.

  The names of the documents made no sense, so I jotted them down on a nearby notepad. “We’ll have to try them, one at a time, until we reach whatever we’re looking for.”

  “Maybe we won’t find what you want,” Sara said. “Whatever’s on his computer isn’t secret. There was no special access code. If he was into something illegal, he wouldn’t have it in plain view for anyone who looked into his computer, would he?”

  “I don’t know. There’s no modem, so this computer isn’t hooked into his computer downtown or any system where someone might be able to access his computer. He probably thought anything in this computer would be for his eyes only.”

  “Okay. Try the first one,” Sara said. “I don’t want to be here any longer than we have to.”

  When the first document came up on the screen, Sara whistled. “Wow! I knew the Garnetts had money, but …”

  I quickly pressed SAVE and EXIT as my face grew hot with embarrassment. “We have no business looking at his income tax records.”

  “We won’t tell what we saw,” Sara said. “Hurry up. Try the next document.”

  A string of French names and numbers came up.

  “What in the world is that?” Sara asked.

  I caught a few words straight out of California. “It’s a wine list,” I told her. “There must be a wall of wine racks somewhere in the house to hold all these bottles.”

  We skimmed as fast as we could, trying not to be nosy, through a list of insurance records that covered life, medical, house, cars, and jewelry. Sara grabbed my hand as we came to a listing of jewelry that was insured. “Wait! Look at that! What must it be like to wear a necklace that’s insured for twenty-five thousand dollars? Was that stolen?”

  “I don’t think so. I think the murderer stole only the jewelry she was wearing.” I tried to remember what the newspaper had reported: Mrs. Garnett’s engagement and wedding rings, a watch, and a narrow gold bracelet.

  Discouraged at my lack of success in finding anything about Mr. Garnett’s business dealings, I entered the next document and almost exited it before I realized what I had found. Leaning forward, I sai
d, “Sara, here’s a list of property Mr. Garnett owns—some of it with other people.”

  Sara leaned forward too and pointed at the screen. “There’s their lake house,” she said. “Still under mortgage. This house too.”

  “Look at this entry,” I said. “It’s a warehouse, and he didn’t own it by himself. There’s a co-owner. I’m going to print out the information.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with owning a warehouse,” Sara said.

  “I know, but maybe there’s something in one of these documents that tells what’s kept in the warehouses.”

  “Then you’d better keep looking,” Sara said.

  The house was silent except for the low hum of the printer and the rustle of paper as it slid into the tray.

  Sara suddenly grabbed my shoulder so hard that it hurt. “Did you hear that?” she asked.

  “Hear what?” I’d been concentrating so hard on what was being printed that I hadn’t been paying attention, but as I listened intently, my memory brought back the tiniest of clicks.

  Nervously I pushed back my chair and tiptoed to the door to the hallway, Sara close behind me.

  For a moment we were silent, except for our rapid breathing, and I shook my head at her. “Hello!” I called out. “Is anyone here?”

  The air-conditioning unit for the downstairs cycled on. “Houses just make noise. You didn’t hear anything.”

  “Yes I did.”

  “Then it must have been a sound from outside.”

  Sara shook her head. “No. It came from inside the house.”

  “Do you hear anything now?”

  “No.”

  “Come on,” I told her. “Let’s bring up those other documents and see if there’s anything on them that will help.”

  As I sat before the computer again, Sara said, “I wish you could see your barrette. The amber is glowing.”

  I gasped and clapped a hand to the top of my head, my fingers tingling as I touched the warm stone.

  “What did I say?” Sara asked. “Why do you look so scared? You’re sitting in the sun, and it’s highlighting the amber in your barrette. Is there anything wrong with that?”

  “Th-The amber …,” I stammered. “I-It’s …” The words that would explain jammed in my throat, choking me. I forced myself to regain control and said, “I’ll tell you all about it later, Sara. Right now we’ve got work to do.”

  The next document I brought up was a list of stocks, bonds, and other investments. I quickly scrolled through that and went into the last document, which was a detailed accounting of bank transactions throughout the current year, with notations—most in abbreviations—that seemed to indicate the sources of the income.

  “Wow!” I said when I saw the business the warehouse had generated. There were pages and pages in this document, but I went into PRINT and the copy began sliding into the tray.

  “This may be important,” I murmured, but as Sara hung over my shoulder, reading the entries I’d pulled from the tray, I felt prickly, as if someone were watching me, and my gaze was drawn to the doorway.

  I froze, too frightened to scream, as I looked into Glenda Jordan’s dark, compelling eyes. She held a finger to her lips, and I heard the words in my mind: Be very, very quiet.

  I was so frightened I could hear my heart pounding. I reached up and pulled Sara’s head down to my shoulder. Whispering into her ear, I said, “Everything’s okay. Whatever you do, don’t scream. Don’t even make a sound.”

  “Wha—?” Sara began, but I clapped a hand over her mouth.

  I stood, releasing Sara. The printer had finished, so I turned off the computer and snatched the finished pages.

  Sara saw Glenda and grabbed my arm in terror, but I shook my head, held a finger to my own lips, and quietly walked to meet Glenda, dragging Sara with me.

  As we drew near, Glenda stepped just inside the room and whispered, “Someone evil is hiding in this house. You must leave. Now.”

  Somehow we managed to walk down the hall and through the den and kitchen behind Glenda, but my legs wobbled so badly it was hard to stay upright. I fought back the panic that made me want to break free and run. I could feel eyes on my back, and I jumped at the sounds of our own footsteps. What if this person who was hiding suddenly leaped out at us? What if he ran down the hall after us? Where was he? What was he planning to do?

  Sara smothered a whimper, and I clutched her hand tightly. We reached the back door, burst through, and raced down the driveway toward the Jeep.

  Leaning against it, sucking in air with loud, noisy gasps, we waited for Glenda, who approached us calmly. The air was still and heavy with heat. All I could hear was the excited yapping of the Rollinses’ dog, Tiger, in the yard on the next street and the loud cawing of two grackles in a nearby tree.

  “You called me, and I came,” Glenda said, looking at me.

  “I didn’t call you,” I insisted. “Sara and I were working on the computer.”

  “I know,” Glenda said. “I saw you, in my mind, so I entered the house.”

  Sara looked from Glenda to me and back to Glenda. “We made sure the door was locked with a dead bolt,” Sara said. “How did you get in?”

  “The door was ajar.”

  “No. We locked it,” I insisted, before I realized what she had said. “Then someone opened it.” I glanced toward the house. “Who? Who’s in there?”

  “I don’t know,” Glenda answered.

  “You didn’t see him?”

  “I saw you … and your friend.”

  With a jolt I realized that the person in the house could be the murderer I was trying so hard to find. “S-Sara and I can w-watch both the front and back doors and make sure whoever’s in there doesn’t leave. Glenda, why don’t you run home and call the police?”

  “It would do no good to call the police,” Glenda answered. “The one who was in the house with you left soon after we did.”

  “How? We would have seen him,” Sara said.

  I realized the Rollinses’ dog barking frenzy meant just one thing. “Whoever it was went over the back fence, didn’t he?” I asked.

  “I have no idea,” Glenda said. “My thoughts were tuned to yours alone. I could sense the evil that was threatening you and came to lead you from the house. For the moment that’s all that matters.”

  “Glenda,” I said, “if there was someone in the house who wanted to harm us, then you could have been in danger.”

  “Whether or not there was danger, I can’t be sure. But with the strong evil that chose to conceal itself near you, I felt the risk was too strong to ignore.”

  “Thank you for coming,” I murmured.

  Sara looked at me oddly but she said, “Yes, thanks.”

  “You’re welcome. Sara, is it?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t introduce you,” I said, embarrassed. “Glenda Jordan, this is Sara Madison.”

  Glenda and Sara nodded politely to each other. Then Glenda turned to me. “I’ve been expecting you.”

  “Uh … well, I …”

  “Together we may discover the identity of the murderer, amber girl.”

  “Amber girl?” Sara murmured.

  “I … uh … I don’t want to re-create the murder scene,” I blurted out. “I don’t want to see it!”

  Glenda laid her cool fingertips on my arm. “I must not have explained well,” she said. “We couldn’t possibly re-create the actions that took place at the time of the murder. Clairvoyants work with visions of what is happening at the moment.”

  “Then what would you …?”

  “What we would attempt to do is offer a receptive climate in which the Garnetts could respond, possibly leading us to the name of their murderer.”

  “I don’t get it,” Sara said.

  But I did. Leaning against the side of the Jeep for support, I managed to mutter, “You’re t-talking about seeking their spirits and bringing them back, aren’t you?”

  “Spirits?” Sara repeated.

&nbs
p; “It’s not a question of bringing them back,” Glenda explained. “In acts of sudden violence, spirits cling to their surroundings, hoping for the justice that will mean their release.”

  Sara moved closer to me and tugged on my arm. “We’ve got to leave now, Holly,” she said. “If I don’t come home soon, Mom will start worrying about me.”

  “Okay,” I answered quickly. I was just as eager as Sara to leave this woman and her invitation to call up spirits. I scrambled to climb into the passenger side of the Jeep and managed to thank Glenda again.

  “Just call me when you are ready,” Glenda said. “But don’t wait too much longer.”

  Sara took off too fast, and I was glad we were wearing our seat belts. “Slow down,” I insisted.

  “You slow down too,” she said, and as we reached the corner, she eased up on the gas pedal.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I saw your face when you were talking to Glenda. You were seriously thinking about doing what she wants you to do, weren’t you?”

  “No!” I said. “Well, maybe, but just maybe. What if she can find out the name of the murderer? I want to help Cody, don’t I?”

  “Not by fooling around with weird people who claim to seek spirits. Look at all that scary stuff she put us through. Maybe she wants some publicity. Maybe she’s just plain nuts. What did she mean by calling you ‘amber girl’?”

  “It’s because of my barrette. She told me that amber has mystical powers, that people don’t choose amber. It chooses them.”

  “Booga-booga, hocus-pocus!” Sara threw me a disgusted glance.

  “Just suppose she saved our lives. The door was open, and she came to warn us.”

  “Come on, Holly. I bet she opened it herself. If one extra key was hidden, there may have been more. People keep extra keys hidden around their property. She probably found a key and used it.”

  “I don’t think there’s more than one extra key kept around the house,” I said, suddenly remembering I hadn’t returned the key to its hiding place. “Cody knew of only one key. Remember, Glenda said she saw us inside the house, felt the evil, and came.”

  “Big nothing. Be reasonable. Think like a TV detective.”