Emily's Ghost

by Stockenberg, Antoinette

  He thought about it, then shook his head no. "'Tomorrow is another day,'" he said with an irrepressible look.

  She smiled despite herself. "Gone With the Wind. Was that on TV, too?"

  "TNT," he said at once. "And a glorious film it is."

  "So now you're a cinema buff, too. Let's hope you don't get hooked on the daytime soaps."

  "Not damn likely," he answered with distaste. "They're too unrealistic."

  ****

  When Emily arrived at her desk the following morning, the first thing she saw was an open Newsweek with the following tidbit highlighted in yellow marker: "There is talk that Massachusetts Senator Lee Alden, whose paranormal pursuits are becoming an open secret with his still-doting voters back home, may be challenged for his Senate seat. Congressman Boyd Strom, who wants to see 'dignity and good judgment restored to the office,' has been gathering political and financial support for a run in the primary this October."

  The second thing she saw was a while-you-were-out message telling her to call about the parakeet, price reduced.

  The third thing she saw was a handwritten note from the managing editor, Phil Sparke, telling her to be in his office. Now.

  She was dialing the number to Lee Alden's Washington office when Stan Cooper came back to his desk, balancing a cellophaned crumb cake on a cup of vending machine coffee. He gave her a sly and sleepy good morning and said, "Which one are you tackling first: the rumor, the bird, or the boss?" He tore open the crinkly wrapper. "It looks like you're going for the bird."

  Emily dropped the phone like a hot brick. "No, it looks like I'm going for the boss."

  "A wise choice." He said it casually, brushing crumbs from his cotton sport coat, but then he caught her look and held it before adding, "Want to talk about it yet?"

  "Talk about what, Stan? I'm on to an interesting story, not my usual thing, but a nice summer piece. Light and easy." Ha. "When I get a little farther along, I'll clue you in."

  "You're in over your head, kiddo," he warned. "National politics is big time."

  "Who said anything about national politics? This one's about a little history, a little mystery, that's all."

  "Nothing to do with your upcoming interview with Senator Alden?"

  "Nothing at all."

  Obviously he didn't believe her. "I'm telling you again, you're in over your head."

  "Everything's under control, Stan. I gotta run; Phil's waiting."

  She walked away with the uneasy sense that Stan was not only professionally jealous but determined to sabotage her interview with Lee Alden in some way, possibly by putting in a bad word with the news editor. Too bad she couldn't just tell Stan that she'd decided to kill the interview. How could she not kill it? She'd been to bed with the interviewee, and her emotions were in a state of chaos. The longing she felt over their time together caused her actual physical pain whenever she thought of it, so naturally she tried not to think. She needed desperately to come to terms with that night, but with a ghost running around demanding justice, who had the time?

  Not to mention she didn't care to be humiliated about her own work. Originally -- it was true -- she'd had hopes of getting the senator to embarrass himself. But Fergus had made her a believer and changed all that. Besides, if the Newsweek rumor were true, the senator would no doubt play it safe in an interview, and safe wouldn't move her career along at all. No, the best thing she could do would be to let Lee Alden off the hook. In every way. She wondered whether the parakeet call was about the interview. She didn't dare hope it'd be about anything else.

  Emily saw the editor through the glass walls of his computer-laden office before he saw her. Phil Sparke looked exactly like his name: a balding, energetic dynamo who liked to clamp cold cigar butts in his teeth while he made reporters' lives hell. So far Emily had managed not to get the cigar butt pointed at her face. Until now.

  "What the hell is going on here, Bowditch?" the editor demanded. "I just got a call from Senator Alden's office canceling your interview with him next week."

  What nerve! "Did he say why?"

  "He's going with 60 Minutes instead."

  What nerve! She shrugged and said, "That's it, then, sir. Television. More exposure."

  "I don't wanna hear that! You should've had that interview nailed down tight as a drum. What the hell kind of reporter are you? We don't shrug off exclusives around here, Bowditch. Christ, the guy's in Newsweek, a campaign fight's brewing -- I want that interview!"

  Emily stared down the barrel of a cold cigar. "But he canceled," she said in a tiny, fearful voice.

  "Well, uncancel him!"

  "How?" she asked in a tinier, more fearful voice.

  "Call the son of a bitch. There's the phone. Here's the number."

  She stared at the slip. It was the number. "Now?"

  "Now, goddammit."

  As far as Emily could tell, there were only two ways out. She could throw herself through the plate glass window and be carried off bleeding on a stretcher, or she could feign a stroke and be carried off unconscious on a stretcher. Phil Sparke would settle for nothing less. She let him hand her the phone while he punched in the number.

  This was it, the professional low point of her life. The ditch. The sinkhole. The lowest rung of the limbo pole. Crawling back to a man she hadn't even had the chance to reject, just because another man was standing there telling her to.

  "Hello, Senator?" she said faintly at the sound of Lee Alden's voice. "This is Emily Bowditch. I was wondering, Senator. Would you ... reconsider ... granting me the interview?"

  That was it, her entire speech. It was all her pride would allow. If the result was dismissal and foreclosure on the condo, so be it.

  After a brief but agonizing pause the senator said, "I canceled because I got the distinct impression the other night that the less you saw of me, the better. Was I wrong?"

  "In some ways," she said, squirming under Phil's baleful eye.

  "You sound like you're not alone. Okay, we'll talk about it later. Actually ... I'll be in Boston Friday night for a fund-raiser at the Copley Plaza. I'll FedEx a ticket to you. Emily, I've got to free up this line. I'm expecting a call from the White House; they need my vote on a bill, which makes now a good time for some serious horse trading. I'll catch you on Friday night."

  Catch me? Does he think I'm falling?

  "Well?" asked her boss after she hung up.

  "Probably," she answered.

  Phil Sparke beamed. "I knew you could do it." Now that he'd got his interview back, he became almost kindly. He asked Emily what project she was working on, and she told him the story of Hessiah Talbot, omitting some things -- notably Fergus -- and fudging others. He thought the feature had possibilities. He made a suggestion or two, and Emily left him in a very good mood.

  For the rest of the day she worked on her consumer complaint column. Every once in a while her glance strayed to the open Newsweek still on her desk, but she refused to ask Stan whether he'd put it there. No doubt Stan thought she was the one behind the paranormal rumors. Maybe even Lee Alden thought it -- was that why he'd canceled? Still, the truth was it could have been anybody, from Jim Whitewood (an opportunist if ever there was one) to the chatty Mrs. Lividus, Kimberly's mentor.

  After work, on a hunch, Emily went back to the Something Old shop on Newbury Street. She was in luck. The Coco Chanel saleswoman was just closing up. Reluctantly the woman let Emily in, but only just inside the door.

  Emily apologized profusely and then said, "Do you remember my buying this necklace a couple of weeks ago?"

  She'd asked merely as a formality and was astonished when the saleswoman acted unsure. "That isn't at all the kind of thing we carry," the woman said with a sniff.

  "I don't have my VISA slip with me," Emily answered, becoming annoyed, "but I assure you it's from here. What I'd like to know, if I can--"

  The saleswoman glanced at her watch and then at her red fingernails. She was obviously on her way out for the evening,
and Emily was holding her up. "What I'd like to know," Emily repeated with a patient smile, "is where this came from. Who owned it before."

  Emily might just as well have accused the shop of fencing hot jewelry.

  "Well, really. Every transaction is perfectly legitimate. But it's impossible to know individual owners. Terri buys from all over the world, usually in odd lots from auctions, estate sales, open markets, whatever. The pieces are itemized, of course, but, well -- really."

  Emily bit back a retort, asked for Terri's business phone, thanked the woman, and left.

  When she got back home the television was on, but Fergus was nowhere in sight. Emily turned off Wheel of Fortune and said aloud to the empty room, "Fergus, I said to turn off the TV if you're not watching it." She was halfway to the bedroom when she heard Pat Sajak's voice. She came back to the television and turned it off again. It came back on. "How do you do that? I suppose you have a built-in remote." She turned the set off again.

  It came back on.

  "Dammit, Fergus, I like it quiet after work. I need to wind down. And I've got to use the phone. If you insist on watching, turn it down a little. And put on PBS or something. What is it about men and Vanna anyway?" she muttered to herself as she went off to the bedroom to change.

  The volume went up.

  After she'd changed and eaten a quick meal, she tried calling Terri Simmer on the offhand chance that an independent businesswoman was always available for calls. She was right; Ms. Simmer, who sounded bright, hard, and urban, took the call in her car.

  "Yes. I remember the item very well. No, I didn't buy it as part of a lot. I happened to be weekending on the Vineyard and found it at a white elephant sale at the Oak Bluffs Home for the Aged. I doubt that they gave me a receipt. That's all I can tell you."

  She probably paid forty-five cents for it, Emily thought as she laid the Princess phone in its cradle. The Yankee in her cringed at the thought of a five-hundred-dollar charge rolling in on next month's VISA statement. Still, she had a promising lead to follow up on, and for now that was all that mattered. The good lead reminded her of the bad one; she'd forgotten all about the photograph that was still in the pocket of the skirt she'd worn at Talbot Manor. It was still in the skirt, lying in a pile bound for the dry cleaners. She pulled out the photo, more crumpled than ever, and took it into the living room.

  She turned off the set in the middle of a lurid account of a triple murder being covered on Hard Copy and said, "Please show yourself, Fergus. I don't have time to play little games with you." She stepped in front of the television so that the ghost's remote-control power wouldn't work.

  But the television behind her came back on anyway, madly flipping through its channel selection. Emily jumped out of the way. "Hey! Don't do that! I want to have children someday!"

  Fergus materialized, sprawled on the sofa like any other couch potato. He glanced at the TV, muting it, but he continued to divide his attention between her and the flickering images as he said, "Yeah? What's up?"

  "My God," she murmured. "Look at you. Listen to you. You're turning into Bart Simpson."

  "Don't have a cow over it," he said in a dead-on mimic that left her speechless. Then he grinned, got the TV to turn itself off, and sat up straight. "Ye'd rather I were Fergus. Fergus it is, then. What's on yer mind?"

  His grin was roguish, but there was something dangerous in it, too, and Emily realized that she still had no idea who or even what Fergus O'Malley really was. He had power, undeniably. But whether it was good or evil or some kind of neutral energy, she couldn't say. One thing was sure: His ability to adapt completely to the world he found himself thrown into was unnerving. His approach simply could not be more different from Emily's. Emily had spent all her adult life trying to make the world over to her system of right and wrong: to correct every injustice she happened to come across, and to encourage others to tell her about the ones she hadn't. It was a big job, and it didn't leave time for her to be frivolous. Television was frivolous. Almost as frivolous as dating men.

  Looked at a certain way, even sex was frivolous. Sex didn't really solve anything. It just complicated matters and knocked you off course. It made you think about it all the time. She knew from the magazines she'd read that men had an entirely different attitude from that of women. Men kept sex in perspective. To them it was a deep, recurring need, like hunger. They acknowledged it; they satisfied it; and that was that -- at least until the next time. Somehow she had to become more practical, more like them, in her approach. Somehow she had to put the other night in perspective.

  She looked up to see Fergus waving his arms back and forth like a railroad signalman, trying to get her attention. She'd been off in a daze somewhere, just the way she'd been doing ever since the night Lee Alden had made love to her.

  "What did ye mean, ye want to have children someday?" he asked her.

  She shook off her daydream. "Pardon me?"

  "Surely ye're barren," Fergus said, a quizzical look on his face.

  "Barren! What put that idea in your head?"

  "If ye --" He cleared his throat. "If ye do it with a man, ye will get pregnant by him. It's an old and fairly simple story," he added, finding refuge in irony.

  "Birth control, Fergus," she said, smiling at his discomfort. "We have that now. Women don't have to get pregnant unless they want to."

  It was a profound revelation to him, she could see that. "It's finally come, then," he said in a strangely melancholy voice. "I can think of some who might've turned out different," he added softly. "I had a sister, she were only fifteen, she died giving birth. Not that she wanted to live. The man never come forward. The neighbors shunned her. Frances hid at home, away from the windows, away from their tongues. She cried all the time. Mum said it was her tears poisoned her. I remember her tears used to fall on the cat, and the cat would lick herself clean. I thought it was strange they never poisoned the cat."

  Emily saw that he was somewhere else in time. "Birth control, Frances," he said softly to his sister, wherever she was. "Imagine that."

  He pulled himself out of the nineteenth century and came back to the twentieth. "Ye don't have to worry, then," he said to Emily with an inexpressibly tender look. "I would never do anything to hurt yer hopes for a family."

  "I know that, Fergus. Not on purpose," she added, because she really did believe that about him now. She sat down beside him, the photograph in her hand.

  He was silent a moment, ruminating. "So," he said at last, "who's the father to be?"

  "I haven't made any plans, Fergus," she said dryly. "When I do, you'll be the first to know."

  "Ye ain't gettin' any younger."

  "Thank you for the reminder. Can we talk about something else now?" She held the photograph out in front of him.

  "What about that senator fella? He looks able."

  "I'll put him on my list," she answered with an embarrassment of heat. "Fergus, please. I need your cooperation in this investigation. Do you recognize anyone in this picture? I found it in the tower of Talbot Manor."

  He stopped smiling and stared thoughtfully at the family members for a long while, then shook his head. She turned the photograph over. He said, "This was taken in 1862! I was nowhere near Talbot Manor then. In 1862 I was cabin boy on a fishing schooner out of Gloucester. I showed up in Newarth only a few months before Hessiah Talbot was murdered."

  "It was a long shot," she admitted. "I thought maybe the mother in this photo might have reminded you of Hessiah, or the father of her brother Stewart. Sometimes family resemblances run deep."

  "It could be anyone -- uncles, friends, neighbors. Why do ye think it's the Talbot family? Who's the extra lad, in that case?"

  "I don't know; I suppose you're right. This is all that was left in a desk Maria Salva emptied after I started asking questions. One thing I do know: Maria knows much more than she's let on about the Talbots. But why keep it so secret?"

  "Money or love," Fergus offered. "There are no other motives
to speak of, for women."

  A vivid picture came to Emily of the mysterious Maria with her vague smile and silky walk. So intense was the memory that Emily forgot to be offended by Fergus O'Malley's chauvinist remark.

  "It's not money," she said firmly.

  Chapter 12

  Fergus appeared to Emily early the next morning as she was toddling half asleep to the Mr. Coffee machine. It was the first time he'd actually shown up before her morning shower, and being a very private person, Emily didn't take kindly to it.

  "Fergus! For Pete's sake, I haven't even brushed my teeth," she said, raking her fingers through her hair and yanking her T-shirt a little closer to her knees.

  "I'm only doin' what ye told me, showing meself if I'm in the room," he answered, surprised by her vehemence.

  It was true. After her mortification over Lee Alden, she'd made Fergus promise never to observe her unseen in intimate situations. As far as she knew, he'd been as good as his word.

  "Sorry. Haven't had my coffee," she mumbled. It was just so weird, having a ghost around in her most unguarded moments. It was like having to adjust to all the disadvantages of marriage with none of the advantages that make it worthwhile.

  "I remembered something that might be of some use to ye," Fergus said as she poured herself a cup of coffee. "Yer Mrs. Gibbs just may be right. Once or twice while I lived in Newarth I heard whispers of a curse that lay on the house of Talbot. No one would ever say what the evil was behind the curse. Either they didn't know, or they were too frightened to say. At the time I thought it was just idle gossip, and after the trial, of course, it didn't much matter to me. I believe there was a feeling it had to do with Mrs. Talbot. She were exceeding religious, people said. Who's to say she hadn't got wind of something? Them kind often do."