Emily's Ghost

by Stockenberg, Antoinette

  "Do you?"

  He leaned his forearms on the back of the wing chair as if he were at the rail of a ship, staring at the horizon. "I wish I had more proof."

  Her heart plummeted. Shaking with disappointment and frustration, she walked over to him and put her hand alongside his cheek, turned his face to her, and kissed him long and hard, a mocking, tonguing, daring kiss.

  She pulled away abruptly. "Check with Millie in that case," she said, and left.

  ****

  Emily came to a screeching halt at the curb outside the senator's office building. She could not gather the wit to remember if she'd brought her car or taken the train. In the meantime, rain had begun to fall. She began to storm blindly down Cambridge Street, oblivious to the sky, heading for either the parking garage or the underground rapid transit, she wasn't sure which.

  "This is the last straw. This really is," she said in a fury under her breath. "That man will never believe me.

  "Not if ye try using power ye don't possess."

  "Oh. You," she said, throwing her hands up in the air. "Just what I need. Go away, Fergus. I'm not in the mood!"

  "What kind of fool stunt was that back there?" he demanded. He was alongside, struggling to keep up with her. "Did ye really believe I'd destroy a piece of the nation's business just to prove a point for ye?"

  "The point I was trying to prove, you jerk, was that you exist!"

  He flushed angrily. "What the hell do I care if yer boyfriend believes it or not? It would just complicate matters. It would bring the press around in hordes. Ye couldn't get a goddamned thing done. Not that ye do a hell of a lot anyway. I never saw such a goddamned procrastinator. Why can't ye just get on with the investigation? Why must everything be laid at the feet of this idol like some kind of offering? What's he got to do with my acquittal? When are ye goin' to stop this hemmin' and hawin' and agonizing and just do it?"

  She stopped and turned the full force of her fury on him, tucking her chin down like a bull before the charge. "You've got a hell of a nerve! I'm trying to fit you in my life the best I can, and you're wrecking it! Do you understand? You're destroying my relationship with this man!"

  "Ye wouldn't even know the bastard if it weren't for me!"

  "I knew him when you were just a glimmer in Kimberly's eye! And things would've moved right along in a normal way if it weren't for you! The least you could've done was prove to him you exist. I mean, this is idiotic! You nearly kill me to show me who and what you are, and all Lee gets is a burned-out light bulb. What am I supposed to do with that? I don't blame Lee at all. I blame you, Fergus."

  "Fine! Ye want me to go back there and blow Millie's computer records to smithereens? Hey, make my day! What do I care if yer pal never submits another bill to Congress? I'm off to do yer bidding!"

  "No! No, no, no," she cried when he disappeared. "Come back here, you! Right now!" she screamed. The rain was streaming down her face; her wet hair clung to her cheeks and neck; and her cotton skirt was plastered against her legs like a big wet washrag. "Right now, I said!" she yelled at the top of her lungs.

  There weren't many pedestrians on the street at that hour on a Sunday in the rain. But the ones there were, well dressed and tucked under sturdy black umbrellas, edged closer to the buildings, giving her a wide berth.

  Fergus suddenly reappeared, cool, dry, and invincible. "Now what?" he sneered. "Ye want me to spell out his name in lights across the downtown sky?"

  She stood there in the middle of the sidewalk, looking like a drowned cat. "He's important to me, Fergus. Don't you understand that? Can't you see I'm in love with him?"

  She saw him recoil, as if she'd landed a blow to his solar plexus. It was a hit, a palpable hit. He stood there, flushed and oddly appealing, his green eyes intense and stricken. She could hear his agitated breathing, see his chest rise and fall under his brown corduroy vest. For the first time since she'd known him, she forgot completely that he was a phantom.

  "What difference can that make?" he said at last. "He's not in love with ye."

  Now it was her turn to recoil from the blow. Fergus was a ghost, with knowledge she could never hope to have on earth. He must know if Lee was or wasn't in love or could or couldn't ever get that way.

  "If he loved ye he'd believe ye, ye simpleton," Fergus added in a growl. "If ye were mine, I'd accept yer every word as God's own. If ye said the moon was hot, I'd believe ye. If ye said ye could fly, I'd believe ye. If ye said ye could pluck a mountain and drop it in the sea, I'd believe ye. Ye're not mine," he added in a voice hoarse with indignation, "and I still believe every blessed word ye say."

  The rain was falling more gently now, and it mixed and ran with the tears on her cheeks. "Fergus ... I'm sorry ..."

  "Nothin' to be sorry over," he said stoically. "The young ones have an expression, don't they? 'Life's a bitch, and then ye die.' As near as I can tell, life's a bitch, and then ye die, and then life seems to be a bitch all over again." He laughed bitterly.

  She held out her hand to him, forgetting completely that he couldn't possibly take it. To her astonishment a passerby, an elderly man in a dark green raincoat, pressed a five-dollar bill into her open palm. "Take this, child," he said. "There's a shelter not two miles from here. You can catch the bus at the corner. Never give up hope. Things will get better. There are people all around you who care."

  He hurried on his way, and when Emily turned around, Fergus was gone. She felt more destitute than ever.

  Chapter 18

  The feeling stayed with Emily through the next morning as she set out early for Newarth City Hall. It didn't help that it was still raining. Rain was depressing. Rain was slow going. The dull slip-slap of the windshield wipers kept time to her mood while she tried to sort things out.

  Even though she'd told Fergus she didn't blame Lee for not believing her, she did blame Lee. And even though she'd accused Fergus of wrecking her life, Fergus had now become a necessary part of her life. In other words, I lied. Or I'm hopelessly confused.

  At this point she had no idea where she stood with either Lee or Fergus; her emotional life was truly a shambles. Maybe that's why Hessiah Talbot's murder suddenly looked so appealing; it, at least, was a problem with a solution. Fergus was right. It was time to stop hemming and hawing and trying to work Lee into the equation. It was time to just do it.

  Emily spent the next hour and a half in the dreary basement of Newarth's City Hall poring over old taxpayer rolls. She had her fingers crossed that Hattie Dunbart's memory was as sharp as her tongue. If Hattie's uncle Eric really had found the necklace in his father's house, then either Mayor Abbott was the murderer, or -- less likely -- he'd been host to the murderer. Granted, it was circumstantial evidence, but circumstantial evidence was better than no evidence at all.

  She ran her finger down the 1892 list of taxpayers:

  "Abbott, Alfred; Abbott, Carl; Abbott, Francis; Abbott, Henry. Here we go," she murmured to herself at the battered oak table she was sharing with a couple of paralegals.

  "Oh, no." Henry Abbott's address at the time of his suicide was listed as "Talbot Manor." "Oh, no." This was not exactly an interesting twist. This was a cruel and diabolical open end. If Henry Abbott had actually bought and lived in Talbot Manor, then she had not only all the Abbotts to consider -- God knows, there were enough of them in the 1892 Newarth directory -- but the whole damn Talbot entourage as well.

  She remembered from the trial accounts that several Talbot cousins were staying at the manor at the time of the murder, not to mention the usual suspects that Fergus had rounded up for her: the large staff, the itinerant peddlers, even the parish priest who played a game of whist on occasion at the manor. Add to that all the mill employees who must've trafficked through the place.

  There were thousands of suspects! Ever since she'd interviewed Hattie, she'd pretty much had her mind made up. It was obvious. The mayor did it. Now, who knew? Maybe the darn butler did it. Maybe she'd never know who did it. And where would that
leave Fergus? Once again she found herself beating back the panic that lay so near the surface nowadays.

  She left City Hall under a new and blacker cloud than the one dropping steady rain on her. On a whim she drove past Talbot Manor, half intending to pop in on Maria Salva and see how things were going. She rolled toward the manor in first gear, but at the last minute she crept on by. The memory of the recent fire was too fresh. She felt something of Fergus's horror at the place now. In the rain it looked bigger, darker, slicker: altogether forbidding.

  Besides, when and if she did go, she wanted to have the time and an excuse to stay and snoop. She chose instead to drop in at the Newarth Library, which was as empty as ever. She found the energetic Mrs. Gibbs in a tiny cubbyhole just big enough to fit a card table holding a hot plate, some cups and saucers, and a fresh-baked Bundt cake.

  The librarian's tired face lit up when she saw Emily. "How nice!" she said, and immediately sat Emily down on a folding chair she produced. "Have a piece of my lemon poppyseed cake. It's the closest thing to sunshine we'll see today."

  She poured strong, percolated coffee into a cup and handed it to Emily with a thick wedge of glazed cake. Then she dragged out a second chair and unfolded it. "I don't like to have my coffee in the library," she explained, easing her heavy burden onto the metal seat. "It sets a poor example." Emily had no idea for whom.

  So the two of them huddled knee to knee in an oddly cozy way, as if they were sneaking treats, while Mrs. Gibbs plied Emily with questions about her article on Hessiah Talbot.

  "I'm pinning my hopes on you, dear," she insisted. Boston Journal can put Newarth back on the map.

  "Mrs. Gibbs! About all this article can do for Newarth is bring a few curiosity seekers into Talbot Manor."

  "If there is a Talbot Manor by then," the librarian said darkly. "That fire was so unnecessary. The whole place could've burned down. Instead of obsessing on the plumbing, Frank Salva should be fixing up the wiring.

  "He's a plumber, Mrs. Gibbs," Emily reminded her.

  "So what? That's not the reason the tower sits idle. The reason is," she said, lowering her voice, "that Maria won't let Frank touch it. She won't even let him in it. I don't like to tell tales out of school, but -- well, there's something strange about that woman lately." She put her cup back in its saucer with a decisive little clack.

  Emily stabbed the next bite of cake with her fork. "Maria did seem high-strung to me," she ventured casually.

  "Overwound and overwrought," Mrs. Gibbs said. "I've known her for only two years, though I've known Frank forever. When Maria came here from France, I thought she was simply shy, you know, because she didn't know anyone. Now I'm not so sure."

  "She's not American? She speaks perfect English."

  "I think one of her parents was American. Her name is Marie, but Frank likes to call her Maria. It's very hard to get her to talk about her past. Or about anything, for that matter. All I really know about her is that she's intensely religious. I believe she was raised in a convent during part of her childhood."

  Emily was a little crestfallen. So much for the young, bored wife theory. "Well, she's living in the perfect house, then," Emily said lightly. "The main floor is a regular Gothic cathedral."

  "Oh, she adores the manor. Frank likes to joke that she fell in love with the house before she fell in love with him."

  "That's interesting; somehow I thought they bought it together."

  "Not at all. Frank was doing some contract work for the previous owner, a financially strapped young man who finally gave up and sold it to Frank outright. Maria showed up in Newarth just before the closing. She and Frank were married less than three months later. It was all very romantic. At the time."

  "There are no children?"

  "Oh, no; I doubt there will be any. Some women are too independent for children, while others are too dependent, if you know what I mean. Maria is one of the latter. She needs to bend her will to someone, and that's not a very good thing to do with children. You'll have children, Emily. I've had children. But not Maria, no."

  "Does she submit herself so completely to Frank?"

  "I'm sure she doesn't. I've never seen any sign that she's devoted to Frank. They kind of go their separate ways. Frank seems puzzled and hurt by it. Well, of course there's the age difference. Frank and I grew up together; he's no spring chicken."

  "Whom does she bend her will to, in that case?"

  Mrs. Gibbs laughed, surprised by the naïveté of the question. "Why, I suppose, to God."

  Emily nodded. It would explain the faraway look. "But then why did she marry Frank?" she asked, still not convinced.

  "That, my dear, is the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. Another slice? I oughtn't to eat it all myself; the cholesterol is wicked high. The only reason I can think of," she continued, cutting herself another thick wedge, "is the obvious one: She was alone in the States and Frank offered her security. An introspective woman like her would never have many friends. Maybe she realized that about herself."

  "There is one other possibility," Emily began, reluctant to admit to such cynicism. "Does Frank have much money?"

  "Emily, really. Does Maria look like a gold digger to you? Besides, Frank is mortgaged to the hilt. He bought at peak; the place is probably worth less now than it was two years ago. I half expect the Salvas to walk away from the property and let the bank have it."

  "Have we figured out yet why Maria is so possessive about the tower?" Emily asked blandly.

  "We haven't figured out much of anything, dear," the librarian answered in a dry but amused tone. "You're busily pumping me for everything you can get. But I understand. You're a newspaperwoman; you're supposed to do that. Just make sure you write a bang-up story about us."

  "I promise. So, are you buying Maria's story about the tower's being too expensive to renovate?"

  "Not for a minute," Mrs. Gibbs admitted. She went to the door and peered out into the main room, then came back and sat down. Leaning even closer to Emily, she said, "I suppose I'm a shameless gossip, but about six months ago Maria was out and Frank was in when I went by. He'd just finished tearing down the old stairwell to the tower, and I complained that I'd never seen the inside of it. That's when he told me he hardly ever went in there himself. But there was another door -- Maria had insisted he put it in before he took out the original stairs -- and Frank let me peek in on the top floor.

  "He let me," she continued, "but he was very nervous about it. I stuck my head in and saw an enormous four-poster bed, unmade, with clean sheets and blankets on it. Well, you know me. I said, 'For goodness' sake! Are you renting this out?' and Frank seemed mortified. It was only later that I put two and two together: He had no idea that Maria was sleeping in the tower."

  "That's crazy. Of course, he'd know!" Emily blurted.

  "Oh, he knew she didn't always sleep in their bed. He told me once that Maria was a restless sleeper and sometimes took an available guest room not to disturb him. But I'm positive he didn't know she was spending her nights in the four-poster."

  "Hmm."

  "That's what I say. Hmm." She pressed her fork into the last few yellow crumbs on her plate to gather them up.

  "Well, obviously she's not having an affair," Emily said bluntly. "Their clientele changes daily."

  "That's a scandalous thought!" Mrs. Gibbs said sharply, shocked by Emily's modern candor. "Not what I meant at all. If I was trying to hint at anything, it was that maybe Maria isn't happy with the" -- she cleared her throat -- "physical side of marriage."

  "Well, she's picked a heck of a place to hide out from it. It's almost as if she sees herself as the princess locked in the tower by the cruel king, waiting for her knight in armor to come and rescue her."

  Mrs. Gibbs thought about it. She nodded to herself and murmured, "Poor Frank."

  "The question is," Emily said softly, "who's the knight?"

  ****

  Though Emily stayed dutifully poised over the keyboard of her office c
omputer for the entire afternoon, her mind had broken free from her fingertips and was poking around the top floor of the manor's tower. A vivid, relentless picture of Maria -- Marie -- fleeing from Frank's bed and crawling into the big four-poster kept blotting out the dull, plodding text on the screen before her.

  Why would a poised and well-educated woman steal away periodically to a room filled with cobwebs and mice? Was Frank, with his Sears, Roebuck furniture, really so unbearably mundane? And if Maria was so fascinated by the historic, romantic manor, why did she act as if she knew nothing about it and cared less? A smoke screen? But why? More and more Emily was convinced that Maria held the key to all the secrets of Talbot Manor, past and present.

  "Yo! Bowditch!" It was her editor, Phil Sparke, knocking sharply on the side of her desk. "You with us today?" He was the kind of man who treated his female staff exactly the same as he did the men who worked for him, which wasn't very well at all.

  "Just barely, chief," she answered truthfully. Kyle Edwards! That was the name! The name on the packet of envelopes postmarked from France!

  "I really would like an answer to my question," Phil said with biting courtesy.

  "What was the question?" she asked absently.

  "The interview! The goddammed interview!" he roared.

  "Oh. Right. Done. I edited it this morning. Stan has it for review."

  "How'd it go?" he demanded, chomping down hard on his unlit cigar butt.

  "Very well. I was very impressed." The envelopes all were postmarked in 1972.

  "Did you nail him on the paranormal shit?"

  1972. Were they written in a feminine hand? Definitely. "Uh, not exactly, actually."

  "'Not exactly, actually'? Yes or no, Bowditch. Did you bring up the Newsweek quote?"

  "Newsweek?" Was Kyle Edwards her knight in shining armor? But how could he be? In 1972 Maria was barely a teenager.

  "What am I, talking to a tape recorder? If you blew the interview, Bowditch, your ass is in a sling. I want a copy on my desk before you leave."

  Emily hadn't had her ass put in a sling all that often in life; it was a new and unsettling feeling. She printed a copy of the interview for the managing editor but held on to it while she waited for Stan to return with his opinion. When he did show up, around six, she could see instantly that he was unenthusiastic.