The Mediator #2: Ninth Key

by Jenny Carroll

  "Well," I explained. "I was on my way home to change when Mr. Beaumont's brother drove by and offered me a ride, and so I took it, and then when I was sitting in Mr. B's office, I started to smell smoke, and so I jumped out the window...."

  Okay, even I have to admit that the whole thing sounded super suspicious. But it was better than the truth, right? I mean, were they really going to believe that Tad's uncle Marcus had been trying to kill me because I knew too much about a bunch of murders he'd committed for the sake of urban sprawl?

  Not very likely. Even Tad didn't try that one on the cops who showed up along with the fire department, and demanded an explanation as to why he was hanging around the house in a swim-suit on a schoolday. I guess he didn't want to get his uncle in trouble since it would look bad for his dad, and all. He started lying like crazy about how he had a cold, and the doctor had recommended he try to clear his sinuses by sitting for long bouts in his hot tub (good one: I was definitely going to have remember it for future reference – Andy was talking about building a hot tub onto our deck out back).

  Tad's father, God bless him, denied both our stories completely, insisting he'd been in his room waiting for his lunch to be delivered when one of the servants had informed him that his office was in flames. No one had said anything about Tad having stayed home with a cold, or a girl waiting for an interview with him.

  Fortunately, however, he also claimed that while waiting for his lunch to be delivered, he'd been taking a nap in his coffin.

  That's right: his coffin.

  This caused a number of raised eyebrows, and eventually, it was decided that Mr. Beaumont ought to be admitted to the local hospital's psychiatric floor for a few days' observation. This, as you might understand, necessarily cut off any conversation Tad and I might have had at the time, and while he went off with EMS and his father, I was unceremoniously led to a squad car and, eventually, when the cops remembered me, driven home.

  Where, instead of being welcomed into the bosom of my family, I received the bawling out of a lifetime.

  I'm not even kidding. Andy was enraged. He said I should have gone straight home, changed clothes, and gone straight back to school. I had no business accepting rides from anyone, particularly wealthy businessmen I hardly knew.

  Furthermore, I had skipped school, and no matter how many times I pointed out that a) I'd actually been kicked out of school, and b) I'd been doing an assignment for school (at least according to the story I told him), I had, essentially, betrayed everyone's trust. I was grounded for one week.

  I tell you, it was almost enough to make me consider telling the truth.

  Almost. But not quite.

  I was getting ready to slink upstairs to my room – in order to "think about what I'd done" – when Dopey strolled in and casually announced that, by the way, on top of all my other sins, I had also punched him very hard in the stomach that morning for no apparent reason.

  This, of course, was an outright lie, and I was quick to remind him of this: I had been provoked, unnecessarily so. But Andy, who does not condone violence for any reason, promptly grounded me for another week. Since he also grounded Dopey for whatever it was he had said that had led to my punching him, I didn't mind too much, but still, it seemed a bit extreme. So extreme, in fact, that after Andy had left the room, I sort of had to sit down, exhausted in the wake of his rage, which I had never before seen unleashed – well, not in my direction, anyway.

  "You really," my mother said, taking a seat opposite me, and looking a bit worriedly down at the slipcover on which I was slumped, "should have let us know where you were. Poor Father Dominic was frightened out of his mind for you."

  "Sorry," I said woefully, fingering the remnants of my skirt. "I'll remember next time."

  "Still," my mother said. "Officer Green told us that you were very helpful during the fire. So I guess …"

  I looked at her. "You guess what?"

  "Well," my mother said. "Andy doesn't want me to tell you now, but …"

  She actually got up – my mother, who had once interviewed Yasir Arafat – and slunk out of the room, ostensibly to check whether or not Andy was within earshot.

  I rolled my eyes. Love. It could make a pretty big sap out of you.

  As I rolled my eyes, I noticed that my mother, who always gets a lot of nervous energy in a crisis, had spent the time that I'd been missing hanging up more pictures in the living room. There were some new ones, ones I hadn't seen before. I got up to inspect them more closely.

  There was one of her and my dad on their wedding day. They were coming down the steps of the courthouse where they'd been married, and their friends were throwing rice at them. They looked impossibly young and happy. I was surprised to see a picture of my mom and dad right alongside the pictures of my mom's wedding to Andy.

  But then I noticed that beside the photo of my mom and dad was a picture from what had to have been Andy's wedding to his first wife. This was more of a studio portrait than a candid shot. Andy was standing, looking stiff and a little embarrassed, next to a very skinny, hippyish-looking girl with long, straight hair.

  "Of course she does," a voice at my shoulder said.

  "Jeez, Dad," I hissed, whirling around. "When are you going to stop doing that?"

  "You are in a heap of trouble, young lady," my father said. He looked sore. Well, as sore as a guy in jogging pants could look. "Just what were you thinking?"

  I whispered, "I was thinking of making it safe for people to protest the corporate destruction of northern California's natural resources without having to worry about being sealed up in an oil drum and buried ten feet under."

  "Don't get smart with me, Susannah. You know what I'm talking about. You could have been killed."

  "You sound like him." I rolled my eyes toward Andy's picture.

  "He did the right thing, grounding you," my father said, severely. "He's trying to teach you a lesson. You behaved in a thoughtless and reckless manner. And you shouldn't have hit that kid of his."

  "Dopey? Are you joking?"

  But I could tell he was serious. I could also tell that this was one argument I wasn't going to win.

  So instead, I looked at the picture of Andy and his first wife, and said, sullenly, "You could have told me about her, you know. It would have made my life a whole lot simpler."

  "I didn't know, either," my dad said, with a shrug. "Not until I saw your mom hang up the photo this afternoon."

  "What do you mean, you didn't know?" I glared at him. "What was with all the cryptic warnings, then?"

  "Well, I knew Beaumont wasn't the Red you were looking for. I told you that."

  "Oh, big help," I said.

  "Look." My dad seemed annoyed. "I'm not all-knowing. Just dead."

  I heard my mother's footsteps on the wood floor. "Mom's coming," I said. "Scat."

  And Dad, for once, did as I asked, so that when my mother returned to the living room, I was standing in front of the wall of photos, looking very demure – well, for a girl who'd practically been burned alive, anyway.

  "Listen," my mother whispered.

  I looked away from the picture. My mother was holding an envelope. It was a bright pink envelope, covered with little hand-drawn hearts and rainbows. The kind of hearts and rainbows Gina always put on her letters to me from back home.

  "Andy wanted me to wait to tell you about this," my mom said in a low voice, "until after your grounding was up. But I can't. I want you to know I've spoken with Gina's mom, and she's agreed to let us fly Gina out here for a visit during her school's Spring Break next month – "

  My mother broke off as I flung both my arms around her neck.

  "Thank you!" I cried.

  "Oh, honey," my mom said, hugging me – although a little tentatively, I noticed, since I still smelled like a fish. "You're welcome. I know how much you miss her. And I know how tough it's been on you, adjusting to a whole new high school, and a whole new set of friends – and to having stepbrothers. We're so
proud of how well you're doing." She pulled away from me. I could tell she'd wanted to go on hugging me, but I was just too gross even for my own mother. "Well, up until now, anyway."

  I looked down at Gina's letter, which my mom had handed to me. Gina was a terrific letter writer. I couldn't wait to go upstairs and read it. Only … only something was still bothering me.

  I looked back, over my shoulder, at the photo of Andy and his first wife.

  "You hung up some new pictures, I see," I said.

  My mom followed my gaze. "Oh, yes. Well, it kept my mind occupied while we were waiting to hear from you. Why don't you go upstairs and get yourself cleaned up? Andy's making individual pizzas for dinner."

  "His first wife," I said, my eyes still glued to the photo. "Dopey's – I mean, Brad's – mom. She died, right?"

  "Uh-huh," my mother said. "Several years ago."

  "What of?"

  "Ovarian cancer. Honey, be careful where you put those clothes when you take them off. They're covered with soot. Look, there's black gunk now all over my new Pottery Barn slipcovers."

  I stared at the photo.

  "Did she …" I struggled to formulate the correct question. "Did she go into a coma, or something?"

  My mother looked up from the slipcover she'd been yanking from the armchair where I'd been lounging.

  "I think so," she said. "Yes, toward the end. Why?"

  "Did Andy have to …" I turned Gina's letter over and over in my hands. "Did they have to pull the plug?"

  "Yes." My mother had forgotten about the slipcover. Now she was staring at me, obviously concerned. "Yes, as a matter of fact, they had to ask that she be taken off life support at a certain point since Andy believed she wouldn't have wanted to live like that. Why?"

  "I don't know." I looked down at the hearts and rainbows on Gina's envelope. Red. I had been so stupid. You know me, Doc's mother had insisted. God, I should so have my mediator license revoked. If there were a license, which, of course, there isn't.

  "What was her name?" I asked, nodding my head toward the photo. "Brad's mom, I mean?"

  "Cynthia," my mother said.

  Cynthia. God, what a loser I am.

  "Honey, come help me, would you?" My mother was still futzing with the chair I'd been sitting in. "I can't get this one cushion loose – "

  I tucked Gina's envelope into my pocket and went to help my mother. "Where's Doc?" I asked. "I mean, David."

  My mother looked at me curiously. "Upstairs in his room, I think, doing his homework. Why?"

  "Oh, I just have to tell him something."

  Something I should have told him a long time ago.

  C H A P T E R

  23

  "So?" Jesse asked. "How did he take it?"

  "I don't want to talk about it."

  I was stretched out on my bed, totally without makeup, attired in my oldest jogging clothes. I had a new plan: I had decided I was going to treat Jesse exactly the way I would my stepbrothers. That way, I'd be guaranteed not to fall in love with him.

  I was flipping through a copy of Vogue instead of doing my Geometry homework like I was supposed to. Jesse was on the window seat – of course – petting Spike.

  Jesse shook his head. "Come on," he said. It always sounded strange to me when Jesse said things like Come on. It seemed so strange coming out of a guy who was wearing a shirt with laces instead of buttons. "Tell me what he said."

  I flipped a page of my magazine. "Tell me what you guys did to Marcus."

  Jesse looked a little too surprised by the question. "We did nothing to him."

  "Baloney. Where'd he go, then?"

  Jesse shrugged and scratched Spike beneath the chin. The stupid cat was purring so loud, I could hear it all the way across the room.

  "I think he decided to travel for a while." Jesse's tone was deceptively innocent.

  "Without any money? Without his credit cards?" One of the things the firemen had found in the room was Marcus's wallet … and his gun.

  "There is something to be said" – Jesse gave Spike a playful swat on the back of the head when the cat took a lazy swipe at him – "for seeing this great country of ours on foot. Maybe he will come to have a better appreciation for its natural beauty."

  I snorted, and turned a page of my magazine. "He'll be back in a week."

  "I think not." He said it with such certainty that I instantly became suspicious.

  "Why not?"

  Jesse hesitated. He didn't want to tell me, I could tell.

  "What?" I said. "Telling me, a mere living being, is going to violate some spectral code?"

  "No," Jesse said with a smile. "He's not coming back, Susannah, because the souls of the people he killed won't let him."

  I raised my eyebrows. "What do you mean?"

  "In my day, it was called bedevilment. I don't know what they call it now. But your intervention had a rallying effect on Mrs. Fiske and the three others whose lives Marcus Beaumont took. They have banded together, and will not rest until he has been sufficiently punished for his crimes. He can run from one end of the earth to the other, but he will never escape them. Not until he dies himself. And when that happens" – Jesse's voice was hard – "he will be a broken man."

  I didn't say anything. I couldn't. As a mediator, I knew I shouldn't approve of this sort of behavior. I mean, ghosts should not be allowed to take the law into their own hands any more than the living should.

  But I had no particular fondness for Marcus, and no way of proving that he'd killed those people anyway. He'd never be punished, I knew, by inhabitants of this world. So was it so wrong that he be punished by those who lived in the next?

  I glanced at Jesse out of the corner of my eyes, remembering that, from what I'd read, no one had ever been convicted of his murder, either.

  "So," I said. "I guess you did the same thing, huh, to the, um, people who killed you, right?"

  Jesse didn't fall for this sly question, though. He only smiled, and said, "Tell me what happened with your brother."

  "Stepbrother," I reminded him.

  And I wasn't going to tell Jesse about my interview with Doc, anymore than Jesse was going to tell me diddly about how he'd died. Only in my case, it was because what had happened with Doc was just too excruciatingly embarrassing to go into. Jesse didn't want to talk about how he'd died because . . . well, I don't know. But I doubt it's because he's embarrassed about it.

  I had found Doc exactly where my mother had told me he'd be, in his room doing his homework, a paper that wasn't due until the following month. But that was Doc for you: why put off until tomorrow homework you could be doing today?

  His "Come in," when I'd tapped at the door had been casual. He hadn't suspected it would be me. I never ventured into my stepbrothers' rooms if I could avoid it. The odor of dirty socks was simply too overwhelming.

  Only since I wasn't smelling too daisy-fresh myself at that particular moment, I thought I could bear it.

  He was shocked to see me, his face turning almost as red as his hair. He jumped up and tried to hide his pile of dirty underwear beneath the comforter of his unmade bed. I told him to relax. And then I sat down on that unmade bed, and said I had something to tell him.

  How did he take it? Well, for one thing, he didn't ask me a lot of stupid questions like How do you know? He knew how I knew. He knew a little about the mediation thing. Not a lot, but enough to know that I communicate, on a somewhat regular basis, with the undead.

  I guess it was the fact that it was his own mother I'd been communicating with this time that brought tears to his blue eyes . . . which freaked me out a bit. I had never seen Doc cry before.

  "Hey," I said, alarmed. "Hey, it's okay – "

  "What – " Doc was choking back a sob. I could totally tell. "What did she l-look like?"

  "What did she look like?" I echoed, not sure I'd heard him right. At his vigorous nod, however, I said, carefully, "Well, she looked . . . she looked very pretty."

  Doc's tear
-filled eyes widened. "She did?"

  "Uh-huh," I said. "That's how I recognized her, you know. From the wedding photo of her and your dad, downstairs. She looked like that. Only her hair was shorter."

  Doc said, the effort he was making not to cry causing his voice to shake, "I wish I could … I wish I could see her looking like that. The last time I saw her, she looked terrible. Not like in that picture. You wouldn't have recognized her. She was in a c-coma. Her eyes were sunken in. And there were all these tubes coming out of her – "

  Even though I was sitting like a foot away from him, I felt the shudder that ran through him. I said, gently, "David, what you did, when you guys made the decision to let her go … it was the right thing. It was what she wanted. That's what she needs to make sure you understand. You know it was the right thing, don't you?"

  His eyes were so deeply pooled in tears, I could hardly see his irises anymore. As I watched, one drop escaped, and trickled down his cheek, followed quickly by another on the opposite side of his face.

  "I-intellectually," he said. "I guess. B-but – "

  "It was the right thing," I repeated, firmly. "You've got to believe that. She does. So stop beating yourself up. She loves you very much – "

  That did it. Now the tears were coming down in full force.

  "She said that?" he asked, in a broken voice that reminded me that he was, after all, still a pretty young kid, and not the superhuman computer he sometimes acts like.

  "Of course she did."

  She hadn't, of course, but I'm sure she would have if she hadn't been so disgusted by my gross incompetency.

  Then Doc did something that completely shocked me: he flung both his arms around my neck.

  This kind of impassioned display was so unlike Doc, I didn't know what to do. I sat there for one awkward moment, not moving, afraid that if I did, I might gouge his face with some of the rivets on my jacket. Finally, however, when he didn't let go, I reached up and patted him uncertainly on the shoulder.

  "It's okay," I said, lamely. "Everything is going to be okay."

  He cried for about two minutes. His clinging to me, crying like that, gave me a strange feeling. It was kind of a protective feeling.