Dead Man Talking

by TM Simmons

  Chapter 16

  Miss Molly meowed and clawed her way out of the tangled bedspread and sheets, digging her claws into my legs as she leaped free. I batted the linens off my face, then froze. The damn asafetida bag still hung on the shower hook!

  Jack’s voice penetrated over Trucker’s ferocious clamor. “Shut up, Trucker! It’s me! Alice, open up!”

  Trucker whined, staring at the door. It took me a few seconds, but I untangled myself and limped across the room, rubbing my aching tailbone. Started to slide the bolt back. Then stopped. I’d known a ghost or two to be a fairly good mimic. “Jack?” I called.

  “Yes, Alice,” he said in a frustrated voice. “I brought you something to eat.”

  My stomach rejoiced, but my mind still balked. “What did you bring?”

  “Alice, what the hell’s wrong with you? Open this door!”

  I reached for the bolt again, but my fingers listened more to my mind than my stomach. I couldn’t force them to slide the bolt back. “What did you bring?” I repeated.

  Despite the heavy oak door between us, I thought I heard his teeth grind. Or maybe that was my psychic senses at work.

  “I brought you a bacon sandwich,” he gritted.

  “What did you put the bacon on?” I asked.

  “Bread, damn it! Now open this door, or I’ll feed it to Franklin!”

  “What sort of bread?” I asked.

  “Toast!” he shouted. “You don’t like bacon on soft bread!”

  Okay. It was Jack. Probably, anyway. Whenever we’d had BLTs for lunch, I always toasted my bread, but he fixed his on bread straight from the loaf. My fingers — and mind — agreed this was proof enough, and I opened the door.

  Jack stood there, jaw clenched and exasperation on his face. “What the hell’s wrong with you?” he repeated. “You, me, and Katy are the only ones in this house.”

  I grabbed the two paper-towel-wrapped sandwiches from him before I said, “No. We’re just the only three living people!" And I slammed the door and secured the bolt again.

  For a long, silent period, I stood at the door. It was nearly a minute later before Jack decided whether to pound on the door or leave. He clumped down the hall, footsteps mirroring his anger, audible despite the carpet runner. Since I hadn’t heard him approach, his mood was obviously darker than when he arrived with the sandwich peace offering.

  Sighing, I limped back to the bed and boosted myself onto the mattress. Re-making the bed could wait until my belly felt like it. I tore one sandwich in fourths, gave Trucker three of them and called Molly onto the mattress to feed her the other fourth on the paper towel. I gobbled the other sandwich, then wished I had something to drink.

  I settled for water from the bathroom, carrying the asafetida bag back when I returned and hanging it on the bedpost. Draining the crystal glass, I set it on the nightstand. Only Katy would keep crystal glasses in her bathrooms rather than plastic. Plastic glasses were plebeian. Fighting exhaustion, I picked up my cell phone and dialed Katy’s private number.

  The beep-beep-beep startled me. Who the heck was Katy talking to this time of night? Would she even tell me? What secret was my cousin keeping?

  Katy definitely wasn’t herself lately. Initially I’d blamed that on Sir Gary, then the murder, and the murdered man’s headless ghost, which she experienced herself this evening. Here I was lurking alone in my room, but at least I had the power of my abilities for protection, as well as my pets for company and added security. Katy was alone, obviously not feeling the need for any protection from the horrible apparition beyond the asafetida in her locket.

  Or did her need for privacy for her phone conversation overwhelm her fear?

  I slid from the bed and picked up the water glass. Padded barefoot to the door and slid the bolt back. Trucker and Miss Molly wandered over, but I shook my head. “Stay here,” I ordered. I glanced back at the bed as they went over to the window seat, obeying me. Uh oh. Hurriedly, I strode over, grabbed the asafetida bag, and hung it around my neck. This time, I opened the door and inched into the hallway.

  Nothing either dead or alive waited out there. I closed the door and fumbled for the hallway light switch, wondering why this span of lights, out of all the others at Esprit d’Chene tonight, weren’t blazing brightly. The switch clicked, but nothing happened. My own home had dozens of light bulbs that needed periodic changing — lamps, ceiling fan lights, other bulbs overhead and in the appliances, such as my refrigerator and stove hood. Probably Katy just hadn’t had Gabe get around to that maintenance lately. I hoped so, anyway.

  Still, I called down a triple layer of white light, and on second thought, added the same measure to the pets I’d left behind. Then inched on down the hallway, wishing once again I had my damned flashlight. Nothing bothered me, though, either because nothing was around or due to the protection of the white light and asafetida.

  At Katy’s bedroom, I laid the glass against the door. I’d read once that sound transmitted through glass. Indeed it did, but not well enough for me to make out the words, only a mumble of agitation in Katy’s voice inside the room. The sound moved closer. Evidently she was pacing the room, portable phone in hand. “No,” I heard her say. “We can’t. Not yet." Then she walked away from the door, and her voice returned to mumble mode.

  There are four areas of psychic senses: feeling, intuition, hearing, and vision. All psychics are stronger in one or two of these areas, weaker in the others. My strengths lay in vision and feeling, not hearing or intuition. Thus my ability to see into the other dimension — the ability to see ghosts — but I couldn’t necessarily tune into a low-beat conversation. Nor did I experience precognition, as Twila did, which was fine with me. I had no desire to handle that sort of pain. Also, I sometimes ignored my “gut feeling” ability, much to my later sorrow.

  Katy possessed a measure of psychic vision ability herself, although as far as I knew she’d never bothered to develop it. She could see Sir Gary, and definitely had seen Bucky earlier. A suspicion that I’d been ignoring one of my “gut” feelings gnawed at me. Now that I’d been slapped in the face with Katy’s deceit, I needed to find out what was going on. Especially if it meant protecting my cousin from her own folly.

  There are also some ethics involved in psychic powers, and one that Twila and I believed in strongly was that we didn’t tune into other people’s private thoughts. Read minds, as it were. Besides, as I said, I’d never had much success with the psychic hearing ability feature. Still, I set the glass down, closed my eyes, and touched both index fingers to the clairaudience area just above my ears. Grimly, I focused on the conversation in the room.

  Too late. Katy said “goodbye” and hung up the phone.

  I grabbed the glass and hurried back toward my room. I doubted Katy would let me in if I knocked, given her penchant for privacy right now. I’d call her again. At my door, I stubbed my toe on something. Reaching for the wall to keep from falling, my hand landed on the light switch. The hallway bloomed with light!

  “Damn ghosts,” I muttered. They did stuff like that at my house, also, so I didn’t think much of it. I was more interested in what I’d tripped over.

  Eyes stared back at me. Ohmigod! The head!

  But before the shriek left my throat, sense returned. Instead of Bucky’s missing head, a doll baby’s head lay on the floor. No body, just the head on the edge of the carpet runner. Surely it hadn’t been there when Jack came up with the sandwiches. I tried to recall if the hall lights had been on when I opened the door. Yes, I thought they had been, although I’d only had a sneak peak out the door and was more interested in the food. The lights had been off when I came out five minutes ago and hadn’t responded to the switch. Now, they did. Maybe to illuminate the doll head for me to find?

  Or maybe it was a wig stand? If so, the wig needed drastic attention.

  Gingerly, I bent down and touched the head. Rubber. And it looked old, fairly large, not like one of the porcelain-headed dolls people collec
t. More like something a past-babyhood toddler would drag around. But how had it gotten there? Was someone else, or something else, leaving clues about the murder?

  I picked it up and studied it in the light now chasing away the shadows in the hallway. Wisps of blond hair straggled here and there on the skull, and the eyelids opened and closed as I rocked it back and forth. Blue eyes, and pink-dusted cheeks. A rosebud-pink mouth. Below the chin, a round opening to insert the head onto the body.

  I really should take it down to Jack, but I could imagine his reaction. What the hell’s an old baby doll face got to do with this murder? You're trying to make me believe a ghost left a clue.

  A huge yawn stretched through me. I needed some sleep! Opening the door, I carried the head in and propped it on the lady’s boudoir desk. I’d give it to Jack in the morning, and let him say what he would, when I had more strength to contradict him.

  Re-making the bed took the last bit of my store of strength, and I forwent calling Katy until I could think straighter. Snuggled between the sheets, I whistled and “kitty-kittied” my pets onto the bed. It was only a double-mattress, but I made room for Trucker’s bulk. Miss Molly curled in her favorite spot behind my legs.