by Mary Bowers
Now she looked back and felt a little uncomfortable about that conversation. Gazing at the walkover and out to the ocean, she wondered if she had said too much? The way Claire had shown so much interest, she had thought they were going to be friends and had opened up in a way she rarely did. But afterwards, Claire had gone back to her cool blond ways and they hadn’t in fact become very friendly at all. In fact, Claire seemed to be avoiding her. God, what a bore she’d been that night! Claire, she realized, had just been being kind.
Well, Willa thought with a little shake, the woman was still grieving for her husband. Of course she didn’t socialize much. And as for the night of the party, when you’re sitting right next to somebody you have to talk to them, right? It isn’t a sin to be a bore.
She frowned. Another memory had come back.
A week after the party she’d been standing in Santorini Drive with the morning copy of The Record in her hand, chatting with Ed, who was holding his own copy of the paper, when Claire had come out and Dan Ryder had come down the drive at the same time. Standing there, the four of them, she had felt something surging around them. Some power. Not from Ed; he tended to fade away when too many people were around. Claire and Dan were quietly polite. Willa tried to introduce them, but they said they’d already met on the beach. They were vague, awkward, strangely embarrassed.
Willa really didn’t know what she had sensed, but then Rod Johnson had come slapping down the driveway in flip flops, talking too loud and interrupting as if nobody had been talking before he got there, and the circuit was broken. Dan, seeming relieved, had nodded and headed toward the beach, and that surge of power had gone with him.
For the first time, she wondered why Rod wasn’t interested in Claire instead of herself. Because, strange but true, he was obviously interested in Willa. Maybe, she thought, catching her reflection in the patio door as she reached for the handle, I’m just more accessible. Not ugly, not overweight, not silly. And not recently widowed, like Claire. Rod was obviously lonely. Maybe she, Willa, seemed like somebody he could actually have.
She pushed her straggly, curly, graying hair back and thought about making a hair appointment. Everybody dyed their hair these days. A light brown, like her natural color, maybe with those apricot highlights that were so pretty on the check-out girl at the Publix.
The doorbell rang, and she turned and called out for the twins to come in, the door was open.
Then she went back inside, hoping they would be quick today. She didn’t really enjoy their gossip.
Chapter 7
“What’s she depressed about?” Poppy said to Rosie as they got the lunch things and settled down to eat in the van.
They’d finished Willa’s house in record time, partly because they wanted to hurry and catch another glimpse of Dan, partly because Willa didn’t seem inclined to talk, even after they told her about the ghost hunt. After three or four non sequiturs from Willa, the twins gave up and just got on with the job.
“Who knows?” Rosie said.
It was time to clean Frieda’s house, and despite the prospect of their fantasy man coming back breathless and sweaty, they were on edge.
Waving a potato chip, Poppy said, “Whaddaya think – Mr. Renter or Mr. D-D?”
“Huh?”
“For Miss Willa.”
“Oh, right, right,” Rosie said pensively, like a biologist contemplating a particularly original coupling. “From the standpoint of the men, I’d have to vote for Mr. Renter. He’s lonely and uncool, and I can see him and Willa together. As for Mr. D-D, it’s a no-go. He’s got no business with a woman. He’d only notice her if she was a ghost.”
“You’re right about that.”
The idle chatter drifted to a halt. They were only trying to distract themselves from the job ahead, and they’d been over the imaginary love triangles of Santorini too many times to really get worked up about them. It was time. Rosie rolled up the potato chip bag and shoved it down in the empty sandwich bag, then faced her sister.
“Well?”
“It’s gotta be done.”
“Right. Let’s go.”
They got out the artillery and soldiered up to the last house.
The house was always so quiet. It had the brooding aspect that all unoccupied houses have, no matter how they are cared for. Outside, the landscaping was tended every two weeks by a hired crew, inside the Double Quick Maids fought the dust and mold and kept the plumbing wet, but somehow the house slept. Even from the beach you could see that nobody was home, and not just because the blinds were closed.
Working in silence, the twins entered through the garage, punching in the code and bringing their gear inside. They closed the overhead door reluctantly. Leaving it open made them feel less trapped, but the little anole lizards were running around outside, and they were the devil to chase out once they were in.
The door went down with a kind of finality and they entered the house, went to the hallway and pushed the button for the elevator.
That was odd. They glanced at one another uneasily. The elevator should have been on the ground floor, where they’d left it the week before, but it wasn’t. From the time it was taking, it was up on the third floor. They shrugged it off and waited.
Keeping up a cheerful conversation while they cleaned Frieda’s house was too much of a strain, and they no longer bothered. They just hit the place hard and got out again.
Once in the elevator with their gear, they closed the gate, pushed the button for the second floor and went up. They never did much on the ground floor, which had the usual oddball rooms, and they saved it for last.
The first thing they did on the main floor was open all the blinds, run their eyes over the view for a few moments, then turn away. They didn’t have to speak. They were both thinking the same thing: Dan had taken a short run today. At midday it was too hot for a long one, and he had probably returned while they were in Willa’s house. They’d missed him.
Rosie attacked the kitchen counter while Poppy started on the floor.
Their eyes met and they nodded. Bathrooms. One and a half on this floor. Then on to the third floor. They split up and got busy.
When they were finished with the main floor, they went back to the elevator.
“Okay,” Rosie said in a very steady voice. “Let’s gitt’er done.”
“I’m ready.”
But on the third floor, as the small elevator opened, they found they weren’t ready after all.
There it was again: her scent, as if she’d just dressed for a party and misted herself with Youth Dew.
The woman was dead. She’d been gone for half a year, and yet her perfume was still in the room, a strong, spicy scent with deep undertones of incense.
It was particularly strong today, all around them, thick in the air. It knocked them back, and they couldn’t even see the bedroom yet. The elevator was screened from the rest of the room by an elaborately carved partition.
Resolutely, they went around it and entered the room, chins lifted, muscles bulging with the weight of their gear.
Frieda glared at them.
Even as a teenager, Frieda had been formidable, and in the portrait on the opposite wall, she stood in a garden with pastel flowers blooming all around her, looking like a fiery empress. She met the eyes of the viewer with an arrogance that the artist had not been able to soften, and those eyes followed you all over the room, pressing into you even when they were behind you.
A white sheath draped her angular body, and the artist had put the grace and melting color that should have been in her face into the folds of the fabric. Her bare shoulders glowed like polished metal, her dark hair seemed press-molded in finger waves, and her red, red lips seemed to hold angry words in check. Every detail of the painting was more beautiful than the subject, from the sinuous branches over her head to the glint on the gold of her sandals.
She glared at the twins. She had never allowed them in her bedroom when she was alive, and even though she
was dead, she still seemed outraged that they were there.
The twins lifted identical chins and went forth into the fury of Frieda’s gaze.
“You get the bathroom,” Rosie said, staring straight into the portrait’s eyes. “I’ll get started on the carpet.”
“Right.”
Giving her sister the bathroom was an act of kindness. In the bathroom, you couldn’t see Frieda.
But you could smell her. “It’s even stronger in here,” Poppy said in a quavering voice.
“Well, scrub it on out of there,” Rosie said, and she looked at Frieda while she said it. For a defiant moment, she stood before the portrait pushing back, then she turned to grab the vac. But as soon as she started it, she stopped it. Then she stood stock still for a while, absolutely rigid.
Hearing the vacuum stop, Poppy froze in the bathroom. After a minute, she said, “Rosie?” in a tremulous voice.
No answer.
“Rosie? Are you there?”
“I’m okay,” Rosie said, in a voice so watery her sister dropped the bottle of granite cleaner and ran into the bedroom. She stopped suddenly when she saw Rosie immobilized.
Slowly, Rosie took her hand away from the vacuum and very calmly said, “She’s on the stairs. I heard her. And saw her. Out of the corner of my eye, just as I started up the vacuum.”
“Oh, Rosie!”
They stared at one another for a moment, then turned their heads slowly toward the stairs as, two floors below them, there was a muffled bump.
“Yes,” Rosie said, strained but calm. “Well, this is what we’re going to do now, Sister. We’re going to clean this damn room, because it stinks,” she spat, looking at the portrait, “and then we are going to go report in.”
“Okay.”
Poppy turned back to the bathroom and with a calm face, a shaking hand and a thumping heart, wiped down the granite sink top. Frightened as they were, it never occurred to either one of them to simply forget about cleaning the house and collect the money on their contract anyway. No one would have known except for the two of them, but that’s not the kind of women they were.
When Poppy was finished in the bathroom, she gazed at her reflection in the mirror for a moment, looked back toward the bedroom, went across the room and flushed the damn toilet. Hard.
Ed sat behind his desk and played with his glasses, maddening the twins with his lack of reaction.
“Well?” Rosie demanded at last.
“Well what?” he asked, noticing them and blinking.
“What are you going to do about it? She’s there. We heard her. And we smelled her.”
“Anybody could be spraying her perfume around,” he said. “I assume her toilette is still as it was when she was alive?”
“Her toilet?”
“Her cosmetics, her toiletries, her – whatever ladies have on their vanities.”
“Oh. Yes, it’s all there,” Rosie said. “We have to dust it every week. Nothing is missing. But who the heck would be sneaking into the house and spraying her perfume?”
“It may very well be Dolores,” he mused.
“Dolores?” they said simultaneously.
Ed became pedantic. “Her mother was an overwhelming presence in her life. Now that she is gone, handling her things, smelling her perfume, spending time in her house, imagining she is still present, may be comforting to Dolores. No, perhaps I don’t mean comforting. Steadying. Well, thank you for the information, ladies.”
It was obviously a dismissal, and the twins stared at him without getting up from their seats.
“So what does that mean?” Rosie demanded.
“It means,” he told them, replacing his glasses and giving each of them a direct look, “that I am finished with the preliminaries and am launching a formal investigation as of now. I am convinced that Dolores is in real danger. I’ll be covertly monitoring the beach at night, and if it seems warranted, I am going into that house.”
“You can’t get in without Ben’s permission,” Poppy said quickly. “And you can’t tell Ben what you’re doing. You promised.”
“I’m going in, with or without Ben’s permission. Dolores’s life or sanity may be at stake.”
“How are you going to get in? You don’t know the code.”
“Oh, ladies, ladies, ladies. Do you think you’re dealing with a child? It’s 1-2-3-4, right? If her keypad is like mine, you put in the code and simply press Enter, and voila. Up she rises.”
Startled, Rosie demanded, “How did you know? I would have told you anyway,” she added, glaring at her sister, “but how did you know?”
“Elementary, my dear Rosie,” he said, covertly glancing at her nametag. “If Dolores can’t remember any other gate code, she wouldn’t remember any other garage code either, and for years she’s been going in to take care of her mother. So as long as Ben hasn’t changed the code for the sake of trying to keep her out of the house –“
“He hasn’t.”
“It’s still the same.”
“I don’t think you should go in there,” Poppy said.
“Really? Why not? You’re the ones who asked for my help in the first place.”
“Yeah, but that was mostly Rosie’s idea. I think it’s too dangerous. I don’t even like being in there during the day, and no amount of money could get me in there at night. No offense, Mr. D-D, but Miss Frieda is more powerful than you are, even dead. If something happened to you, I’d feel like it was our fault.”
“And if something happened to Dolores?”
“Yeah,” her sister said. “Isn’t that why we told him in the first place?”
Poppy glared at both of them. “Oh, well, all right! I can’t stop you. I’ve said my piece. You be careful, Mr. D-D, that’s all.”
“I shall,” Edson said, rising. “The investigation begins.”
Chapter 8
“I had a dream last night,” Taylor said.
As soon as he’d managed to get the twins out of the house, he had called her to report the latest development. Before he could, she had blurted that one short sentence, not even bothering to say hello. Now he sat up, quivering. “About –“
“About her. About Frieda Strawbridge.”
“Tell me about it.”
“We were having coffee together at her house, and she kept getting up to look out the window.”
“Getting up? She was wheelchair-bound when you met her. And what window?”
“Ed, will you let me tell this my own way?”
He could hear the tension in her voice. Many times she had been exasperated with Ed, but this was different. She seemed to be at the breaking point.
“Of course,” he said.
She took a ragged breath, then began again. “We were in her house, and it was dark outside. I couldn’t see anything out the windows, but she could. She was young – a young woman of about twenty, and she could walk. She was wearing a white gown, very filmy, very light. And gold sandals. They glimmered. Her gown kept floating as she moved around. Her hair was in perfect waves, you know, the way they used to do it back in the 1940s. Pressed into place. She kept telling me to have more coffee, to eat some cake, but she was distracted at the same time, and I couldn’t eat because she kept jumping up and pacing, and then she would go to the window and say that they weren’t there yet, and they should be warned that the beach is dangerous at night.”
“They? Who were they?”
“She never said. But she kept looking for them and talking about how dangerous it was to play on the beach at night, and that they should stay out of the water, because there were rip currents.”
He waited, but she had stopped. “Anything else?”
“No. Ed, what have you gotten me into? I don’t like this feeling of being . . . possessed.”
“I know. But it’s not me doing it. You know that, don’t you?”
She was silent for a while, then said. “Yes. Ever since Bastet showed up . . . at lot has happened that I don’t understand.”
“I know. Something has changed in you.”
“I haven’t changed!” she snapped.
Ed closed his eyes and shook his head. She was still fighting it, this interface with something she didn’t understand. It had formed too late in her life for her to accept it as natural. Perhaps she would never accept it, but some force had decided that she would have it and use it, even if her mind rebelled.
“The situation is fluid here,” he said carefully. “The Double-Quick Maids just reported another encounter. I have decided to begin night vigils on the beach. If necessary, I will go into the house. I understand you can’t keep watch with me. I know you have a lot of responsibilities with the animal shelter. But perhaps we can meet on a regular basis and you can give me your thoughts.”
“If that’s all you want, that’s fine,” she said. Then she grumbled, “Unless my cat disagrees,” and hung up.
Strange, Ed mused. Strange were the ways of the unseen powers. Ed would have treasured the gift that had been given to Taylor. But for some reason, she was the chosen one, and he was left to try to measure and analyze the unknown with all the psychic sensitivity of a bar of soap.
Taylor already had so many gifts: a healthy body, a beautiful face, a mission in life which she had achieved by creating the shelter and rescuing hundreds if not thousands of dogs and cats. Teaming up with such a woman would have been an exciting life, not that Ed thought of Taylor in a romantic way. He was more excited by her paranormal gifts. She wasn’t much older than Ed: a mere six years, and after middle age, who cared? But Taylor had her man, and Ed liked Michael, and Ed had known for a long time that he was destined to be a solitary man.
In some ways, he mused, a solitary life was necessary for the paranormal investigator. Most people just wouldn’t understand him. And the only ones who would – those involved in paranormal research, like himself – were sometimes bizarre. He ran over the list of female psychics, ghost hunters and mediums he had met. They ranged from uber-feminine exhibitionists to vampire tramps to possessed demon-witches who were scarier than the phenomena they investigated.
