by Mary Bowers
“Because you know he’d never let us in.”
Ed waved it away. “He probably doesn’t even own the house, as it turns out. Willa probably does, and I’m sure she’d agree to the investigation. I don’t think she’d enjoy encountering her aunt’s wandering shade, the way Dolores did. No, there’s no need to ask her.” He was gazing distantly at Frieda’s portrait, over Taylor’s head.
“That way, she can’t say no. You’re not a stupid man, Ed,” Taylor said, deciding not to mention how quirky she thought he was. “I’m sure it has occurred to you that this flesh-and-blood murderer we have might have been hiding out in Frieda’s house all along?”
“I’m sure he has.”
“You are? ‘He?’”
“Or she. Yes. Somebody has been using that house, whether Frieda still inhabits it or not. Something is going on over there, and I believe it has directly led to two deaths.”
“And yet you want to go into the haunted house and camp out at night.”
“Right.”
“Even if the murderer is still there.”
“Right.”
“Count me in.”
“Right. Michael has a gun, correct?”
“Yes, but without his right index finger, I can’t get at it. I don’t know one end of a gun from the other, so I wouldn’t touch it anyway, but he has it in a gun safe. It only unlocks if he puts his finger on the thingie. If anybody tries to attack us, I guess we can throw the gun safe at them.”
“Really, Taylor, this is not the time for levity. Hmmm. On second thought, I don’t think we need to go armed. Our ghost hasn’t used weapons yet, and I believe we will encounter flight, not fight. After all, we are not a couple of unsuspecting, helpless women, as Dolores and Peggy were that night.” He tapped his pen on the desktop, thinking hard. “If things seem to be getting more dangerous, I think I know where we can get help. In the meantime, I have more research to do, and you will have to leave now.”
He began to type, and Taylor relaxed into her chair and gazed at the picture of Frieda’s ghost hanging on the wall to her right. She became pensive. After five minutes Ed sent something to the printer and looked up. When he saw Taylor he said, “You’re still here.”
“You know, something she said didn’t make any sense.”
“I thought you were leaving.” He glanced at his atomic watch. Yes, he was correct. She should have left five minutes ago. Almost six minutes now.
“I think she was lying. I just can’t figure out why. What difference would it make?”
“Well, you’d better go home and think it over. You have your new guests to entertain, remember,” he added with a sardonic grin. “And I have new information to digest. This could be rather serious. Things are not as they have seemed. He’s been lying.”
“He who?”
“What?”
Taylor stood up. “Trying to talk to you always turns into a vaudeville act sooner or later. Listen, I gotta go. Call me when you put a plan together on the ghost hunt.”
“Be back here at midnight tonight,” he said without looking up.
“Yessir, cap’n, sir.”
Annoyance flitted across his face, but he didn’t stop reading.
She got up and patted Bastet on the head, returning her green-eyed gaze with eyes that were exactly the same color. Then she went around the desk quickly, planted a kiss on Edson’s head and escaped before he could react.
He gazed at Bastet, shook his head, then went back to the computer keyboard.
By midnight, Ed was extremely disturbed about what he was finding out on the internet. The fact that he had hacked into databases where he didn’t belong simply needed to be packed away in a box at the back of his brain and taken out to be dealt with later, if ever. He sincerely hoped that his snooping would never be detected, and if it was, the life-and-death circumstances would bring him a lighter sentence.
It was five minutes to midnight, and a car was pulling into his driveway.
His ghost-hunting kit was always at the ready, so he didn’t need to inventory it. He hoisted the bag and went forth.
The sound of Frieda’s garage door going up was like a howitzer fully engaged in battle, but it couldn’t be helped. They didn’t have a key.
Quickly slipping inside, they put the door down again and waited until the light on the garage door opener went off. After another five minutes, nobody had come to see what was going on at the untenanted house, and they breathed a mutual sigh of relief and headed for the stairs. They went straight up to the third floor and walked into the darkened bedroom. As before, the motion-sensor night light came on, giving the room just enough light to make it look creepy.
Taylor walked toward the portrait, but Ed lingered near the top of the stairs.
“Youth Dew,” he said softly. He didn’t need to sniff delicately to detect the fragrance; it was overwhelming.
He gave Taylor an uneasy glance, wondering if she would be possessed again, and the fact that she was across the room at the critical moment kept him from being able to capture his ghost when it burst out of the bathroom and pushed him down.
Taylor turned to see a shadowy figure flying toward the stairs and disappearing. Without appearing startled by the incident, she walked over to where Ed was still sitting on the floor and knelt down beside him.
“Are we going after her?” Taylor asked.
“No,” he said, strangely calm. “Blast. I didn’t have my camera out yet.”
“That’s why she ran.”
“Yes. I think we missed a chance at catching Frieda’s ghost. But she could only get by me by knocking me down, and now I know what I needed to know. Once again, my paranormal investigation has led to a devastating conclusion. There is no ghost.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Taylor said dreamily. She sat down on the floor beside Ed and gazed through the murky room to the portrait. The steely glaze on Frieda’s draped body stood out in the gloom.
“I’m quite sure,” Ed said, gathering himself up. “She pushed me with her hands. She was warm.”
“Oh, that one,” Taylor said, glancing toward the stairs. “I didn’t mean her. The one I mean is cold. Cold and angry, and as much in this room as the other one was.”
Ed snapped his head around at her, then began rummaging in his bag. When he found the EMF meter and did a sweep, he said, “Oh!” in a very little voice. “It’s – it’s . . . .” He gestured helplessly at the wildly jumping readout.
“Put that thing down,” Taylor said languidly.
“Yes. My camera . . . .” He searched for it, then said, “Damn! The police still have it. Give me a direction. Tell me what you sense,” he got his cell phone out as a last resort and began to record. “Where is she?”
“Hmmm? Oh. Don’t you feel it? Can’t you sense her?”
The scent of Youth Dew became overpowering. Ed felt the sudden compulsion to stand up.
“There,” Taylor said, like a child sharing a secret. She was pointing at the portrait.
As Ed watched, his vision clouded, and he felt a profound sense of urgency. He blinked rapidly, trying to clear his eyes, and as he did, the mist bloomed and coalesced and drifted toward him. He lost all touch with his senses and the barrage of frantic thoughts tangling his mind was sliced away. It was like a hundred televisions being turned off simultaneously, and he held himself very still for a moment as an icy stillness formed around him.
Then it was gone, and he felt condensation forming on his skin.
“My thermometer!” he cried, falling onto his bag and desperately searching.
“What?” Taylor said.
“That was a cold spot! It was genuine. At least I think so. I need to get a read-out. Where is it?”
Taylor gently put her warm hand on his arm. “Ed, what does it matter? Now you know.”
“I don’t just want to know,” he said. “I want proof. How could I not have been ready for this? How could I be caught off-guard?”
Taylor patted his arm. “Let�
�s go. All of a sudden I could pass out, I’m so tired. I think we’re done here.”
Ed dumped the contents of the bag out on the carpet, frantically searching, but he finally realized there was no point. He wasn’t going to get any readings now. It was over.
The bitter thought that if he’d had his crew with him – yes, even including Teddy – made him feel even worse. He would have been able to record the event if he’d had help. He would have had his proof.
“You don’t really want proof of this,” Taylor said, reading his mind.
He looked up at her, incredulous.
“Proof of Frieda?” she asked. “Proof of this?”
To his dismay and astonishment, he realized she was right.
Chapter 25
Cat husbandry turned out to be easier and less emotionally ravaging than Ed had anticipated. Seeing how Lily kept screaming “NO!” and “STOP THAT!” at Porter, Ed had expected the worst. But no, cats turned out to be delightfully placid and easy to please compared to dogs, or at least compared to Porter.
Bastet required food and water. If Ed forgot, she would remind him. Bastet seemed to enjoy his company without demanding to be fawned over. Her toilet habits were cleverly self-contained and easy to arrange. He had done his due diligence on the internet and found vague references to something called “hairballs” that sounded unpleasant, but so far, Bastet hadn’t produced one. And he found he could trust her not to run away. She was a sensible creature. After all, with someone willing to feed her, keep her comfortable and chat with her, why run away?
Porter had all that and more, and he needed to be watched constantly or he’d drown in the river, run into traffic and chase a squirrel until he couldn’t find the way home again, all on the same afternoon.
Yes, Ed thought with satisfaction, cats were just right.
Ed had spent the day making notes on the events in Frieda’s bedroom the night before. He doubted he could use it for publication, having failed to record any proof. No, this report would be locked up in his files, and only used for reference.
Taylor hadn’t called, and he could see no point in calling her. Once he had finished off The Beach Haunting file and put it away, he went back to the computer and continued his researches of the day before.
By the time he felt confident of his results, dusk was coming down Santorini Drive on velvet paws, throwing long shadows before it. As he digested the information he’d gleaned and collated, he found himself gazing into Bastet’s eyes like a man who’d been hypnotized.
The wheels in his brain had stopped turning long ago, he suddenly realized, and he came to as if he’d fallen asleep sitting upright at his desk with his eyes wide open. Ed felt released.
“My goodness,” he said to Bastet. “How long have I been sitting here like this? You must be famished. Why didn’t you remind me it was dinner time?”
He got up, and Bastet stretched and prepared to remove herself to the kitchen at her usual regal pace. Ed remembered to feed the cat but forgot to feed himself. As Bastet ate, he wandered out the back door for no particular reason.
It was beyond dusk now. It was dark. Lights began to appear in his neighbors’ windows, and stars looked down from above, cold and bright. The ocean lay breathing beside the land like an invisible creature stirring in its sleep.
It occurred to him that he never went into his back yard at night. Ants, you know, and even snakes and things. He didn’t have a motion-sensor light at the back of his house, because his bedroom was there, and he was such a light sleeper any passing raccoon would have triggered the light and awakened him. So he was standing in his yard in the dark, and suddenly he wondered what the heck he was doing there.
Then the light from the bay window in Parker Peavey’s breakfast nook drew his attention, and he began to walk slowly toward the fence between their yards, never giving a thought to what he might step on in the dark.
Parker had dark hair, yet at the table he could see a man with short, whitish hair, looking over a manuscript. As Edson watched, the man used the pen in his hand to write something on the page, then turned to the next page.
It was Dan.
“Of course,” Edson said to himself in the dark. “It’s a natural. Why didn’t it occur to me before? And why keep it a secret?”
He went back into his house, picked up some papers from his desk, went out the front door, then crossed the driveway and rang the doorbell to Parker Peavey’s house.
“Oh. Ed. It’s you.”
“Yes. May I come in?”
“Well, I’m kind of busy right now,” Parker said, a bit stressed.
“Yes. I see you’re working with your collaborator. Or is he the author? Are you his ghost-writer?”
“He’s my consultant!” Parker said, flaming up suddenly. “Ghost writer my ass.”
“Yes. My apologies to your, um, ass. May I come in?” he asked again.
“Oh, hell, why not?”
He widened the door, and by now, Dan Ryder was standing behind him.
Once inside, Ed addressed Dan formally. “Your secret is safe with me, sir. I can see that with your personality – the strong, silent type who values his privacy, needs his space, broods a lot, and so on – you wouldn’t want to do something that would thrust you into the public spotlight. Yes. I can see that you’re the type who would not want to be known as a writer of militaristic space fantasies. Sagas,” he corrected hurriedly. “Militaristic sagas. Fans and things. So public.”
By now Dan had a one-sided smile, and as Ed shuffled his feet, Dan’s smile worked its way up to his eyes.
“How long have you known?”
Ed began to consult his watch, but Dan said, “Never mind. Come in. Let’s talk.”
“At first, when I saw you through the window, I thought Parker was showing you one of his wife’s manuscripts.” He looked at Parker in a shifty-eyed way, wondering if he was still keeping secrets.
“He knows,” Parker said. “Nobody else does. I showed him Peggy’s book right after I showed it to you. We figured . . . .” He glanced at Dan.
“We figured that’s how it happened. Peggy was either investigating what Dolores was up to on the beach, or even impersonating Frieda.”
“Oh, I’m sure she wouldn’t have done that,” Ed said with a glance at Parker, even though he had considered just exactly that.
“She might have,” Parker said wearily. “I don’t think she would have deliberately deceived Dolores to get material for her book. But I think she was intrigued by the situation, and once she was on the beach with Dolores, she realized how much she missed her mother. I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and with all the emotional damage Frieda left behind her, it would have been just like my wife to try to heal some wounds, even to the point of deception. That could have put her in a dangerous situation.”
Ed nodded, admiring Parker’s loyalty, and also his ability to invent a more pleasant reality for himself.
“You’d better know the whole story behind my work with Parker,” Dan said. “It all started six years ago, when I met him by accident. I had read one of his books, and when I was introduced to him by a friend, I began to tell him why his books were all wrong. His descriptions of military tactics were way off, and his weaponry was straight out of Flash Gordon.”
“I was impressed by his knowledge,” Parker continued, “and he was at a loose end, so I hired him as a consultant. The books we collaborated on became instant bestsellers, but Dan didn’t want to have to deal with the public, and he wasn’t interested in consulting for other authors. He was happy working with me on the Stormchildren series. Together, we’ve taken it in a lot of new directions. I respected his need for privacy, and as we got to know one another better, we became good friends. When the house across the street went up for sale, I told him about it, and he bought it so we could work together more conveniently. The books are still published under my name, but we have a partnership agreement, and we share the royalties. We write the books together, th
en I deal with book signings, interviews, podcasts and social media.”
“I get to keep my privacy,” Dan said.
“And I get a harder edge to my books. A sense of gritty realism.”
“Ah, yes, gritty. Very nice. That’s not what I want to talk about, though,” Ed said.
Both men stared at him.
“Then what do you want?” Parker said, with a glance at Dan that plainly said, “I told you he was nuts.”
In answer, Ed placed the papers he’d brought with him onto the table and pushed them across.
After glancing at one another, Dan and Parker pulled the material toward themselves and read it. Then they sat back and stared at Ed, dumbfounded.
“So you see,” Ed said, adjusting his glasses, “they’ve been deceiving us. They’ve been married all along.”
“What do you want us to do?” Dan said.
“I was wondering what kind of weapons you have,” Ed said. “We may have to confront them. They’re killers, you know.”
“I – I can’t quite grasp all this,” Parker said. “What are we going to do about it?”
“I plan on informing the police, perhaps anonymously,” Ed said. “I obtained this information in . . . various ways. But in the meantime, we need to keep a sharp eye on the other end of Santorini Drive. I don’t see them making a move any time soon. In fact, as things have developed, I don’t see why they need to make any move at all. They probably think they’re going to get away with it.”
Parker looked from Dan to Ed, then took another look at his writing partner. “What is it?”
Dan’s face had darkened, and as he held Ed’s research in his hand, the papers trembled.
“Oh, they’re going to make a move, all right, and soon. Oh my God, I think I may just have pushed somebody into committing a murder.”
Chapter 26
Beyond that, Dan refused to explain. He got up from the table and moved toward the front of the house, startling Parker and Ed. They looked at one another, then followed the other man, who was leaving the house with a sense of determination.
