Ice and Steel

by Alexie Aaron

  “We can’t have that,” Albert said firmly. “How about you letting me look into this? You could move into a hotel to get some sleep in the meanwhile.”

  “I’m not leaving my home,” Naomi insisted. “I’ve been sleeping during the day so don’t you worry about me.”

  “If you’re sure. How about you letting me sleep on your sofa tonight? I’d feel better if I did,” Albert admitted.

  Sissy and Naomi looked at one another.

  “I don’t know how Ernest is going to react when he finds you sleeping in my room,” Naomi fretted.

  “I’ll take my chances with Ernest,” Albert told them.

  “Alright, but you’ll not sleep on the sofa, you’ll never fit. I’ll sleep with Sissy, and you can have my bed,” she offered.

  “Fine. Now if you will excuse me, I’m going to alert Mr. Stewart to the moaning and screaming. He’ll need to check out the condos around you, just to make sure.”

  “We’ll expect you at what time?” Sissy asked, walking Albert to the door.

  “I’ll be here at ten. I have to pick up my nephew from the Y and take him home before I can come over.”

  “I’ll have a little snack waiting for you,” Sissy promised. “We’ll have a slumber party. Watch a DVD.”

  “Okay, but nothing too scary,” Albert said, wishing he hadn’t.

  Sissy and Naomi each raised an eyebrow. “Oh no, I think you will have enough of a scare later,” Naomi said frankly. “How about Downton Abbey?”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  Sissy walked him to the door and thanked him. He walked up and down the hallway before summoning the elevator. He checked out the stairwell and climbed it to seven and back down to five before he took the elevator the rest of the way. He was going to get to the bottom of what was really going on. Who was trying to frighten the life out of his old dears?

  “Albert, that took you a long time,” Elaine commented. “Mr. Stewart’s been in to ask where you were, twice.”

  Albert walked out to where his boss was supervising the ice removal.

  “What did the Miss Seeleys want?” Clive asked.

  Albert didn’t tell him about Ernest but did tell him about the moaning and screams they heard on the sixth floor.

  Clive looked concerned. “I think we better check out those empty condos.”

  “I think you’re right,” Albert said, rubbing his arms to stave off the chill he was feeling.

  “Goose bumps?” Clive asked as they walked inside.

  “I think someone just walked over my grave,” Albert said without thinking.

  “Let’s hope not or we’d both be dead,” Clive said and patted him on the back. “Don’t worry, we’ll probably find a television show programed to record that turns the set on at three am every night. There will be a logical explanation, I assure you.”

  Albert caught movement from the corner of his eye and rushed out without his overcoat to get the door of the arriving taxi. Mrs. Abrams handed him a sack of groceries to carry while she carried the other sack herself. They walked into the lobby.

  Mrs. Abrams stopped upon seeing Clive Stewart there.

  “Mr. Stewart, could you have someone check the plumbing on the fourth floor? It’s been moaning all week. There must be air in the pipes. I swear one night it positively screamed in my apartment.”

  Chapter One

  “I know it’s asking a lot, but could you and Ted come and stay the week in our condo?” Ralph asked Mia over the phone.

  “Gee, a week in Chicago in the height of winter, hmmm,” Mia stalled, knowing she was going to say yes.

  “I wouldn’t ask this of you, but our house sitter’s gallbladder has acted up, and I just can’t find anyone I trust with my things.”

  “Of course I’ll stay. Ted is another matter. He’s got a big project that keeps him and Cid in the garage from morning to night. Perhaps Audrey would like to have a week on your dime? We could go to a few shows.”

  “I’ll pay for the shows, and you should really do some shopping. Your wardrobe is getting a bit tatty.”

  Mia ignored the insult; she was used to Ralph’s digs at her customary uniform of cargo pants topped with a tee and a hoodie. “When do you need me?”

  “Tomorrow will be fine. Bernard and I are leaving for Greece tonight if the weather holds and our flight isn’t canceled. Winter is such a damned inconvenience.”

  “Don’t worry. Leave your schedule on the kitchen table. I’ll call Audrey and make arrangements.”

  Ralph said his goodbyes, and Mia put down the phone. She pulled on her coat and rehearsed how she was going to tell her newlywed husband that she was going to spend a week in Chicago without him. Maggie was waiting at the door for her. She’d been banned from the barn ever since she decided that a computer motherboard was tasty. Mia bent down and took the dog’s head in both of her hands. “I can’t take you to the barn. You’ve just been out to pee. If you’re a good girl, when I come back I’ll fry you a couple of piece of bacon.”

  Bacon! Maggie knew that word. She would sit there until Mia came back if bacon was on the menu.

  Mia slipped outside and shut the door firmly. She took a look around at the snowy landscape and breathed in the cold, clear air. The quiet of the countryside she would miss. Also, there was only one ghost to deal with at the farm, and in the city, she would have a deluge of spirits to ignore while she walked the sidewalks of the Magnificent Mile. Her ghost was adding wood to the overflowing woodpile at the moment with his back to her. Mia waited a moment, and he turned around. She smiled and waved at Stephen Murphy. He nodded and went back to work. They both had a sixth sense about the other. Mia wasn’t sure how it had happened, but Murphy just knew when she was there. To someone else it would be unnerving, but to Mia it saved time getting his attention.

  She walked along the cleared walk to the converted barn and let herself in the PEEPs office. She kicked off her boots and put on the slippers she left there. The warm, woolen tapestry shoes were a gift from Glenda Dupree, Mike the senior investigator’s mother. Glenda had found them in a bazaar in some Middle Eastern country she had visited but forgotten the name of. All Mia knew was that Glenda enjoyed bartering with the owner of the stall. She got into several arguments and went back the next day for more abuse. She knew she had met her match and loved the confrontation. Her cruise partner wasn’t amused, but Glenda was footing the bill, so she kept quiet and memorized the quickest route to the US Embassy.

  Mia opened the door to the barn and squinted as the overhead lights were set to blind. “Whoa, I need sunglasses in here,” she said, stumbling forward.

  A set of strong arms caught her and guided Mia to the side of the workshop. She wanted to say thank you with a kiss to her husband, but in her blindness, she worried that she may indeed be kissing Cid, their boarder and Ted’s best friend, instead. “Thank you,” she said lamely.

  “Here,” Ted said gently as he put a set of tinted goggles in her hand. “Put these on,” he instructed.

  Mia did as she was told and was pleased to be able to see without squinting again. She looked up at her husband. He had on his customary ball cap turned backwards that hid all but the most unruly of his curly auburn hair. His brown eyes twinkled as he drew his lips into a full smile.

  “I take it, things are working,” Mia said, looking from his smiling face to the device in the middle of the room.

  “It has just passed the sunlight test. Hey, Cid, I think we can turn the wattage down. Com Ed’s stock is too high as it is.”

  Cid complied. Mia watched the handsome techie as he turned off the floodlights they had encircled the testing area with. Lastly, he lowered the overhead lights from supernova to normal.

  “What brings you to the barn, Minnie Mouse?” Ted asked as he gently pulled the goggles off her face. He leaned down and kissed her tenderly.

  Mia’s body instantly warmed, and she had to fight the urge to continue to kiss him. “I have to ask your advice,” she said slyly.


  “You’ve come to ask my advice?” Ted asked suspiciously. He looked over at Cid whose gullible nature was buying into the whole thing.

  “Ralph is looking for someone to house sit for a week. He lost his sitter at the last minute. He leaves tonight and is in quite a tizzy.”

  “I’ll go,” Cid volunteered. His good nature and Kansan upbringing made the inconvenience of leaving his snug apartment over the Paranormal Exposure Entity Partners office not matter, especially when it came to helping out a friend.

  “No, I need you here,” Ted said, looking at his wife. “I take it you want to go,” he said, smiling down at his petite, Nordic blonde wife.

  “He’s done so much for us. I don’t want to go. I’d much rather spend my time here but…”

  “I can’t leave this project, Mia. We are into the testing phase and…”

  “I understand. Would you mind if I went? I could come back and forth.”

  “I appreciate the thought, and I may do the same. I worry about you being in that place all by your lonesome.”

  “Hey, doesn’t Mike live near Ralph’s?” Cid said. “He could look in on her.”

  Mia groaned at Cid’s suggestion. She had forgotten that Mike was a mere taxi ride away.

  “Mike will not be spending time there,” Ted insisted. “Call Audrey, and see if she would keep you company.”

  “What a great suggestion. I would rather have you there, Teddy Bear, but a little girl time would be nice. I feel guilty leaving you men here with Maggie and…”

  “She’s going to say Murphy. Mia, when will you learn that Murphy is one of us guys? He’s no trouble. I will miss you, but I understand that family needs come up from time to time, and after all Bernard and Ralph have done for us, we owe it to them to help them out,” Ted said. “But you knew that I would say that, didn’t you?”

  “Me? I wouldn’t presume to know what you were thinking, Ted. Men are so confusing,” Mia lied. “I’ll call Audrey and go and pack. I’ll need to unearth the Chicago clothes Ralph bought me.”

  “They’re in the closet in the big guest room,” Cid said.

  Mia and Ted looked over at the techie. Both wondered for a brief minute how Cid knew where Mia kept her clothes.

  “That’s right, he helped last time Ralph came for a visit. We moved my stuff out of the bedroom and put Ralph’s gifts in,” Mia told Ted. “It was his suggestion.” She pointed at Cid who was nodding.

  “Perhaps you and Ralph could find a middle ground when it comes to your fashion. I do find it odd that your godfather is still dressing you after all these years,” Ted said.

  “I can’t hurt his feelings, and I hate stores,” Mia added. “Perhaps you wouldn’t mind shopping for me…”

  “Oh no!” Ted raised his hands in surrender. “I spent my teenage years being dragged from store to store with my sisters. We’ll let Ralph do it. I withdraw my ill-thought-out comment.”

  Mia giggled.

  Cid looked over at the couple. He wanted to find what the two of them had found in each other. Someone to tease, argue with and to love. They were both talented people. Mia was born with the ability to see and converse with ghosts. She had developed the ability to bilocate and had begun to learn how to control a telekinetic talent that unfortunately started most of things she moved on fire. Ted was a mechanical and computer genius. He had more patents than most major think tanks did. He started putting his abilities to work on better ways to communicate with ghosts and branched out to develop some inventions that had medical and military applications.

  The project before them was a remote-controlled device he had named Centipede. It was a machine that could climb walls, move about various terrains and even roll into a protective ball while it was filming in infrared and other spectrums. Its present size was a bit of a problem. When rolled into a ball, it was the size of a NBA regulation basketball, which made moving under some obstacles a problem. Ted was working on a smaller version but had decided to go through with the testing of the large Centipede anyway.

  The idea for Centipede came out of Ted recognizing Mia’s revulsion to going into spider-infested crawl spaces and small attic areas. Ted also didn’t want Mia walking through the hidden wall passages and rooms, they sometimes encountered, without first checking out the area to make sure it was safe. She took Murphy with her when he was available, but Ted didn’t want his wife to always have to depend on the ghost for her safety.

  If he succeeded, Centipede would be small enough to curl around Mia’s arm like a bracelet but mighty enough to record and send film and data back to the PEEPs computer.

  “So how’s Curly doing?” Mia asked, knowing Ted hated her nickname for Centipede.

  “We had to develop a filter for bright sunlight to avoid lens flare,” Cid told her. “It moves like a dream though. It climbed the wall of the barn and halfway across the ceiling before it started to lose its purchase.”

  “It’s the weight. When it’s smaller that shouldn’t be a problem,” Ted said, defending his creation.

  “Well, I’ll leave you to it. I’m making BLTs for lunch. Should I bring them over or are you coming in to eat?” she asked, already knowing the answer.

  “If you wouldn’t mind, could you bring them here?” Ted asked her sweetly.

  “You got it,” Mia was about to say something further when she noticed that Ted had already forgotten she was there and was tinkering with something on the workbench. She quietly exited the workshop, stopping only long enough in the PEEPs office to put on a fresh pot of coffee.

  ~

  Murphy moved to intercept Mia on the porch. She smiled when he opened the door for her. The ability to maneuver things outside his ghostly realm took a lot of energy, but Murphy being on his home turf had no trouble charging up when he needed to - although, it did take some time. When they were away from the farm on an investigation, Murphy drained the batteries for power. Not enjoying the process of changing the batteries in their cameras and recorders, Ted decided to think through the problem. He had developed a cube of strong batteries affectionately known as an energon cube – paying homage to the Transformers franchise – for Murphy to place his ever present axe he carried into, to draw out as much energy as he needed.

  “Would you like to come in?” Mia invited the ghost.

  He nodded and followed her into the farmhouse he had built during his lifetime. Maggie jumped up and greeted both the axeman and the future bacon fryer with a delighted bark.

  Mia took off her outer gear and walked into the sunny kitchen. She pulled out an iron skillet, set it on the stove and turned up the flame. “How are the seedlings doing up on the hillside?”

  “Don’t know, covered in snow,” Murphy answered.

  “If you could wait until I pack, I’d be happy to move some snow for you,” Mia offered.

  “Pack?”

  “I’m going into Chicago to watch Ralph’s place for a week. Ted and Cid are staying here. They have to work out the kinks on Curly.”

  “Want me?” Murphy asked, fearing she’d say yes.

  “Oh no, I’ll call Audrey and see if she wants to spend the week with me. Unless you want to spend the week in the city?” Mia asked.

  “No!”

  His voice echoed through the house. Mia knew it was his relief that increased the volume of his reply, that and the difficulty Murphy had with speaking through the veil.

  “I’ll be just fine. I’d rather spend my time here with you boys, but Ralph needs me,” she explained. “Although, I’m going to take advantage and see a few shows and perhaps check out the Shed Aquarium.”

  Murphy looked at her, puzzled.

  “It’s a place where they keep fish.”

  “Lake.”

  “It’s on the lakeside by Bernard’s museum,” Mia said, referring to the Field Museum. Murphy was well acquainted with the museum, having investigated there with PEEPs. He, however, didn’t venture too far into the city, too much steel and not enough wood for his taste
s.

  “Fish belong in lakes,” he clarified.

  “Yes they do but… oh nevermind.” Mia gave up trying to explain herself and concentrated on frying bacon.

  ~

  “Of course, I’d love to,” Audrey said. “I’m in between projects right now, and PEEPs don’t have an investigation scheduled for a while. It would be nice to eat on Ralph’s dime. It will help me make ends meet.”

  “I didn’t know money was dear. You could have bunked with us for a while,” Mia said.

  “Oh, don’t worry. I can still pay my bills. I’m used to things slowing down during this time of year. People aren’t thinking about renovations as much as winter vacations.”

  Mia knew that Audrey’s specialized consulting business, analyzing old donated buildings to fit the needs of charities, was responsible for seeing to her daily needs as a divorced woman trying to live independent of her parents. PEEPs gave her a small income, but it wasn’t enough to live on.

  Most of the PEEPs had to take second jobs to survive. Ted had the money from his inventions to keep their heads above water. Before they were married, Mia had depended on odd jobs, to subsidize her inheritance interest payoffs, to live on. After they became a couple, Ted asked if she could curtail her more dangerous enterprises, such as clearing gutters from two and three story homes, in favor of helping him to make a home for themselves. She agreed, knowing it would ease the worry lines he had developed during their ghost hunting activities.

  “Ralph wants us to also go shopping.”

  “He said us as in you and me?” Audrey asked.

  “Yes, as long as we don’t break the bank…”

  “I need a new coat,” she confessed.

  “I thought I sent Bev’s coat home with you to use?”

  “Mia, it’s fur, and no matter how I try to reconcile myself to it, I feel guilty. Plus, my charities will get the idea that if I can afford fur, they don’t have to pay me for my time.”

  “I hear ya,” Mia said. “And the Bears jacket?”