She didn’t smile. “I thought you would be older and . . . you know . . .”
“Not as pretty?”
A serious plucking would have done her eyebrows a world of good. They did a slow slide up her forehead. “I didn’t want to be rude, but since you insist. I was going to say that I thought you’d look smarter.”
“I’m plenty smart.”
“Sure you are.”
She said this in the same tone of voice I’d once heard a clerk at Nordstrom use when a woman who shouldn’t have been caught dead in a tankini sauntered out of the dressing room and asked how she looked.
Unlike that shopper, I was good at picking up on subtleties. I stepped back, shifting my weight to one foot. “You’re the one who wanted to see me. At least I’m guessing you had something to do with the postcard and—hey!” An idea struck, and though I don’t like exposing my ignorance or my weaknesses—not to anybody—I’d never been good at hiding my curiosity. I pulled the postcard out of my pocket and waved it in the air. “How’d you do that, anyway? Ghosts can’t touch things. How did you write on this postcard? And how did you get it to me?”
“Ghosts can’t touch things, is that what you think?” A smile touched her lips. Since she was already as cold as anybody can get, I doubt if she did it for warmth, but she tucked her hands into the pockets of her lab coat. “Looks like you don’t know everything after all.”
Like I said, I don’t like admitting I’m not at the top of my game. Naturally, I prickled, and honestly, it wasn’t such a bad thing. A little healthy anger went a long way toward warming me up. “I do know there’s a reason you brought me here. And I’m pretty sure . . .” I pretended to think about this before I said, “No, I’m very sure I’m the only one who can see you and the only one who can help you. I suggest you cut the sarcasm.”
“Oh, you are a feisty one! I hear that goes along with the red hair.” She leaned nearer to give me a closer look. “If it’s natural.”
My smile was as brittle as the chill wind. “It’s natural, all right. So’s the curl. Which means I don’t have to handle bad hair days by pulling my hair away from my face and tying it up in an old-lady bun.”
“How clever of you to notice.”
Two minutes with this spook and already she was getting on my nerves. I didn’t walk away, though, not even when I saw out of the corner of my eye that the cemetery conference group had already moved on to another nearby monument. Remember what I said earlier. I knew that even if I left, this ghostly pain in the ass would find me again. I might as well get it over with. Though it was unlike me, I decided it was time to find some common middle ground. If I was going to get anywhere, a change of subject was in order.
I glanced toward where I’d last seen the hulking shadow and breathed a sigh of relief when I saw it was nowhere in sight. “What’s with the spooky shadow?” I asked the woman.
Her shrug was barely noticeable. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“All rightee.” Like I said, I was all about being nonconfrontational. And smart enough to know arguing with this ghost would get me nowhere. I stepped closer and looked down at the gravestone nearest to where she stood. “Madeline Tremayne. Is that you?”
She didn’t look at the gravestone but kept her head up. Her jaw was rigid. “It used to be.”
I checked the dates carved into the rose granite. “You’ve only been dead for three years. And you didn’t live all that long. Thirty? You don’t look—”
“That old?” Her eyes flared.
“I was going to say that young. It’s the lab coat. Sorry, but you must have realized the lab coat and the glasses and the shoes . . .” I couldn’t make myself look at her black loafers again. “If you had any sense of style—”
“Women with brains don’t need a sense of style. And women who are psychologically healthy aren’t fixated on looks and fashion.”
“Fixated? Think so?” I glared at her. “Well, come to think of it, you must believe it. And you must have some pretty heavy psychological issues, too. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be trying to prove how psychologically healthy you are by going out of your way to look so frumpy.”
Madeline simply stared at me, her chin steady and her lips pulled into a thin line. Easy for her to do; she wasn’t wearing any lipstick so she didn’t have to worry about smudging it or biting it off. “It’s far too early for a diagnosis, of course,” she said, “but if push came to shove and I had to guess, I’d go with NPD. In case you don’t know, and I’m certain you don’t since I think it’s clear you’ve never read the research of Heinz Kohut or the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, that’s narcissistic personality disorder. It’s as clear as clear can be. You’re preoccupied with your own physical and social image. You’re wrapped up in your own thoughts and feelings without any concern for others at all. With your defensive attitude and your overblown sense of self-importance . . .Yes, I think we’re looking at a classic case here. I do hope you’re seeing a therapist, if not for yourself then out of consideration for all the people around you.”
She wasn’t funny and I wasn’t laughing. “I don’t need a therapist,” I told her, even though I shouldn’t have had to. “What I do need is to be left alone. What you need is to remember that if you’re going to ask a living person for help, you need to show a little respect in return.”
“Yes, yes, of course.” I might have taken this as a form of apology if she wasn’t nodding and mumbling and talking to herself. And if she didn’t continue with her half-baked diagnosis. “Concern for your own affairs to the exclusion of all others, the inability to empathize with others who have clearly—being dead—gone through far more than you, interpersonal inflexibility, an insistence that you’re the only one who’s right and to take things far too personally . . .” Her mind apparently made up, she looked at me again. “You shouldn’t be ashamed of it, you know. It’s like any mental illness, and fortunately for you, I’m able to understand the root cause. You feel rejected. Humiliated. Threatened when you’re criticized.”
“And out of patience when I have to deal with stupid people, dead or alive.” To prove it, I turned around and stalked away. “Sorry, lady, but you’ve offended the wrong Gifted person. Oh, wait!” I whirled back around; I didn’t want to miss her expression when I delivered my parting shot. “I’m the only one with the Gift, aren’t I? I guess that would sound narcissistic. Except that it’s true. Just like it’s true that I can choose to help whichever ghosts I want. News flash, the ones that piss me off don’t get the time of day. Whatever you wanted my help with, you can just forget it.”
“Fine.” She folded her arms over her chest. “Go back to your cemetery conference and forget this ever happened. It doesn’t make one bit of difference to me. After all, I wasn’t going to ask for your help for myself. And if you don’t want to help Dan—”
“Dan? Dan Callahan?” Without hesitating, I turned right back around and marched over to where Madeline waited. “You know Dan Callahan?”
Her slow smile was the only answer I needed, and I cursed myself and this Gift of mine, which had a way of getting me in over my head every time.
While I was at it, I cursed Madeline, too. She had me at the first mention of Dan’s name. And damn it, she knew it, too.
4
I was cool, calm, and collected. For about three and a half seconds. Then I closed in on Madeline.
“How do you know Dan?”
She slanted me a look. “Is that more than professional curiosity I hear in your voice?”
I wasn’t about to confess my very personal interest in Dan. Not this early in the conversation. And not to this particular spook. I raised my chin, but since I was about a foot taller than Madeline to begin with, this didn’t exactly have the imposing effect I was hoping for. I had to look down again to look her in the eye.
“Dan wants to study my brain,” I told her. “And my aberrant behavior. He recorded the EVP that helped solve my last
case. I can be plenty curious. Dan and me, we’ve got history.”
“Is that all you have?”
It took me a second to figure out what she was getting at. “No way!” I didn’t so much wave away the very idea with one cashmere-enshrouded hand as I dismissed the subject as none of Madeline’s business. “You can’t be serious. Dan and I have never—”
“But it’s not like you don’t want to.”
Did I?
OK, Dan was cute. He was more than cute. Dan was sexy. In a dorky sort of way. It never ceased to amaze me that I thought of him that way, since dorks have never been my thing and geeky scientists aren’t exactly on the top of my list when it comes to guys I want to get up close and personal with.
Like I’d been up close and personal with Quinn.
The thought brought me up short, and I curled my hands into fists and held my arms close to my sides, keeping my secrets as carefully as I chose my words. This was not the time. And Madeline was not the person who needed to hear any of this.
I deflected her question with one of my own. “How do you know Dan?” I asked her again.
She expected more in the way of me owning up to Dan’s deliciousness. When she didn’t get it, her eyes narrowed. “I worked with him,” she said. “Here in Chicago. At the Gerard Clinic.”
“Dan worked in Chicago?”
“Ah, something else you didn’t know.” Madeline’s smile was sleek. “Looks like the great detective needs a little help now and then after all. Danny . . .” Though it wasn’t mussed or rumpled, she smoothed a hand over her lab coat. “He was a graduate student at Northwestern at the time. He was completing his dissertation and working with Doctor Hilton Gerard.” She paused, waiting for me to respond, and when I didn’t, Madeline shook her head sadly. “You’ve never heard of Doctor Gerard, have you?”
“I’ve heard of Doctor Doolittle. And Doctor Who. Is this Doctor Gerard guy related to either of them?”
“Ah yes, hiding your inadequacies behind jokes that aren’t funny.” Madeline seemed to make a mental note of this before she turned her attention back to our conversation. “Hilton Gerard is one of the most distinguished psychiatrists in the country. He runs the Gerard Clinic.”
“Where Dan used to work.”
“I worked there, too.” This was obviously a matter of some pride to Madeline. Her chin came up. Her eyes sparkled as much as a dead person’s can. “I was Hilton’s chief research assistant.”
“Which explains how you knew Dan.”
This was not the gushy response she was expecting. I knew this when she pouted. On Madeline, it was not a pretty expression. “I conducted all Hilton’s clinical studies,” she said, in answer to the questions I was supposed to ask but didn’t. “I interviewed and selected our test subjects, and I was in charge of collecting, compiling, and synthesizing our research data. The day-to-day operations of the clinic, that’s Hilton’s bailiwick. So are the grant proposals. And the fundraising . . . well, nobody can get the city’s movers and shakers to open their wallets the way Hilton can. He’s a genius.”
“And he knows Dan.”
Madeline let go of an annoyed sigh. I couldn’t help but notice that when she did, there was no puff of cloudy air around her mouth. “Yes, Hilton knows Danny. That’s the problem, don’t you see?”
“Kind of hard to see something when you’re not making anything clear.” My fingers were numb; I shoved my hands in my pockets. “You want to explain what a job Dan had in grad school has to do with him being in trouble now?”
“I would. If you’d stop jabbering.” Madeline stepped away from her grave. While she collected her thoughts, she paced back and forth, and when she was finally ready to speak, she stopped directly in front of me. “Three years ago, I left the clinic late one night and I got mugged. The mugger panicked when I didn’t produce my wallet as quickly as he would have liked. He shot me. I died in the alley outside the clinic’s back door.”
“No way Dan had anything to do with that.”
Madeline’s eyes glistened. “So, though you pretend you’re not interested in a personal sort of way, you do think highly enough of Danny to know he’d never do anything wrong. From a psychological standpoint, that’s very interesting. You try not to reveal your true emotions, but—”
“Get back on track, will you, before I shoot you myself.”
Madeline got the message. “Danny wasn’t involved in my murder. You’re correct in thinking that. He wasn’t even at the clinic that night, though he was supposed to be. He had some statistics to tabulate and a few reports he should have been going over. But—”
“But he wasn’t there and that’s why you were alone and that’s how you got mugged. Now you’re pissed and you want justice.” I’d heard this song and dance before, or at least ones similar to it. It didn’t take more than a nanosecond for me to make up my mind. “If Dan wasn’t there when he was supposed to be, then he must have had a good reason. So, nice try, but I’m not going to help you get your revenge from beyond the grave. Not against Dan.”
“You’re defending him. Even though you don’t know the whole story. I like that!” Madeline smiled. When a skeleton finger of sun poked through the clouds, her eyes glittered. “That’s nice. It proves you have feelings for him.” Before I could respond with a lie, she went on. “Good thing I’m not asking for revenge.”
“Not against Dan. OK, I get that since it wasn’t his fault. But how about against the guy who shot you?”
The sun ducked back behind the clouds and Madeline’s face was thrown into shadow. “The man who killed me . . . John Wilson . . .he was one of our clients and mentally unstable, poor soul. There’s nothing to be gained from wanting revenge against him. When he snapped out of the dissociative state he was in when he shot me and realized what he’d done, the guilt was too much for him to bear. He took an overdose. He’s been dead nearly as long as I have.”
“So you’re not mad at Dan. And you’re not mad at this John guy. But you want my help anyway. Why?”
“Like I said, it’s all because of Danny.”
It was a sound bite, not an explanation. I stepped back, my arms crossed over my chest and my hands tucked under my arms and close to my body in a futile effort to generate some heat.
Madeline didn’t have to worry about trying to maintain 98.6; she could afford to take her time. While I shifted from foot to foot and stamped my feet, she eased into her explanation.
“You know Danny is brilliant. I mean, you must. Anyone who meets him instantly knows he’s unique. I knew it, too, as soon as Doctor Gerard introduced us. Once I started working with Danny . . . well, it didn’t take me long to realize that in addition to his razor-sharp mind, he has something a lot of scientists lack—a special spark of creativity. Sure, he has an encyclopedic knowledge of psychology and biochemistry, but he can take that knowledge and combine it with experience and... well, it’s hard to explain to a layperson, but his results are always surprising. He has a way of looking at old information in new ways. That’s something special.” Madeline raised her chin.
“I admired Danny’s methods and his thought processes. I appreciated the fact that though I was his superior, he was open to asking for my advice. Many men won’t do that, you know. Especially when it comes to research. Not when they’re working with women who are more professionally and academically advanced and—” If I didn’t know better, I would have said her smile was sweet. “Well, I guess you’ve probably never been in that position, have you?”
The smile I shot back was just as sugary. “You sound like you’re writing Dan’s retirement speech.”
“I just want to be sure you understand. Danny was a real asset to the clinic. He was—”
“Terrific. Yeah, I get it. Dan was terrific, this Doctor Gerard guy is perfection, and you were the ace number one go-to person who kept the place running like clockwork. So?”
“So, even after Danny left Chicago, he kept in touch with Doctor Gerard. They’re working
together now on a special study.”
A single snowflake drifted in front of my eyes, and the heavy clouds above us promised more. If I stood there much longer, I’d harden up and be mistaken for one of the statues. Like a bewildered spectator trying to decipher an especially baffling charade, I urged Madeline on with a wave of both hands. “And this study . . .”
She hesitated.
I grumbled.
Madeline drummed her fingers against her chin. “I hate to say anything denigrating against Doctor Gerard,” she said. “He’s a great man. A brilliant man. Without him and the Gerard Clinic, thousands of the indigent would never have adequate mental health care. It’s just . . .” She drew in a breath. Without taking in any air, of course. “Some of Doctor Gerard’s business practices aren’t exactly on the up-and-up.”
“And you know this, how?”
Night of the Loving Dead Page 5
