“Then it’s true? Doctor Gerard is giving you the money for your research?”
If Dan thought my question was odd or impertinent, he didn’t say. He simply nodded. “Hilton Gerard is a man who can really make things happen.”
Be that as it may, I was still stuck on the bit about Doctor Gerard and the money. “Where does it come from?”
“The money?” This time, the whole odd part of the equation was evident in the look Dan gave me. “Hilton’s got a huge family fortune.”
That, apparently, was supposed to be explanation enough.
It might actually have been if I wasn’t hell-bent on finding out more.
“You’re sure?”
Dan made a face. “Of course I’m sure. Where else would it come from? You can’t possibly think that Doctor Gerard is—”
“Of course not.” It was too soon to point fingers, but not too soon to probe. Just a little more. “What about the people in your study?” I asked Dan. “Where do they come from? How do you find them?”
And what happens to them when you’re done poking around in their brains?
That was the question I was dying to ask, but like I said, it was too soon. Better to play it cool than take the chance that Dan would get offended and leave me high and dry. And I wasn’t just talking about being left at the cemetery alone again. I could deal with that. But if Dan shut me out... well, then I’d lose any hope of helping him.
His answer to my question about his test subjects was a shrug. “I find subjects the way any researcher does,” he said. “Questionnaires, feelers, requests to other researchers, referrals. I find them the way I found you. You know, by working in hospitals, watching who comes in, checking out their records. I have to tell you, Pepper, by the time I met you, I was losing faith. I’d looked into lead after lead. Doctor Gerard had studied patient after patient. Even the promising ones . . . well, they never panned out. Then when I saw your brain scans, I knew you were different. Special. I thought—”
“You thought I could help your study along.”
“It’s not like I was trying to take advantage of you. It’s just that—”
“You were trying to take advantage of me.”
Dan didn’t look any happier admitting this than I did saying it. He didn’t meet my eyes when he said, “You’re a terrific girl, Pepper. Really, I like you a lot. It’s just that—”
“You’ll always be in love with Madeline.”
Maybe he didn’t hear the disappointment that dripped from my every word. That would explain why he responded to my statement as if it was a good thing. “I’m glad you understand,” he said. His smile was brief, and I got the feeling it was more for my sake than anything else. “I knew you would. It just shows what a kind and sensitive person you are. I know it’s not a very scientific thing to say—after all, it can’t really be measured, can it?—but your understanding and your compassion . . . I think that has something to do with your ability to communicate with the dead.”
He didn’t say it like it was a question. Dan was way more up front than that. And me? Well, if ever there was a time for me to come clean, I knew this was it.
My sigh rippled the icy air between us. “It’s not something I’m thrilled about.”
“You should be! Think of all you can accomplish with this wonderful Gift of yours. You can give grieving people hope. You can be a messenger between the here and now and the Other Side. You can find her for me, Pepper.” At this point, Dan’s eyes weren’t just bright, they were fiery. I’d never seen him look that way before, and it made me a little uncomfortable. “I’ll do anything—anything—to talk to Maddy again. I need to see her and I need to tell her how very much I love her.”
“And you think I can help?”
“I know you can.” Before I even had a chance to react, Dan had his hands on my shoulders. His look was pleading. “With Doctor Gerard’s guidance, we can make this thing happen. I know we can, Pepper. And when we do, we’re going to change the world!”
If I was as understanding and compassionate as Dan thought I was, I would have responded to this statement with some genuine enthusiasm. I actually might have if I wasn’t thinking about what I’d learned from Ernie outside the clinic that afternoon. My detective tendencies kicked into high gear. “Doctor Gerard isn’t just looking for folks with aberrant behavior, is he? He’s looking for people who see things. And people who hear things. Because—”
“Because . . .” Dan reined in his wild enthusiasm to answer. “Because though most of the people who exhibit those behaviors are mentally ill, he suspects what you and I both already know. Not all of them are.”
I let this news sink in before I responded. “So Doctor Gerard thinks that some of the people who hear things and see things really do hear things and see things. And that the people who do—”
“Are lucky enough to be in contact with the Other Side. Yes.” Dan nodded. “Now that you’re on board, well, things can really start to come together, can’t they? All our other subjects . . . they might hear and see things, but they’re not things from the Other Side. But I know you’re different, Pepper. I just know it. We’re going to accomplish wonderful things. This is cutting-edge science, and not something the mainstream scientific community would endorse. But hey, they made fun of Galileo, too, right?”
I wasn’t sure about that, so it seemed best not to answer. Instead, I forced myself to hold off on all the questions I was burning to ask. Why bother when I knew I wouldn’t get a straight answer. Not from a man who had chucked his conventional scientific ways to devote his life to exploring the possibility of communicating with his dead wife. If I was going to find out what was really going on in that study, I would have to bide my time. As I’d already learned in the course of three previous investigations, biding my time meant playing along. At least until I figured out who was who, what was what, and what the hell was really going on.
Looking back on it, I guess that’s why I didn’t mention that I’d already been in touch with Madeline. If I gave away that secret, Dan would want details, and there was no way I was ready to tell him that the Maddy I met didn’t exactly jibe with his memories, colored as they were with guilt, sentiment, and loneliness. In point of fact, she was a snooty, bigheaded pain in the—
“Did you see that?” A movement in the shadows on my left caught my eye and interrupted my train of thought. I spun around that way, and when I did, Dan dropped his hands from my shoulders and looked around, too.
“See what?”
I squinted into the gloom, but if there had been something there before, it sure wasn’t there now. Or was it?
An arctic blast of air curled around my feet and slithered up my legs, penetrating my layers of clothing. It left me feeling icy and so scared, my knees knocked together and I couldn’t breathe.
Believe me, this was one frosty feeling I recognized on contact. I thought back to my visit to the cemetery the day before and to the shadow that had followed me for a while, then slipped away and disappeared. Yeah, that one. The spooky shadow that scared me to death.
As frightened out of my gourd now as I was then, I hugged my arms around myself and looked hard in the direction the attack of cold had come from.
I was just in time to see a shadow—thicker and darker than the ones around it—pass behind a standing headstone. It didn’t come out on the other side.
“That.” I pointed, but by the time Dan caught on and looked in the right direction, the heavyweight shadow was already gone.
And if I told him how just looking at it made me want to run off screaming into the night, I’d sound like a nutcase.
“Must have been a bird.” My smile wasn’t any more convincing than my feeble explanation, but let’s face it, Dan was too busy thinking about his beloved Madeline to worry about anything else. He twitched his shoulders before he turned back to me, and if he noticed that while he spoke my gaze kept darting to the place I’d seen the shadow disappear, he was polite enough no
t to say anything about it.
“I’m glad we had this chance to talk.” From behind the lenses of his wire-rimmed glasses, Dan’s eyes shone with emotion. “I just wish . . .”
He didn’t have to fill in the blanks. I knew exactly what he was wishing for.
I wondered what he’d say if he realized that the next second, she was standing right behind him.
“What is it?” Dan must have seen the flash of awareness in my eyes, because he spun around and looked where I was looking. Of course, he didn’t have my Gift (lucky guy). All he saw was a vast stretch of cemetery and row upon row of headstones and monuments, as cold as the wintry air. “You’re looking at something. At someone. Is she . . .” Dan was so excited, he could barely get the words out. I watched anticipation wash across his face. “Is Maddy here?”
It was either lie to him or tell him the truth and watch him melt into a puddle of mush. I wasn’t prepared for that. Or for revealing the whole truth and nothing but about my Gift. At least not until I learned more about Dan’s study and those people who’d gone into it and never come out again.
None of that explains the words that came out of my mouth. Then again, the look of longing in Dan’s eyes probably does.
“Madeline is here,” I said, and always the rational scientist—even when we were talking about something completely irrational—he tried hard to control his smile. “She’s standing there.” I put a hand on his arm and nudged him around so that he was facing the right way.
“He’s anxious to see me, poor darling.” Madeline drifted back and forth in front of Dan. “Tell him, Pepper. Tell him I say hello.”
“She says hello.”
Dan blinked away tears. “How does she look? What is she wearing? Is she happy? Does she . . .” He swallowed so hard, I saw his Adam’s apple jump. “Does she miss me?”
“He’s a sweetheart.” Madeline’s voice was as soft as the look she gave her husband. “I don’t want to see him suffer.”
“She doesn’t want to see you suffer.” I relayed the message to Dan, of course, because I didn’t want to see him suffer, either.
“I want him to be happy.”
“She says that she wants you to be happy.”
He nodded, but pardon me for not being convinced. There was so much pain in Dan’s eyes, I could tell that happiness was the farthest thing from his mind. “I can never be happy,” he said, echoing my thoughts. “Not without you, Maddy. I’m sorry about what happened at the clinic that day. If only I—”
“Shhhh.” Madeline drifted closer. Her clunky shoes never touched the ground. “Tell him there was nothing he could do. Our fates are sealed, he couldn’t change mine.”
“She said you shouldn’t feel guilty.”
“It’s time for him to get on with his life. Tell him, Pepper.”
“She wants you to move on with your life.”
“It’s time for him to put the past behind.”
“It’s time for you to put the past behind.”
“It’s time for him to open his heart to new possibilities.”
“It’s time for you to . . .” Madeline’s message was just too lame. I wrinkled my nose and decided a little poetic license was in order. “It’s time for you to start fresh.”
“She wouldn’t understand if I did. How could she?” Dan barely looked my way before he stepped toward where I’d told him Madeline was standing. “I promised I’d love you forever, Maddy. I meant that. With all my heart.”
“He was the man of my dreams.” Madeline stepped away, fading as she did. “He was the perfect husband. If only . . . if only there was someone who could make him as happy as I did. I want him to be happy.”
I decided not to relay this part of the message. Talking to a dead wife about finding her husband a live wife . . . well, that was a little too weird, even for me.
When I didn’t say anything, Dan spun toward me. “Is she gone?” he asked.
I looked to where Madeline was standing. There was nothing and no one there now. “She’s gone.”
“But she’ll be back, right?”
I didn’t have the answer, but it didn’t stop me from saying, “Of course she will be.”
A bittersweet smile touched Dan’s lips. He patted my arm. “You’re a good friend, Pepper,” he said. “I’m glad you’re the one who’s giving me the messages from Maddy. It means . . .” His voice clogged with tears. “It means so much to me. You understand, don’t you? When Maddy talks about me being happy again . . . I know she means it, and believe me, I’d really like to. But you understand that it isn’t possible, right? It’s just not that easy to turn off grief.”
8
By the time it was all over, I had lost my taste for dinner. I don’t think I was imagining that Dan didn’t even notice. When I said I wanted to go right back to the hotel, he never questioned it. He didn’t say much in the cab, either, except, “Thank you,” and “Thank you,” and “Thank you” again. He was so ecstatic that I’d finally admitted to my ability to commune with the Other Side and with his own close encounter with the late Mrs. Callahan, he barely bothered to say good night.
I didn’t have much of a chance to be offended. We weren’t on the road for more than ten minutes when it started snowing like crazy, and by the time I stepped out of the cab at the conference hotel, I had to tiptoe over the mounds of slush on the street and the piles of snow on the sidewalks. The wind nearly blasted me off my feet, and it was either hold my dorky felt hat in place or lose it.
Oh yeah, and Madeline was waiting outside the hotel door, too.
“That’s a cute trick.”
The valet thought I was talking to him, and before he could wonder what he’d done to warrant such an acerbic statement, I gave him a tight smile and darted into the revolving door.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Madeline was right next to me, and when it comes to ghosts, right next to is too close for comfort. I scooted as far away from her as I could in the confined space.
“I’m talking about first, you not telling me about the patients who are MIA. Then forgetting . . . forgetting—”
The door spit us out in the lobby, and since there were knots of conference goers standing around and talking about whether they wanted to venture out in the nasty weather, I swallowed my words. There was an alcove nearby with a chintz-covered settee and a potted palm. I darted inside, slid the palm in front of me so no one could see me, and flopped down on the couch. I stripped off my hat and my gloves and slapped them down on the couch beside me to emphasize my words.
“You forgot to mention that you and Dan were married.”
Madeline sniffed. “You’re the detective,” she said. “You should have figured it out.”
“What I’m figuring out is that you have a problem with the truth.”
Sitting down had been a tactical mistake. When Madeline replied, she was looking down at me. Literally and figuratively.
“And what would you have done if I told you about me and Danny?” she asked. “Would you have believed me? And if you did... well, I don’t think I’m imagining things here, Pepper. If I told you Danny and I were married, you never would have concentrated on the case. You would have been too busy being jealous.”
“Of you?” The words practically choked me. Maybe because they were so preposterous. Maybe because they were true. I decided to stick with the preposterous theory because it was, after all, more likely. It was also far less humbling than considering that I might harbor the tiniest inkling of jealousy for a woman as plain and as boring and as downright annoying as Madeline. To stress my point and how much I so didn’t care, I rolled my eyes. “Please! I’m way more professional than that. And in case you haven’t noticed, I’m not exactly the jealous type. I don’t need to be.”
“Because you think you’re better than everyone else.” Madeline nodded, as if she’d just been waiting for me to say this. “It’s your narcissism rearing its ugly head again. I knew it would eventually.
No one with as many serious mental health issues as you have can possibly hold it together for too long. It’s statistically impossible. And before you get all defensive—” She held out a hand to shut me up because let’s face it, I was already getting all defensive. “Let me tell you that I do understand. Narcissistic personality disorder is insulating, disenfranchising, terribly painful, and thus, overwhelming for those who deal with it. Believe me, Pepper, I feel your pain.”
Night of the Loving Dead Page 10
