“We’ll go soon enough. Do you know anything about my nephew, Aloysius Pierce? He was here just last week. Sandy hair? Pointy chin? He probably made a pass at you.”
“Oh him! I remember him. He represented some development project or other, I think. The owner would never sell any of his properties, though. Never.”
“Did he come here often? Think carefully, dear. He was my nephew and I’m terribly concerned.”
“Just once. I liked him. He was flirtatious. I like it when people are nice to me. The owner...”
“The owner didn’t want to see him again, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Can you take us upstairs? I want to drop in.”
“I can’t. I’m sorry. Rules.”
“We’ll be going upstairs for a visit anyway. Thank you, Natalie. You can head back to your office now.”
They went back to the hall and eased Natalie onto the elevator. She looked a little confused as the doors closed, and waved at Marley and Albert. They waved back.
“To the stairs!” Marley exclaimed.
“I’m a little confused,” Albert admitted. “The guy still owns property, even after he’s dead?”
“Ghosts don’t always know they’re dead, and often the people around them don’t know either.”
“Huh. That explains that smelly guy who sits next to me in Starbucks.” Albert tried the door. “It’s locked.”
“Try one of the keys you got from Natalie.”
Albert held up the key ring in his left hand and gaped at it. “I could have sworn I gave this back to her.”
“She thinks you did, too. Hurry up, please.”
It turned out to be the third key he tried. The lock snapped back and the door swung open into a dimly-lit stairwell. Marley stepped inside and looked up at the landing above.
“Oh my,” she said. “Who do you think that is?”
Albert saw the body, too, and vaulted up the stairs two at a time toward it. She was a young woman, slightly older than Albert himself, thick-bodied and dark-haired. She was dressed in fashionably muted earth tones, and beside her lay an open backpack with personal gadgets—Alphasmart, cell phone, empty water bottle, energy bar wrappers, tablet computer, and a few other items he didn’t recognize—almost spilling out. She had curled herself into a corner of the landing, as though hiding there.
“She has a pulse,” Albert said. “Do you think she fell down the stairs?”
“She didn’t fall, dear. She curled up here on her own. We appear to have found where Natalie’s TV producer ran off to.” Marley shined a flashlight into her face. The woman’s eyes were closed and seemed a little sunken. Her lips were white and cracked. “She’s dehydrated.”
The woman’s eyes opened. “Quiet,” she croaked, her voice barely above a whisper. “He’ll hear you.”
“We’re going to get you out of here, Kara. Can you stand?”
The woman shook her head, but Albert was unclear whether that meant she couldn’t stand or didn’t want to. It didn’t matter to Marley. She took the backpack and waved at Albert to take the woman. He scooped her up and carried her down the stairs.
Marley scowled and waved him off when he tried to give her Natalie’s key ring, so he had to unlock the stairwell door without putting down the woman, then do it again for the condo unit. Marley squeezed past him and waved at the couch, dropping the backpack beside it. As he set the woman down, she moaned with pain.
Marley emerged from the kitchen with a tall glass of water. “Tiny sips, dear.” She put the glass to the woman’s lips and helped her drink. “Tiny tiny sips. Too much at once isn’t safe.”
“Quiet,” the young woman said again. “He’ll hear you. Quiet, he’ll hear you. Quiet, he’ll—“ Marley gave her another drink.
There was a company name on the backpack. Albert straightened the material so he could read it. “Haunt Hunters. Hey! I like that show!”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Things Could Be Much Nicer Than They Are
It took some time, but eventually the producer regained her senses. Marley kept pressing the glass of water on her, and she kept sipping.
“How long have you been here, dear?”
Before she answered, the woman took out her cell and looked at the display. “Two days? Only two days? God, I thought it was a week.”
“I’m sure it felt that way. My name is Marley and this is Albert.”
“I’m Kara.” She held up her hands. They were trembling.
“Nice to meet you, Kara. What brings you here?”
Marley let her voice grow louder, and as she expected, Kara shuddered. “Quiet, he’ll...” She stopped, then was silent a moment while she cleared her thoughts. It wasn’t easy; it felt as if there was someone else in there, someone vicious. “I’m here because my bosses received a tip about a haunted building. I’m supposed to check it out. God, it sure checks out.”
“Who sent in the tip?”
Kara waved one trembling hand in an attempt to be casual and worldly. “Some creepy lawyer guy. He met me at the airport, actually, early on Sunday, and showed me the building. Tried to press me for drinks, too.”
“But he wasn’t your type, was he?”
Kara gave Marley a wary look. It occurred to her that Marley had not just come upon her by chance and Kara began to suspect she’d been set up somehow. “Right. I returned after dark...” She trailed off, shuddering again.
Marley took one of Kara’s hands into her own. “You discovered that this haunting is the real thing.”
Kara’s mouth was dry again. She took another small sip. “I did. I really, really did. Oh God, I’ve been offline for two days. I’m probably so fired.” She began dialing.
Marley caught Albert’s attention and jerked her head toward the kitchen. They retreated into a spacious kitchen unit with granite counters and glasstop stove to give Kara privacy for her call.
“I’ve been watching her show since my tour ended,” Albert said. “I didn’t think they investigated the real thing.”
“They don’t,” Marley answered. “Thank goodness. They mostly point night vision cameras at themselves or occasionally a stray raccoon, then work themselves into a tizzy. They’ve come into my territory twice, and both times they didn’t get anywhere near the actual ghost of a dead person.”
“Which saved you the bother of running them off, I’m guessing.”
“Absolutely correct,” Marley answered. “But that’s not the important thing here.”
Albert nodded. “No. The important thing is that Aloysius called these people in. He wanted the ghost upstairs to be featured on a TV show.”
“No, dear,” Marley said patiently. “He wanted the TV show people to put the ghost to rest. That’s how they end every episode, after all.”
“That’s right! I forgot about that. Then the properties would pass on to someone else, someone who isn’t determined to hold on to everything, as Natalie said.”
“I think so. I think Evelyn wanted to buy up some valuable real estate, and our friend upstairs was in her way.”
“Aunt Marley, why did he turn to these TV people? Why didn’t he come to you?”
Marley sighed and looked out the window, wondering if this was the reason her nephew was dead: he didn’t think he could come to her for help. “Because he believed I wouldn’t do a thing about it, and I understand why he thought so. I have a live-and-let-live attitude about my city. If a person is going about their daily activities without hurting anyone, what do I care if they’re dead or not?”
“It’s hurting Natalie, though. And Kara.”
“Yes, Albert, exactly. This particular ghost is doing harm. And if Natalie is correct that this haunting is drawing bad people toward this building, then it absolutely must be put to rest. Human evil combines with the supernatural in truly awful ways.”
“Are we going to have an exorcism? Like in that old movie?”
“It’s looking that way, but no, it won’t be lik
e any movie you ever saw. And really, Albert, it’s not an ‘old’ movie unless it’s older than I am.”
Kara stepped into the doorway, politely clearing her throat. She’d slung her backpack on. “I’m not fired, if you can believe it. I sure can’t. They were actually worried about me and my boss was going to call the police if I hadn’t checked in by morning. They’re also not going to send a production team up here. They cancelled. Apparently, this isn’t the first time they… I’m catching the next flight back.”
“No, you aren’t!” Marley exclaimed. “You’re still woozy and weak, aren’t you?”
“Well—“
“I won’t hear another word about it. This is a haunting and you have had a ghost’s thoughts in your head. That’s no small thing. You need to purge them. If you don’t do it quickly, you might never be free. You go downstairs and tell Natalie that the two of you need a decent dinner. She’ll know a place. Comfort food, dear, that’s what you need, along with lots of water and no alcohol. Honestly, getting on a plane with nothing but airport food and a back of salty pretzels… I shudder to think of it. Run along now, I’d come with you myself to check on you but it’s getting late. Run along!”
Kara was about to respond but instead she turned and headed for the door. She still felt a little woozy, and obviously she didn’t have to catch the very next flight. Once she opened the door to leave the unit, she found the strength to run for the elevators.
In answer to Albert’s expression, Marley said, “Oh, she’ll be fine.”
“I’m sure she will, but… ‘Run along’? That really works?”
“On a young woman? It does for me. I wouldn’t suggest you try it.” Marley glanced at her phone. Sunset was nearly over, and so was the advantage it gave. “Shall we make another attempt at the stairs?”
They did. The landing was empty but for a few coins that had fallen from Kara’s pockets. Marley made sure to pick up every one, then count them carefully: there were three pennies, two nickels and three quarters in total. Marley jingled them between her cupped hands happily.
“Rich people love their money,” Albert said. He thought he sounded too sharp and was about to apologize but Marley only laughed.
“Indeed we do.”
To their surprise, the landing at the top of the stairs was furnished. There was no carpet, but there was a small loveseat, end table, and standing floor lamp against the wall. A platinum-colored princess phone sat on the end table.
Albert stood beside the phone, staring at it. “Do we call? Because I’m pretty sure I’d turn into a girl the moment I touched that.”
“You should be so lucky. No need to challenge your masculine self-image, dear. Calling would just create an additional opportunity for someone to tell us no. Let’s put the key in the door and see what happens.
The deadbolt lock above the knob was different from the others in the building: it was plated with silver. Albert found a likely key and unlocked it on the first try.
The door creaked as it swung open onto a dark hallway. Finally, Albert had his spooky sound effect, although he took much less pleasure in it than he would if it had come through the speakers of his television. Marley shook the jingling coin in her hands again, and the sound seemed to cut through the gloom, echoing like a cough in a church.
“Hello? Mr. Quigley? Amos Quigley?” Marley slipped past Albert and walked down the darkened hall.
The hair on the back of Albert’s neck stood on end. “Maybe I should go first,” he whispered.
“Oh, hush.”
Marley reached the end of the hall, then turned left. A huge empty room lay before them. The furniture was all leather, chrome, and glass, as chilly and impersonal as a sidewalk in winter. Through the windows that made up the entire eastern wall, the clouds glowed pink and blue, and the glass sides of the downtown Seattle skyscrapers flashed as fading rays of sunlight reflected off them into the room.
In the very center of the room, seated in a low-backed chair, staring at the fading light, was an old man. All they could see was the back of him, and the wisps of gray hair neatly combed across his balding head.
Marley and Albert walked slowly into the room. “Amos Quigley?” Marley said again. “I’ve come to talk to you about something of great importance.”
“Gold,” was all he said in response. The room was so still that dust moats seemed to hang in the air, unmoving. Marley and Albert circled around him far enough that they could see his long, beakish nose and shadowed eyes. His skin was very pale. “Gold.”
“I wonder,” Marley said slowly and carefully, “if we could take a moment of your time.”
“Everyone takes,” he mumbled. His voice was low and raw like an old engine grinding its broken gears. “Everyone thinks they can dip their looter hand in. Everyone has their projects. Everyone think I should give away my own money, money that doesn’t even have any real value.”
Each word out of his mouth filled Marley and Albert with exhaustion and despair. The room darkened and his voice took on the droning quality of a thoughtless, senseless machine. “They put a printing press in the basement of the Federal Reserve and gave them all the ink they could ever want. My own money loses value every day. Every day. The only sensible choice is to put gold behind it. Nail dollars to real gold. Nail dollars to nail dollars to nail dollars to…”
Albert staggered. The ghost’s empty, irrational droning sucked the vitality out of him—his knees went weak and his mind began to go blank. His heart beat slower and slower with each passing moment—Albert could feel it fading—and he realized that he was in the unique position of feeling himself slow down while terror overtook his thoughts.
“Mr. Quigley,” Marley broke in. Her face was pale, too, but beneath the misery and fatigue, she managed to focus. “I want to talk to you about a man’s death.”
Quigley began to shout. “Inflation is government-sponsored robbery and—“
Marley shook her hands, jangling the coins inside. Quigley immediately fell silent and tilted his head.
“I thought that might break through to you.” She jangled them again. The old man’s head turned toward her slightly, and the miasma of life-stealing despair lifted slightly.
A floor lamp on a timer switched on suddenly, startling Marley so much that she dropped the coins. She cried “Albert!” and they both fell to their knees to find them again.
“August fifteenth, 1971, was the worst day in history,” Quigley said as he turned his attention—or what passed for attention with someone like him—back toward the window. Albert found it impossible to hold his head up. His forehead fell against the carpet, his nose mashing against a nickel.
“Albert, get up.” Marley’s voice was strained. She jangled the coins, causing Quigley to interrupt his monologue again. He looked in Marley’s direction without seeming to see her. “Get up right now.”
“I’m sorry,” Albert said, although he didn’t lift his head off the floor.
“Everyone takes,” Quigley said.
“I’m not here to take,” Marley said. “I’m here to invest. Would you like some money?” The mood in the room suddenly changed from a dismal, irrational despair to a vicious avarice. “Yes,” Marley said. “That’s changed things, hasn’t it?”
She stepped toward Quigley, a coin in her hand. “How would you like a nice, shiny quarter?” Quigley’s face lit up as though all his dreams had come true. He turned over his palm and let Marley place the coin in it.
“More.”
Marley stepped back, holding a penny up where he could see it. Albert struggled to his feet, then staggered toward his aunt. He still harbored a vague hope of protecting her somehow, which demonstrated both his fine intentions and his inability to judge his own strengths.
“I have more for you,” Marley said. She glided closer to him. Quigley opened his hand again—the quarter was gone. Marley gave him the penny. He closed his hand over it, then opened it again. The penny was gone.
“More.”
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Marley held up another quarter. She moved toward him, making sure that Quigley’s eyes were on it. Then she stepped back. “Someone came to visit you recently. A slender man with light-colored hair wanted to buy one of your properties, but—“
“Never sell,” Quigley said. His whole body began to grow darker as though he was absorbing light. “Mine. Never sell.”
Marley moved toward him again as though about to give him the quarter, but then stopped. Quigley stopped talking and the darkness around him stopped expanding. “Of course you’d never sell. Of course you said no. But what I need to know is this...” Marley held the quarter closer to him. “What property did he want to acquire? Was it this one?”
Quigley stared at the money, his entire self given over to his raw yearning for it. The room felt like the inside of a tiger’s cage. Albert would not have been surprised to see the old man turn into an alligator and snap the coin from Marley’s hand with his long jaws.
Then Quigley looked up at Marley. For the first time, he seemed to genuinely see her there, and it was awful. “Why do you want to know?”
“Because,” Marley answered, swaying slightly under the old man’s terrible gaze, “banana Wilberforce transmit the cabbage ticket.”
Quigley nodded wisely, as though thinking this over carefully, then said: “Waterfront chowder restaurant. Near the Unocal brownfield.”
Marley placed the quarter in his palm, then another penny, then a nickel. She held up the last quarter, then pocketed it. Quigley’s eyes never turned away from her as she side-stepped around him toward the door.
Marley grabbed Albert’s elbow and pulled him after her. “Thank you, Mr. Quigley,” she said. “We’ll see ourselves out.” Then she hustled her nephew toward the exit.
Albert opened the door and they rushed into the stairwell. Albert nearly collapsed onto the loveseat, but Marley steered him away from it. They hustled down the stairs into the eleventh floor hallway. Albert stood unsteadily in the dingy light his gaze fixed on the door to the room where they’d taken Natalie and Kara. “Can we—“
“No, dear. No lying down. Think what happened to poor Kara. Now come push this elevator button.”
A Key, An Egg, An Unfortunate Remark Page 14
