The Chick and the Dead

by Casey Daniels

  More reenactors.

  When a fellow in a Union cavalry uniform tipped his hat and made a showy bow, I nodded hello. I sidestepped a woman in a wide hoop skirt who was chatting on her cell. Across the street there was a vacant lot, and someone had set up a small white pup tent. I glanced that way, watching as three Confederate soldiers sat outside the tent playing cards with two guys in Union uniforms.

  One of the Union officers looked awfully familiar, shaggy hair, wire-rimmed glasses, and all.

  I dropped my suitcase and did a double take, automatically stepping in that direction.

  "Dan?"

  "Why, no, ma'am." The cavalry officer standing nearby thought I was talking to him. He stepped forward and looked me up and down. "My name's Joe, but I'll tell you what, if you want me to change my name to Dan, I'd be willing. But only if you'll meet me for a drink later."

  "No. Thanks." I turned to him and offered what I hoped was an apologetic smile. "I didn't mean you. I was talking about that man across the street." I turned back that way. "The one playing—"

  There were three Rebels playing cards with one Union officer now.

  Do I need to point out which of them was gone?

  Baffled, I shook my head. "Shit."

  Joe chuckled. His eyes were wide with pretended amazement. "Ma'am," he said, "this is the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and sixty-three. No proper lady talks like that!"

  "I've got news for you, Joe." I grabbed my suitcase and headed up the front steps, carefully stepping around cracked boards and a box of spilled nails. "I'm no proper lady. You want proof, stick around. Something tells me that before I get out of here, I'm going to be using plenty of four-letter words."

  Chapter 9

  Of course I didn't realize I was being delusional. Not at the time. That's what makes a delusion delusional, right?

  When I stepped inside the Bowman home, I actually expected some sort of welcoming committee.

  Who could blame me?

  After all, I'd agreed to fill in for Trish on short notice and, let's face it, that automatically put me into the above-and-beyond category. Add to that the fact that Ella had done the seemingly impossible and found someone—anyone—willing to put up with Merilee for the better part of the summer, and I was thinking that a brass band and a dozen roses would have been just about right.

  Short of that, I was ready to settle for Merilee waiting to greet me at the door with one of the construction workers (preferably a cute, muscular one who was not currently attached) to carry my suitcase to my room.

  No wonder I was surprised when I pushed open the front door and there was nobody around.

  "Hello?" I set my suitcase down on the marble floor of the entryway and leaned forward, peeking into the rooms beyond. Ahead of me was a hallway that led to the back of the house. It was cut in half by a stairway. To my left was what must have once been the living room and, across from it, a room of similar proportions with built-in china cabinets in two of its corners. The ceilings were spanking-new white, and the chandelier at the top of the staircase gleamed like it was a recent addition. The walls were papered in high Victorian kitsch: maroon and purple flowers against a black background, accented with green vines and gold leaves. There was scaffolding, paint cans and lumber stacked all around. Between that and all the vegetation going on, it was hard to see a clear way through to anywhere. Even when I thought I could, I found the path blocked with furniture and museum displays covered with white canvas tarps.

  Like shrouds.

  Of course I made the connection instantly, and I can't say I was especially happy about it. Me and the whole life-after-death thing… well, I guess I was just predisposed to think that way.

  "Hello?" Don't ask me why I bothered, but I tried again, convinced that if only they knew I was here, someone would make an effort to acknowledge my presence and remind me that what I was doing was fabulous and phenomenal and that he (or she) would be forever grateful. "Anybody here?"

  "You Pepper?"

  The sound of a man's voice came at me from out of nowhere, and I jumped and gulped down a gasp of surprise. I took another look around, just in time to see him step onto the landing at the top of the steps.

  The man in question was tall and broad. He was dressed in a dirty blue denim shirt and jeans that were torn at the knees and frayed at the bottoms. Like a worn blanket, his face was creased in a thousand places. His salt-and-pepper hair (more salt than pepper) was long and stringy. It was pulled back in a ponytail.

  Okay, so maybe my imagination was working overtime, what with me thinking I'd seen Dan Callahan across the street and all. Still, when the man moved out of the shadows and positioned himself to look down at me over the railing that ran the length of the landing, I have to admit, my stomach clutched. The stained glass window was directly opposite from where he stood, and the red light filtering through it stained his hands.

  Was it a simile? Or a metaphor?

  Either way, it sure looked like blood to me.

  I forced my morbid thoughts and my gaze away from his hands just in time to see him lean forward and study me from behind thick tortoiseshell glasses. From where I stood, his eyes looked as if they were two sizes too large.

  "Yeah. I'm Pepper." My own voice sounded small and breathless. I told myself it was because of the tall ceilings and not because I was anxious.

  "Miss Bowman, she says you're staying up here." The man jabbed his thumb over his shoulder. "First door on your left."

  I smiled. And waited for him to come down the steps to take my suitcase.

  He didn't.

  Smile or come down to take my suitcase.

  Realizing he wasn't going to, I hoisted the suitcase myself, threaded my way through the maze of construction materials, and climbed the stairs. The closer I got to the man, the stronger the smell of cigarettes became. Believe me, even when I got to the top of the steps, I kept my distance—from him and from the nasty smell—but even so, I felt as if we were too close. I skirted him and got my bearings.

  Like the entryway downstairs, the landing led in two directions. To my right, the hallway was carpeted and the walls were papered (more flowers and vines). The smell of Pine-Sol and lavender wafted out at me, and, grateful for the reprieve from the stench of nicotine, I inhaled deeply.

  The breath caught in my throat when I turned the other way. No carpeting there. No flashy wallpaper, either. I eyed the stained and pitted floorboards and the chipped plaster walls.

  "You sure Merilee said left?" I asked the man. "It doesn't look like this part of the house is finished yet."

  "First door on the left. Miss Bowman says."

  I swallowed my misgivings and stepped that way. I'd quibble with Merilee later about the renovations (or lack thereof) in my temporary quarters. For now, getting away from this man and from the stink of cigarettes was top priority.

  My hand was already on the doorknob when he spoke again. "Name's Bob," he said.

  "It's nice to meet you, Bob." Years of Easter at the country club, Fourth of July at the yacht club, and Christmases spent with the social-climbing contingent of my social-climbing family down in Florida had taught me to lie with a smile on my lips. I turned to Bob and hey, I may have been a smooth talker, but there was only so far I was willing to go when it came to making nice with weird old guys. As if they were made of Velcro, all ten of my fingers clung to the handle of my suitcase. The better not to have to shake Bob's hand. "Do you work here?"

  Bob sucked on his lower lip. He was staring at the front of my shirt, and for the first time since I packed my bags and headed for Ohio City, I wished I'd chosen to wear something other than a lime green tank.

  His gaze flickered down to my hips and back up again. "Live here," he said. "Always have."

  "You're the one who's kept the house for the Bowmans all these years." I nodded, confirming what I'd heard from Ella about how the house had never left the possession of the family. I didn't bother to mention that from the look of my s
ide of the landing, Bob hadn't kept things too well. After all, if he'd been here since Didi's days, he might prove to be a valuable source of information.

  I opened the door to my room. "I guess that means we'll be seeing each other around," I said, a clear indication that—at least for me—our conversation was over.

  Bob stepped forward. "She died. Right here, you know."

  Was Bob a mind reader?

  The question flashed through my brain, and hard on its heels, the name fell off my lips.

  "Didi?" I asked.

  Like I'd sucker punched him, Bob jerked back. He narrowed his eyes and looked at me hard. "What do you know about Deborah?"

  It actually might have been fun to watch Bob's face when I told him my newest best friend was a woman who'd been dead for fifty years. But like I said, I couldn't afford to alienate him. At least not until I found out what he knew. About the Bowman sisters. And about So Far the Dawn.

  "I'm a fan," I said. I stopped myself on the verge of a shrug. No use calling any more attention to my chest. "A fan of Merilee's. I've read everything ever written about her. About So Far the Dawn and how she wrote it right here in this house. About her family, too. Of course I've heard about Didi. I know she died young. I didn't know it was right here in the house."

  Bob shook his head. His ponytail twitched across his shoulders. "That was the Lorain/Carnegie Bridge. Not here. Deborah didn't die here."

  "I thought you said—"

  "It was that Trish. The one who smelled so bad. Like cough drops." His nose wrinkled, he turned and stalked down the steps. "That room you're staying in, that's where she died. Just a couple of days ago."

  "Great."

  Now that I was alone, the sound of my own voice echoed from the high ceiling and bounced back at me from the bare floor. I shivered.

  Not that I was scared, I told myself. There was no reason for me to be.

  Except for the fact that I was here at the request of a ghost who wanted me to prove that Merilee had built her reputation—and her considerable fortune—at the expense of her dead sister, and that if I did, I'd ruin one of the great legends of American literature…

  And the fact that I'd be spending the next however many days in a decrepit house with a guy weird enough to make my skin crawl and that my new boss made Cruella De Vil look like a candidate for sainthood…

  And the additional fact that I was staying in a room where a woman had recently lost her life and that I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that just because ol' Trish was dead didn't necessarily mean she was gone…

  Except for all that, what did I have to worry about?

  If there was any good news in all this, it was that my room didn't smell like menthol. I should know. Before I even put down my suitcase, I looked over every inch of it, sniffing as I went, convinced that if I found—or smelled—one trace of Trish, I was out of there.

  The bad news was that my home away from home was a twelve-by-sixteen box with one window. It looked out at an alley. The wallpaper that had once been—maybe—dotted with pink carnations, hung in shreds and was a uniform and unattractive shade of gray. The floor was bare. The bed was squishy. When I tried to put my clothes in the one and only dresser in the room, the drawers stuck and refused to open until I gave them a healthy smack.

  There was no attached bathroom, and at the same time I knew in my head that I shouldn't have expected one in a house this old, I dreaded the thought of a trip down the hallway in the middle of the night.

  I wondered where Bob slept.

  "Find the manuscript and get out." I gave myself the pep talk as I tucked my clothes away.

  "The manuscript is in the attic." I gathered up my shampoo, conditioner, and makeup and headed out to find the bathroom, reminding myself of everything Didi had told me. "If you can get your hands on it—"

  As I neared the door that led from my room into the hallway, the toe of my sandals caught on a rough spot in the floor. For a second, I lost my footing. I didn't fall, but I didn't hang on to what I was holding, either. The shampoo and conditioner went one way. A bottle of Happy went the other. A brand-new tube of Pretty in Pink landed on the floor and rolled. Before I could get to it, it disappeared under the bed.

  "Damn," I mumbled and stooped to pick up what I could, then knelt and gingerly lifted the ruffled skirt that covered the mattress. I peeked under the bed.

  It was too dark to see anything.

  "Double damn." I grumbled and reached out my hand, carefully feeling around, and when the only things I got for my effort were dust bunnies, I lay on my stomach and stretched some more, groping through the dark and the dust. Finally, my fingers connected with something. I grabbed and pulled.

  It was not a tube of Pretty in Pink.

  I sat back, blew a strand of hair out of my eyes, and examined the roll of duct tape I'd retrieved.

  It hadn't been under the bed long. I could tell because in comparison with the rest of the room, the roll of tape wasn't dusty. It didn't belong to any of the construction workers, either. I could tell that because… well, all it took was one look at my room to figure that out. No one with an eye for remodeling had set foot in this place in a long, long time.

  Which meant that the duct tape might have belonged to Trish.

  Which really didn't interest me in the least.

  At least not as much as a new tube of lipstick did.

  I tossed the tape aside and felt around under the bed some more. This time I was successful. The Pretty in Pink in hand, I sprang to my feet and set out to find the bathroom.

  Another room that needed a whopping dose of TLC.

  I set my cosmetics on the sink and took a gander at the pitted linoleum and the hole in the wall that provided an unobstructed view of the claw-footed bathtub—and anybody in it.

  "Find the manuscript fast," I reminded myself, and as funny as it seemed, the thought gave me courage. I told myself not to forget it, combed my hair, and checked to make sure there was no dust lurking anywhere on my clothes.

  Sure that I was together and as ready as I was likely to get, I went in search of Merilee.

  As it turned out, I didn't need to worry about my hair or my makeup. When I found Merilee, she was in her study, sitting behind a huge mahogany desk and writing in a notebook. She didn't even bother to look up.

  I toed the threshold and wondered how to announce myself, and while I did, I took the opportunity to check out the room with its rich paneling and its plush Oriental carpet. Every lamp in there glittered. The empty bookcases that took up all of one wall and the tables on either side of a burgundy-colored, uncomfortable-looking sofa gleamed.

  No doubt, a cleaning crew had just finished with the room. After the musty odors on my side of the house, I basked in the lemony scent of furniture polish.

  Which is why the undertone of smoke in the air struck me as odd.

  I glanced toward the fireplace. Two huge oil paintings hung above the mantel. One of them was of a woman with flashing blue eyes and cascades of golden hair. Her gown had a wide skirt and a tight waist. It was the color of sapphires and cut low enough to show off her shoulders and her slender neck.

  The other picture was of a dark-haired man with a bushy mustache. He had the hint of a smile on his lips and a naughty twinkle in his eyes. He was wearing a blue uniform.

  The mantel itself was chock-full of knickknacks, china figurines of women in gowns (one was the same deep blue as the woman's in the picture) and men in old-fashioned clothing. It didn't take much of an imagination to figure out that they represented characters from SFTD. Like the rest of the room, they were as clean as can be, and the oak mantel itself was sleek and glossy.

  I guess that's why the small pile of ashes in the hearth looked out of place.

  "It's too warm for a fire."

  I didn't need to worry that Merilee had heard me. She was so deep into whatever she was deep into, she never budged.

  Of course, that didn't mean that no one answered.

  "
We never had a fire." Didi's voice was breathless. It bounced over the words. "Mother said it was too dangerous. A house down the street burned down, you know. When I was little. After that, Mother never allowed a fire."

  I turned just in time to see her materialize. She was wearing a plaid skirt and a white blouse. Her hair was in pigtails. She was jumping rope.

  I rolled my eyes. Enough said.

  "Don't like the little-girl look, huh?" Didi laughed, and in the blink of an eye, she was back to normal. At least as normal as a ghost can be. "Hey, you can't blame me for trying to relive my childhood. This is where I grew up."

  "And it's where you wrote the book, right?"

  "Of course it's where I wrote the book." Merilee's voice came at me from across the room. "If you'd been paying attention, you'd know that."

  I turned toward her and forced an enthusiasm I didn't feel into my voice. "I was just kidding. I'm sure Ella told you, I'm a huge fan."

  "Of course you are." The desk was piled with books. Merilee closed one of them and set it aside. She took off the glasses that were perched on the end of her nose and put down her pen, studying me intensely. It didn't take a detective to figure out that she still hadn't forgiven me for mentioning Didi back at Garden View. She might have accepted me as Trish's replacement, but no way was she going to make this easy.

  "Cleveland had an especially interesting place in the Civil War," she said, her voice as crisp and clipped as if she was giving a lecture. "But then, if you're a fan, no doubt you know that, too. I'm sure we'll have plenty of opportunities this summer for some lively discussions, you and I. We can talk about the increase in petroleum refining and the growth of the railroads during the war years."

  I could hardly wait.

  "And then, of course…" Merilee aimed a laser look at me. "There's Elizabeth and Kurt. Since you're such a huge fan, I expect you'll have plenty of questions to ask about them, too."

  The names were vaguely familiar.

  Which didn't make it any easier to make small talk when I didn't know who we were small-talking about.