“That’s all right,” Mindy said. Chaos stuck her head out of my bag and sniffed at the odors of food. Mindy noticed her and smiled. “Better keep that under the table, just in case,” she suggested. “I leave Beaker with the folks who run the bird store on Western. They spoil him, of course.” Then she looked at the couple who had joined us. “Are you two comfortable? You don’t mind . . . ?”
“No problem,” the woman of the couple said. “Fuso’s always a rude pain in the ass.” Then she stuck her tongue out at the man named when he looked as if he would object.
Mindy looked around the table while I closed the zipper on my bag to keep the ferret from running amok in the restaurant.
Mindy waited until I was done, glancing at me one more time before saying, “Well, I’m Mindy Canter. Fuso you know—Ansel Fuso. And these are Nightingale and Whim Sonder.”
The male Sonder reached across the table and put out his hand to shake mine. “William, really, but it’s Whim to most.”
I had seen their names on flyers around town—Whim and Nightingale created children’s shows with all sorts of puppets, mimes, musicians, and wild costumes. “I thought you two were big-time producers,” I said.
Nightingale pulled a rueful face. “Unfortunately, puppetry is not the easiest gig to make a living at if you’re not willing to travel. Whim is utterly terrified of planes.”
“Not terrified, just not convinced they’re going to stay aloft,” Whim said. “And we can only afford to mount one show a year—the Christmas show at the Children’s Theatre.” He glanced away. “Our son would have been six this year. . . .”
I looked at Nightingale, who bit her lip as tears welled in her eyes. She met my gaze and shook her head. She didn’t want to talk about it. Silvery faces boiled around her in the Grey, one in particular whispering something I couldn’t catch.
Into the awkward silence, Fuso blurted, “But you want to know about the Banjo Guy, not Whim and Nightie’s kid.”
Mindy gave him a cold glare. “Yes, she wants to talk about Jordy, Fuso. You could be a little more sensitive.”
“Me? I’m the most sensitive guy in the world. Didn’t I give those two guys who snaffled Banjo Guy’s badge the rush? I’m not running around acting like he was never here.”
“No one acts like Jordy was never here. We just don’t use it as an excuse to be mean to other people.”
Fuso rolled his eyes and blew a noisy breath into his hair. “You say so.”
Mindy gave him one more hard look, then turned her attention back to me. “What did you want to know?”
“Well, I have a mailing address for him, but I really need to talk to his caregivers or family in person. I need an actual address where I can find him.”
“Why?” Nightingale asked.
“He may have something in common with a client of mine who’s also in a coma,” I said. “I’m trying to find out what happened to him and other patients with the same symptoms and see if there’s a connection that might help us understand and possibly correct their conditions. So far all the patients’ injuries seem to have some association with the tunnel construction zone, but that’s very vague and the longer it takes to find Jordan and possibly a common cause, the worse each patient’s chances become. I need more information and I think I can get it if I can see Delamar and talk to the people who are taking care of him. Do any of you know his address or anything about his condition or his accident?”
They exchanged glances before Mindy looked at me as if they had elected her their representative. “I have Jordy’s address. He’s been unconscious ever since the awning fell on him. Whim and Nightingale and I went to see him while he was in the hospital, but when Levi couldn’t afford it anymore, they moved him to a different facility and it’s been hard to go see him. We all work long hours in the summer. I have another job as well as this one. So do Whim and Night.” She cast an exasperated look at Fuso. “Ansel is just a bum who sponges off his mother.”
“Hey! I do my bit. Don’t go dissing me.”
Beside him, Nightingale gave his shoulder a token smack. “Don’t be such a whiner, Fuso. Learn to take a joke.”
Fuso grunted and snatched a handful of French fries off Nightingale’s plate and shoved them into his mouth in a wad. Nightingale shook her head and Whim made an exaggerated face of disgust. “You’re such a delicate flower, Fuso. I’m going to make a puppet just like you: Its mouth will reach all the way around to the back of its head.”
They poked fun at Fuso for a few minutes, diffusing the tension that had risen between them earlier. I waited for them to wind down. Then I said, “Tell me about Delamar. What’s he like? What did he do?”
“You mean his act?” Mindy asked. “He plays banjo.”
“He also makes them,” Whim said. “It’s part of the shtick. He has a real nice Gibson resonator, but he’s always got a couple of specialties around. Like . . . he has one made out of a dried gourd and a yardstick and another he made out of a cooking pot.”
“I remember that one!” Nightingale said. “He sold it to some guy from a restaurant supply company. Remember the cigar box?”
Whim laughed. “I do. That was a classic.”
“He made them all himself?” I asked. “So his act is some sort of gag?”
The Sonders looked appalled. “Oh no!” Nightingale said. “He was just so talented he could make a playable instrument out of almost anything. He made a three-hole chicken-bone whistle once, but he wasn’t a very good wind player, so he gave it away. He made things all the time—mostly out of junk he found around the market. He’d play them for a while, but if someone liked the instrument, he’d sell it to them. He was probably better at making instruments than playing them, but he only really liked banjos. I think selling the instruments brought in more money, but he liked to play. He thought of himself as a musician, not an instrument maker.”
“You speak of him in the past tense,” I noted.
Nightingale drew in her breath as if to rebut me, but stopped. “I—guess it’s just been so long . . .”
Whim put a hand on her shoulder. “It’s been a long time since we saw him and every show’s yesterday’s news. Once you go home for the day, it’s over and past.”
Fuso rolled his eyes. “What he really means is no one thinks he’s coming back.”
Mindy jabbed a finger into Fuso’s arm. “Fuso!”
He turned to her. “It’s true! You can pretend all you want, but we all know it. He was a good guy, but there ain’t no Prince Charming going to come along and wake him up.” He glared at the Sonders. “You know that better than anyone.”
Nightingale turned in her seat and slapped him. “Shut up, Fuso. Shut up.”
Fuso stood up with more self-possession than I’d have expected, and walked quietly away. Nightingale pushed her tray aside and got up from the table. She looked down at Whim, her face white and the energy around her flaring red, then yellow, then green. “I need to leave.” She looked at me. “I’m sorry I can’t help you. Jordan is a very nice man. He deserves better friends than Fuso. And us.”
She turned and walked off, Whim hopping up to follow her without looking back.
Mindy closed her eyes and shook her head. “I should have known better than to let Fuso open his mouth.”
“I get the impression he’d open it anyhow and you couldn’t have stopped him.”
“He’s such a brat.”
I thought that was too mild a sentiment, but Fuso wasn’t my problem. “I’m sorry to have raised such a stink.”
“It happens. Especially if Fuso is involved. He liked Jordan. I think he’s a little jealous, really, because he wants to be liked just as much, but he doesn’t know how. He’s immature and even younger than he looks, so he hasn’t learned to keep his temper in check. He’s not very good at making friends.”
I wasn’t either and I felt a niggle of shame since I was older than I looked and should have learned better by now. “I do know how that goes.”
As she wrote the information down I watched her. “I have one other question,” I said.
She nodded without glancing up.
“Have things been . . . strange around the market lately?”
“Strange? This place runs on strange.” She raised her head. “What sort of thing are you really after?”
“I mean has it seemed haunted or like there have been more accidents or that things are unsettled lately?”
“Oh,” she said, her eyes lighting with recognition. “There has been more . . . disturbance than usual. It feels like . . . something’s broken. People are snappish, strange events have become more common—it’s always odd here and some people won’t work in the main arcade when that sort of thing starts happening. I won’t, for one.”
“Why?”
Mindy studied my face in silence before she answered. “Spirits. You can feel them, sometimes, watching you. All the people who lived on the bluff before the market was here, all the people who’ve been here since. Usually they’re just there, and it’s no problem. But sometimes—lately—they seem . . . agitated. Ever since Jordan was hurt. Do you think the ghosts are mad about that?”
“I don’t know. But there was a monkey in the office this morning and I was told things have been going badly a lot. I just wondered if that was a widespread impression.”
She peered at me, her half smile holding steady. “It’s not an impression. It’s true. What made you think of it?”
“I met a woman named Mae. . . .”
“Purple skirt, beer can hat?”
I nodded, watching her closely. She returned my intense gaze.
“That was Lois Brown. They called her Mae West because of her bosom and her salty language. She used to be a regular in the market and she lived in one of the low-income apartments here until she died in 1995. Her ashes were buried under the white plum tree in the secret cemetery. The tree put out purple blossoms after that until they pulled it up in 2007. There were a lot of other people buried there—Indians, other market people. Since they started working on the tunnel, the tree they planted there hasn’t bloomed. If you saw Mae, maybe she’s not the only one of those buried in the market who can’t rest.”
“Where is the secret cemetery?”
“Across from Kells, in the Soames-Dunn courtyard.” She handed me the napkin she’d written on. “If they’re unhappy, maybe it’s the ghosts who are causing these problems—like the one that hurt Jordan.”
The idea hadn’t crystallized to that degree in my own head until Mindy spoke it, but it had been forming there. I wasn’t certain, but it did cast an interesting light on the relationship between Sterling, Goss, and Delamar: They’d all been injured in ways associated with the tunneling under Pike Place Market and both Sterling and Delamar had been in contact with the dirt from the tunnel. I wondered if the same was true of Goss. . . .
I took the paper with a frisson running down my back. “Thank you.”
Mindy nodded and picked up her hat. “You’re welcome. Come back and tell me how Jordy’s doing, won’t you?”
I said I would and watched her go, discomfited by my thoughts.
ELEVEN
The address Mindy gave me led me to a small long-term care facility that was not quite in Capitol Hill. I parked outside and looked at the building without enthusiasm. Hospitals are not fun places for me; their complex layers of history and emotional residue make them look nearly black to my Grey sight. Even a brand-new facility quickly accrues a burden of anxiety, fear, and pain and the places where we hide people so we don’t have to watch them die are among the worst. I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment, trying to ease the discomfort in the injured one before I plunged into the darkness that lay before me. Nothing changed except that I wanted eyedrops.
I took Chaos out of my bag and put her in the small travel cage in the rear with a bowl of water and some kibble. She danced a bit, frustrated that I was leaving her, and I wished I wasn’t, but hospitals were not good places for ferrets and I knew she’d be fine for an hour now that the drizzle was starting up again. With a sigh, I got out of the Land Rover and headed inside to find Jordan Delamar.
Since I had the room number, I didn’t bother with the front desk, but walked straight through to the elevators and into the heart of the facility, concentrating on my good eye to keep me out of the swirling eddies of ghost-stuff. No one stopped me, but then, it was midday and well within visiting hours and I didn’t look like a troublemaker or a vagrant—in this neighborhood both were common enough.
Delamar’s room was a single, but I still crept in like a penitent into a church. I invade people’s privacy as part of my job, but I don’t enjoy it much and the hospital made me more aware of my trespass than usual—all those angry phantoms staring at me as if I should have done something for them. Ghosts don’t understand the apparent indifference and inattention of the living. They also have no sense of time. The ugly apparition that loomed in the doorway didn’t even know it was dead, badgering me with a roaring complaint as I passed through it, trying not to flinch.
“Hello?” I said in a low voice, noticing a figure sitting beside the bed that was wreathed with a ring of anxious ghosts in a boil of Grey mist.
The young black man in the chair raised his head, blinking as if he’d been asleep, though I knew he hadn’t. “Hello? Can I help you? Are you the social worker?”
I shook my head. “No, I’m not. I am trying to find Jordan Delamar, though. I’m a private investigator. My name’s Harper Blaine.”
The man stood up, seeming confused. “I don’t understand. What do you want with Jordy? He’s . . . he’s not well. You can see that. Is it the insurance?”
I shook my head again, smiling reassurance. “No, nothing like that. Nothing bad. I’m trying to help another patient like Jordan. I just wanted to talk to you or his caregivers about his condition.”
In the bed, Jordan Delamar rolled his head to the side, but gave no other sign of animation. His arms lay on top of the covers, pale brown skin slack over too-prominent bones.
“His condition? You mean the PVS?” the man asked. “It hasn’t changed. He’s still . . . just like this.” He waved at the angular shape under the blanket. His lower lip trembled very slightly and he blinked too rapidly. “What could you possibly want to know that would help anyone?”
“I want to know about the episodes—the strange things that can’t be happening, but are.”
The man sat back down, hitting the chair seat hard. “No. There’s nothing going on. Nothing.” He shook his head.
A shadow as dark as oil smoke pressed down over the bed and the rest of the ghosts broke away, floating out toward the corners of the room. Delamar stirred slightly and his lips parted with a small wet sound. The other man looked down at him and then rose as he lunged forward, trying to cover the patient’s arms with his hands. Delamar’s limbs were so thin and his protector’s hands so large that it almost worked, but I could still see the eruption of blood red words that scored the patient’s skin, flowing as if they were being written before my eyes.
“What does it say?” I asked.
The man shook his head frantically. “Nothing. It doesn’t say anything. It’s just . . . it’s a rash.”
I stepped closer, coming up next to the man beside the bed, and looked down at the script now scribbling itself up Delamar’s arms and vanishing under his pajama top, appearing swiftly in the collar opening and glowing through the thin cloth across his chest.
“It’s dermographia,” I said.
The man stared at me. “It’s what? Is that a disease?”
“No,” I said, amazed. “It’s ghost writing. It’s a technique fake mediums used to use in séances. They scratched their skin and the scratches would swell up and turn red.”
Th
e man turned on me, glaring and pushing me back. “It’s not fake! Jordan’s sick! These rashes—they’re not his fault!”
I put up my hands and didn’t resist him. “I know that. I can see it. I know it’s real.”
The man dropped his hand from my arms. “You do? Everyone else thinks I’m doing it to him. They tried to bar me from the room for a while but I won that fight. I wish—I wish this wasn’t happening.”
“I know you do. No one would want this.”
“You believe me?”
“Yes. I see the same thing you do.” I wished I could read the whole message, but the script was difficult to begin with—spidery and shaky—and the words were mostly under the patient’s shirt. All I could see were the words “Limos tribu . . .” on one arm and “broken wheel” on the other. At least I now had another reference to wheels and I thought I might understand Cannie Trimble’s reference to ashes, too—the ashes of the dead scattered in the market’s secret cemetery. “How long has this been happening?”
The man backed away from me and fell again into his chair, letting out a sound like a sob of relief as he put his head in his hands. “Months. Since April at least. It’s hard to remember. Every day’s the same. . . .”
I spotted another chair and pulled it up beside his so I could sit with him. “You come here every day?”
“Since the beginning. It’s been hard. . . . I had to lie about our relationship so they wouldn’t throw me out, but no one asks you to prove you’re a relative.”
“What’s your name?”
He stared at me, frightened. “Why do you want to know?”
“Just to be polite. My name’s Harper Blaine,” I repeated, offering him my hand. “What can I call you?”
He hesitated, shivering, then took my hand in a grip that was cold with sweat. “Levi. Levi Westman. Jordan—called me Westie.”
“I’ll stick with Levi, if that’s all right.”
“That’s fine.” He was trembling harder and his control was crumbling. “You really believe me? You believe I’m not doing it?”
Possession g-8 Page 13
