Mike touched Ann’s arm. “Should we go get a cup of coffee first?” He gave her elbow a squeeze but she jerked her arm out of his hand.
“I’m not going in! Why should I have to go in if I can tell from here that they shouldn’t buy it?” And Ann turned and strode down the street toward Rittenhouse Square.
Her breath was short and her face was now flushed but the nausea was fading the further she got from the house. In a few minutes she saw a taxi and flagged it down and told the driver to take her to King of Prussia. She got out her phone and, her hand shaking, dialed Walt’s cell number. When he answered she could hear what was likely The Weather Channel in the background.
“Walt, can you pick me up at the King of Prussia Mall?”
“Sure,” said Walt, sounding baffled. “When?”
“If you leave now we’ll probably get there at the same time.”
“OK.”
Ann named an entrance to one of the anchor stores as their meeting place, ended the call, then sat back staring out the window and running the strap of her handbag through her fingers again and again. Her phone buzzed periodically, showing her brother’s number, but she ignored it. Two hours later she and Walt were in the air and on their way back to the Adirondacks.
Chapter 16
The day after the abortive attempt to show the Rittenhouse Square house to the Van Dykes, Joyce dialed the number for Mark Pironi, the seller’s agent.
“Pironi here.”
“Hi, Mark, it’s Joyce Grigson.”
“Hey, Joyce, how did the showing go yesterday?”
“Well ... interesting, to say the least.” She patted her hair self-consciously. She wished Mark Pironi would ask her out on a date. “We didn’t even get to go in—”
“Wasn’t the key in the lock box? Man, I told my assistant it had to be there first thing in the morning—”
“No, it wasn’t that. The clients wouldn’t go in. One of my clients is very interested in the occult and she had brought along a … well, I don’t know what you’d call her but she claims to be able to ‘sense spirits,’” she said, warming to her story. “My client is looking for a house that’s, well, haunted, but in a friendly way, I suppose you’d say. But when we got to the Rittenhouse Square house this psychic woman completely freaked out, wouldn’t go in, just ran off. I guess she must have taken a taxi because she didn’t take the limo they had come in—”
“Weird,” said Pironi. “And the actual buyers wouldn’t go in either?”
“They already saw it a couple of weeks ago—the Van Dykes, remember?—and liked it, but now they want to know if it’s haunted so they didn’t care about looking at it again without this woman.”
“Oh, right, Van Dyke,” said Pironi, having no memory of that conversation with Joyce. “Well, it takes all kinds. Listen, if your buyers are interested in a townhouse, I have a nice one in Old City, can’t say if it’s haunted but same period as the Rittenhouse Square place but a little bigger with a chef-grade kitchen ...”
Pironi and Joyce chatted in realtorese for a bit, Pironi deflecting any suggestions of discussing the state of the market over drinks. As soon as seemed reasonably polite, he ended the call.
He briefly thought about calling Biden Firth with an update but he was actually supposed to be accompanying anyone looking at the townhouse and he didn’t feel like extending the deception quite so far as pretending he had witnessed the event in person, with all the potential pitfalls that entailed. He did, however, relate the story to a hot agent from Wayne between puffs of a post-coital cigar who repeated it, without attribution, to her husband. Her husband passed it on to his squash partner who mentioned it to his accountant who the next day was paired with Morgan Firth for an early-morning round of golf and who erroneously thought the anecdote would amuse his partner. So it was that less than a week after Ann’s visit to Rittenhouse Square that Joe Booth got a call at work from an angry Morgan Firth.
“What the hell are you people doing to find out who killed my daughter-in-law? I’m having to listen to morons tell me stories about how she’s haunting my son’s house! It’s been two months since she disappeared, it’s been more than two weeks since they found her body—don’t you have anything?”
Joe made soothing noises about continued investigation, following up leads, something bound to surface soon, and Morgan Firth, not at all soothed, said, “I’m not above calling the Commissioner and telling him what a sorry cluster this investigation is—” Joe heard a woman’s voice in the background. “Pardon my French,” grumbled Firth, then continued, wearily, “just find out what happened to my daughter-in-law. I’m just sick and goddamned tired of this hanging over my family,” and the line went dead.
Joe hung up and ran his fingers through his hair. “Fantastic,” he said gloomily.
He sat back and drummed his pencil vigorously on the desk blotter until someone yelled, “Hey, Booth, knock it off!” He sighed, rolled back from his desk, and took his Flyers mug to the break room for a coffee refill. Back at his desk he turned to his computer. He had very little to show for his work over the last two months besides his suspicions—any lead was worth following up on, he thought.
A read through the file, a couple of phone calls, and an internet search gained him the phone number of the real estate agent who had attempted to show the Firth house to her spooky clients and their paranormal advisor.
After identifying himself—Joyce Grigson sounded quite excited to be receiving a call from a police detective—and hearing her version of the event, Joe asked, “Do you know what that woman’s name was?”
“Ann Kinnear,” said Joyce promptly. “I’ve spoken with her brother, Mike Kinnear, who is also her business manager. I have his number here somewhere ...” After a few moments she read it out. “May I ask why you’re interested?”
“A woman who lived there disappeared.” Joe chose not to add that she had recently reappeared in Tinicum Marsh.
“Really?” said Joan. “How awful! Did something happen to her in the house?”
“We have no reason to think that,” replied Joe.
“How interesting. What was her name?”
“I really can’t share any more details,” he said, regretting that he had shared any details at all. “And I’d just like to reiterate that there’s no evidence that the house had anything to do with the woman’s disappearance.” All he needed was for Morgan Firth somehow to hear that the police were interfering with the sale of his son’s townhouse.
“Yes, of course,” said Joyce conspiratorially. “Well, maybe that woman does have some supernatural powers. Or,” she continued, “she just did a little homework ahead of time.”
Joe thanked Joyce Grigson for her time and hung up. He ran a search on “ann kinnear” then sat back to read what his search had brought back.
Joe clicked on the first link, for annkinnear.com. The web site’s design was conservative and the colors muted.
Ann Kinnear is a spirit senser whose skills have been reported on and documented in the national media. Miss Kinnear is able to perceive manifestations of spirits in color, sound, and scent and, based on those perceptions, can provide advice regarding the demeanor of the spirit—for example, if it is welcoming or otherwise. Miss Kinnear’s skills can be of value to people considering purchase of a home who wish to ensure that their ownership experience will not be marred by a malign spirit. She has also been able to put the minds of many homeowners to rest by confirming whether or not phenomena they are experiencing in their homes are the result of a resident spirit.
Miss Kinnear’s skills have been documented by the History Channel in The Sense of Death.
Links provided access to a trailer of the History Channel show and a video excerpt of Ann’s interview. Joe clicked on the link and saw Ann Kinnear speaking to an off-camera interviewer.
“When a person dies,” she said, “it’s like a door opens and lets some essence of them out. Sometimes it’s like a color, sometimes it’s like a sound, sometimes it�
��s like a scent. You might go into a house and know right away that someone is baking bread or has burned something on the stove, or you might go into a house where no one has cooked for years but know that the family that used to live there used a lot of garlic. It’s the same with people, they leave an essence when they die and it’s good or bad, it’s recent or old.”
Joe returned to the web site and continued reading:
Miss Kinnear also works with law enforcement officials on recovery missions in missing persons cases, helping to bring a sense of closure to families in distress. Please click the links below for coverage of two of Miss Kinnear’s most celebrated such cases.
The links displayed news coverage of a young woman who had died while caving in Pennsylvania and another who had died on a hike in Wyoming, along with references to Ann’s involvement in locating the women’s bodies. Joe read through the linked material. The site continued …
Please note that Miss Kinnear does not engage spirits in two-way conversations as some others claim to be able to do.
Ann Kinnear grew up outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and currently lives in New York’s Adirondack Park.
A Contact page provided a phone number and e-mail address for those “interested in discussing the possibility of engaging Ann Kinnear.”
He sat back, drumming his pencil on the blotter, thinking about what Amelia Dormand had said about hearing her daughter speak to her in the Firth house. After sipping his coffee for a minute, he sat forward at the keyboard again and did a few searches that gave him the name of the person on the Lewistown, Pennsylvania, police force—Adrian Brunauer—who had been in charge of the Pennsylvania caver case and another search that provided him with the police department number.
Joe dialed the number and asked for Brunauer, not expecting the person in charge of a fourteen-year-old investigation to still be with the department, but the person who took his call put him through. To Joe’s surprise, Brunauer turned out to be a man. Joe introduced himself.
“I’m investigating the disappearance of a woman named Elizabeth Firth. It’s possible she was killed in her home in Philadelphia. The house is for sale now and I understand that some potential buyers brought in a psychic to check it out and she had a very negative reaction to the place. Her name is Ann Kinnear. Do you remember her?”
“Sure,” rasped Brunauer. “The Barboza case.”
“Yes. I understand she helped find the body?”
“Yup, just an hour or so after the girl died.”
“Was there anything, I don’t know, fishy about her finding the body?”
Brunauer cleared his throat a few times. “I never got the idea she was scamming us. In fact, I got the impression she would just as soon not have been there. I was suspicious of the brother for a while, he seemed like the ringleader, but there wasn’t anything to suggest he had any inside scoop or had set anything up. There sure wasn’t anything to suggest that the Barboza girl’s death was anything but an accident.”
“So how do you think Ann Kinnear knew where the girl had died?” asked Joe.
Brunauer cleared his throat a few more times and finally said, “I honestly don’t know. I tried to figure out a logical explanation for a while and then I gave up. I figured the Kinnear girl found the body, I don’t know how, and saved us and the Barboza family a bunch of heartache. It ended up not being worth trying to figure out.”
“You think she really has some kind of ability to sense dead people?” said Joe.
“You got me,” said Brunauer. “She found the Barboza girl and I decided not to ask why.”
Joe thanked Brunauer, gave him his phone number out of habit, and disconnected.
Joe refilled his coffee mug again and, returning to his desk, placed a call to the number on annkinnear.com. The call was answered after a few rings.
“Hello, this is Mike Kinnear.”
“This is Detective Joe Booth from the Philadelphia Police Department. I was calling with a question about the services described on the Ann Kinnear web site.”
“Certainly, Detective, how can I help you?”
“Miss Kinnear is your sister?”
“Yes.”
“I spoke to a realtor, Joyce Grigson, who said that her clients had engaged Miss Kinnear to check out a house they were thinking of buying, a house off Rittenhouse Square, and that she had a very negative reaction to it.”
“Yes, that’s true.”
“Did she say why she had such a negative reaction?”
“Only that something bad had happened there. Did something bad happen there?”
“I don’t know. We’re investigating a disappearance.”
“Did someone disappear from the house? Or at the house?”
“I’m afraid I can’t discuss the case, but I’d be interested in speaking with your sister.”
“I’d be happy to set up a conference call for us,” said Mike.
“I’d prefer to talk to her one-on-one, at least initially,” said Joe, thinking of Brunauer’s description of Mike Kinnear at the “ringleader.”
“Certainly. You said your name was Joe Booth?”
“Yes.”
“What precinct do you work out of?”
Joe told him.
“Could you hold for a minute?”
“Sure.”
Joe was on hold for more like three minutes, then Mike came back on the line. “Sorry about that,” he said. “If it’s all right I’d like to give her a call first to let her know you’ll be contacting her, she’s a very private person and doesn’t like unsolicited phone calls. She probably wouldn’t even answer if she didn’t recognize the number.”
“Yes, that’s fine,” said Joe.
Mike gave him Ann’s number.
“Could I have the address too?” said Joe.
Mike gave him the address. “Just give me half an hour or so to give her a call before you try her,” he said.
“Actually I was planning on driving up there,” said Joe.
“Really?” said Mike. “She lives in the Adirondacks. It’s about eight hours away.”
“I know. Tomorrow’s my day off, I don’t mind a drive. I hear it’s a nice area.”
“Oh, it’s beautiful,” said Mike. “Pretty time of year, too. What time do you think you’d be arriving?”
Joe had typed the address into an online map site and did a quick calculation. “I’d say between three and four,” he said.
“I’ll let her know. Can I get your mobile number?”
Joe gave it to him.
Mike jotted the number down. “If Ann is able to help out with a police investigation, I assume we would be able to post information to that effect on her web site?”
“I’m not sure how that works, you’d probably need to work with the PR department, but let’s cross that bridge when we come to it.”
“Of course,” said Mike.
A few minutes after they hung up, the internal line on Joe’s phone rang. “It’s Stu,” said The Mouse. “A guy called a couple of minutes ago asking if you worked here. Name was McAneer or something like that. I tried to put him through but your line was busy.”
“Thanks, Stu,” said Joe. “I think I was on hold with him when he called you.”
“Ah. Checking to see if you were who you said you were, eh? OK.” The Mouse disconnected.
Joe hung up. If you were in the psychic business it probably paid to be cautious, he thought, you never knew what kind of person was going to take an interest.
Chapter 17
Ann, Mike, and their parents had vacationed in the Adirondacks when Ann and Mike were children. They had first gone there when Ann was seven, stretching the eight hour drive to twelve with stops at various historic sites and scenic overlooks along the way. Her mother had wisely reserved a motel room for the first night in anticipation of a late arrival but they had spent the next few nights camping, her parents’ latest interest. She remembered on that first trip her parents consulting a camping book borro
wed from the library for nearly everything, from pitching the tent to building the fire. And she especially remembered sitting around the fire that first night, her father poking the logs proprietarily with a stick, and her mother saying, “Annie, see the fireflies?”
Of course she had seen the fireflies, but she had thought they were spirits, rising from the ground and drifting up into the high branches—in the woods and with the firelight flickering they somehow had looked more otherworldly than fireflies in her own backyard.
She had learned not to talk about seeing spirits because such declarations were inevitably met with worry (her mother), amusement (her father), or taunts (her classmates). Only Mike always believed her.
That week in the Adirondacks, as they drove through the park or hiked the trails, she began to notice with surprise how few spirits she sensed. The hiking paths could be so dark and the woods so primeval-looking that it seemed like a place that should have ghosts. But already Ann sensed that “ghosts” was not the right word, implying as it did something malevolent, the husk of a whole person returned from the dead. She believed that what she sensed was the inner essence left behind by a person now gone.
But she felt that “haunted” was not a bad term to describe what the spirits did. The ones she had encountered were haunting a place, not a person. Susan, the spirit in the house in West Chester, wasn’t there because of Ann or anyone else living there now—and Ann was quite sure that Susan wasn’t there because of anyone who had lived there when she herself was alive. Susan’s spirit haunted the house because she was tied to the house itself and wasn’t ready to leave it. But Ann had discovered that using the word “haunted” had even less desirable consequences than talking about seeing spirits and so she had learned not to talk about that either.
She began to think of the Adirondacks as “clean”—she came to apply this term to anywhere free of spirits—and she returned there again and again, on more trips with her family, on trips with Mike when she was old enough to drive and her parents’ interests switched to island vacations, and later on, when Mike was occupied with his own circle of friends, on trips by herself. She was able to relax in the Adirondacks in a way she couldn’t relax in places where spirits were more prevalent. It wasn’t so much that she objected to the spirits themselves as that she felt more normal when she wasn’t dealing with them, when she was relieved of the need to pretend they weren’t there when they were.
The Sense of Death: An Ann Kinnear Suspense Novel (The Ann Kinnear Suspense Novels Book 1) Page 11
