Which was a lie.
He had thought that far ahead, but Declan couldn’t find the right way to tell her he was hoping she’d invite him to her place.
“I’d invite you to my place, but I got a kid,” Mary Ann said.
“I like kids,” Declan said.
For the next thirty seconds, Mary Ann remained silent, deciding what to do, then—once she’d made up her mind—tried to find the right words that wouldn’t make her look like she was throwing herself at him. Finally, she asked, “Do you like pancakes?”
“Pancakes?” Declan said, glancing at his watch. “Not for dinner.”
Mary Ann stood up and took Declan’s hand. “I was thinking about breakfast.”
Chapter Nine
Lily Dale, New York
July 12, 2010
With the morning peeking through the trees and the air already sticky from the humidity, Koda, Robyn, and Paul Luckner worked their way down the quiet trail that wound its way through Leolyn Woods within the Lily Dale Assembly grounds toward Inspiration Stump to hear Gerylyn Stoller give her talk.
“This is our church, a place of spirituality with a grand history,” Paul said. “Services have been conducted here going back to the 1890s. The stump is our altar and the wooden benches, made from the elm trees that surround us, are the pews. We come here to connect with the Universal Spirit that guides us all—the God of our own understanding—regardless of our personal religious beliefs.”
“Where’s Ingrid?” Robyn asked. “I thought she was joining us.”
“She’ll be here soon,” Paul Luckner said.
Moments later a bell rang three times and the gathered went silent as Ingrid Luckner climbed the steps and took her place at the center of the stump, having been given the honor of introducing Dr. Stoller.
“See, I told you she’d be along,” Paul said.
When she finished with the introduction, Ingrid stepped down and an elderly woman wearing dark sunglasses was helped up the steps by two men, one on each side of her, to her place on the stump.
Gerylyn Stoller was blind.
“Good afternoon, my name is Dr. Gerylyn Stoller. My students refer to me as Dr. Stoller to my face—and, I am told—as Dr. Frankenstoller behind my back,” she said to laughter from the gathered. “But my friends simply call me Gerylyn, which is what I hope I will be to you all by the end of this presentation.”
The gathered applauded in appreciation and approval.
“As you can probably tell, I do suffer from a disability—one that has gotten in the way many times during my academic career. I am a woman.”
Again, more laughter.
“Joking aside, as Ingrid said, I have been blessed to have led the Department of Parapsychology at the University of Richmond for the past thirty years. I am also honored to be a fellow at the Koestler Parapsychology Unit at the University of Edinburgh and have had a number of articles published in the Journal of Parapsychology.”
“Now, for those of you who are still impressed with my credentials, I need to clarify that the field of parapsychology includes the study of telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, near-death experiences, reincarnation, and apparitional experiences. To the chagrin of some of you, it is important that I deliver the following disclaimer: I am not a believer in astrology, cryptozoology, paganism, vampires, fairies, alchemy, witchcraft, UFOs, or the impending zombie apocalypse.”
Again, the gathered found themselves laughing.
“Still, my field of study has been met with strong opposition by mainstream academics who consider what I do to be little more than quackery. Admittedly, the majority of the early research in my field was inconclusive, and some of it has been deservedly discredited. That said, let me say to those who do not believe: Just wait. You’ll see.”
The majority of those who’d gathered broke into loud applause.
“For the history of our time here on Earth,” Stoller continued, “we have sought answers to the same four questions: Who are we? Where do we come from? Why are we here? Where do we go when we die? Each year, the university does a survey to determine the topics that interest students most, and every year the number one topic is ‘where do we go when we die?’ I teach eight courses at the university on five different topics, and I call them all ‘Where Do We Go When We Die?’”
Again, the gathered found themselves laughing.
“To answer that question, we must start with what we know, and what we know for sure is that all things in the universe—everything we see, all that we touch, smell, hear, and taste—is made of energy. This stump on which I am standing. The benches on which you are seated. The clouds in the sky above, all made of energy. Energy that cannot be created nor destroyed; it can only be changed from one form to another. Albert Einstein said so, and he was right.
“This is true of both the physical plane—that which is seen, and in the unseen places where spirits of the dead reside. The heaviest of solids and the lightest of liquids and vapors are made of energy. As are our thoughts, feelings, and our ethereal life-breath, which animates the living and sustains the dead who have passed. More directly, everything needs energy to survive, including ghosts.”
As Dr. Stoller continued her talk, Koda found his thoughts drifting to the times he’d asked Dane about his parents, only to have Dane change the conversation as if he were ashamed of them for some reason.
Besides the thing that happened with Vooubasi, Koda found the off-beat community of Lily Dale—with its psychics and mediums who made their living talking to the dead, or in some cases, pretending to—an oasis hidden from the rest of the world. And he found Paul and Ingrid Luckner to be charming, welcoming people with big hearts.
So why had Dane worked so hard to keep all of this hidden from him?
How sad.
If Dane were there at that moment, Koda would tell him how none of that mattered. What mattered was Dane had parents who loved him deeply, and that they’d done a marvelous job raising a great son who turned out to be the best friend he’d ever had.
And that’s when the tears finally came.
Koda turned his head and did his best to keep Robyn and Paul from seeing the tears streaming down his face, tears he’d been pushing down and forcing away for days, ever since he’d received the news.
Koda felt Robyn’s hand slip into his and heard her say, “It’s okay, Koda. Let it out.”
And he did.
“So where do we go when we die?” Stoller asked. “In 1901, Dr. Duncan MacDougall conducted a groundbreaking experiment to prove that the human soul had mass—and was therefore measureable—by placing volunteers on special scales to weigh them just prior to their deaths and again moments after. The resulting weight loss in virtually every case was—”
“Twenty-one grams,” several in the audience called out.
“Very good,” Stoller said. “And I have conducted similar experiments on 146 dying patients using equipment unavailable one hundred years ago. I can confirm Dr. MacDougall’s findings. We do have souls, and our souls can be captured, weighed, and measured.”
Gerylyn Stoller removed a small glass vial from her pocket and held it up for the gathered to see. “This is Alice Moore. More precisely, this is Alice Moore’s soul—all 21.3 grams of it. I know because I put her here.”
Murmurs erupted from the gathered.
“Now, watch closely,” Stoller said as she twisted the cap on the glass vial and opened it to gasps from the crowd. “Where is Alice now? She is everywhere—yet nowhere. She is here—and yet not here. She was once the stuff of stars, and now she has returned back to whence she came, as we all will—back to the stars—and forward to places we have never been.”
“What an amazing woman,” Robyn said as the applause died down at the conclusion of Gerylyn Stoller’s speech.
“Would you like to meet her?” Paul asked.
“Could we?” Robyn asked. “Do we have time?”
“Absolutely,” Koda said, realizin
g he’d agreed to stay out of a sense of obligation but had found the talk enlightening and was just as interested in meeting the woman as Robyn was.
Two hours later, Dr. Gerylyn Stoller would be in Koda’s private jet, having accepted Koda’s offer to fly her back to Richmond, Virginia.
Chapter Ten
Crimson Cove, Oregon
December 13-24, 1937
Ulrich knew he couldn’t put it off any longer. It was time to do what Claudia had asked him to do. No—not asked him—had told him to do.
It was time to kill Onyx once and for all.
Six weeks earlier, Ulrich had stumbled from the all-night diner in complete shock. Of course, had he been paying attention, he’d have noticed the neon sign that said “Spilatro’s Place” in the front window.
Yes, that little doozy of an error was on him.
But how in the hell was he supposed to know that—when Claudia showed him the picture of the lighthouse that night in Las Vegas—she was showing him a picture of where she grew up?
“Dumme Frau!” Ulrich shouted aloud.
Idiot girl.
Of course, when Claudia’s belly began to show, her father wanted her out of town. At least she’d covered for him by lying to The Owl about who the father was.
Ulrich could only imagine what Claudia’s brothers had done to the guy she’d pinned it on. His arm was still healing from the last time her brothers had him tied in a chair.
Claudia had left him no choice.
Well, technically he got to pick the method of Onyx’s untimely demise. Claudia was unconcerned with such details.
Ulrich had already tried poisoning Onyx without success. Maybe he could cut her wrists and make it look like a suicide? No, he loved Onyx too much to do it that way. The same went for suffocation, strangulation, hanging, or drowning, each of which would require Ulrich to get too up-close-and-personal for his taste. He eliminated electric shock by tossing a radio in the bath for the same reason.
What about a botched robbery? Ulrich thought. Maybe he could get a gun from Claudia, simply whack Onyx over the head like he’d done to the lighthouse keeper. But he didn’t want to become a suspect. What were the chances of two people both being attacked at the same lighthouse?
That was out, too.
How about a car accident? Maybe he could place her in the Chrysler and send her off the cliff? No, the Chrysler was stolen and that could lead the police back to everything else he’d done.
Hit by a train? Too hard to pull off.
Heroin overdose? Onyx had no history of drug abuse or needle tracks; they’d never buy it. Same thing with alcohol.
Carbon monoxide? No way to get Onyx to sit in the Chrysler long enough unless he was in the car with her, which defeated the point. Locking her in a room and simply starving her to death? That would take too long.
In the end, Ulrich came back to his original plan.
Poison.
But this time he’d do it right.
The last time Ulrich had tried to poison Onyx in Las Vegas he’d given her one poison at a time. This time he decided he’d give her all the same poisons, all at once. God only knew what kind of terrible toxins could accidently get in your food and water in an old lighthouse.
The cocktail Ulrich ultimately created included some of the same ingredients he’d used the first time around: a scoop of rat poison, an ounce or two of arsenic, a dash of cyanide, sulfur, hemlock, aniline dye, pyrethrum, and rotenone. The only thing he didn’t include was the Jamaica ginger. It was not available in a hick town like Crimson Cove, and he dare not try to special order it and let there be a record of the transaction. But how much difference could one ingredient make?
Next came laundry detergent—which he’d discovered needed to be used sparingly since it tended to foam up—choosing Super Oxydol over Lux because the skull and crossbones on the box were bigger.
A number of liquid ingredients—including kerosene, gasoline, Lysol-brand disinfectant, and mercury were also added. Ulrich had gotten the mercury by breaking the weather thermometer outside the caretaker’s house door.
As terrible as the whole thing seemed, it was—after all—Onyx’s fault for simply not dying the first time he tried to kill her.
December 14: Ulrich gave Onyx the first of his special, poison-laced meals.
“I have a gift for you,” Ulrich said.
“A gift?” Onyx asked. “What kind of gift?”
“I have made you a special meal.” Ulrich was proud of himself for his clever use of the word gift. In German, the word “gift” meant poison.
December 15: Ulrich gave Onyx two more toxic cocktails, and she complained about having an upset stomach after dinner.
December 16: Ulrich watched Onyx go from slightly nauseous to fairly sick as he increased the dose of each poison to a level that would kill several head of cattle.
December 17: Onyx woke up violently ill, vomiting for an hour. Ulrich convinced Onyx she needed something in her system and made a bowl of oatmeal laced with toxins.
December 18: Onyx vomited throughout the day, suggesting perhaps it was time to call the doctor. Ulrich said he would but had no intention of doing so. Instead, he increased both the number of meals he prepared for her and the amount of poison in each.
December 19: In addition to vomiting, Onyx was debilitated by extreme lethargy and non-stop shivering so severe there was nothing that could be done to warm her. Ulrich took her temperature and determined the thermometer must have been broken, for it registered an impossibly-low 88.4 degrees.
December 20: With six days of poison in her system, Ulrich knew the end was at hand. In an attempt to appear concerned, Ulrich sat on the side of her bed and ran his hand lovingly through Onyx’s hair, which fell out of her head in large clumps.
December 21: As a final symbol of love and affection for his wife, Ulrich set up Onyx’s easel and brought in her paints and several fresh canvasses. “Only if you feel up to it, my love,” Ulrich said, running his hand gently over her straw-dry hair.
Now all he had to do was sit back and wait.
Unfortunately, waiting was something Ulrich was not good at and, against his better judgment, he decided to phone up Claudia to update her on his progress.
The telephone, an induction coil device with separate ringer, had apparently been installed four years earlier, according to the service records on the battery box. Ulrich had originally intended to disconnect the device. He had made it to the age of forty-six without one and could not fathom how it had ever caught on—but now found having it quite a convenience.
“Just tell me, is she dead?” Claudia asked.
“Very, very close,” Ulrich said. “Another few days should do the trick, and by Christmas it will be just you and me.”
December 22: Ulrich checked on Onyx and found her in the same place, on her side in bed—blankets pulled up over her head in an attempt to keep warm—but still shaking and shivering. Though she wasn’t dead yet, she had finished her special drink, which was good. Ulrich did notice, however, that Onyx had found enough energy somehow to drag herself out of bed in a feeble attempt to paint.
December 23: Onyx was still in bed, but the shaking and shivering had subsided and she was virtually motionless. The glass he’d left her was empty. The end was near, Ulrich could feel it. One or two more days, and it would be over. His wife did, however, find enough energy to paint again, though whatever the picture was supposed to be Ulrich had no earthly idea.
December 24: It was Christmas Eve and Ulrich had promised to call Claudia to give her the good news once the dastardly deed was finally done—and, with any luck—to let her know he was coming to have dinner with her and her son, Phil.
His son.
God, how could he have let that happen?
Ulrich knew he should call Claudia, but he simply did not have it in him to tell her his wife was still hanging on.
Onyx lay beneath the covers, completely still and motionless. Were it not for the sou
nd of a periodic shallow breath, Ulrich would have assumed she was gone. When he looked at the painting, he saw that she’d added a bit to it since the day before, but not much. She was slowing down, her energy was fading.
Soon, Ulrich thought.
Perhaps tomorrow Saint Nicolas will come and put an end to his nightmare.
Chapter Eleven
Wheeling, Illinois
June 7, 1963
The phone rang a second time, but Tommy Bilazzo did not move to get it. Then it rang a second, third, and fourth time. And then a fifth.
On the tenth ring, Tommy figured he was already awake, so he might as well find out who wanted him so badly they were calling at six in the morning.
It was Declan.
“I was wonderin’ when you were gonna call,” Tommy said. Declan had promised they’d get together and catch up, but then weeks turned into months, and nothing. “Where are you stayin’?”
“You remember that waitress who started all the trouble that night at the Villa Venice?” Declan asked.
“Yeah, feisty little thing,” Tommy said. “What was her name? Mary Ellen?”
“Mary Ann,” Declan said. “I’ve been hanging out with her and her kid at her place.”
“Huh? Since when?”
“Since that night at the Villa,” Declan said.
“I can’t get laid to save my life, and you roll into town and two hours later you’re shackin’ up with a nice piece of skirt.” Tommy said.
“Piece of skirt?” Declan said. “You may not be whacking people, but you sure as hell sound like a mobster.”
“Can’t help it,” Tommy said. “You spend as much time with these spaghetti vendors as I do, you’d be speaking fluent wop, too. So, why the call? You know it’s six in the morning, right?”
“I’ve got a line on an opportunity, and I need some cash,” Declan started.
Onyx Webb: Book Three Page 5
