by Sylvie Kurtz
Chomp whined and Valerie reached for his paw and rubbed it. “Why would anyone hurt an innocent dog?”
Nick climbed up the bluestone stairs that curved to the back patio, his knee screaming with pain with each step. “He got in the way.”
“But he’s just a dog.”
“The anniversary. It brings out all the crazies.” Only one person could know all the details that someone had so carefully reconstructed tonight.
Whoever had taken Valentina was back.
Was he working alone or had he trained a surrogate Valentina to bring the past alive? What did he want from reopening old wounds?
Chomp’s labored breathing rasped in Nick’s ear, and the need for violence exploded once again in his blood. He could not let hate win. The time had come to let out all the secrets, to expose the lies. To trap a kidnapper.
“I’ll do your interview instead of Rita,” Nick said at the top of the stone stairs.
Valerie’s step faltered. “There’s no point if you’re only going to dance around the issue. Protecting Valentina’s privacy seems to be a hot button for you.”
“Telling Valentina’s story means a lot to Rita.”
Valerie tilted her head as if he’d revealed a secret. “You love her.”
“She’s been good to me.” Once someone made a mistake, could any amount of compensation erase it? Even if his financial skill earned Rita all the riches in the world, it would never make up for losing Valentina. “I owe her.”
“I BELIEVE RITA HAS legionellosis,” Dr. Marzan said, and stuffed the stethoscope back into his black bag.
His bald head shone under the room’s ambient light. Though easily in his seventies, with his fit body and lightly lined face, he could pass for a man twenty years younger. He was a dying breed. Nick didn’t know of any other doctor in the area who still made house calls or who truly seemed to care about his patients’ wellness. He’d shown up for a follow-up visit after the cops were done with taking Nick’s, Valerie’s and Mike’s statements and after they’d all picked at the dinner Holly had prepared.
“Legionnaires’ Disease?” Nick frowned. “Where would she have picked it up?”
“A place with mold—like a malfunctioning air-conditioning system or a hot tub.”
Nick had looked up Rita’s itinerary. She’d stayed at an older hotel in Chicago because the convention hotel was full. “A hotel?”
Dr. Marzan nodded and made a noise that sounded like a yes. “Outbreaks tend to happen in summer and early fall. I’ll need to do a chest X-ray and run other lab tests to be sure.”
“I’ll bring her in first thing in the morning.”
“Don’t speak as if…I’m not here,” Rita said weakly. Her eyes fought to stay open.
Nick sat at the edge of the bed. “I thought you’d fallen asleep.”
Rita reached a hand toward him, and he held the fragile bones in his palm. “I’ll go if Valentina comes with me.”
Dr. Marzan shot Nick a questioning look that Nick ignored. Valerie again. Everything that had happened in the last few days seemed to revolve around her. How little it had taken for her to insert herself in Rita’s life. Why wasn’t Joe picking up anything off-color in her background?
“Then she’ll go with you.” Not that Nick had a choice in the matter. Not if he wanted to keep the situation under control. “Rest now.”
“You’ll see, Nicolas. I’m right.”
Nick banked his sudden annoyance at Valerie’s interference, and followed Dr. Marzan out into the sharp bite of night. To unearth Valerie’s plans, he needed to keep his personal feelings out of play and stay objective. Rita was counting on him to keep her safe. “How bad is this disease?”
The doctor pushed his rimless glasses up his nose. “It affects primarily the lungs. Because of her age, and her weakened immune system from her kidney infection over the summer, she’s more susceptible to complications. If she puts off care too long, it can lead to chronic lung disease. With prompt care, it usually clears up in a few weeks.”
“She’ll be there tomorrow, then. And if she needs hospitalization, I expect you to admit her.”
Dr. Marzan nodded. “Bring her round the hospital at nine. I’ll make sure everything is ready for her.”
As Dr. Marzan drove away in his beat-up Volvo, Nick spotted the extra patrol the police department had promised cruising by the front gates. With Chomp recovering at the animal hospital, Nick would have to beef up the security system.
Poisoning, the vet had said, from tainted meat. Which only stirred up Nick’s suspicions because Chomp had been trained to accept food from only two people—Lionel and Holly. And Nick trusted both of them with his life.
MIND PREOCCUPIED, Nick marched up the front steps and practically ran into a distracted Evan Gardner as he plowed out the door.
“I have to bring in more equipment,” Gardner said. His bushy eyebrows met at the center of his pleated forehead. “Do you mind?”
Gardner didn’t wait for an answer, but continued down the stairs to his truck. Nick reversed his path and followed him. Cold wind moaned through the trees and spiked right through the weave of his shirt. “What kind of equipment?”
“An ELF meter for one. And an audio enhancer.”
“ELF meter?” This was scientific?
Gardner riffled through the stacks of gear under the cap over the truck bed. “Extremely low frequency. The meter measures sound waves that the human ear can’t hear.” He pulled out a black handheld device. “Ah, here it is.”
“How did you meet Rita?” Nick leaned against the truck—as much to keep out of the wind’s way as to appear relaxed.
Gardner stuffed the meter in the pocket of his tweed jacket, then kept rummaging through his gear. “I met her ten days ago in Chicago. After my panel at the convention, she arranged to meet me for dinner at her hotel.”
“What convinced you to trek all this way?”
Gardner’s eyebrows rose and his face became animated. “Most of the paranormal activity I’ve had the opportunity to research has been apparitions. This was a chance to study an auditory event.”
“Did you hear the cries last night?” As if he’d say he hadn’t.
Gardner made an aha sound, then pulled out a laptop. “Yes, but I don’t think there’s a paranormal event going on in the tower room.”
“No?” Nick said, surprised.
“I think it’s physical.”
“What makes you think that?”
Gardner fired up the computer, checked on the battery’s status and pulled out a power cord. “Even though the physical structure is destroyed, the energy structure can stay behind. I didn’t pick up anything on the digital or video cameras. No orbs, no mists, no apparitions. Nothing on the night-vision scope. The EMF—electromagnetic field—meter showed no pools of excessive energy. No cold spots registered on the thermometer. And there were no anomalies on the compass. The only piece of equipment to pick up anything was the tape recorder.”
Gardner put aside the laptop and handed Nick his battered logbook. As if all that gobbledygook and chicken scratch handwriting meant anything to him. How in the world was all that supposed to prove that a ghost existed or didn’t exist? “Then what causes the cries?”
Gardner took back his log and plopped the laptop in Nick’s hands. “Infrasound. Like that caused by background radiation from microwave ovens or overhead power lines.”
“Sounds like more bull.”
Gardner shot him a scathing look. “Sometimes sound waves can make it appear as if there’s an otherworldly phenomenon going on, when it’s just pulses below our hearing range vibrating something in the room.”
Nick grumbled unconvinced.
“Infrasound can also cause vision irregularities, blurring or vibrating the visual field. The eyeball has a resonant frequency of nineteen hertz, so if you’re standing some place that’s vibrating at nineteen hertz, your eyeball will vibrate along with the wave.”
“So someone could
think they saw something, but it’s really just their eyeball vibrating?”
Gardner’s smile widened like a barn door as if pleased that Nick finally understood. “Exactly.”
Gardner shut the truck’s back gate and started toward the house, various cords sticking out from under one arm. “Peripheral vision is extremely sensitive to movement and could make the vibration seem like a blurry gray ghost. Infrasonic waves also trigger the fight-or-flight response, which explains why some people feel cold or the backs of their necks tingling or a strange feeling in their stomachs in the presence of a so-called ghost.”
“I’m still not getting how that makes a baby cry.”
Gardner bent down and tapped the house’s foundation with the knuckles of one hand. “Old buildings have thicker walls that resonate better.”
“That’s supposed to convince me?” Nick asked.
Gardner whirled to face him and shook a finger in Nick’s face. “Just because I’m studying extraordinary activity doesn’t mean I abandon ordinary logic. In order to define a fact, I assume as little as possible and consider all angles. I’ll need to set up some measuring equipment in the cellar. And really, if you think about it, everything we know about our world was at one time unknown.”
Would Gardner now find an expensive “treatment” to rid the mansion of those infrasound waves?
If Gardner was trying to convince Rita that she had a ghost haunting the tower room, he certainly wasn’t going about it in a very convincing way. On the other hand, if he was in cahoots with Valerie to extort money from Rita, then convincing Rita that Valentina’s ghost wasn’t haunting the tower room and, therefore, Valentina was still alive, ta-da, in the form of Valerie, then his gizmos and gadgets and his fancy explanations were going to go a long way to prove that point. A point Rita was already sure was true. But having Gardner stick around a bit longer also gave Nick a chance to debunk the fraud.
“Go ahead, set up what you need.” Nick handed Gardner his laptop. “But don’t bother Ms. Meadows with any of your findings. She’s too ill.”
Gardner and his equipment started for the basement. After a few steps, he stopped. “I’m not doing this for the money, you know.”
“Then why?”
“For data. For science. For understanding.”
And Gardner’s unblinking expression gave Nick the impression Gardner really believed the crap he was trying to feed Nick.
But then, confidence was a con man’s best asset.
Chapter Eight
The nausea started soon after Valerie reached her room. The hot shower did nothing to help the mad churning of her stomach. Neither did the Pepto-Bismol tablets she’d chewed. She blamed the greasy food from lunch and the stress of the day. She should have skipped dinner, but hadn’t wanted to get on Holly’s bad side any more than she already was. She’d forced down the heavy chowder, the overcooked lemon sole and the bitter steamed broccoli.
Sitting on the bed, shivering in her fleece hoodie and sweatpants, she finally managed to reach Higgins on his cell.
“What’s up, kiddo? Tell me you’re on schedule.”
Valerie reached for the blue-and-white afghan at the foot of the bed and pulled it over her legs. “About that… I got the interview with Kirby Cicco taped. I’m trying to arrange one with a chauffeur who was on the suspect list and another with the widow of the landscaper who supposedly made a deathbed confession to the kidnapping. For some reason, no one ever took his admission of guilt seriously. But Ms. Meadows fell ill, so I’ll have to reschedule her interview. I’m going to have to stay over the weekend.”
“All you have is one interview?”
Valerie tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. With Higgins it was better to keep pointing out the positive. “There are some new developments.”
“Such as?”
She shook away the image of the dummy’s body flying into the path of Nick’s car. “Someone is setting up a scenario ripe for blackmail.”
“How so?”
“Someone broke into the mansion and left behind a necklace that belonged to Valentina and a note saying they knew where she was. Nobody will confirm this, but I have a feeling Valentina was wearing the necklace the night she disappeared.
“Then on our way back from the prison interview, someone threw a child-size mannequin in front of the car. It was dressed like Valentina on the night she disappeared. I think the kidnapper’s back, and he wants the ransom he was cheated out of twenty-five years ago when a random patrol car messed up the exchange.”
The rubber band give-and-take of highway traffic whooshed in the background. “Why wait that long?”
“That’s what I need to figure out.”
“You’re a coordinator, not a reporter.”
Valerie leaned forward and hugged her knees with her free arm, hoping to calm the greasy eels of nausea snaking through her stomach. “But just think, if you could air a resolution to the Meadows’s kidnapping, you’d have Mr. Meadows’s undying gratitude. Not to mention the ratings.”
“What makes you think you can solve this mystery when no one else has been able to in twenty-five years?”
A gut feeling. But that wouldn’t fly with Higgins. He wanted facts. So she swallowed down a wave of sickness souring her throat and gave him a half lie. “I’ve found someone who was there the night of the kidnapping.”
“Sounds like tired territory.”
How old had Nick been at the time of the kidnapping? Five? Six? Given his history with Moongate, he would have been at the party. How much had he seen? “He’s never told his story to anyone before.”
“But he told you?” Higgins pushed.
Not yet. “Yes.”
“Get it on tape.”
She lay down on her side, curled up in a fetal position, but the queasiness didn’t ebb. Nick had agreed to the interview, but she wasn’t convinced he’d tell her his deep, dark secrets. Building trust would take more than a day. “It’s going to take some time.”
“Well, kiddo, time’s one thing you don’t have much of. The segment airs in five days. If it doesn’t, you’re out of a job.”
Because Mr. Meadows would not be pleased, and Higgins had a habit of taking out Mr. Meadows’s wrath on his underlings. “I can solve this.”
“Your job isn’t to solve the case. Your job is to get the package ready.”
Valerie pushed harder. “Think eternal gratitude. Think skyrocketing ratings when you scoop everyone else.”
“Hmm…” Higgins paused.
Valerie pressed a hand to her heaving stomach as Higgins drew up a mental pros-and-cons list.
“Don’t get yourself in trouble, kiddo,” he said. “I’m not going to bail you out.”
The possible ratings won out. Valerie attempted a smile, but the pull of muscles seemed to invite her stomach’s contents to climb up her throat. “Thanks. I won’t.”
“Keep me up-to-date.”
She hung up and barely made it in time to the bathroom before she was violently sick.
VALERIE AWOKE WITH A START, dazed and disoriented, her heart in her throat, darkness choking her.
Where was she? What day was this?
The sounds were distant, the colors faded, but the terror and the confusion remained brightly etched. Anguish lingered, thick and heavy, and the dry salt of her tears caked her cheeks.
Pushing her hair off her face, she breathed in deeply. Moongate. Thursday—no, Friday by now. She was on assignment, not caught in the sticky web of her nightmare. She was okay.
With a flick of her wrist, she pulled away the twist of sheets and blankets and sat on the edge of the bed, hands planted firmly at her sides to steady the dizziness bouncing the room around.
The dream was old, recurrent. As always, it dogged her into sleep on the heels of stress. And yesterday had been chock-full of stress between the interview, the dummycide and the stomach bug.
And Nick.
Like a fingerprint on her psyche, she’d been awar
e of him every minute of the interview, of the ride home, of that mad race into those dark woods. The space he’d occupied. The rhythm of his every breath. The chaos of his thoughts. And that awareness had tampered with her usual focus. She’d wanted to go to him and reassure him.
As if he needed any reassuring. The man was an island. He needed no one—least of all her.
She dreaded looking at the interview tape. What if she’d messed up because of her distraction? What if all she’d managed to get out of Kirby Cicco was crap?
Worrying before she had the facts was useless. Obsessing over Nick and the strange pull he had on her wasn’t going to help her, either.
She clicked on the bedside lamp, making the darkness retreat. Hugging her knees, she plucked at the remnants of the dream and tried to label the shadows that still trembled inside her. Something, like a word on the tip of the tongue that the brain couldn’t quite retrieve, scratched at her, begging her to remember.
A soft cry rode in through the chilly night air. She cocked her head and tuned into it. A baby’s cry. The sad sobs echoed inside her chest, and she spread a palm over her throat as if to hold them in. Helpless whimpers, like a child resigning itself to a fate of abandonment.
Rita’s ghost child? Valentina?
Still shaky from her bout of stomach sourness, Valerie wrapped an afghan around her shoulders and followed the sounds of the cries down the hallway and up the narrow stairs to the tower room.
As she neared the door, the tormented screams wailed from inside the empty room. She reached for the latch, hesitated. “Stop it. There’s no baby. Ghosts don’t exist.”
With a determined push, she pressed the iron plunger. The door opened, whispering like frenzied termites across the wood floor, and the cries instantly ceased.
Valerie stepped into the room and stopped in a ray of moonlight drawing a rectangle on the wide pine planks. Through the uncurtained windows, Mount Monadnock loomed black against the dark slate of the sky. Tree limbs sketched an intricate web of shadows across the lawn. The light reflecting off the pond’s surface gleamed like white blood on black veins.
