Olivier frowned, shook his head, and took a sip of scotch. “That sounds more like an unhappy human than a spirit. It is rare for a ghost to attack someone, and it’s difficult for them to manipulate physical items.”
I nodded. “I haven’t completely ruled out human mischief. But in the closet in the attic, where I thought I heard whispers, I saw something written on the wooden panel that serves as a door: Memento mori. Do you know what that means?”
“‘Remember you must die.’ Or ‘remember to die.’ Depending on your interpretation.”
“That sounds like a threat.”
“Not at all. It used to be a common inscription on tombstones and that sort of thing. Have you seen any actual apparitions in the house?”
“I saw footprints in the dust right in front of me, as if someone was walking toward me. And a figure in a mirror. But the worst is a dark, amorphous figure, like a shadow or black cloud. The woman of the house says it hovers over her shoulder sometimes when she tries to enter the baby’s room.”
Olivier’s nostrils flared slightly as he inhaled deeply, nodded, and released the breath.
“What do you feel when you are in the presence of this shadow?”
“Rage. Fear. Even . . . desire, lust. I didn’t feel this way with the first ghost I met, at least once I got over the shock. This time it’s . . . more disturbing.”
A group of twentysomething hipsters started laughing loudly in the next booth, their rambunctiousness seemingly at odds with the subdued tone of the lounge. Olivier leaned toward me and spoke in a low voice.
“What you are describing sounds like a shadow ghost. They appear darker than their surrounds, and are often experienced as a barely-there figure, or a column of smoke.”
Great. I was already searching my peripheral vision; now I had to scope out shadows for something darker than dark?
“Some believe they are more dangerous than other ghosts, that they remain in the shadows out of guilt, or shame, or the fear of being revealed. What you may be feeling is this fear, this shame.”
“How are they different from other ghosts?”
“Many spirits are trying to reveal themselves, which is what allows sensitive people to see them from time to time. It is why you saw your friend before. They may need something from us, or may simply not understand where they are and what is happening. And so they wish to interact with the living. But shadow forms . . .” He took another sip of scotch, sat back, and shook his head. “They’re usually not benevolent.”
“Can they actually hurt us? Or do they just make us so jumpy that we end up hurting ourselves? I mean . . . how can something immaterial, ghostly, affect the material world?”
“Do not discount the power of emotions. You have no doubt heard of people who, when faced with a grave crisis, find strength they do not normally possess? A mother seeking to rescue her child, suddenly able to lift a heavy weight?”
“Sure. The fight-or-flight response to threat. The mother’s body releases adrenaline when she sees her child in danger, and it pumps up her muscles. But a ghost doesn’t have either muscles or adrenaline.”
“Of course it does not. But, Mel, it is the mother’s emotions that release the adrenaline, yes? What if that emotion had no body to be released into, to channel it? Who knows what effect it might have on the surrounding physical world?”
“Wow. I . . . I guess that makes sense.”
The increasingly raucous group at the next table called to the waitress for another round, making me realize I had gulped down my scotch. I contemplated ordering another, but I was driving. And considering the circumstances, it was probably best if I kept my wits about me.
“This sounds silly, but could ghosts have been responsible for a murder across the street from where they usually live—er—reside? A man was shot.”
“Ghosts don’t shoot people. However, a powerful ghost might inspire someone to shoot someone else.”
“Are you talking about . . . possession?”
He gave a one-shouldered shrug, sticking his chin out slightly. “Not in the way it’s portrayed in movies. It’s more that their emotions can influence others, particularly if a situation reminds them of a critical time in their own lives. They sort of . . . what is the word . . . pig-backy?”
“Piggyback?”
“Yes, piggyback on the living person, enhancing the living person’s guilt or anger. Or even lust, desire, jealousy.”
That sounded bad. Really, really bad. I didn’t want to think too hard about what had happened in the attic with Graham.
“So how do I get rid of them? My client says she lit sage and asked them to go, but now it seems worse than before. I . . . I know this is asking a lot, but would you be willing to come to the house, see what you can see?”
“I would be honored.” He held my gaze again, sipped his scotch, gave me a crooked smile.
Is he flirting with me?
“I will have to charge you a small fee, I’m afraid.”
Strike that. He was just happy to meet another sucker he could soak for money. “I’ll talk to the owners, make sure it’s okay with them.”
He nodded. “May I ask you a sincere question, Mel?”
“Shoot.” I signaled the waitress for the check.
“Why are you so worried about this? It is not your home being haunted.”
“It’s my job site.” Duh. “And it’s just plain wrong.”
“Ah, you are very American!” He smiled. “You think everything should be sweetness and light all the time. But that is not life. If you move to France you must embrace your dark side. There is beauty and romance in the darkness, no?”
I wondered if I could leave Jim and Katenka with that insight. “No worries,” I’d tell them as the black cloud appeared and footsteps marched across the floor. “Just embrace the beauty of the dark side!” Then again, I imagined Katenka was no stranger to the “life is pain and then you die” school of thought.
Feeling a headache coming on, I sighed and rubbed my temples.
“Headache? Allow me,” Olivier said. He reached across the table and encircled my head with his large hands, his thumbs on my forehead, the fingertips holding the back of my neck, at the base of my skull. He pressed hard, rubbing slightly. I studied his face; his eyes were closed.
After a few moments the ache receded, just like that.
He sat back and smiled. “Better?”
I nodded. “What are you, a healer of some kind?”
He laughed. “It’s a trick my mother used on me when I was a child. It only works if you catch the headache when first it starts.”
“Well, thanks. And thanks for your time, as well. I’d better get going.”
Olivier insisted on walking me to my car. The fog had rolled in, thick and cold. A foghorn sounded in the background, low and mournful.
“Have you eaten?” he asked as we walked.
“I, uh . . . had a samosa from the lunch truck on the way here.”
“Bof! That is not dinner. You need real food to function properly, especially if you are to have the fortitude to go up against ghosts, no? Yesterday I made an amazing osso buco. Do you cook?”
I shook my head. “My dad’s the cook in our family.”
“Ah, this is how it should be.”
“You and my dad would get along. He insists the best chefs in the world are men.”
“I did not mean that in a sexist way. I meant only that cooking is the least we can do, since the women do so much more.”
“Uh-huh,” I said, unconvinced.
“At least I believe it is true for the French. Cooking a beautiful meal, awakening the senses through taste and aroma, is a wonderful way to please a woman.”
“In America we say that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.”
“Perhaps so. But I am not interested in men.”
“This is me,” I said as we arrived at my boxy Scion. “Oh, what’s the best way to get in touch with you? Your answering machi
ne doesn’t take messages.”
He pulled out a business card and wrote a phone number on the back in curvy, French-style writing, then handed it to me.
“I’m available tomorrow night. Nighttime is better, because the vibrations are clearer.” He gazed at me for a long moment, the streetlight bathing the planes of his face in an amber glow. “Perhaps together we will vanquish these ghosts, and find you and your friends some peace, yes? And then I will cook for you.”
The jury was still out on that last part.
“Thanks again, Olivier.”
“I will see you soon, then. I look forward to your call.”
“Hey!” the homeless man shouted at me the next morning as I walked toward Cheshire House. “You’re the one who yelled at Blunt the night he died, right?” He was sitting on the sidewalk in front of Emile’s shop, his back against the wall below the grimy display window.
“Um . . . yes,” I said, blushing. It wasn’t among my proudest moments.
“Some lady just threw me outta the doorway. Why can’t I sit in the doorway? Man’s already dead—what does he care?”
“Who threw you out? The inspector?”
He shook his head. “Old lady. She’s in there now.”
The crime-scene tape was torn and hung limply on either side of the shop door, waving lazily in the light breeze. Last night’s fog had become this morning’s deep mist, and the mournful foghorn lent a mysterious note to the scene.
Stepping over the cracked mosaic at the entrance of Emile’s shop, I pushed on the door, which was slightly ajar. I recognized the old woman inside the shop.
“Hettie? What are you doing here?”
“This here’s my place now.”
Chapter Twenty
“Your place?”
“That’s right. Emile left it to me in his will. Don’t that beat all? Maybe I’ll hire you to fix it up for me.”
“I’m . . . surprised,” I said, recalling what Janet had said about Hettie and Emile. It was hard to imagine them being amorous toward anyone, much less each other, but as I kept reminding myself, I was no expert in the ways of love.
Heck, I was no amateur in the ways of love, either.
“Will you look around with me?” Hettie asked, tucking a big black patent leather pocketbook securely under her arm. The formality of the purse contrasted sharply with her oversized T-shirt. This one was black with bold yellow lettering, and advertised a local supermarket chain. “I’m afraid the ghosts will figure out I’m here and come on over. Or do you think they’re stuck in Cheshire House? But then, if they’re stuck there, how’d they kill Emile?”
“I, uh, really don’t know.” I thought of last summer’s apparition. He hadn’t been limited to one location, that’s for sure.
I glanced around the shop. It felt strange to be here, on the site of a murder.
Dozens of footprints and scuff marks, no doubt belonging to emergency personnel, were visible in the thick film of lint and dirt on the ugly linoleum. The crime scene itself had been cleaned of blood. The seven-by-four-foot patch was the only clean spot in the room.
I felt a pang of sadness. Curmudgeon or not, Emile didn’t deserve to die like this.
“Hettie, the last time we talked you didn’t sound very fond of Emile. And frankly, he didn’t exactly speak of you in glowing terms, either. Why would he leave his place to you?”
“We go way back.”
I waited for more. Looked like I had a long wait.
“I guess he could leave it to whoever he wanted to,” Hettie finally said, peering into the cupboards along one wall.
I noticed white hair on one side of the burgundy moiré sofa. I remembered Emile telling me he didn’t keep cats because of the risk of getting fur on the furniture. So where had this hair come from?
“Were you here that night, Hettie?”
“What night?”
“The night Emile was killed? Did you stop by to see him?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She played with her dentures a minute. “Place is a dump anyway. Not much of value here.” She pointed to the stuffed cat I’d noticed on my previous visit to Emile’s shop. “Maybe I’ll take the cat, at least, give it a proper burial. Never did like how he did that, stuffed them. Why’d someone want to do that to a kitty?”
“I think he meant well by it,” I said halfheartedly. Then I noticed that the cat’s rhinestone collar, the one that held the charm, was no longer around his neck.
“Have you taken anything from here?”
She looked surprised. “No.”
“Because the shop’s not yours yet, you know. The police have to release the crime scene, and then the actual transfer of ownership will take a while.”
“I know that. Wasn’t born yesterday, you know. I just wanted to see if it was worth anything, is all. Maybe I’ll do what I did before, and donate it to the shelter. That way I don’t have to mess with it. And I don’t want to deal with any more ghosts, anyway.”
“Hettie, I wanted to ask you something. The other day you mentioned one of your former boarders, Dave Enrique? Remember?”
Hettie nodded.
“What was his relationship to Janet? Or Emile’s for that matter? Janet mentioned that Emile took something from her.”
“I don’t know anything about that.”
“No idea what went on that time up in the attic?”
Hettie smoothed her T-shirt, and poked her dentures with her tongue. “I expect it wasn’t anything good. Grown men and a young girl. After that Janet seemed different, changed. I sent her to live with her daddy after that. Better that way.”
When we left, the homeless man was still sitting on the sidewalk, talking to himself.
“Got a dollar for the hobo?” Hettie asked.
“I’m not sure ‘hobo’ is the best term. . . .” I said out of the side of my mouth as I scrounged in my satchel for a dollar.
“Actually, I prefer ‘hobo,’ come to think of it,” the man said with a lopsided smile. “Sounds more adventurous, doesn’t it? I’m not lacking a home; I’m on a grand adventure.” He pulled a fifth of some kind of liquor out of his coat pocket. “Bon voyage to me!”
As we left, we heard the man singing to himself.
“Ever notice how now that regular folks walk around with their phones in their ears, talking out loud ’bout this and that, the crazies on the street don’t seem so crazy?” said Hettie. “You gave that feller some clean clothes and . . . maybe a chair to sit on instead of that piece of old cardboard, and people’d assume he’s talkin’ to his stockbroker ’stead o’ being nuts.”
“You might be right,” I mused. Seemed like a social experiment worthy of one of Luz’s graduate students.
I walked Hettie to her car, a dented avocado-green gas guzzler that must have dated back to the seventies.
“You think you could fix the place up for me, I decide to keep it?” Hettie asked as she climbed in.
I paused. The truth was the building didn’t call to me, and besides, I wasn’t sure how much time I wanted to spend with Hettie the cat lady. And anyway, where would she get the money to fix it up? In my business I had to make quick judgment calls about clients’ ability to pay, and my ability to work with them. Hettie failed on both counts.
“Why don’t we cross that bridge when we come to it?” I said as I closed her door for her. “Give your cats a squeeze from me.”
She laughed, a kind of hoarse chuckle. “Will do, lady builder. That much, I can do.”
Hettie fired up the car’s engine and roared off, her driving style as unrestrained as her personality. She flapped one arm out the window, waving good-bye, and screeched around the corner, narrowly missing a stop sign.
Time to go back to work.
But . . . Emile’s place was wide-open. What could it hurt to have a more thorough look around? I didn’t know what I was looking for, but maybe I would discover something that would connect Emile’s murder with the ghostly goings-on acros
s the street. Inspector Crawford probably wouldn’t approve but . . . I promised myself I’d be extra careful not to interfere with any possible evidence, and headed into the shop.
I didn’t see anything else out of the ordinary, except for the hair on the sofa. That bothered me. I noticed a pad on Emile’s desk. K. Daley, 2 pm was written in blue ink, but there wasn’t anything suspicious about that. Katenka mentioned to me that she was going to have him reupholster her settee.
Had this really been a simple break-in that had turned lethal? Could Emile’s spirit be hanging around, angry that his life ended so horribly?
If so, perhaps I could communicate with him. Then I wondered if I wanted to communicate with Emile. I hadn’t liked him when he was alive. Why would I like him any better as a mad-as-hell ghost? And if I did manage to reach him, could he even tell me what had happened? Did I want to hear it?
Impatient with my own doubts, I forced myself to stand on the clean spot, where Emile had died. I took a deep breath, focused, and called to Emile with my mind. I waited.
Nothing. No tingle at the back of my neck, no sensation of being watched. All I felt was depressed.
The shop was quiet as a tomb. I took in the mess, the gloom, the gazes of forlorn creatures. Reason #348 why I don’t want to be a taxidermist: The risk of spending my last moments on earth like Emile, prone and injured, surrounded by dead animals, their glass eyes unblinking, hungry . . . vengeful.
I squeezed my eyes shut, cursing my overactive imagination.
“You are so busted,” a voice said from the vicinity of the door.
“Graham! You scared the daylights out of me!” I clapped my hand over my heart in a dramatic gesture. “I swear: you’re committed to giving me a heart attack.”
He remained in the doorway. “Maybe you’re jumpy because you’re snooping around a crime scene where you have no right to be. Come on out, before you get busted for breaking and entering.”
“I have a right to be here,” I insisted, but I joined him at the door. “Sort of.”
Graham just raised his eyebrows.
“Hettie Banks says she inherited this place, and she might hire me to redo it.”
Dead Bolt Page 16
