“Uh-huh.”
“But that’s not all,” he continued quickly. “We also think you’d be great at transporting sensitive documents or important items that we find challenging to move on our own.”
“I see.”
“And there are other—there are other duties that we—”
“So let me get this straight,” I said. “Basically what you’re looking for is someone to perform séances and also act as some sort of glorified messenger boy?”
He frowned. “Now hold on, Myron, I don’t think that’s a fair way to describe—”
“Oh you don’t, do you? How would you describe it?”
“Now look,” he said sternly, “I don’t know why you’re being so hostile. I’m trying to help you here.”
“No, you’re trying to use me here.”
“Jesus Christ!”
“As you well know,” I said, “that fellow doesn’t seem to be anywhere around—if he ever was.”
“You’re impossible,” he said.
“Now I’m convinced you talked to my wife.”
“You know, money would not be a problem if you came to work for us. It would not be a paycheck in the usual sense, but trust me, you would be well compensated. We have ways of making money flow when we so desire.”
“That’s nice. We done?”
“Myron—”
“It was an honor to meet you, really. I’ll have to tell Dad. He’ll get a real kick out of it. But like I said, I got a lot of weeding to do. Better get back to it.”
“Myron, if you’ll just hear me out.”
But I was done hearing him out. Without looking at him again, I returned to my knees. I returned to the weeds and the dirt and everything I knew was real, because I could feel it. I could feel the hand shovel digging into my palm. I could feel the soft push of the grass on my other hand, the moistness of it seeping into my skin. The tickle of the breeze on my face, the warmth of the sun on my neck, the call of the blue jay in the oak overhanging my house—this was all real. This was all the world I needed and would ever need.
He stood there another minute, as tall and silent as a mountain, then turned with a grunt and walked away.
Chapter 15
Stepping out of the elevator in Karen Thorne’s building and still feeling the heat of her amorous gaze on my body, I was eager to hightail it back to my Prius before I could change my mind about her offer. My brain may have been fully faithful to Billie, but my body didn’t always show the same level of commitment, and I wasn’t all that confident my brain would win a boxing match between the two—especially when a temptation so gorgeous was waiting on one side of the ring.
Still, the whole ride down, I couldn’t help but fantasize what sex with Karen would have been like, the same kind of fantasies I’d had about Billie lots of times. The difference with Billie was that she didn’t have the ability to interact with the physical world that Karen had.
Or did she? She’d said her ability to move objects was limited to her art—pencils, paintbrushes, and the like—but there was always some part of me that wondered, fair or not, if she was just holding out on me.
All this was on my mind when I stepped out of the elevator and saw the same bespectacled desk clerk still at the counter. The lobby was otherwise empty, a morgue-like stillness pervading the place. When he saw me, his face shriveled.
“You again,” he whined.
“Me again,” I said. “I’m not going to hurt you, okay? I just have a few questions.”
“Questions?”
He rasped out the word as if someone was strangling him. His eyes, magnified by his glasses, bulged. I would have worried that talking to me was going to kill him if he weren’t already dead.
“Who did you see come through here since I went upstairs?” I asked.
“Come through here?” he squeaked.
“Are you going to answer my question or just repeat what I say?”
“Repeat what you—” the old man began, then caught himself. He tugged at the collar of his sweater. His forehead, already sweating, gleamed under the fluorescent lights. “I’m—I’m not sure. There’s been a few. People, that is. A few people.”
“Dead or alive?”
“Um. I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? I thought all ghosts could tell the difference.”
He swallowed, and in the quiet of the room, the sound was comically loud. “I’m sorry, Mr. Vale. What you say is true. It’s just that I—I have difficulty. It’s a problem. I just can’t, um, seem to do anything to fix it.”
Him knowing my name was only a small surprise. That had been happening more and more over the past few years, as my reputation grew. But him not being able to tell the living from the dead, that was a first, and I felt an immediate and powerful sympathy for the guy.
“Well, I know the feeling,” I said. “What’s your name?”
“My name?”
“Careful, you’re doing the repeating thing again.”
“Sorry. It’s Perry, sir.”
“Don’t call me sir. Just Myron. It’s good to meet you, Perry. Sorry if I scared you.”
“It’s quite all right, sir. Myron, I mean. It’s not your fault.”
“It’s not my fault I scared you or not my fault that I’m scary?”
When he only stared at me, perplexed, I laughed. After a momentary pause when he seemed a bit surprised by my laughter, he even joined in a little. I pulled out the picture of Tony Neuman, the one I’d gotten upstairs, and put it on the counter.
“How about this guy? You know him?”
“Oh, yes. That’s Mr. Neuman, sir.”
“You’re doing the sir thing again.”
“Sorry, sir. Myron. Perhaps I could call you Mr. Vale? It would be easier for me.”
“Well, if you insist,” I said, with obviously fake irritation, but poor Perry didn’t seem to catch the joke, reacting with alarm. “Relax, I’m just kidding you. Have you seen him today?”
“Today? Oh no, Mr. Vale. I have not seen Mr. Neuman today. I have not seen him in at least … Well, let me think. I suppose it’s been about three weeks or so.”
“Really? Three weeks? Are you sure?”
Perry opened his mouth to reply, then shut it, wincing as if he’d swallowed something sour. He glanced around nervously, and when he spoke to me again, dropped his voice to a whisper. “I’m sorry, Mr. Vale. I forgot myself for a moment. I’m really supposed to show more discretion about our residents. They would not appreciate it if they knew I was so forthcoming about their comings and goings.”
I wanted to slap him. Instead I forced a bright smile and drummed my fingers on the counter.
“Discretion, huh?”
“That’s right, sir. Mr. Vale.”
“Did you know his wife was murdered?”
He gaped at me. “Murdered! But I—I just saw her come through her a while ago.”
“She’s a ghost now.”
“Oh.”
“Really is tough not being able to tell them apart, isn’t it?” When he nodded glumly, I went on: “See, that’s how it is for me, Perry. I’m investigating her murder. I’m trying to figure out who killed her, and it’s tough. It’s especially tough for me, not being able to tell the living apart from the ghosts. And it’s even tougher when somebody who can help me decides to get in the way of a murder investigation for something as silly as discretion.”
“Oh, well, I—”
“But that’s fine,” I said, talking right over him. “I understand that you have to do what you feel is right. I’ll just call up Frank Warren of the NAANCP and tell him exactly how helpful you’ve been in the investigation.”
He swallowed hard. The fear was back in full bloom, but this time I could see it wasn’t about me. “You mean … You mean the NAANCP is involved?”
“In a manner of speaking,” I replied.
“I didn’t—I didn’t realize—”
“Well, now you do. You think you might want
to be a little more helpful now?”
“Of course, sir. Mr. Vale, sir. I’ll do—I’ll do whatever I can to help.”
“That’s great. Frank will be glad to hear that. Let’s get back to Neuman. You said you saw him three weeks ago. Was he with anyone or by himself?”
“I believe he was alone,” Perry said.
“Has he been in a lot in the past three months?”
“No … No, actually, I believe that’s the only time I’ve seen him.”
“Did he leave with anything?”
“I don’t—I don’t think so. He did seem upset when he left.”
“Can you tell me for certain whether he was alive or dead?”
“Well …”
“Did he open the front door? Did he use the elevator? Did other people look at him who you’re pretty sure are alive? Did he ignore you?”
Perry’s brow furrowed as he attempted to unwind my questions, and I thought I saw the faintest glimmer of a lightbulb going on behind his eyes. “Um, yes. Yes, to all of them. I guess now that you say that, it seems fairly likely he was alive and not, um, like me. I never really thought to piece it together like that. That’s—that’s helpful.”
“Believe me,” I said, “when you can’t tell ghosts from the living, you start using every trick in the book to make it through the day. So let’s talk about Tony and Karen’s marriage. How was it? Did they have ups and downs?”
Clearly uncomfortable, Perry was hesitant to say anything that might be considered improper, but with lots of coaxing, I managed to pry a fair bit of information out of him. I learned that while Tony and Karen began their marriage seeming very much in love and inseparable at the hip, the last year or so saw them spending more time apart than together. Tony was often coming and going at odd hours. He would often be gone days at a time. When they did go out together toward the end, they did not look happy. In the last few weeks before she died, Karen often came home drunk and alone.
Perry said he couldn’t be sure if anyone else had been into their condo, because since Perry’s passing, nobody checked in at the desk. Though when I described Bernie, he agreed he’d seen him a few times, but not in the past month or so. I asked him about Karen’s mother, sisters, friends, anyone else that seemed to belong with them, and he said he honestly didn’t know.
I asked him to describe the people who’d left the building in the past few hours. He remembered three women and one man. One of them, a Mrs. Janet Habershaw, was an elderly woman who’d lived in the building for many years. The other two he didn’t know, and his descriptions of them were fairly generic: a young woman with red hair, maybe in her twenties, and a chic-looking Hispanic man in jeans and a black turtleneck. There were no security cameras in the lobby.
When I thought I’d squeezed as much out of poor Perry as I possibly could without turning him into a sweaty mess, I asked him if there was anything else he could tell me that might help. He chewed at it his bottom lip.
“I suppose I should add one more thing,” he said.
“Yes?”
“Well, this is awkward, really not my place at all—”
“Just spit it out, Perry.”
“Um, well, I think there’s a good chance Mr. Neuman was having an affair.”
“What makes you say that?”
Perry adjusted his collar again. His face was so slick it looked as if he’d just come from a dip in the hot tub. “I can’t say for certain, of course, but he took a call in the lobby on his cell phone. No one else was here. He stopped right next to my desk, leaning on it, so it was very hard not to hear. I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, you understand. But he was talking to a woman. He was making plans to meet. He said—he said he loved her, and some other, well, fairly explicit things. Things he would, um, do to her.”
Now Perry had really piqued my interest. Since Perry was a ghost, and the lobby had been otherwise empty, Tony had felt comfortable talking as if he were alone. “What makes you so sure it wasn’t Karen on the other end of the line?”
“Well, I thought so at first, but then he talked about her. He said Karen would be home soon, so they couldn’t meet at the condo.”
“I see.”
A middle-age woman carrying grocery bags from Whole Foods, two kids in tow, entered the building. I waited until she’d gone up the elevator. Poor Perry, all twitchy and pale, resembled someone suffering from dysentery. It really was time to make my leave. “Thanks for all your help,” I said. “If I have other questions, will I find you here?”
“Of course, Mr. Vale. It’s my job.”
“Uh-huh. Can I ask you something personal?”
He blinked a few times. “All right.”
“Why are you here?”
“Why am I …”
“Here, behind this desk. You could be doing anything. A lot of ghosts go on cruises. Take up a new hobby. But you, you’re working as a clerk at a condo building. And the people living here, they can’t even see you.”
His face turned thoughtful. For the first time since I’d met him, he no longer seemed afraid. “Well, I … I worked here before. Before I … you know. And since the condo hasn’t replaced me, I thought, well.” He shrugged. “I guess I just liked doing something I was good at, you know. Something that gave me purpose. I’m—I’m not sure how to explain it.”
His answer made me smile. I thought how long I’d struggled with those very issues and how easily Perry had summed up what probably should have been obvious to me in the beginning. I would have liked to believe that my current job was a little more meaningful than Perry’s, but in the end, that was probably all in the eye of the beholder.
“Believe me,” I said, “I understand perfectly.”
* * * * *
It was just after ten o’clock when I reached my house in Sellwood—a two-bedroom, turn-of-the century bungalow that Billie and I had bought shortly after I’d made detective. It had a den in addition to the bedrooms, on the back side of the house near the detached garage, and the light from the room formed yellow squares on our cracked driveway. The den was Billie’s art studio, but the light didn’t mean she was home. I left the light on in her studio all the time, as I did the porch light, since she couldn’t turn it on by herself.
The house hadn’t looked like much when we’d first bought it, but we (or actually, mostly I) had dolled it up nicely: new slatted fencing surrounding the small porch, repairs to all the broken wooden siding and cracked concrete foundation, and a fresh coat of gray-blue paint with white trim. The house was deeper than it looked from the front and offered more than eighteen-hundred square feet of living space, more than enough for two people.
On the way over, the throbbing where I’d been knocked over the head had grown worse. I was exhausted but in too much pain to sleep. I was hungry but too nauseated to keep anything down. As I got out of the Prius, a sudden breeze shook loose the rain clinging to the oak above my head and splattered me in the face, making me even more cranky.
So I certainly wasn’t in the mood for unexpected guests when I stepped into my dark living room.
“Billie?” I said, flicking on the light.
There was no Billie, but there was someone else. There on our futon by the wood stove, his black robes nearly touching our bamboo floor, was the same old priest who’d shown up in my life only one other time so far—at my bedside when I’d woken from my post-shooting coma five years earlier.
“She’s not home,” he said.
His hands were folded neatly in his lap. He looked just the same as the last time I’d seen him. Same wavy white hair. Same kindly smile. Same ridiculously big gold cross hanging around his neck. The house was still except for the steady tinkling of the faucet in the kitchen, just off to my right, a drip I’d been meaning to fix for months.
“What are you doing here?” I said.
“Waiting for you,” he said.
“I didn’t realize that trespassing was part of the Catholic faith.”
He chuckled softly.
“Oh, come now, Myron. I hardly think this qualifies as—”
“Just because you can sneak into the homes of other living people doesn’t mean you should do it to me. I don’t care how big your cross is, you should give me the same courtesy as you would have when you were alive.”
“Myron—”
“Who are you, anyway?”
He leaned back in the futon and steepled his fingers, looking at me over the tops of them.
“A friend,” he said.
“Funny way of showing it. You got a name?”
“Certainly.”
I waited for him to tell me. He didn’t.
“Am I supposed to guess?” I asked.
“My name’s not relevant. What is relevant is why I’m here.”
“Is that some kind of riddle?”
“I’m not even supposed to be talking to you, Myron. But I can tell you this much. I’m with the Department of Souls—one of the more, um, shadowy divisions. You have to understand. There are those who think of you as a threat. I’m your friend on the inside.”
From everything I knew about the Department of Souls, they were the equivalent of the Department of Administrative Services—big, bureaucratic, and benign, charged with running everything from the Non-Corporeal Tourism Board to the Immortal Living Adjustment Bureau. “I didn’t know the Department of Souls had any shadowy divisions.”
“Well, that’s because they’re shadowy.”
“Who thinks I’m a threat?”
“Let’s just say there are certain people who don’t like random elements they can’t control.”
“Come on, you’ve got do better than that.”
He smoothed out his robe and stood. I felt a queasy trepidation. The last time he’d appeared, it was to tell me how hard my life was going to be. He stepped up to me, his robes swishing over the bamboo floor, and regarded me with his deep and soulful eyes. There was a musty smell to him that reminded me of old books. Then he did something unexpected. He reached out with his hands and squeezed my shoulders.
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