by Kim Hornsby
“I know you’re staring,” I said. “It’s fine, but I wonder what you’re thinking.”
“If you know I’m staring at you, why don’t you also know what I’m thinking?” His voice was full of challenge.
“I do know. I was wondering if you’d try to cover it up.”
“What am I thinking then?”
It was good-hearted fun, not a snarky challenge and I laughed out loud. “You’re thinking that I look so much like your lover upstairs.”
Now, it was Ron’s turn to laugh. “Should’ve known to block that thought.”
“Coffee’s on,” I offered.
He rose from the chair.
“Can you block thoughts?” I wasn’t sure if police trained to do that.
“Not that I know of. It would be handy around here though.”
I didn’t believe him.
He poured a cup of coffee and then I heard a rush of water in the pipes upstairs signifying someone else was awake. “I want to talk to you about this Giovanni case,” Ron said, and I folded my arms across my chest, hoping my mother was on her way because this was the moment I was dreading.
“You do?”
“Yes.” Ron took a sip of his coffee. “I didn’t want to talk about this in front of Rachel.”
Oh, oh, here came the part where I had to choose between lying to save my mother or telling the truth and sending her to the slammer. “Why not in front of my mother?” If he said it was because she was lying, I didn’t need to worry about blowing the top off her relationship with the cop. If he said he couldn’t get a word in edgewise around Rachel, I’d know he had my mother figured out.
“She’s sensitive about the death. Mrs. G was like a mother to her and she tears up every time I ask her anything. I’ve been waiting to talk to you because Rachel won’t talk about it.”
I took a long sip of my coffee while I tried to keep from blurting out the reason my mother wouldn’t talk about Mrs. G’s death was because she’d lied and said I foresaw a murder when truthfully, I saw nothing. The night Rachel led me into Mrs. G’s bedroom, past the police tape (OK, there was no tape but there soon would be) and asked me to snoop around her bedroom for psychic clues, I came up empty. But Eve was sure Mrs. G was forced to do something and it was not the daughter who ended the old lady’s life, but a dude. Telling Ron it was my prediction was a mistake but then my mother made these morally questionable judgement calls on a daily basis. And I’d been covering for her for over two decades. I wasn’t sure why I didn’t want to play her game anymore, but I didn’t. “What do you want to know?” I asked Ron, leaning to pet Hodor and to hide my sweaty upper lip.
“I’d like to hear directly from you what you felt.”
I was tempted to lie on the floor and snuggle in to Hodor, hiding my face in his fur. Instead I sat up straight, attempted to make my face look troubled and stared off towards the ceiling. “I’d need to go in there again,” I chose my words carefully, using a low voice to sound more like I was possessed. “But the feeling was that Mrs. G did not die naturally. She was forced to do something, maybe take a drink, and it was a man who did that.” I shook my head like the vision was gone and put my head in my hands like those sentences took everything from me.
With perfect timing, Eve’s footsteps tapped along the hall.
“Here comes Eve!” I said brightly, the pretense now gone. “Good morrow, Cousin.”
Eve walked to me. “I had the worst dream about you, Bryndle.” She rested her hands on my shoulders. “Super stoked to see you with a cuppa java, shooting the shit with Ron.” Eve’s voice was breathless, like she’d run downstairs.
“What was your dream?” I needed to change the subject anyhow.
“You…you were being interrogated and tortured by the Nazi’s,” she said drifting off to the other side of the kitchen. I detected Eve was lying.
“Did I give up important secrets?”
“You were not going to say anything, under any circumstances. Then, I woke. Good morning, Ron.”
I tried to look over to Ron. “Eve is a very vivid dreamer. Me too. It’s a Primrose thing.” I now knew that Eve sensed Ron was talking to me downstairs and hurried down to intercept. She was sure I didn’t want to lie for my mother, but I also didn’t want her to go to jail for interfering with an investigation. Who knew what else Rachel did or said to get Ron to take her idea of a murder seriously? “I dreamed I was on a beach with giant fish who lived on air and they told me to stay out of the water. I saw zombies swimming around in there.”
“I never remember my dreams,” Ron said, having taken the bait to change the subject.
Eve poured a cup of coffee on the other side of the room. “It’s our jam, right Bryn? We analyze our dreams pretty much every day. Yesterday, I dreamed that you feared someone was gone forever from your life.”
We hadn’t told Ron about Caspian yet. Unless Rachel spilled the beans; I’d asked her not to or I’d spill bigger beans about her lying to Ron about my prediction. There was no reason to tell Ron, unless Caspian showed up and I mistakenly commented on what Ron was wearing or looked him straight in the eyes.
“Rachel dreams a lot,” Ron said. “Am I allowed to say that in front of you Bryndle?”
“That you sleep with my mother? Yes, that’s fine, Ron. We’re all adults. I just don’t want any details.”
Ron chuckled. “I’ll only say that she kicks in her sleep while dreaming.”
“Something I am too familiar with, unfortunately,” I whispered.
“She said she shared your bedroom here because she was afraid of a ghost but would not tell me anything more.” Ron sounded like he was leaning forward, staring at me, waiting for a story. I decided to throw him a bone.
“There are several ghosts in this house.”
Eve cleared her throat in warning.
“It’s OK, Eve. Ron’s almost family. I can tell him.” I tried to shoot a psychic message to Eve that I was going to mess with Ron a bit, and hoped she’d get it. “The evil ghost is a woman who lived here with her lover in the mid 1800’s. We don’t know how she died or why she remains, but apparently, she’s dangerous. We believe she might have killed someone.” I said this last word spooky-like. “She’s played some tricks on us, like moving my coffee cup, detaching the hall chandelier so it would fall on our heads to kill us and then, most recently, she inhabited Eve’s body to play the piano and terrorize a dinner party.” All of this was true. So far, I hadn’t lied to a cop. “She’s the one who stabbed someone in a bedroom upstairs.” I had yet to tell Eve I’d been fake-stabbed myself.
“Rachel told me that a ghost murdered someone.”
“Having had her inside me,” Eve said, “I’d believe that. She’s got a screw loose.”
I jumped in. “We have no proof that a ghost murdered a person, but this woman is dangerous.”
When I’d grilled Eve on the inhabitation, she’d been both freaked out and honored to have Jacqueline inside her. “Like being in a horror movie, except I was the monster,” she said. I didn’t think the incident was as fun as Eve had let on at the time of the dinner party. Carlos had told me that Jimmy had to sit up all night with her, Eve being too frightened to go to sleep. I wondered if Eve used that as an excuse to worm her way further into Jimmy’s heart. I couldn’t help but think that of Eve, even though her heart was purer than my mom and me who wouldn’t stop at pretending to be scared to get a man to show his protective side. The night we talked of her inhabitation I knew Eve was scared of our evil ghost. “Can you tell me if she murdered someone, Eve?” I’d asked.
“Negatory. When she jumped in me, I was only able to access her current mood, not memories. I remember her thinking she wanted to shake things up.”
Jacqueline had planted the seed that Caspian might have been involved in the smuggling of Chinese women and I’d bristled at the possibility.
Ron broke through my train of thought. “How many ghosts are in this house?”
“We don’t
know for sure,” I answered. “Caspian says six, including the cat…” Shit! I’d mentioned his name. I bit my lips closed like the singing canary I was.
“Who’s Caspian?” Ron asked.
I took a deep breath and set my coffee cup down on the table. I could either distract or give Ron an overview of the sea captain ghost who was AWOL or spill my guts. I chose the safe one. “He’s another ghost in the house. The husband of the evil one.”
Eve was silent. What a gem she was in the best and worst of times. There was so much she could have added to my last sentence.
“How often do these ghosts appear?”
Ron had moved on. “The woman is more elusive.” I wanted to steer the conversation back to Jacqueline, the scary ghost. Caspian’s name, I realized wasn’t a big secret if Ron watched my show on YouTube, which I assumed he did because he’s a frickin’ detective and probably nosey as heck. “The man appears more, but we haven’t had contact from anyone recently.” That wasn’t entirely true, but I didn’t want to talk about Jacqueline stabbing me in the back last night.
My mother arrived silently in the doorway, like she’d sneaked down the hall, trying to eavesdrop, which is probably exactly what she did. Subterfuge was her middle name. Rachel Subterfuge Primrose.
“Good morning, everyone,” she said with a touch of sneak in her voice.
I tried to block out the fact that my mother was buzzing with intense physical feelings for her boyfriend, feeling sexually alive and beloved. “Good Morning, Old Mom,” I said.
Ron stood, like a gentleman, and then crossed to her.
“I was trying to let you sleep in, like you always do.”
“I never sleep in,” my mother said, lying through her pearly whites.
The sexy vibe jumping off them almost made me lose my coffee and I gulped down the bile that had risen in my throat. “Ron was saying you kicked so much last night, he’s tempted to sleep in the bloody bedroom,” I said to her.
“What’s the bloody bedroom?” Ron followed my mother to the coffee maker.
Aha! Ron did not watch my show and that made me both disappointed and delighted because he had so little information on this house. “It’s the torture room in the house with blood all over the walls.”
My mother ruined my joke. “She’s joking Ron, but look at your wide eyes,” she said, laughing. “It’s just a nickname Bryndle has for a room with a mural,” my mother answered, revealing to me she was downplaying the ghostly action in the house to her lover. I wasn’t sure why she wasn’t giving up all our secrets but knew my mother well enough to realize that she had a devious reason to withhold information. She always did.
I detected the cologne Eau Savage and heard another body enter the kitchen. The room was filling quickly. “Carlos. Buenos dias.” He hadn’t applied cologne to come downstairs at eight in the morning, I was sure, but his clothes had a leftover scent. Or Jimmy Big Ears was wearing Carlos’s clothes.
“Hola,” Carlos said in his morning stuffed-up voice.
I listened, and, from what I got, I was able to determine where everyone was in the room, including Hodor, who’d risen to greet Carlos.
“Are we headed to Portland today or tomorrow?” Carlos asked. The hotel manager had asked us to come Monday, so my answer was short and sweet.
“Neither.”
“He wants us there on a slow night, so we’ll go Monday,” Eve said. I pictured her not looking up from her phone as she talked. That girl spent way too much time on her phone these days. I knew this from when Caspian was around. And with my super-hearing, I could detect her lovely thin fingers tapping at lightning speed. No one could type as fast as my cousin.
“Monday?” My mother pulled a chair so close to me I could smell her coffee breath. “I thought we’d all go to Seattle on Monday and do more work at Mrs. G’s house.”
This was news to me. “You, me, and Ron?”
“I told him we could.” She sounded so disappointed that it was satisfying to burst her bubble.
“Did you ask me, and I forgot?” I knew the answer was no. My mother always assumed I was at her beck and call.
“I didn’t know you were going to Portland. Ron needs you in Seattle ASAP.” My mother was whispering near my ear while, across the room, Carlos told Ron all about how that sugared creamer was bad for you.
“Sorry, not sorry, Mother. You should have run this by me. I have a show to film on Monday in Portland.”
“I was just going to tell you. I assured Ron you’d help with our investigation.” Rachel sounded desperate like her relationship depended on this, which might have been true, although I didn’t detect Ron was into Rachel to get to me, a psychic who could crack his case for him. Or was that the big secret he kept from Rachel?
“We’re booked Monday night, Tuesday morning,” I said.
Carlos shuffled to the table. “We could head to Seattle right after, instead of coming back here. I need to pick up that EVP monitor at Floatville.”
A trip to my houseboat would be good: check on a few things, pick up the mail. I hated to leave Cove House, it being Caspian’s home. What if he showed up and I was gone?
“Tuesday will be fine, won’t it, Ron?” My mother’s desperate whisper in my ear had returned to normal.
Ron stood behind my mother now. “We can start your work on the case Tuesday. I’ll tell my chief it’s been pushed back one day.”
What the heck? I was working on a case and was scheduled in like a guest star on a TV show?
My mother was in deep doo-doo.
Chapter 5
Portland was sunny and warm, in direct contrast to our coastal fog at Cove House. Eve kept saying what a gorgeous day it was, and I knew it wasn’t just the sunshine that had her exclaiming her happiness. Eve was in love, like a star-struck teenager who’d just touched the hand of Teen Magazine’s latest singing sensation.
She was in love, but alone. Jimmy had returned to the Seattle area to work this week. We’d all parted in the driveway earlier and although I’d strained to hear if Eve and Jimmy kissed, I heard nothing smoochy when they said goodbye. Eve was getting better at subterfuge herself, probably spending too much time around Rachel. My mother and Ron were already in Seattle, having left the day before for Ron’s apartment, a place my mother did not like apparently. She’d told me she could not spend more than a day at his place the space being too small, “undecorated and the hall smells like onions.”
“Too bad you can’t stay at your own house,” I’d said, hoping to get an estimate of when her house would be ready to move back into. How long did an extermination take? Rachel had been with us for weeks avoiding the chemical spray that knocks creepy crawlies dead.
“You want me to get sick?” she’d asked.
Our investigation was set for midnight at the Grand Hotel in the old part of Portland near China Town. The manager had reserved two connecting rooms for us to operate out of and as we parked directly in front of the hotel, I wished I could see the place even though Eve described it to me in intimate detail.
“Red brick, ten floors, like something in Pioneer Square, restored, a red tent thing over the front door that says The Grand Hotel in white script font, a restaurant on the first floor around to the right of a corner, it’s called The Aristocrat.” Eve’s explanations had become more concise lately. “About as wide as four lots on Aunt Rachel’s street, eight stairs carpeted to the front double glass doors.” Eve sounded tired and I wondered if she hadn’t slept well last night or if she just hated describing every single detail in her sight. I didn’t blame her, if so, but I hung on her words to get a feel for the place.
Inside, the lobby was “dark wood, expensive looking, like the Great Gatsby era, potted palms, chandeliers, sort of like Cove House but maintained, bigger and nicer,” Eve said, as Hodor and I followed her to the front desk. Since discovering Hodor’s affinity for the harness, I’d been having him lead me all over the place, including a walk along the sea cliffs yesterday where he would n
ot let me get too close to the edge. Eve had stood guard watching, ready to scream if Hodor started to lead me over the edge. However, with the harness off, Hodor was my silly boy who wouldn’t come when called.
Although I’d told Eve about Jacqueline stabbing me and had every intention of following up in the bloody bedroom on Saturday night, we didn’t. Ron was a pervasive body in the house and I didn’t want to summon spirits with Ron nearby. Sunday night was out too because we had a power outage and although we could have taken candles to the bloody bedroom and not relied on electricity, we couldn’t film with most of the equipment not fully charged when the lights went out at nine. Contacting Jacqueline again was on the agenda for when we returned to Cove House later this week.
Still no sign of Caspian. I’d returned to the third floor late at night to summon him with no results. The emptiness of that third floor was painful.
After checking in to The Grand Hotel and getting key cards, we headed off to the restaurant to wait for a meeting with the manager. Eve and I sat in the extremely uncomfortable chairs while Carlos lugged in the equipment we’d use on tonight’s investigation. The nice part about being blind was that I couldn’t see disapproving looks from Carlos about him having to do all the work now. I also could not see disapproving looks from anyone about having Hodor in a restaurant. Eve didn’t give a flying fig but if my disability was hers, I’d have been smiling apologetically all over the place, giving way too much credibility to strangers’ opinions. Eve simply remarked that Hodor was getting the once over and she’d put up her hood to better ignore the looks.
“Not fair,” I said. “I don’t have a hood.”
Eve laughed. “You have better than a hood. You’re blind.”
“I’ve been wondering if my eyes look weird,” I said to her as we waited. “Should I start wearing sunglasses or something?”
Eve didn’t answer immediately.
“Because if one eye looks up to the corner of the room and the other is pointed to the floor, I’d like to know.” I didn’t think this was the case, having looked in the mirror when Caspian was around. I hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary but also wondered if things changed when I was truly blind.
