Chapter Fourteen

 

A solitary police car was pulling out of the tall iron gates as I reached the turnoff for Green Lanterns.

As the blue-and-white-marked vehicle passed me, I thought I recognized Police Chief Kingsland, and felt a flash of unease. I remembered what Tarrant had said about local gossip the night I arrived. Did people really believe the investigation into Ogden’s death had been cursory because the Kingslands were longtime friends of Aunt H.’s?

And was Kingsland taking another look at Aunt H. because of that gossip? Was he going to reopen the case? After Aunt H.’s vague comments about bearing responsibility in Ogden’s death, the possibility seemed real—and alarming.

I returned Aunt H.’s baby-blue Chevrolet Bel Air to the garage and turned off the engine. Seamus came down the circular staircase as I was climbing out from behind the wheel.

“Hey there,” he called in greeting.

“Hi,” I called back briskly. “Was that Police Chief Kingsland?”

The briskness was because of the annoying way my heart jumped in recognition every time I spotted Seamus. I’d tried with only moderate success to forget all about that kiss we’d shared after the first séance. I did not want to be distracted when I already had so much on my mind—let alone be distracted by someone I didn’t completely trust.

Completely trust? I didn’t trust Seamus at all.

I did believe him when he swore he had not dropped the glove during the séance. And—maybe this was weird, but it was true—I believed him when he said he intended no harm to me. I was less certain about his intending no harm to Aunt H., partly because he hadn’t sounded particularly convinced on that point. Seamus was definitely up to something. And it was enough of a something that he had government agencies like San Francisco’s Parks and Rec Department willing and ready to help him fake his references.

Was he a cop? He didn’t seem like a cop, but beyond Chief Kingsland, I hadn’t had a lot of experience with the police. If he was undercover law enforcement, what the hell was he investigating at Green Lanterns? Ogden’s death? Was he here to try and nab Aunt H. for doing away with Husband #2?

He came to meet me, saying, “She purrs like a kitten, doesn’t she?”

“Who?”

He nodded at the Bel Air.

I appreciate a nice piece of well-oiled machinery, but I’m not what you would call a car guy. Also, I know when I’m being sidetracked. “Was that Chief Kingsland I saw pulling out the front gate when I arrived?” I repeated.

Seamus hesitated. It was fleeting, but it’s my job to pay attention to dramatic beats, and there was most certainly a pause in the dialogue.

“Yeah, it was,” he said very casually, meeting my eyes.

I didn’t think we were having a particularly meaningful conversation, so it was a little disconcerting how hard it was to tear my gaze from his. What the hell were we talking about again?

He wasn’t that good-looking, after all. Even if he was, since when did I go for the brawny, brainless type? Not that Seamus was brainless—or unduly brawny. I had no real idea what he was. It didn’t seem to matter. That tug of attraction got stronger every time I saw him. At this point, it was close to a tractor beam.

Nor was the magnetic field all on one side. I could read awareness, attentiveness in his eyes too. Feel it in the way he crowded just a bit too much into my personal space, the way his hand seemed to reach automatically toward my own and then drop awkwardly back into place at his side.

“What did he want?” I asked, remembering we were supposed to be having a conversation.

“Who? Oh. Chief Kingsland? I— One of your neighbors reported seeing someone lurking outside the gates last night. He was just giving me a heads-up.”

It was a plausible story. But Seamus’s voice was too casual, his gaze too direct. Tiny cues that he was not telling the truth. Or at least not telling the complete truth. But so long as Kingsland had not come out to reinterview Auntie H., I didn’t care. I much preferred prowlers in the night to a possible reopening of the investigation into Ogden’s death.

“Our neighbors? Which neighbors? You mean the RCU?”

Seamus looked blank. “The what?”

“The church that bought the property to the north of here. They’ve set up camp in the old schoolhouse.”

“Um, no. The residents to the south. The Chamberlains. They were coming back late last night from visiting their grandkids and thought they spotted a suspicious-looking character.”

“I see.”

Again, he trotted it out smoothly. It could have even been true. It would be like Kingsland to give the gardener a heads-up rather than worry Aunt H. with vague warnings about suspicious characters loitering. That didn’t change my initial impression Seamus wished I hadn’t spotted Chief Kingsland. Why?

Or maybe I was getting paranoid?

Aunt H.’s semi-confession earlier had shaken me.

“We’ll keep an eye out,” I said and turned away.

Seamus said quickly, almost urgently, “Artemus?”

I turned back.

“Would you want to—” He cleared his throat. “Get together? One night? Maybe have dinner? Or even just drinks. Whatever.” He looked surprisingly serious. Even earnest.

My face warmed. My whole body warmed. My heart got all light and fluttery, like a bird belatedly noticing it was sitting on a tree branch with a cat.

I did want to. That was the problem. I wanted to a lot. I liked him. I found him attractive. Too attractive for comfort, frankly. Even if I hadn’t been suspicious of him, that was a distraction I didn’t need right now. Especially since I should surely feel a little more broken up about the way things had ended with Greg.

I opened my mouth to regretfully decline and was astonished to hear my own equally awkward, “Er, yeah. Maybe. Sure. Why not?”

His eyes lit. “Great! Tonight?”

What am I doing?

“Oh no. No, I can’t tonight,” I lied—and not very well.

He looked disappointed. Doubtful. “Okay. Well…tomorrow night?”

“Yes. Tomorrow night,” my mouth said despite explicit directions from my brain to say otherwise. “I’d like to.”

“Great!” Seamus repeated, cheering instantly. “Okay, then. Let’s say seven?”

“Seven,” I agreed, and I couldn’t help smiling back at him.

* * * * *

“Artie, dear, I’ve been thinking,” Aunt H. began over dinner that night. “Maybe it’s time you returned to New York.”

Liana was still sick in bed, so we were on our own, for once putting the dining room to the use God—or Green Lanterns’ architect, anyway—had originally intended.

Betty fried veal cutlets, which she served with herb salad and mushroom rice. Whatever else had gone wrong at Green Lanterns, our Betty was still the best cook in the county. In a spirit of defiance, I raided Ogden’s sadly neglected wine cellar and chose a bottle of white to go with our meal. I was drinking on my own, though. Aunt H. was not a wine drinker. She either drank sparkling water or cocktails—and that night she was sticking to water.

I put my wineglass down untouched. “Return to New York? With everything that’s happening around here?”

“Yes, dear. I see now that I was wrong to drag you into my problems. You have your own life, and you must be anxious to get back to it.”

“Sure, but you and Green Lanterns are also part of my life. And always will be.”

Aunt H. avoided my gaze. “Yes, but… I’m sure your editor is wondering when you’ll be back to work.”

“Actually, if I showed up before my vacation was over, my editor would suspect I was an imposter.”

Aunt H. did not so much as crack a smile. “All the same, dear. I feel you should book your return flight.”

“Why?”

“I’ve just said—”

“No, the real reason,” I cut in. “Why are you suddenly in a hurry to get rid of me?”

She raised her brows. “Really, Artie. Get rid of you?” She rarely resorted to the Grand Dame, but when she did, she did it well. Her tone—light and ironic—was perfect. As was her expression.

“Come on, Auntie H. What’s changed?” As I studied her troubled face, realization dawned. I remembered Roma’s oblique warning. “Are you worried about me?”

She didn’t speak, but I saw at once I was right. I said, “Even if Ogden is haunting Green Lanterns, I’m not afraid of ghosts.”

“But perhaps you should be,” she burst out.

“What does that mean?”

“After you went out this afternoon, Liana did another reading of her tarot cards.”

I snorted.

She ignored that. “Liana believes there’s danger for you here. That if you stay, something…terrible might happen. I know you don’t believe in any of this, but she wasn’t playacting. She was frightened.”

I didn’t laugh. For one thing, I could see Aunt H. was truly worried. For another, this warning coming so soon on top of Roma’s did make me uneasy.

“What kind of danger?” I asked.

“I don’t know. But I’ve been thinking. Ogden had his good qualities, but when he didn’t get his way, when he felt thwarted, he could be difficult. Very difficult.”

I thought there was a lot of painful history behind that rather terse comment.

“Okay, but—”

“I think his parents spoiled him terribly. As did his first wife. And Liana always catered to him. He isn’t—wasn’t—used to being told no. He didn’t take well to what he would call obstruction. And if there is an afterlife, why would we be any different in character there than we were in this life?”

That was an interesting perspective. One I’d never considered. If there was such a thing as ghosts, did these shades retain their fundamental human traits? Or were they just shadows? Echoes of the past? Did spirits have free will, or were they simply running on autoplay?

“I see,” I said. “And you think Ogden might feel thwarted by my attempts to keep him from ruining the rest of your life?”

She put her hand to her forehead. “You have such a-a way of putting things, dear.”

“Okay, in your own words, then.”

“I think Liana is right. At least, I think she’s right that Ogden might resent your lack of…sympathy. I don’t know what reprisals he could make—I don’t understand how these things work.” Unexpectedly, tears welled in her eyes. “But I’m not willing to risk you, my dearest boy.”

I got a little choked up myself, and rose, going around the table to hug her.

“Look, me old darling.” I had to stop and clear my throat. “I appreciate your concern. And I’m willing to concede I don’t know how these things work either. But I’m not leaving you here to spend your days with Liana and her tarot cards and your nights with Roma and her séances. Something is not right in this house. And maybe it is Ogden acting out at finding himself inconveniently dead. But maybe it’s something else.”

“Oh, Artie. I thought so once. But what else could it be?”

“I know you’re convinced otherwise, but I still believe the source of your problems is—could be—human.” She opened her mouth, but I cut her off. “I know you think it’s a stretch, but it’s worth making sure, don’t you think?”

Aunt H. hesitated, nodded reluctantly, and wiped her eyes.

 

 

I didn’t sleep well that night.

Every time a floorboard squeaked or a panel popped or a gust of night breeze whispered down the fireplace, my eyes flew open and I spent the next few seconds listening intently to a silence that felt increasingly ominous.

But I must have finally drifted off, because around two o’clock I woke to the sound of footsteps overhead.

I blinked upward at the shadowy ceiling.

Were those footsteps, or was that a squirrel or a raccoon scampering around? For a moment I lay there, ears attuned. I was starting to think I’d been dreaming when I heard a muffled thump, as if something heavy had fallen over.

No, I was not dreaming, not imagining things. Someone was moving overhead.

A burglar?

Wouldn’t a burglar be more likely to grab a microwave or TV set from downstairs and make his getaway?

Previously, the “ghost” had stuck to walking this floor. What was it up to on the third floor? I couldn’t think of anything that would be of interest to a ghost, let alone a professional criminal. There were more bedrooms, of course, but no one slept up there. There was the ballroom, which had not been used since the fifties.

The attic was on the fourth floor, so that couldn’t be the target.

Did the footsteps belong to Tarrant? At this point I could almost believe it. Given his open discontent, I could imagine him wandering around, pocketing a few stray collectibles and antiques to pawn.

Liana? Her behavior was erratic these days, to say the least. Could those muffled footfalls belong to Liana hunting for her dear dead brother’s spirit among the mothballs and dust sheets?

Doubtful. Liana had been Nyquilized for the evening.

Aunt H.?

Even more doubtful.

There was another possibility. What if a tramp or a vagrant had taken up residence on the rarely disturbed third floor? They could live there undetected, safe and secure—and pretty comfortable, all things considered—emerging only at night to steal food, which would likely go unmissed, from the overstocked pantry and refrigerator.

By now two or three minutes had passed, and I could still hear that mysterious someone moving furtively overhead.

I threw the sheet back, grabbed my robe, shoved my feet into slippers, and let myself out of my room.

I stepped quietly down the hall and tiptoed up the stairs to the next level.

When I reached the third floor, all was silent. Had I missed my opportunity? I moved soundlessly down the hall until I came to the double doors of the ballroom.

I leaned my head against the wooden surface and listened.

Nothing.

I reached down and noiselessly turned the knob.

The doors did not budge.

Hell. Was the room locked? That possibility hadn’t occurred to me. As far as I could remember, the only locked doors at Green Lanterns had been Ogden’s study.

I tried again, this time leaning my weight against the door. The wood creaked, but the hinges seemed remarkably silent as the doors slowly opened inward to a black void. I reached back to feel for the nearest hinge, and my fingertips brushed something slippery. I sniffed my hand. Household oil. My suspicions were confirmed. Someone had gone to the trouble of silencing the doors up here.

Using my smartphone’s flashlight app, I stepped across the ballroom threshold.

The brilliant white beam bounced down a dusty vista of parquet flooring and dull, gilt-framed mirrors to a raised platform at the far end. Black plush chairs and small oak tables lined either wall, and above, suspended from the ceiling at intervals, hung three enormous amber chandeliers. Everything was festooned with cobwebs; the chairs and draperies, the chandeliers woven to one another in shrouds of gauze, intricate, hairy, shimmering in the phone’s light beam.

It was both grand and creepy.

I advanced farther into the room. There was no sign that anyone had been there for years. The dust-blanketed floor stretched ahead like smooth, untrodden sand. Halfway down the long room, I spotted a brown, crumbling corsage resting on the seat of one of the chairs.

I turned and started back, my shadowy image reflected multiple times in the wall of grimy mirrors.

Once in the corridor, I listened again.

A complete and solemn silence met my ears.

Not so much as the rustle of a dust sheet.

The ballroom took up most of the floor, but there were a few additional bedrooms on this level. Murky, musty small rooms in various states of disuse. I had the vague idea these extra rooms had been used for household staff back when Green Lanterns ran a full stable of servants.

I took each room in turn, working my way down the main hall to the end and starting up the smaller corridor. The dust was not as thick in the bedrooms. The floors had been swept once or twice in the last year, so I couldn’t say for sure no one had been through there. I didn’t find any sign of actual occupancy: no crumbs, ashes, cigarette stubs, or discarded candy wrappers; no mussed bedclothes or disarranged pillows—no bedclothes or pillows at all. Some of the drawers were not flush to their dressers, and in a couple of cases, they even lay on the unmade mattresses. Maybe that meant something. Maybe it didn’t. There could be any number of non-sinister reasons why empty drawers had been moved aside.

I was almost ready to believe I’d dreamed up those stealthy sounds, when I came to the final room on that floor. As I reached for the door handle, I heard a slight sound that raised the hair on my head.

No mistake. Someone was inside that room.

I put my ear to the door, and yes, I could hear the cautious slide of wood on wood.

Cabinets being opened, drawers being shut.

The sounds stopped. I heard the pad of footsteps. Then the scrape of wood on wood resumed.

Someone was searching for something—and I knew with sudden certainty who that someone was.

I yanked open the door and shone my phone flashlight in the direction of those secretive sounds. The blast of white light fell full upon the startled face of Seamus Cassidy.