Annette Blair (8 page)

The minute they entered, Jason began to reveal a side of himself that surprised and delighted Kira. He loved history as much as she did.

Give the toad a princely crown.

In the stairway leading to the third floor, a draft of cold air rushed up Kira’s skirt, teased her, like icy fingers against her skin, and made her shiver. As she did, a weird noise grew, and swelled, into a cacophony of excited squawking. “What
is
that?”

“We keep birds, but I’ve never heard them go ballistic like this.”

“How many birds?”

Jason allowed her to precede him into a sunny pink-striped sitting room, sparse of furniture to one side, with a wall of glass on the other, a window through which Kira saw a huge bustling birdcage.

“That,” he said, “is our working aviary.”

“Big birds, and . . . noisy. Is that a crow?”

“They’re all crows,” Jason said, “two blacks, two black-and-whites, two grays, and a pair of browns. Mated pairs.”

“A
murder
of crows,” Kira said.

“No, we keep them healthy. They live for years.”

“No, a group of crows is often
called
a ‘murder,’ because in folklore, crows are believed to punish rogue members of their flocks by—Never mind. It’s gross.”

“Look at the way they’re screeching, and jumping, and flapping their wings,” Jason said, “almost as if they’re . . . happy to see you.”

“Yeah, right,” Kira said. “Sorry—though they are thought to carry messages from the spirit world—an aviary of crows does not a spooky ghost tour make.”

Jason opened the glass door, and when Kira stepped into the aisle beside the cage, the birds went nuts and flew in her direction.

Kira stepped back.

They landed on her side of the cage, extending their beaks between the bars, as if trying to reach her.

“Wow,” Jason said. “I never saw them like this.”

Kira stepped farther back, tugging unexpectedly on a black-and-white crow with its beak in her pocket.

“Yikes.” She freed her jacket, and backed against the glass wall, leaving the pickpocket with a piece of tissue in its beak.

“Good goddess,” she said, her hand on her heart. “What is
with
them?”

A black crow on the floor waddled to the bars, tilted its head, and winked at her. “Hello, Mommy.”

KIRA
escaped to the sitting room side of the glass, the safe side. “Now I know why it’s illegal to keep crows. They’ll scare you to death.”

“We have a federal permit to keep them,” Jason said, “though I think we should have been grandfathered in.”

“Excuse me, but did you hear that bird call me Mommy?”

“Pretty cute.”

“Pretty
weird
! Where did you grow up? I don’t know why you keep birds. I mean, nobody lives here.”

“Keeping them in the aviary was a stipulation in gifting the estate to the foundation,” Jason said. “In order to keep the house, we
have
to keep the crows. The donor left a separate endowment. We use the interest to house, feed, and care for the birds.”

“Now, that’s spooky. Who takes care of them?”

“The Rainbow’s Edge caretaker and his wife, the Deerings, you know, the couple who live in the gatehouse for
life? They’re older and treat the birds like their children. They’re very into caring for them.”

“Well, that’s good, I guess. But we should make them work for us . . . the birds, I mean, not the Deerings. This
is
a neat setup,” Kira granted, “when the birds don’t go wacko.” Still spooked, she regarded the room-sized cage. “Have you ever thought of making this a school-tour stop or something? Hey, have the kids at St. Anthony’s seen it?”

“I don’t know,” Jason said. “Too bad the place is too small for their get-acquainted night, or whatever we’re going to call the event for people looking to adopt.”

Kira tilted her head. “ ‘Get Acquainted Night’ might do, though I wanted something more meaningful. The play might give us a clue; Sister Margaret is in charge of that. I’m not sure we can schedule the event before December, though.”

“Christmas would be a good time to bring kids and parents together. Maybe Sister should do a Christmas play.”

“I’ll mention it,” Kira said, following Jason up the attic stairs. “Maybe we can bring the boys to see the birds some afternoon after hockey lessons?”

“The boys will fall asleep after hockey lessons, believe me. Sister will have to carry the little ones off the bus.”

“Never mind,” Kira said. “I forgot they’re coming for a ghost tour on Halloween. They’ll see the birds then.”

“Right,” Jason said, switching on the attic light.

“Oh, wow,” Kira said. “Look at all this amazing stuff; it’s fabulous. Look at that rack of clothes. I love old clothes.” She threw a gold cut-velvet shawl around her shoulders, sneezing at the dust she sent into the air. “I buy most of my clothes at thrift stores, or at my friend’s vintage clothing shop. Vickie gets a lot of her stock from attics. Look, a cradle someone painted flowers on, and a little baby slept in, like a hundred years ago. And this doll; her hair is probably real. Old books. I love old books. They’re better than new ones, don’t you think?”

Jason grinned. “Some of this is quite valuable.”

Kira felt foolish for her rambling. “It’s all valuable in my book,” she said, standing to regain her dignity. “It’s history. Somebody’s past. That always has value.”

Jason stroked the lines of a dusty bronze nude and allowed his appreciation to show. “This was done by Carl Bitter,” he said with reverence. “One of the things I like best about this family was their interest in art and antiquities.”

Jason shared his knowledge as they trudged through the rest of Rainbow’s Edge, from attic to cellar.

Kira’s respect for him grew. Not only did he know the house and its owners, he knew about the furnishings and bric-a-brac, even the stuff in the attic. Too bad he’d assumed wrong about the ghost.

“You
love
the history of the mansions,” she said as she made her way down the main stairs, him with his cane descending slowly behind her. “And don’t pretend otherwise.”

He shrugged, as if he hated to admit it.

“You made fun of me because I read the mansion histories,” she said. “Why?”

“Hey, you had just withered a man’s penis. I didn’t know what to make of you. I didn’t know
you
. I thought maybe you were the enemy. Cut me some slack. I’ll admit it, okay, I’m a closet historian. I especially love the Gilded Age and the Roaring Twenties, and I can be a real me-man/you-woman throwback, if I’m not careful.”

“Well, yeesh, you were brought up in a Gilded Age household, what do you expect?”

“You understand now, but wait till I grab you by the hair and drag you into my cave. You won’t be happy then.”

Try me,
she thought. “It’s not a sin to be a historian, you know, though it’s not consistent with the macho hockey-gorilla-type image, is it?”

“That’s part of the problem, though I’d like to go on record as resenting the gorilla analogy. Part of it’s because I have a reputation.”

“To protect?”

“To live down. My grandfather’s. He was the historian;
he
got Gram involved in historical preservation in the first place. Unfortunately, he was also a philandering old rogue trying to keep her occupied so he could spend his time chasing other women.”

Kira stilled. “Oh, no. Poor Bessie. I didn’t know.”

“Well, don’t let on. It’d kill her. She still thinks no one ever suspected. Here’s the library. Find a comfortable chair and pull up a stack of history books.”

“And I get paid for this? Cool.”

Jason propped his cane against the wall and walked to the bookshelves under his own steam.

“Hey,” she said. “No cane? Should you be taking that chance?”

“The doctor said I could start to wean myself off it, in controlled situations, and for short periods of time.”

“Controlled?”

“Flat ground, nothing to trip me.” He looked around the room. “This seems to fit the bill.”

“Congratulations,” Kira said, and for some reason, her words seemed to surprise and touch him.

That day the only information they found of any interest was about Nate Winthrop’s wife, Addie, and the pet crow she carried on her shoulder.

The following day they planned to return to the Rainbow’s Edge library, but when Kira got in his car that morning, he shook his head. “Black again?”

Kira looked down at her pantsuit. “I like black.”

“No kidding. This is the third day in a row you’ve worn it.”

“You have a problem with black?”

“You dress in black, but I’d be willing to bet the bank that you seethe with hidden depths of color.”

“Get real.”

“I like color.”

“So do I. In quilts and stained-glass windows.”

“Right,” Jason said. “Coffee?” He pulled into a doughnut drive-through.

“Diet cola,” Kira said. “And a chocolate glazed, if you don’t mind, to round out the nutritional value of breakfast.”

“Good choice. I’ll have the same.”

They quietly ingested caffeine and sugar as they drove toward Rainbow’s Edge.

“Here we are,” Jason said.

“Let me at those history books.” Kira got out before he could come around and open her door.

That day was also a wash, ghost-wise, though they learned about Addie’s death, Nate’s expensive taste, and his more expensive women.

On Thursday they continued their ghostly research, getting pizza for lunch, and eating in the mansion’s big old kitchen, complete with Italian tiled step-in hearth and ancient copper kettle.

Kira began to feel in sync with the hockey jock. Their shared enthusiasm for history was somewhat amazing, and made it all quite fascinating.

By one o’clock, after finishing every book they could find about Rainbow’s Edge over the past few days, the spookiest event they had found was a prank played by a little boy in 1924. It had caused some notoriety at the time, and gave the impression, for a very short while during the mansion’s history, that Rainbow’s Edge did have a ghost—a little boy crying for his mother.

“What if we were to recreate the prank, exactly as it happened,” Kira said as they sat on the porch steps of Rainbow’s Edge appreciating the Indian Summer day. “At least it would be true mansion history, not a misrepresentation of facts.”

“If we did that, wouldn’t we have to find the hidden staircase the kid said he was locked in?” Jason asked. “We never saw one.”

“We never searched for one.” Kira looked toward the family cemetery on the property. “Odd how the crow thing
keeps popping up. Both writers saw fit to describe Addie’s pet crow. Her husband, the main historian, implied very strongly that she was thought odd and frightening by the general population.”

“I hadn’t realized that.” Jason rubbed his nape. “But I chose the books about the house more than the people.”

Kira already knew Jason’s body language, and that neck thing was a sure sign of distress or exhaustion. “Are you worried about finding the hidden staircase,” she asked, “or are you disappointed that we haven’t found any real evidence of ghosts?”

“A bit of both I guess. And there’s that obelisk of a gravestone. Look at it.” He pointed toward the cemetery not too far distant.

The headstone in question lay facedown like a huge, bright white marble blight on an otherwise perfectly bucolic scene.

“Raising it is going to be a pisser,” Jason said. “To make matters worse, the entire headstone seems to have been carved from one solid chunk. The pedestal alone must be four by five. We need to get it lifted and back into place. Gram says it’s been tried over the years, with no success.”

“Too bad you never looked at the place before you sent those inv—”

“Can it, Fitzgerald.”

“Right. Look, there are seven crows on the obelisk. That’s significant.”

“Enough with the crows.”

“Crow augury has been practiced for centuries. It’s practically a science. Crows can have mystical significance in certain numbers. Do you know what seven means?”

“No,” Jason said, “and I’m not certain I want to.”

“Seven crows can mean that a secret is about to be revealed. In some cases, it’s a sign of witchcraft.”

The wind whistled eerily through the trees, like cheesy movie music when a dumb heroine descends a dark stair, candle in hand. Kira laughed.

“You’re making that up,” Jason said, looking at the trees as the whirlwind calmed.

Kira shook her head. “No, crow augury is taken seriously by some witches. I noticed right away that you keep four pairs. Four could mean the coming of a male child, or an event surrounding a son. Got anything you’re not telling me?”

Jason barked a laugh. “No, no sons on the way.”

Kira nodded, surprised by the odd flash in his expression as he denied the possibility.

“If we count the crows upstairs as two sets of four . . .” she said, pausing to spook him.

“Two sons? I don’t think so.”

“No,” she said. “I mean if we count them as eight crows, we’re talking about a life-altering experience to the good, a glimpse of heaven.”

“Heaven?” Jason scoffed. “Though I wouldn’t mind having someone return from there for a quick Halloween haunt, you know, to help our cause.”