Ciji Ware (14 page)

“Have you seen something Ms. Reporter?” he asked quietly. Corlis kept her eyes glued to her bowl of uneaten gumbo as a silence lengthened between them. “Well,
have
you, sugar pie?”

“Have you?” she countered. “Ever?”

“Once. At least I think so.”

“You
have
?”
she asked, relieved. She was astonished that a former member of the U.S. Marine Corps would admit to such an un-macho thing. Then, to her horror, she suddenly felt her eyes growing moist.

“Corlis?” she heard King say, his voice filled with concern. “What’s the matter, sweetheart?”

“Oh, thank God you
said
that,” she whispered in a strangled voice.

“Called you sweetheart?” he asked, puzzled.

“No,” she said, flushing again.

“Oh!” he grinned. “You mean what I said about once seeing something I couldn’t explain in an old house?”

“Yeah… the ghost thing,” she said, surreptitiously wiping her eyes with her paper napkin. “Because I’ve truly wondered since the first day I saw you in New Orleans at your sister’s wedding, if maybe… just maybe… I was starting to go stark, raving mad.”

King abruptly stood up from the dining room table and strode across the Persian carpet into Corlis’s minuscule kitchen.

Jeez Louise,
Corlis thought,
I hardly know the guy, and now he must think I’m a loon!

King removed the top to her bottled water jug and poured the liquid into a glass. The next moment he’d returned to her side and handed it to her.

“Here… drink this. You’re white as a sheet.”

“Like I’ve seen a ghost?” she replied with a rueful smile. She obediently took a sip, relieved that at least he hadn’t branded her an out-and-out crazy woman. In fact, she was amazed to see an expression of genuine empathy play across his features.

“Well, I sure got the jitters when I thought I’d seen one.”

“You?
Where was that?” she demanded.

“One time when I was still living with my folks at our family house on Orange Street in the Lower Garden District. The place was built in 1842 by the Kingsburys in the period when the Americans were trying to show off to the French—who’d excluded them from purchasing real estate in the Quarter—that they could build beautiful houses, too.”

“And did you determine what it was you thought you saw?”

“Not really,” King said, shaking his head. “It was just a strange sense I had of someone being in the parlor,” he allowed. “I thought I saw a… kind of a
shade
glide by, reflected in a big mirror hanging over a chest of drawers.” King picked up his spoon once again and commenced eating a mouthful of gumbo. “The family lore has it that some early family member supposedly put a bullet in his head for reasons that have been lost over time. There’s always been talk that his ghost hangs around the liquor cabinet in the parlor, hoping to get a handout!”

Corlis couldn’t help laughing, relieved that King was speaking so candidly.

“Did you pour him a mint julep?”

“Now,
that
would have been a good idea,” he said, smiling. He shrugged. “People who work with old buildings experience this sort of thing all the time.”

“Truly?” she said. “We’re beginning to sound just like those weirdos on
Unsolved Mysteries
!”

“Well… what did you see?” King asked matter-of-factly.

Corlis heaved a sigh and shook her head.

“Look,” she temporized, hesitating. “I was under a lot of stress last year… and I get terrible headaches if I go too long without eating. Maybe I just—”

“What did you
see
?”
he repeated gently.

“I—I’ll tell you about it sometime,” Corlis said, feeling untethered and prone to weeping for some strange reason.

“You said you’ve been under stress,” he noted. “You mean, changing jobs, leaving your family… and making such a big move across the country?”

“Well… that…” she admitted, “and…” She paused briefly then plunged ahead. “I called off a wedding last year, just like your sister, Daphne.”

“You did?”

“Yes… only it wasn’t quite such a last-minute thing,” she said with a little laugh, though his startlingly blue eyes were boring into hers. “The invitations had stamps on them, but thank God, they hadn’t been mailed. Then I did a geographical.”

“A geographical? You mean, move here?” She nodded affirmatively. “I’d call that stressful, all right.” Then he asked, “How’d the groom take it?”

“To tell you the truth, I think the son of a gun was relieved.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because Jay Kerlin and I worked together and our television ratings were slipping. The media and marketing consultants sent out from New York strongly recommended that he hire a va-va-voom blonde to anchor the six o’clock news instead of me. I’d only just been promoted from a consumer reporter.”

“Ouch,” King said, setting his spoon down and listening intently.

“Yeah… a major ouch.”

“And so then what happened?”

“Two months before the wedding,” Corlis related with a rueful expression, “Jay started getting seriously pressured to demote me back to general assignment reporter—or they’d have
his
head as well. Then I found out he’d lied to me.” She toyed with her spoon, making circles on the surface of the rich gumbo, laughing shortly. “Turns out he’d been married three times before. He just forgot to mention
two
of his ex-wives. But, to be fair, marrying me would have been a dumb career move.”

“What a wonderful business you’re in,” King commented.

“No kidding.” She was faintly embarrassed to have revealed so much personal information to her old enemy. “So, you can see… with this woo-woo stuff on top of everything that’s gone on in my life this past year, I guess I need a bit longer to process it. Can you understand that?” she asked, her voice tight with an emotion she didn’t quite understand, but felt compelled to hold fiercely in check.

“Sure,” he replied quietly. “Sounds like you’ve had quite a year. We both have.” Then he reached across the table and touched her hand—a gesture that sent an amazing jolt up her arm. “Look, Corlis… who knows if these kinds of paranormal experiences are real? If it makes you feel any better about this woo-woo stuff, as you call it,” King reassured her kindly, “real estate agents deal with this phenomenon a lot in a place as old as New Orleans. I even know a guy… a Jesuit who left the priesthood and took up selling houses. Well, he gets called on all the time to do space clearings whenever something strange comes up.”

“Space clearings?” She was acutely aware that King’s hand remained on the dining room table, an inch away from hers. “You mean like exorcisms?”

“Sort of…” King said, nodding and taking a sip of water. “Nothing as dramatic as that movie… but I’ve had a couple friends of mine call him in when they bought old places that they were gonna fix up, and then had bizarre things start to happen.”

“And what does this ‘space clearer’
do
?”
she asked, amazed that two perfectly sane people were having this sort of a conversation. “Has he hung out a shingle as a New Orleans ghostbuster?”

“Dylan? Oh no. It’s done very much on the hush-hush. Like I said, he just comes over and clears the space.”

“Of
what
?”
Corlis persisted.
“How?”

“‘Entities’ he calls them. Meditates at the site. Says prayers… lights white candles… burns small bundles of herbs to purify the atmosphere—that sort of thing.”

“Sounds very Californian,” Corlis noted archly.

“Space clearing started long before the New Age was declared out west, darling girl,” King chided her. “It’s an ancient Chinese custom… you know…
feng shui
?”

“Is that the stuff where the Chinese orient hearth and home to face certain directions they think are lucky?”

“Something like that,” King confirmed with a grin. “It also has to do with getting rid of evil spirits or bad vibes—or whatever you want to call ’em. It’s a practice that’s been around for thousands of years.”

She was fascinated by King’s knowledge. “Besides the… entities, what else is he clearing out?”

“He clears places of any negative energies that can flow from the building itself… or the land it sits on, and even from artifacts, like an old sword, or a piece of antique jewelry—anything that was around when unhappy events or trauma occurred.” King cocked his head at an angle. “Haven’t you ever had the experience of walking into a place and wanting immediately to turn around and get the hell out of there?”

“Sure,” Corlis nodded. “Bad vibes.” Her thoughts went immediately to the closed, oppressive parlor on Royal Street with the corpse of Henri Girard lying still and sinister in its coffin. And then, of course, there was the evening just before she got fired.

King laughed. “Vibes? Now that
does
sound pretty Californian.”

“Ah, yes… bad vibes,” she repeated. “You mean like the night I arrived unannounced at my fiancé Jay’s apartment in the Hollywood Hills to confront him about having those three ex-wives, and guess what? There was Miss Sunny, the blond weather girl, wearing a filmy peignoir and being served a romantic candlelit dinner on a dining table that Jay and I had bought together for our new home! I, of course, gave him what-for and broke off our engagement, right then and there. You could have lit a fluorescent bulb with the negative vibes flying around that room!”

King scrutinized her closely and then said, “Wow. What a guy.”

“What a guy,” Corlis concurred.

“You know, maybe you should meet Dylan sometime… and ask him about space clearing this old place,” he said, glancing up at the high ceilings redolent with crown moldings stretching along all four walls. “He’s a hell of a nice man and has some amazing stories about the situations he’s been consulted on.”

“So you think he’s really legit?” Corlis asked.

“You mean… is Dylan sane? Not a crazy?”

“Not a con artist?” she asked skeptically. “A lot of people who say they’re mediums or claim to have occult powers are charlatans out for people’s money.”

“The guy was formerly in the
priesthood
,”
King explained patiently. “He’s completely sincere. But who knows if any of this stuff has merit?
You’re
the one who’s seeing things, remember?” He leaned toward her with a mischievous leer. “Now, why don’t you tell Dr. Duvallon exactly what’s been bothering you, my dear? Where have you seen spirits flitting about?” Again he glanced around her living room. “This place is pretty old. Gotta have a lot of stuff lurking in the shadows,” he added in sepulchral tones.

“King!” Corlis said with a shaky laugh. “As I said before, it’s probably just my bad habit of working long hours and not eating regularly.” She gave him a sidelong glance. “But I wouldn’t mind meeting this guy. Might make a good story for WJAZ… a real estate agent that doubles as a ghostbuster. What’s his name again? Dylan… what?”

“Dylan Fouché,” King replied. “And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t make a complete mockery out of him,” he added lightly. “He’s a friend.”

She protested, stung by his accusation. “I would never fry a source if what they told me was off the record!”

King gazed at her from across the dining table and said quietly, “No, I don’t think you would, Ace. Well, anyway, one of Dylan’s ancestors founded an order of African American nuns in New Orleans. The Fouchés are a very traditional black-Catholic family in these parts. Somebody in nearly every generation joined a religious community.”

“Why did he leave the priesthood?”

“When you meet him, you’ll see that Dylan marches to a
very
different drummer.” King shrugged. “The priesthood wasn’t the right fit for him, but he’s a tremendously decent fellow—and a first-rate real estate agent. He’s a huge supporter of the Live in a Landmark program where people who fix up derelict historic houses get some tax breaks.”

“I’d really like to be introduced to him sometime, and you have my word, King, I won’t do anything to publicly ridicule his work as a… space clearer. I’d just like to talk to him. Could you arrange it?”

King glanced at his watch and stood up from the dining table.

“Piece a cake,” he said. “Let me help you with these dishes, and then, do you want to go with me to the Preservation Resource Center down the street? I need to check in, and we can decide on a good spot to shoot the interview there tomorrow—after I show up in court at nine and get a stern verbal warning from Judge Bouchet.”

“You seem pretty sure of all that,” she said suspiciously.

“This is New Orleans, darling,” he said, poker-faced.