Haunted (47 page)

He bent and kissed her forehead. "I owe you an apology."

"You do?"

"You were right about Theo all along. I was too stupid to listen to you. Again."

“And now you're stuck going to the dance with the witch?"

"How'd you know about that?"

"Gee, Dad, I'm your daughter. You can't keep stuff like that from me. So, you gonna stand her up?"

"No, no, of course not. But you were right. Now, what's the ruckus out here?"

"The chief's here. He's in his uniform."

"He's at work?"

"Yeah, I guess. He wants to talk to you. Something happened. I don't know what."

The chief was pacing the width of the parlor as David and Amber entered.

"Craig?"

Swenson turned and David saw that his face looked pale and tired, not lively and ruddy like it usually did. "Amber?" Swenson said. "Maybe you should leave."

"Do I have to?"

"Not if your dad doesn't care."

"She can stay."

"The Willards are dead," Swenson said heavily.

"Both of them?" David asked, too surprised to think.

"All three of them." Craig shook his head. "Looks like Minnie and Mickey died some time in the early hours of yesterday morning. Calla, this afternoon. Perp was still in the house."

"How?"

Swenson glanced at Amber. "Murder. A real mess."

"Amber's okay," David reassured him.

"Sexual assault. All three of them. Savage beating with a whip, Shayrock thinks it was a cat-o'-nine-tails with metal tips. Then he chopped them up." Swenson turned a little green. "Chopped them into little bitty pieces."

"Do you know who did it?"

"That's why I'm here--"

"My dad wouldn't kill anybody in real life." Amber suddenly grabbed David's arm protectively. "He only does it in books, and if you think--"

"No, no, Amber, I'm not accusing your father."

Silently, David sent a prayer of thanks to whatever gods were looking out for him.

"We have a description of the perp and it doesn't make any sense, Amber. That's why I'm here. You got any whisky, Masters?"

"Not a drop. Coffee?"

"Decaf?"

"I'll get it," Amber said before he could ask. "But don't say anything good until I get back."

Craig sat down heavily on the couch and David eased onto the easy chair opposite. "What's going on?"

"Bea Broadside, who's about as big as a quarterback and twice as mean, is our witness. She was going up the walk when the perp exited. He reached for her and she says she tried to knee him in the groin. Says she hit nothing but cold air."

"Jesus."

"Joseph and Mary. Says he walked right through her. Not around her. Right through her. Says he felt real cold."

David said nothing.

"Shayrock says you have his photo album?"

David nodded.

"I need to borrow that picture you told me about on the phone yesterday. The one of Christabel and that nasty-looking sailor?"

"Sure, but why?"

"You said the doll you think Minnie might have taken was a ringer for the photo?"

"Absolutely. It's a man named Peter Castle. Evidently he was Christabel 's main squeeze. Why? What does this have to do with the Willards?"

"I wish I knew. Everything, I think. Broadside's description of the perp was very detailed. It sounds like she saw this Castle guy. I want to show her a picture."

"I'll get it."

Amber returned with the coffee as David rose to get the photo from his bedroom. Before he reached the stairs, he heard her pumping the chief, who wasn't telling her anything. He returned five minutes later to find Amber still trying to get Swenson to talk. "Kiddo, I forgot to tell you, Rick Feldspar called earlier this evening. He wants you to call him back."

"Oh!" She jumped to her feet. "Can I use the phone in your office?"

"Go ahead." After she was gone, David smiled. "I hope Rick's home." He extended the photo. "Here you go."

Craig looked at it, shaking his head. "I'll be damned." He paused. "I need to ask you a weird question."

"Shoot."

"What did you do with the doll of the headless sea captain?”

"Eric insisted on burying it by the lighthouse. The body and the head. He told you--"

"The captain wanted his head." Craig gave him a tired smile. "I can't believe I'm buying this shit."

"Frankly, I can't either. Myself, as well as you," David added.

"The captain wanted his head." Craig shook his head. "Eric says he's a lot easier on the eye now."

"He is." David hesitated, then decided to go on. "He visited last night."

"What?"

"Came to the door. Knocked." David briefly told him the major details.

"Well, if we're not all heading for the rubber room, then I'd guess your captain was warning you about this guy." Swenson tapped the photo. "I can't believe what's coming out of my mouth. Of course, I can't believe what I did this afternoon, either."

"What did you do?"

"I messed with the evidence," Swenson confessed as he unzipped his jacket and reached inside. He withdrew a large Ziploc baggie.

"I was the first one on the scene. Broadside gave me her description and I left her outside with my deputy. I found this in the bathroom."

He extended the bag to David, who gasped as he saw the broken doll representing Christabel's lover. "She did have it. I don't believe it."

"Neither will anyone else. I shouldn't have taken it, but I made a snap decision." He chuckled grimly. "I thought about the explanations and I snapped. There was a lot of that red powder around the doll--you said you wanted it analyzed, so now you're in luck. Anyway, after Broadside described the perp and said all that stuff about him being cold and walking through her, well… My best guess is that they were killed by a frigging ghost. If I put that in a report, it'd be my ass and my badge."

"Why did you ask about what I did with the other broken doll?"

"A hunch. Broadside claims the guy didn't walk very far, and I swear to Christ, twice since I've had this on me, I thought I saw somebody lurking nearby. Probably nerves, but… You said the captain came all the way to the house?"

"Yeah. But he didn't come in. I thought he'd want to."

"His sweetheart's haunting the upstairs, isn't that the story?"

David nodded.

"Was there anything in those journals about ghosts being tied to the dolls?"

"Not exactly, but they weren't really detailed. The souls are supposedly tied to the area--the grounds, whatever--until Christabel is destroyed. It would make sense that they'd be tied to the dolls."

"It would. Which leaves me in a hell of a quandary. I was going to leave this with you." He gestured at the doll. "But maybe I should take it back to the station."

"Take it out in the middle of nowhere. That's the only way we'll know it's safe." David told him. "Throw it off Widow's Peak."

Swenson smiled. "A fitting end." He rose and David walked him to the door. "Masters, you ever feel like you're losing your mind?"

"These days, most of the time."

"Me too. I'm going to drive out there, toss this damned thing, and get back to work. See you."

"Say hello to the captain for me."

Swenson turned and gave him a sick look, then went on out to his cruiser.

David stood on the porch and watched him do the job, then went back inside once the chief had safely driven past the house.

"Dad?" Amber appeared as he approached his office. "Are you sure it was Rick who called? He said he didn't."

"He was happy you called, right?"

"Yeah, but--"

"I'm starved, kiddo. You want to go out for a pizza?"

"You bet."

Standing there waiting for Amber to grab her purse, he felt old, so old. The house was draining the life from him in dribs and drabs, draining his creativity with demands from a reality so skewed that no one could deal with them. Away from the house, he'd ask Amber how she was holding up. He didn't have more than a quarter of Mephisto Palace left and he thought that once the Romero interview was done, closing up and renting a nice little place in Pismo might be just the thing to help him finish. He understood how Commodore Patton felt when he said he could no longer stay here. He understood all too well.

August 22

Body House: 5:48 P.M.

“It's going to be a pleasure to work with you, Mr. Romero."

Dragging his gaze up from the bodice of Theo Pelinore's nineteenth century gown, Jerry Romero, nearly as tan and rakishly dashing as he appeared on television, smiled, favoring her with the full extent of his dimples. "Call me Jerry. And don't worry about your identity as channeler being revealed, Theo." His dark Latin eyes, as famous as his dimples, returned to her platter of breasts. "Your secrets are safe with us."

I'll bet. Theo's bosom, David thought, would be the talk of the Come As You Were dance, and she knew it. And loved it. He wasn't jealous, just filled with a disgust that had been building for nearly a week, ever since he found out she'd told Romero everything she knew about Body House and its secrets.

After David discovered this, he'd called her and tried to talk to her about it rationally, tried to get her to explain her actions, but she'd blithely brushed him off. In a way, it was the best thing that could have happened, because since then he'd made himself unavailable, holing up and working on Mephisto Palace like one of those proverbial fiends. He had put the finishing touches on the novel shortly before lunch today, and by now it was winging its way to New York.

All week, the house had been as quiet as a tomb: no sounds of laughter or piano music, no smell of jasmine or rot, no cold spots. He hadn't even had any erotic dreams, at least none that he remembered.

The only sign of paranormal activity came during a brisk walk he'd taken out to Widow's Peak and back. He was fairly certain he'd caught sight of Captain Wilder high on the lighthouse catwalk, but the phantom wasn't there when he looked a second time and he would have chalked it up to his imagination if Eric hadn't reported seeing the captain several times.

David smiled to himself: if things remained as quiet as they were now, Jerry Romero would be very disappointed and David would be quite relieved.

In a way, though, the quiet of the house had been more disturbing than its usual tricks. In the last week or so, during the first truly quiet times, David had had the feeling that Body House was holding its breath, watching him and waiting. That feeling had increased tremendously over the last few days, but his utter involvement in the book had helped him to ignore the sensation most of the time. Several days ago, it had become harder to ignore when he'd realized that Eric, too, was having a reaction to the apparent calmness of the house. The young man had constantly found excuses not to work inside its walls. David couldn't get him to say much about it: Eric claimed only to be unsure of why he felt the way he did, and David decided be was telling the truth, mostly because he doubted that Eric was capable of lying.

The Willard murders were still the talk of Red Cay, and Romero, since arriving earlier this afternoon, had asked several questions about them, but seemed fairly uninterested, thank God. David had talked to Craig Swenson and Keith Shayrock enough in the past week to know that Craig's not-by- the-book actions had been a fortunate choice. The powder had turned out to consist of blood, old blood, and Shayrock had listened, skeptical but fascinated, as Swenson and David had haltingly revealed what they knew about the dolls.

That the chief of police and the town doctor were virtual conspirators with him in this insane circus, secretly tickled the hell out of David, and even as he smiled to himself, he felt slightly sorry for the well-respected men. If either of them could dig up any kind of rational explanation, he was sure they'd embrace it like a long lost love--and he didn't blame them: he wanted an explanation pretty badly himself. He'd always thought of supernatural horror as something that arose in daydreams and nightmares, fantastic thoughts born of facts and twisted to the imagination's wishes. It seemed to be the other way around now.

The townspeople, caught in the grip of the nightmare of the Willard murders, were quiet too. They spent the nights locking and relocking their doors as they reassured themselves that the four-man police force and three auxiliary officers patrolling Red Cay would catch the murderer, while on the docks, the fishermen scrutinized all the incoming boats, watching for the mysterious and bloodthirsty sailor in black.

If they only knew... But, fortunately, they didn't, because Bea Broadside had unknowingly cooperated with Craig Swenson's wish to cover up the paranormal aspects of the case.

After a single bout of controlled hysteria at the scene of the crime, where she told police the supernatural aspects of the man in black, she had said no more about it, stoutly claiming that the horrible sight of the bodies had made her imagination run wild. Swenson, relieved, figured that the woman didn't want to be thought of as a nut any more than anyone else in this town--except, of course, he remarked to David, for the Beings of Light, who thrived on nuttiness.