Last Impressions (The Marnie Baranuik Files) (37 page)

John Briggs-Adsit in the full-dress uniform of a union soldier, with his mother in black, beside an open coffin. Poppa Briggs-Adsit was in the casket, surrounded by flowers. Mother was wearing the lachrymatory vial on her necklace. It appeared as if John’s father’s eyes were open, but they looked goofy, and when I squinted at them, I could just make out that someone had painted fake eyes on his closed eyelids. “Uh, Harry? Still there?”

“Mmhmm,” he said, lilting his murmur to make it a question.

“What kind of weirdo paints eyes on a corpse’s closed eyelids?”

“Funeral pictures, I am assuming. Is the family in the picture with the deceased? Are they dressed in mourning clothes?”

“Yes,” I said. “And it’s friggin’ creepy.”

“It was not uncommon in the late eighteen hundreds, love.”

I flipped the picture over. John’s father’s name was also John. He passed on October third, 1866. Schenk passed me another. John
Junior’s funeral, closed casket, only a few months later. Mother
Briggs-
Adsit wore the same dress to her son’s funeral as she had to her husband’s, with the addition of her son’s brimmed hat from his army days.

I stared at that picture for a long moment, and the woman in the picture stared back at me accusingly from beneath that brim. Breath stolen, I felt the weight of her in the room.

“Mama-Captain.”

There were several other photographs of her, in formal wear,
with the incongruous hat set upon her curls, first black, then grey, her face grimmer and sterner with the passing of years.

“Did she ever take it off?” Schenk asked, and I wondered if he was thinking aloud.

“I’m coming home,” I told Harry on the phone. “We’re done here.”

“Ducky?”

“Yes, Harry?” I said, handing Schenk back his pictures, watching him put them away in the envelope.

“I should thank you not to bring home any visitors tonight,” he said, and then he was gone.

I crooked my finger at Schenk and said, “Kitchen. Got more gloves?”

He gave me a fresh pair from his pocket. I snapped them on.
“Okay, Schenk. You got your skull, your pictures, your whine cork on a mope rope,” I shrugged. “Clearly, I suck at exorcisms, and I can’t do a thing if you don’t want me to get my herbs out before the
forensics
team has been over here. I’m confident that there’s no demon
lingering in this apartment. Scarrow can banish the spirits from this place, if
that's needed. Part of me would love to take all this haunted
evidence
with me on my big date with the freaky priest to the Blue Ghost Tunnel and watch the whole universe go
polter
-
ghosty-kablooey,
because clearly that’s what would happen. The other part of me wants nothing to do with this shit, especially not around my Harry, and would be on the next plane to the delightfully secluded tropical island of St. Fuck This if I thought it was an option.”

Schenk nodded. “Way ahead of you.” He poked the necklace gingerly with a thick finger, experimentally. “Sure you don’t wanna take this with you? I hate to hear a woman cry.”

“I don’t need it, I’ve got my own.”

“Lying to a cop, now,” he said. “
Tsk tsk
.”

“You don’t know,” I said. "I like to keep mine filled with herbs and spices, because the tears of widows are fucking bland
otherwise."

I went back through the maze of boxes to the filth-ridden kitchen, Schenk following, as I poked at light switches on my way. It
seemed way too dark in the room, but the sun was fading early, and another storm was rolling in. The skull sat on the counter where we’d left it.

He popped it into a large evidence bag without incident, gathered up all the bags he'd tucked this, that, and the other into,
and then took a long, hard look at me, squinting. “Sure you’re okay, Cinderblock?”
He cocked his head and very kindly did not voice that my upper lip was starting to puff up, though I’m sure it was a detail he didn’t miss.

I touched my right eye gingerly and winced. “I need to go home and get face deep in a bag of ice. You tell
no one
about me getting my ass handed to me by what may be a little old lady ghost, got that?”

“Oh, I’m going to tell
everyone
.” He smirked, walking me out of the apartment. “First on my list, journalistic genius Jerry Formick. I see the headline now:
Ghost Granny Wales on Great White Dork of Psychic Investigations
. That story would get that asshole off my back for a solid fucking month.”

“Hey, stop swearing, twat-cracker.”

“
You
stop swearing, hose-smoker,” he shot back.

I gave his arm a playful shove, but I had as much chance of moving him off his feet as I did tipping a tractor trailer over.
“Officer, he’s swearing!” I tattled to the uniform on the way out.

“Sorry.” The officer cracked half a smile and shrugged a
whaddya-gonna-do
for me. We locked up and handed the keys off to
the constable, who had gone back to checking replies to his undoubtedly witty Facebook status message and barely noticed our exit.

Dear Diary: I shouldn't speak ill of the dead, but every dead person I met today, except Harry, was a complete fuckpocket. There's a whiny soldier, his abusive cunt of a mother, and a disrespectful pervert who should have been on an episode of Hoarders before he got locked up for life for desecrating corpses. I want to go home and watch Wesley fuck my slippers because it's less awful. Love, Marnie. PS: Longshanks is a geek.

“TRY NOT TO
show off too much, Harry,” I said from inside my ski
mask.

Harry had not dressed down for his big meeting with the priest. He had, if anything, gone overboard; under his heavy coat he wore a frilled silk poet's blouse that matched the thundercloud grey of his eyes, the high lace collar of which poked up around his pale throat. The coat nearly covered the long, lace cuffs at which he insisted on tugging. A black silk top hat rested on his lap. Immaculately shaved
but for his upper lip, he’d switched fake mustaches to one that reminded me of Rhett Butler.
His sandy brown hair smelled of
pomade, and though he had neglected to refresh his 4711 cologne, I could still smell it on my own face from when he’d last hugged me.

“
Moi?
” Harry’s eyes went wide with feigned indignation. “Show off? My brazen little sugarplum, do you presume to suggest that I am an ill-mannered braggart?”

“No, not at all,” I drawled, dripping sarcasm. “Why, faced with a man of the cloth, I have no doubt you’ll be restrained to the point of being invisible. How will I ever draw you out of your shell?”

Harry’s smile narrowed to a grim line, and he flashed fang.
“Only, I
should be the perfect gentleman-monster your lad expects me to be, love.”

My lad?
I sighed. “If you eat the priest, you’ll get a bellyache and a speckled tongue.”

“We don’t know that for certain,” he retorted, making sure his
coat was buttoned to the chin. He shot his cuff and glanced at his watch. His little fidgets weren’t fooling me; Harry was not interested in his appearance right now, or the time. Harry could think of
nothing but the priest. It had been a while since Harry’s last encounter with a man of the cloth, and that had been on far friendlier, if sadder, terms, at the funeral of a young girl who hadn't deserved what happened to
her. Tonight, Harry was spoiling for confrontation, and I felt
decidedly like a prize to be won. Probably, that was his intention. Probably, I could have felt flattered that he wanted to fight over me. Probably, it shouldn't have made me want to tell both Harry and Scarrow where to stick their territorial urges.

So, it was definitely time for some people skills. “It’s too cold out here,” I said. “This was a bad idea, Harry. Sorry.”

“Steady on, cricket.”

“Mr. Merritt can drop me off at the café,” I said, “and then take you back home. How would that be, eh?”

“I do so enjoy your expressing yourself in your mother tongue,
eh
?” He winked at me. “Must you wear that ridiculous balaclava?”

I pouted; though it was hidden by the black fabric, I’m sure he knew it. “It hides my fat lip and makes me feel like a bank robber. And you can give me lip about this Canadian accent when you stop sounding like a Victorian dandy, Lord Highbrow McAntiquated.”

Harry turned to me so that he could show me how grandly he was rolling his eyes. “The night’s weather is indeed quite unfriendly,
but you must allow that I have braved much worse. Have you
forgotten that I was in London for the terrible winter of 1715?”

I played along, comfortable with not knowing what the hell he was talking about. “But of course I keep track of all your movements,
Harry. All four hundred years of bopping around the planet.” I
mimed
licking a finger and cheerfully flipping through an imaginary
logbook.
“Oh, right, how could I have forgotten? That was the year the
Thames froze over.”

“The Thames has frozen over many times, Dearheart, but I
cannot remember a time the ice heaved so high. Flood tide beneath the ice, a veritable wall of slow-moving destruction. Dreadful.” He smoothed the front of his jacket. “It ruined one of my favorite public houses, where a gentleman could find both a blazing hearth and warm drink of an evening. I’m positively chilled by the memory. ”

Mr. Merritt’s liver-spotted hand automatically poked at the dash and the heat went up a notch. He put on the blinker at a stop sign; we were the only car on the road, but Mr. Merritt liked to do things
by the book, I’d noticed. He came to a full stop, paused long enough for me to wonder what he was waiting for, and then turned left cautiously. Even with so much care the back of the hearse fishtailed
slightly.

“You’re going to catch the cold deep in your bones, tonight,” I told Harry. “You should go home.” My upper lip was still throbbing from getting cold-cocked by the ghost that afternoon, and I thought we could
both
use an evening at home in front of the fire, cozy in the
Winter Room, browsing the books and enjoying one another’s
company. There came a point in every investigation where I felt I’d taken too big a slice of the pie and I longed to withdraw, call it quits, circle the wagons and protect what little safety and sanity I had. My
I-Don't-Wanna
meter was edging towards that redline.

My Cold Company knew it, too. “Soon enough,” he assured me. “I would not be so ungallant as to abandon you to the night again,
especially after yesterday's watery misadventure and your
tumultuous
afternoon in that disgusting little urchin's abode. After some shadow-chasing with our host, I shall rush home to hot bath and
heavy robe,
the comforts of home, to apricate in the warm care of my fair sweetheart... only, you will have to change. I packed several lovely
nightgowns for you.” He nudged my leg with his. “I think the chocolate silk would be appropriate.”

“Distraction. Don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to.”

He gave a little caught-out shrug, and the Bond informed me that getting up to something was only the beginning of what he had in mind.
Unf
.

“Play nice,” I warned, but wanted him to do anything but once we had some time alone.

The teasing sparkle was again in his eye and he dropped me a wink.

“Suppose we do meet this spirit, again, Harry. The soldier.”

“If you’d allow me to counsel you in this matter, ducky, I would suggest that he may be our greatest confederate.” He blinked quickly and said, “Poor choice of words, I’m afraid… poor sod. Let us pretend I said ‘ally,’ lest we offend the chap.”

“An ally against his own mother, the slap-happy poltergeist?” I
thought of Harry’s descriptions of our soldier-specter, crouching on the floor, shrinking in the corner, and seeing him for the first time
myself, first a film, strengthening to a shadow, and then banishing him into
the closet with a single finger. How easily I'd made him flee. Easier than shooing a fly. “Why is he so scared? You know, besides the fact that he’s maybe been pulling a Norman Bates with his charming
mother.”

“We must ask him.” He tapped my gloved hand on the bench seat while Mr. Merritt navigated a poorly-plowed stretch of road. “And Norman Bates is not a fair comparison; Bates murdered his mother. I assure you John Briggs-Adsit never harmed a hair on his mother’s
head.”

I gave him a sidelong glance, remembering the hole in John’s skull. I hadn’t mentioned any of the evidence to Harry; since I’d
started working for the PCU I’d kept more of my work to myself, as much as that was possible given our Bond, as a matter of habit. “Do you think she might have hurt him?”

“His current sense of self, as I perceived it, was scrambled by the
muddle of being lost,” Harry said. “’Tis not easy, being lost, and
spirits
become confused, but if you were to tell me that, near the end of his life, he had cause to fear his mother, I would not be surprised in the slightest.”

“How do we get through to him? He’s been appearing to me, so he’s got something to say.”

“Relate to him as you would to any living person,” Harry said softly. “I must not, myself. It is best that I keep my distance. If he cleaves too strongly to my sympathetic presence through Kinship of
the Departed, he will never move on to the light, and will be
Earthbound for all eternity. That is a frightful fate for an innocent soul, and one I do not wish to add to my litany of damnations.”

“How will I relate to him?” I said with a discouraged sigh. “I don’t know what his life was like. I’m not a Civil War buff. I don’t
know what
his situation was, other than a few sketchy facts and some
guesswork.
What am I gonna talk to him about, how syphilis is a major
bummer? I
certainly can’t chat about
my
life, or how my extra-large Tim
Horton’s cup won’t fit in the microwave for reheating. Maybe we could bond over how much we disappoint our mothers. That'll be a hoot and a half, I bet.”