No Ghouls Allowed (20 page)

My hopes fell. As much as I was afraid of the truth, I so wanted to hear from Mama
right now that it almost physically hurt. I needed reassurances that she was close,
even if that was the most she could offer me. And then I thought I had a better idea.
“Can you ask Sam to bring Everett Sellers forward?”

Heath’s eyes cut to me again. “That’s what I was just asking.”

I tapped my temple. “Great minds . . .”

Heath began to smile, but it quickly faded and his gaze went over my shoulder again.
I knew he was listening to what Sam was saying. “He won’t be able to bring Everett
forward,” he said.

“Can’t find him?” I guessed.

“No,” said Heath. “Everett didn’t make it to the other side. He went another way.”
And then Heath made a point of looking down and I let out a breath. “No way!”

But Heath was nodding. “It was Everett’s choice. He turned away from the light and
ducked through to the lower realms. That’s all the history Gramps is able to get.
He says the records for Everett on his side close with his turning away from the light.”

“Whoa.”

“Says something about Everett, doesn’t it?” Heath said.

“It does,” I agreed, a bit disturbed by the revelation. It was incredibly rare for
a child to turn away from the light and head to the lower realms instead. I mean,
I could’ve seen Everett remaining grounded, but Sam was telling us that wasn’t what
happened. Everett had chosen the dark, evil energy of the lower realm, and that let
both Heath and me know that there must have been something dark and perhaps even evil
within Everett.

After a moment I worked up my courage a bit more and said, “Ask Sam if he can ask
Mama what happened on that day that Everett died.”

Heath adopted that faraway expression again, and I knew by the way he pursed his lips
in a frown that we weren’t going to get an answer we liked. “He says she won’t tell
him.”

“Then she knows what did happen that day,” I said softly.

“I think she does, Em.”

I fell backward onto the bed and stared up at the ceiling. I was starting to feel
lost and abandoned by the most precious spirit I’d ever known, and it hurt like hell.

Then Heath said, “Sam says Gilley might turn up a clue tomorrow.”

That got my attention and I sat up again. “Can he see how this will play out?”

The future can be a bit murky to souls on the other side. Sometimes it’s clear as
day and they make wonderful fortune-tellers. Other times, the future is riddled with
possibilities, and no one way looks clear enough to be able to predict. I had a feeling
we were currently wading in waters more murky than clear. “He says he sees answers
coming, but they’re from unusual sources. He says he thinks we’ll have everything
we need to put the puzzle pieces together, but throughout all of it, we need to be
careful of the Sandman.”

“Does he have anything else to tell us that isn’t obvious?” I joked.

“Nah, he’s pretty much sticking to that. Except that he’s pointing to your foot and
telling you to take care of that.”

I knew what Sam meant. I’d had this tendinitis issue for a couple of months and I
was a bit worried that I might be doing lasting damage to the tendon. I knew what
I had to do to fix the issue too, namely, adjust my stride, change my running shoes
to ones with more arch support, and soak my foot in an ice bath after every run, but
that hurt something awful, and I tended to skip it more than I should. “Got it, Sam,”
I said, vowing to take better care of myself.

“He’s pulling back,” Heath told me, and a second later I felt the energy in the room
shift, as if someone had closed a window.

After Sam left, Heath and I talked late into the night. I was quite tired but not
sleepy and I suspected that it was the same for Heath. I think we finally nodded off
around three a.m. and I was in a very deep sleep when I heard the sound of loud knocking.
I struggled to come fully awake as the knock sounded again and I half fell, half clambered
out of bed to see who was at our bedroom door.

“Who is it?” Heath groused, his face in the pillow. From the sound of his voice I
thought what he meant to say was, “Make them go away!”

I grabbed my robe from a chair, threw it on quickly, and opened the door to find Mrs.
G. standing there. “Oh, Mary Jane, I’m so sorry to disturb you, but Linda Chadwick
is here to see you. Did you want me to offer her some coffee and a piece of Danish
while you pull yourself together?”

My eyes were blinking rapidly as I tried to come up to speed. Linda was here? Now?
Why? And there were Danishes? “Uh, yes, please, Mrs. G. Thank you. Tell her I’ll be
right out.”

She smiled kindly at me and was gone; then I hustled around to my suitcase to fish
out a clean pair of jeans. I glanced over at Heath; he and Linda had never met, but
I’d told her all about him. I had a fleeting thought to introduce them now, but my
sweetheart was already back asleep, snoring softly.

I paused in the bathroom long enough to quickly brush my teeth and comb out my hair.
It refused to cooperate without a proper shower, so I settled for sweeping it back
into a ponytail.

When I arrived in the kitchen, I saw that the clock on the wall read eight o’clock.
No wonder I was tired. “Hi, Linda,” I said shyly.

She was sitting next to Mrs. G., a steaming cup of coffee and a half-eaten, delicious-looking
homemade raspberry Danish in front of each lady. “Good morning, Mary Jane,” Linda
said, pushing a smile to her lips. Her eyes betrayed her nervousness, however, and
I hated that we were in this awkward state with each other.

“Well! I’ll leave the two of you to your visit,” Mrs. G. said, scooting back her chair.
“I must get out to water my garden before it gets too hot out.”

Before she left, Mrs. G. poured me a cup of coffee from the carafe in the center of
the table and plated me one of her Danishes. My stomach gurgled hungrily. I’d skipped
dinner the night before, and wished I’d had a sensible meal instead of that ice-cream
cone.

“I went by your daddy’s place this morning,” Linda said, as if yesterday’s outburst
had never happened. “He told me you were staying over here with Gilley.”

“Daddy and I get along better if we’re not under the same roof.”

“Oh, you don’t have to tell me, honey,” she said with a laugh. “I know how your daddy
can be.”

From anyone else, that statement would’ve gotten my dander up, but from Linda it wasn’t
in the least bit offensive. Daddy
could
be ornery and hardheaded. “So what brings you by?” I asked as I took a sip of coffee.

Linda had been picking at the edge of her pastry. “I wanted to apologize.”

“Oh?” I said lightly.

Linda rolled her eyes. “Don’t you dare be coy with me, Mary Jane. I
invented
that sweet little ‘Oh?’ and don’t you forget it.”

I smiled. “Sorry. Force of habit.”

“Yes, well, I really
do
want to apologize, buttercup. You see, your mention of the . . . of the . . .”

“Sandman?”

Linda shuddered. “Yes, that, well, it just threw me, is all. I had no idea you knew
about him.”

“How do
you
know about him, Linda?” I knew it was bold of me to ask, but I figured the worst
she could do was yell at me again, and I thought I was better braced for that reaction
this time.

She eyed me in that way that said I was a wicked, mischievous child who ought to know
better. “I can’t tell you anything,” she said to me.

I set down my coffee cup. “He’s come back, you know.”

Linda’s back stiffened. “Who?”

“The Sandman.”

She blinked. “That’s impossible.”

“Impossible because Mama somehow managed to banish him to the lower realms?”

Linda’s mouth opened and closed, but she offered me no further insight. “Mary Jane,”
she said, wrapping her hand around mine, her face now pinched with concern. “You must
swear to me that you won’t try to communicate with this evil spirit. He’s dangerous,
baby.”

“It’s too late, Linda,” I said to her. “I’ve already had two encounters with him and
he knows I’m DeeDee’s daughter.”

My mother’s best friend put a hand to her mouth. “Oh, please tell me that’s not true!”

“It’s true, Linda,” I said. “You must’ve heard about the incident at the mental hospital
yesterday. That was the Sandman, and that’s how I got roughed up enough for you to
notice when I showed up at your back door yesterday.”

For several seconds Linda simply stared at me in disbelief, and then I saw her gaze
travel to my cheek where the scratches and the bruises were, and even more scratches
on my forearms. And suddenly, she was in motion. “I have to go,” she said, pushing
back her chair and making haste to grab her purse.

“Linda,” I said, jumping to my feet. “What’s going on? Come on, you have to tell me!”

But she wasn’t having any of it. She practically ran to the door, pausing only to
say, “Promise me you won’t go looking for the Sandman,” she said. “Please?”

“I may not have a choice. And if you don’t tell me what you know, Linda, he may have
the advantage against me.”

She stared hard at me and I could see the wavering in her eyes, but then she simply
shook her head and went out the door, barely pausing as she passed Mrs. G.

“Hey, honey,” I heard Heath say while I watched her drive away. “Everything okay?”

I shut the door and turned to him. “We have to figure out who this Sandman is, and
how to shut him down, and we have to do that
today
, Heath. Today.”

While I showered, I gave Heath a brief summary of what’d happened with Linda. “She
knows something about how your mom is linked to all this,” he said from his place
at the sink, where he was shaving.

“She definitely knows something.”

“How do we get her to tell us?”

I turned off the faucet and wrapped myself in a towel. Pulling back the shower curtain,
I said, “We don’t. I know Linda, and when she promises to keep a secret, it’s as good
as locked up in Fort Knox.”

Heath wiped the remnants of shaving cream from his face and said, “Then what do we
do?”

Before I could answer, the bathroom door flew open and Gilley stood there with a big
fat Danish in his hand. “Aww, jeez, you two! You’re half-naked! Get a room, would
you?”

I glared at Heath. “What’d we say about locking the door?”

“You said to lock it, and I forgot,” he replied sheepishly.

“Gil,” I snapped, pulling the towel tighter around me and waving at him to shut the
door. But Gilley was currently ogling my boyfriend and stuffing his piehole with breakfast.
“Gil!”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said, finally tearing his gaze away from Heath’s bare chest and scantily
covered rear. “Breslow is here to pick you guys up, so y’all better get a move on.”

I reached for my phone on the counter. “He’s early!”

“Well, how about I feed him a bagel and coffee and stall him?”

Heath squinted at the last few bites of pastry resting on Gilley’s napkin. “Didn’t
your mom make Danishes?”

Gil shoved the last bite into his mouth and gave a muffled, “We’re all out.”

With that, he closed the door and I made sure to walk over and lock it behind him.

When I turned back around, Heath was pouting. “I was looking forward to one of those
Danishes. They smelled awesome.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell him they tasted even better. Instead I rushed through
a quick blow-dry and got dressed while Heath headed out to fish around for some breakfast.

I found Breslow in the kitchen with a mug in his hand and his back to the corner as
Mrs. G. did her best to grill him for information about what we’d all gotten ourselves
into.

As Gilley’s mom tended to worry a lot, we’d done our best to keep the explanations
brief and skip many of the more troubling details, but she was a wily one, that Mrs.
G., and she knew there was more to the story.

“Ready to go?” I said loudly when I entered the kitchen, and Breslow jumped to his
feet.

“Yep!” he said, setting his cup in the sink and tipping his hat to Mrs. G. “Thank
you kindly, ma’am.”

She frowned at me. I suspected she’d been getting close to having Breslow tell her
what she wanted to know. Heath was already waiting on the front porch, nibbling on
a banana and a power bar. Sloppy seconds to the homemade Danishes.

For his part, Gilley was lying on the porch swing, rubbing his belly and looking as
lazy and happy as a well-fed tomcat. I tapped his foot and said, “Hey. Have you done
any research on that Ouija board like I asked?”

“Oh, yeah,” he said with a yawn. “I’m all over it.”

“Gil,” I said levelly.

“M.J.,” he replied, mocking my tone.

“I’m serious. I need to know where that board came from. We have to trace the roots
of the Sandman and look for a weakness or something.”

Gil sat up and rubbed his eyes. “He comes from Louisiana.”

That took me by surprise, and I couldn’t tell whether Gil was making a joke or being
serious. “Are you playing with me?”

Gil rolled his head around on his neck, which made several unsettling popping sounds.
“No, I’m not. I was up most of last night searching and finally found a pretty obscure
reference to the Sandman and that Ouija board from Louisiana back in the nineteen
twenties.”

“How obscure?”

Gil went back to lying down. “An article in the
Times-Picayune
from nineteen twenty-two described how police were called to the scene of a house
in the Garden District. A wealthy eccentric widow named Olivia Baumgarden had hosted
a séance that night, and she’d invited a few friends over for cocktails and a bit
of adventure.

“According to the article, Baumgarden had hired a spirit medium named Lady Madelyn.”
I tensed. Madelyn was my mother’s full name. My father and her mother were the only
ones who ever called her that, however. The rest of the time she’d gone by DeeDee.
“Lady M. claimed to be able to call up not just dead people, but powerful forces capable
of leaving no skeptics in the room,” Gil continued.

“What happened?” Heath said over my shoulder, and I realized he’d come up behind me
and was listening to Gilley.

“Things went south shortly after ten p.m. One of the party guests, a retired general
of some note, had apparently snapped, and he’d attacked several of the patrons including
the host, Mrs. Baumgarden, who’d, tragically, suffered a broken neck.”

“He killed her?”

“Yep. Witnesses claimed that something weird had happened to the general as Lady Madelyn
manipulated her planchette over her elaborately painted Ouija board. He suddenly started
growling, foaming at the mouth, and he was quoted as saying, ‘The Sandman cometh for
you!’”

“Then what?” I asked when Gilley didn’t continue.

“Then nothing. That’s where the article ends. The general was tried for murder, convicted,
and hung a year later.”

“So what happened to Lady Madelyn and the board?”

“That’s where the trail ends, sugar. I looked late into the night for another reference
to her, but so far, nada.”

“So, somehow the Ouija board made it from New Orleans in the nineteen twenties to
Valdosta in the nineteen seventies,” Breslow said over my other shoulder. Apparently
everyone had come to gather around Gil while he told us what he knew.

“Wait a minute,” Heath said, and he disappeared back inside only to come out a minute
later with Everett Sellers’s missing-persons file. “I was reading this in the car
yesterday while you were in with Linda, Em, and . . .” Heath paused to flip through
several pages of the file. “Where was that? Oh, here. Okay, so look at this.”

He handed me the file and I looked down at the sheet of paper, which appeared to be
a summary of Mr. Owen Sellers’s business practices. “Everett’s dad owned a shipping
company based in New Orleans,” Heath told Gilley and Breslow while I scanned the sheet.

I stared at the summary and wondered, “Could the board have belonged not to the Porters
but to Everett Sellers?”

“It’s possible,” Breslow said.

Turning to Gil, I said, “Uh, Gilley?”

“Yeah, yeah, you want me to research the Porters and see if they had any ties to New
Orleans. Got it. Right after my nap.”

I was tempted to insist that Gil get off his duff and do the research, but then I
remembered he’d said he’d been up most of the night trying to find a reference to
the Sandman, so I let it go. “Thanks,” I told him.

With that, we left Mrs. G.’s and Breslow talked about which leads we should focus
on. “Today we definitely need to stop by Glenn Porter’s,” he said.

“I think it’s more important to talk to Sarah than Glenn,” I said.

“It’s not as easy to talk to Sarah as you’d think,” Breslow told me, and he seemed
uncomfortable about something.

“She’s not dead, is she?” Heath said from the back, and I thought he was only half
kidding.

“No, no, she’s alive. She’s just not quite all there, if you get my drift.”

I glanced over my shoulder at Heath and he shrugged. “We’re not getting your drift,
Beau. How about filling us in?”

“A few years back Sarah Porter had a nervous breakdown. She’s a sweet lady, but she’s
not all there,” Beau said, tapping his temple. “She startles super easy too, so we’ll
have to tread lightly with her.”

“Okay,” I agreed. “But we still need to talk to her about that playroom. If she didn’t
witness or wasn’t involved with the crime, she had to have known about the body in
the playroom. I mean, all those toys in there belonged to a little girl, and she was
the only little girl in the house at the time.”

“I hear ya,” Beau said. “But let’s tackle Glenn Porter first.”

A bit later we had come to a stop in front of an old home that’d been converted into
an office building, which sat atop a hill overlooking lovely manicured lawns and well-kept
gardens and was ringed by a fleur-de-lis capped wrought iron fence. The exterior of
the building appeared freshly painted a light gray-blue with gleaming white trim and
as a whole it represented a most charming facade.

The sign at the front read
GLENN
PORTER
,
LLC
.

“What does Porter do?” I asked as we got out of the car and headed up the first set
of stairs leading us to the front door.

“Mostly real estate investments,” Breslow told me. “At least that’s what I read in
the paper about him a few years ago.”

“Have you ever met him?” Heath asked.

“Oh, yeah. Stopped him for a speeding ticket a year ago. He fought it in court and
won. He was pretty smug about it too, the bastard.”

I squared my shoulders. “Well, let’s see if he’s as smug about a forty-five-year-old
body showing up in his old house.”

We entered the building and I took note of the rather dim interior, the creaking floors,
and the smell of a very old house.

“Hello, Deputy,” said a husky female voice. We all turned toward the sound and discovered
a gorgeous woman with ebony black hair, bright blue eyes, and a porcelain white complexion.
I took one look at her and wished I’d put on a little more makeup. Heath took one
look at her and turned away, pinning his eyes on anything in the room but her.

Great. He thought she was crazy beautiful too; otherwise, he wouldn’t have made such
a show of averting his eyes.

“Uh, hello,” said Breslow, quickly pulling off his hat. “How’re . . . uh . . . how’re
you today, ma’am?”

She stifled a smile. The deputy was clearly also a bit thrown by her beauty. “I’m
fine. What can we do for you today, sir?”

Breslow’s face went blank. It was like a switch was flipped and he lost the ability
to think. I stepped forward and said, “Hi, I’m Deputy Holliday, and these are my associates,
Deputy Whitefeather and Deputy Breslow. We’re here on a matter of some urgency. Is
Mr. Porter in?”

“Oh! Of course, let me just go in and tell him you’re here. Won’t you please have
a seat?” She made a motion for us to sit in the small area near her desk, which held
a fainting couch and two wing chairs. The boys took the wing chairs, and I was left
with the couch. It wasn’t lost on me that the chairs faced the gorgeous woman’s desk,
while the couch was angled away from it.

We’d barely gotten comfortable when the woman came back and smiled sweetly at us.
“Mr. Porter is just finishing up a phone call. May I interest you in a cup of coffee,
or water, or maybe a soda?”

“I could go for a cola,” Breslow said.

“I’m good,” Heath said, again keeping his eyes trained on anything in the room but
her. His gaze landed on me and I gave him a pointed look. “Okay, maybe a cup of coffee?”
he said, misinterpreting my expression.

I rolled my eyes before turning to her and saying, “I’m sorry—what was your name?”

“Chloe,” she said. “And I’m the one who should be sorry. I should’ve introduced myself
to y’all.”

“Don’t worry about it, Chloe. I’d love a water. Either bottled or tap is fine.”

She moved over to a small credenza at the opposite end of the room and got our drinks
ready before placing them on a tray and bringing them to us. She moved with a beautiful
fluidity, and Breslow practically swooned when she handed him his soda can and accompanying
glass.

“You look very pretty today,” Heath said to me immediately after he lifted his drink
off the tray.

I did my best not to give in to the temptation to roll my eyes. “Thank you, Heath.”

“Your water, ma’am?” Chloe said.

After taking the water and thanking her, I hoped like hell Porter wrapped up his phone
call soon.

I got my wish a very short time later when the office door Chloe had disappeared through
earlier opened and out stepped a very handsome man in an impeccably tailored suit.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” he said, brushing a hand through his dark blond locks
and flashing the most winning smile at us.

I turned to Heath. “You look pretty today.”

He chose to ignore me and focused on standing up without spilling his coffee. Breslow
and I also got to our feet and Porter said, “Deputy, won’t you and your associates
please come in?”

Breslow took a step forward but then seemed to hesitate, unsure what to do with his
glass of soda.

“Would you like me to hold on to that for you?” Chloe asked.

Beau’s cheeks went scarlet red. “That’d be great!” he said with a bit too much enthusiasm.
He seemed to realize it because he immediately cleared his throat and added, “Thank
you, Zoe.”

Her solicitude never faded and I had to hand it to the girl for keeping nothing but
a pleasant smile on her lips. As we headed toward Porter’s office, I nudged Breslow.
“By the way, if you work up the courage to ask her out later, you really should get
her name right.”

He looked almost panicked. “What? Why? Isn’t her name Chloe?”

“Yes, Deputy, but you just called her Zoe.”

He rather subtly slapped his forehead right before turning into Porter’s office. I
glanced at Heath, who was behind me, and he grinned and shook his head. He’d caught
the deputy’s slipup too.

When I turned to face forward again, however, I nearly walked right into Breslow,
who’d stopped unexpectedly just inside the doorway. “Beau?” I said, tapping his shoulder.

But he wasn’t moving. And then it hit me why he’d stopped dead in his tracks. “What
the . . . ,” I heard him whisper, perfectly mirroring my thoughts as I took in the
interior of Glenn Porter’s office.