Smoke and Mirrors (9 page)

“Not really, no.”

She snorted. “You know what your problem is? You have no imagination! No connection to a world beyond the day-to-day.” This time she did bounce. “These are real ghosts, Tony!”

About to argue that there were no such things as real ghosts, Tony suddenly realized that this conversation had nothing to do with him. That he didn't have to be careful about being involved with the weird lest someone trace that weirdness back to Henry, who was helpless and stakeable during the day. Old habits died hard. And weird was Amy's middle name. “How do you know Caulfield House is haunted, then?” He propped one thigh on the corner of Amy's desk.

“Duh, how do you think? I did a Web search. There's been sightings by hikers. Well, sighting,” she amended reluctantly. “A young man dressed in white standing in one of the second-floor windows.”

And there was that blood-running-cold feeling again. “The bathroom window?”

Heavily kohled eyes widened. “How did you know?”

“Lucky guess. Most movies, the bathroom's haunted,” he continued when Amy fixed him with a suspicious glare. “You know, the whole body-in-the-bathtub thing.”

“Well, these bodies aren't in the bathtub,” she snapped. “Back in 1957, September twenty-sixth to be exact, Stephen and Cassandra Mills' father freaked and attacked them with an ax. They died in the second-floor bathroom. Then he killed himself!”

“How?”

Mollified by his interest, she leaned closer. “With the same ax.” She mimed embedding an ax into her own forehead.

So it was entirely possible there was a third ghost. Or a fourth . . .

“Was there a baby, too?”

“You mean . . . ?” More mimed chopping. When he nodded, she sat back and shrugged. “It didn't mention a baby on the Web site. Why?”

“No reason.”

“Yeah, right. Like I tell you about a double murder/suicide and you ask about a baby for no reason. Spill.”

“I don't . . .”

Leaning forward again, she dropped her voice below eavesdropping levels. “Spill or I tell everyone in the office what you told me about you and Zev on Wreck Beach.”

He glanced over his shoulder at the door leading to post production, half expecting the music director to walk through on cue. When he didn't, Tony locked eyes with Amy and matched her volume. “You wouldn't do that because you wouldn't want to upset Zev.”

“Hey, as I recall our Zev comes off pretty good in this story. You're the one who stars as the hormonally challenged geek.”

Vowing, not for the first time, never to go drinking with Amy again, Tony sighed. Unfortunately, hormonally challenged geek was a fairly accurate description and he didn't doubt for a moment that Amy would follow through on the threat. “All right, you win. I was standing at the top of the main stairs and I thought I heard a baby cry.”

“Too cool.”

“Not really.”

“Really.” Throwing her weight back in her chair, she steepled black-and-magenta-tipped fingers together and beamed. The beaming was freaking Tony out just a bit. Amy wasn't usually the beaming type. Scowling, frowning, glowering, yes. Beaming, no. “It's possible that the baby is Cassandra, that she isn't able to manifest the way Stephen does and this throwback to her infancy is all she can manage.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Ectoplasmic manifestations. Ghosts, you moron!”

She took a long, almost triumphant swallow from her coffee mug and exchanged it for the receiver as the phone rang. “CB Productions. What? Hang on a sec.” Swiveling her chair around, she bellowed toward the closed bull pen door: “Billy, it's your mother. Something about water getting into your comic collection!” There was a faint scream from one of the writers. Amy listened for a few seconds, then hung up the phone. “Apparently, his room in the basement flooded. Anyway, the ghosts . . . Stephen was a year younger, so he'll be stronger. You get points for hearing the baby—provided you heard what you thought you heard—but I suppose it's too much to ask if you've seen the young man in white?”

“You suppose right.” Which, technically, wasn't even a lie. “
I
don't suppose you'd be willing to do a little more research on the house? You know, just in case.”

“In case of what? The kind of ‘oh, no, ghosts are dangerous' crap that shows up in bad scripts? Ghosts are unhappy spirits caught between this life and the next. They can't hurt you, you big wuss.”

Someone had scooped a finger of wet paint off the wall of the second-floor bathroom and applied it to Lee's ass. Granted, no one had gotten hurt, but that did prove they could manifest physically. And physical manifestation wasn't good.

“I mean, it's not like they're poltergeists,” Amy continued. “They're not throwing things or damaging anything or you'd know about them by now. They're lost and confused and probably lonely. They might not even know they're dead.”

They knew. Their reaction to him seeing past the glamour had proved that.

“We're shooting in the second-floor bathroom this afternoon.”

“So?” Amy snorted. “It's not like they'll show up on film, and I very much doubt that anyone who works here is sensitive enough to . . . CB Productions, can I help you?”

If they didn't show up on film and he was the only one who could see them . . . No wait, Lee had seen them. Except, Lee hadn't seen them as they were. Did that matter? No. None of this mattered. Bottom line; haunted houses were not a good thing, and he was only a PA; he had to talk to the . . .

“Daddy! Ashley shoved me!”

For the second time that day, Tony felt his blood run cold. He matched Amy's terrified gaze with one of his own, she hung up the phone, and together they turned toward the outside door.

“I did not, you little liar!”

“Did! You just want to get to Mason!”

“He's not even here, Cheese!”

“Zitface!”

“Girls, try to remember this is a place of business.”

“And Zitface wants to do business with Mason!” Making kissing noises, a girl of about eight backed into the office both hands raised to ward off the attack of a slightly older girl.

Following them was Chester Bane. The six-foot-four, ex-offensive tackle, who ran every aspect of CB Productions with an iron fist and a bellicose nature to back it up, looked a little desperate. Tony didn't blame him. Ashley and Brianna's mother, CB's second wife, had convinced the girls that Daddy owed them big time for the divorce and they, in turn, had convinced CB. As a result, the man who had once made an opposing quarterback wet himself in fear could deny his daughters nothing. On the rare days they came to the studio, production went right down the toilet. Once or twice other, less easily recovered things went down the toilet as well.

Wait a minute.

He was supposed to be picking up the two kids playing the ghosts.

As Ashley chased a screaming Brianna through the door leading to the dressing rooms, CB lifted his massive head and met Tony's eyes. “You're driving them to the house, are you? Good.”

So much for the power of prayer. “Uh, Boss . . .”

“I promised them they could be on the show. They're thrilled about it.” His expression lightened slightly. “Unfortunately, I have paperwork to catch up on.” The sound of distant crashes propelled him toward his office. “You'll be the supervising adult of record. Amy has the paperwork. See that they have a good time.”

“Boss, I have to talk to you! About the house!”

CB paused in the doorway and considered him for a long moment while Tony tried to make the words metaphysical emergency appear somewhere in his expression. Finally, as the office lights flickered and faint shrieks of girlish laughter lifted the hair on the back of Tony's neck, he sighed, “Keep it short,” before disappearing into his office.

Amy snagged Tony's arm as he moved to follow. “You're not going to tell him about the ghosts, are you? He'll think you're nuts and you'll still have to drive the girls to the set!”

He pulled his arm free. Ghosts on Web sites were one thing. Ghosts in the drawing room talking to the actors were something else again. Hopefully. “You just don't want the terror twins to stay here.”

“Well, duh!” They winced in tandem at the distinctive sound of a clothes rack hitting the floor. “I should never have told you about the ghosts.”

It wouldn't have mattered, but Amy had no way of knowing that. Although given what was at stake, even if he hadn't seen Stephen and Cassandra large as life and twice as dead, he'd have used Amy's information and tried to convince CB they were real.

CB's office matched him in size and, like him, was functional rather than ornate. The single fish in the saltwater tank glared out at Tony as he passed. The fish had been a recent present from CB's lawyer and the day it was put into the tank it ate the three smaller fish still struggling to live in the murky water—an omen of biblical proportions as far as Tony was concerned. He paused about a meter from the desk, took a deep breath, and decided to get right to the point.

“Caulfield House is haunted.”

“So Amy informed me first thing this morning. You're wasting my time, Mr. Foster.”

“Yeah, Amy told me, too, but she didn't need to. I saw them—the ghosts.”

“You saw them?” When Tony nodded, CB laid both massive hands on his desk and leaned forward. “Is this because of . . . what you could be?”

“The wizard thing? No. Maybe. I don't know.” On second thought. “Probably. Point is,” he added hurriedly as CB's eyes began to narrow, “I saw them. Stephen and Cassandra, murdered back in '57 standing in the drawing room talking to Lee.”

“Mr. Nicholas saw them as well?”

“Yeah, but he didn't know they were dead.”

“How did you . . . ?”

“Bits of them were missing.”

“And Mr. Nicholas didn't notice this?”

“He wasn't seeing them the way I was. And I saw Stephen standing in the second-floor bathroom window.”

“
In
the window?”

“Well, you know, behind the window. I saw him from the front lawn.”

“So the house
is
haunted?”

“Yes.”

“Well. Thank you for keeping me in the loop, Mr. Foster.” He glanced down at the Rolex surrounding one huge wrist. “I'd like both scenes the girls are in shot this afternoon, so you'd best get moving. You may tell Peter I won't be available to take his calls.”

Given that Peter had been in a good mood when Tony'd left the shoot, Peter didn't know about the girls. He'd be calling, that was a certainty. And beside the point. “Boss, I don't think you understand. Haunted houses are dangerous.”

“In what way?”

He was kidding, right? “In the dead-people-walking-around way! People die in them.”

“No, people
have
died in them. Not the same thing. Have you any reason for your fear or are you basing your theory on bad movies and the world according to Stephen King? Have these ghosts done anything that might be considered threatening?”

“They put paint on Lee's tux.”

“Annoying, Mr. Foster, not threatening. Anything else?”

“Ghosts stay around for a reason. Usually because they're pissed off about something.”

“Like being murdered?”

“Yeah, like being murdered. And they want vengeance.”

“So they put paint on Mr. Nicholas' tux?”

“Yes! No. That wasn't vengeance, that was . . . I don't know what that was, but the point is we can't keep shooting in a haunted house.”

“Because something
might
happen?”

“Yes.”

“You might get hit every time you cross the street. Do you spend the rest of your life standing on the sidewalk?”

“Well, no, but . . .

“I've paid for the use of this house until the end of the week. If you have nothing substantial to base your fears on . . .” CB waited pointedly until Tony shook his head. “. . . I will not disrupt my shooting schedule because you have a bad feeling and dead people are hanging about the set.”

Was the man listening to himself? “Having dead people hanging about the set isn't normal!”

“Normal?” His lip curled. “Being beaten in the ratings by half a dozen so-called real people eating earthworms isn't normal, Mr. Foster. And dead people have got to be less trouble than one of Mason's ridiculous fan clubs.”