Strum Again? Book Three of the Songkiller Saga (33 page)

"I wanted to find out more about the site
where Lucien's house is. It's very interesting."

"Yes, he's written some articles on it
himself for the
Joplin
Weekly
, and a while back they did a spread on his
place for the
Kansas City Star's
Sunday magazine."

"I'd like to see that," Juli said.

"I can dig it up for you," her new friend
said, leading her back through rows of half-empty bookshelves that
made the library seem as empty as an abandoned church. The library
wasn't large, basically two big rooms with long windows overlooking
the street, a fireplace at each end, the rows of shelves, and a
couple of long tables with folding chairs around them. One older
man was reading a newspaper at the table. On the far side of the
table, a row of wooden slanted shelves held magazines, and beside
it something that looked like a clothes-drying rack had newspapers
draped over it.

The librarian fished underneath the shelf
where another stack of newspapers were and opened a wooden
compartment, pulling a sheaf of papers from it and laying them on
the table. "It's not hard to find anything anymore—this place is so
bare. We used to have a big staff, but now there's only the two of
us and a couple of volunteers. The last administrator completely
gutted the fiction section. Sold everything at the fundraiser for
twenty-five cents a book. Can you believe it?"

"You wouldn't believe what I could believe,"
Juli said fervently. "If I stick around, I'll tell you about it
sometime."

"I sure hope you do. I'd love to hear you
play that thing. What's your name anyway?"

"Julianne Martin. My husband George and I
used to be a duo until—well, the bottom sort of fell out of the
music business, which is a long story. George was killed, and since
then I've been out of circulation. I met Lucien while I was trying
to cope with George's death."

"Gee, that's tough. Well, maybe you came at
the right time to help him with Marley's death." She stopped
flipping through papers, keeping her finger in her place, and stuck
out her other hand. "I'm Flora Harmon. Good to meet you." A moment
later she crowed—quietly—"Here it is!"

Lucien's house, in full color, graced the
cover. "Rest for the Spirit," the title said. Juli opened it, and
on pages five and six another full-color spread with a tiny bit of
text showed Lucien in his glass-walled living room. On the next
page he was pictured handing a book to a slender, attractive woman
of about forty wearing slacks and a sweater. The woman's hair was
loose on her shoulders. Juli stared at it hard. There was something
very familiar about that woman.

Flora, looking over Juli's shoulder,
pointed. "That's Marley."

Lucien came in the front door just then,
looked around, then headed toward them.

"Hello, Lucien. I've just been learning from
Flora how famous your house is," Juli said pleasantly, to let him
know there were no hard feelings.

"Julianna, I cannot tell you how sorry
I am to have upset you. Of
course
I know that you were sharing with us your very best when you
sang your song. I just felt that, with the recent loss of our
friend, perhaps—"

"I understand, Lucien. Perhaps it's time for
me to move on."

"No, no, no. I won't hear of it. You must
come back home with me and let me make it up to you. I sent the
others home early and canceled my afternoon appointments. We have
much to tell each other, and I have not been a good host, I
fear."

"I'll get in touch with you about playing
for the library, Juli," Flora said. Juli waved good-bye,
half-absently. Her mind was still on the picture of Marley
Bethune.

On the way back to Lucien's, he said, "My
Scottish sweater looks good on you. I like to see a beautiful woman
wearing my things."

"I'm sorry," she said. "It was just so cold,
and I—"

"No, no, keep it. You came with very little.
Really, if you are to play for the library—I did hear Flora Harmon
mention that, did I not? We must get you some more clothing."

She said nothing. With so many trees around
the house, the yard and the creek were already in shadow by the
time they arrived back at his place. She helped him unload
groceries, and he fixed them delicious omelets with some sort of
herbs, a tossed salad, and a lovely, soothing tea.

"Now, my dear, you must tell me all about
your sojourn abroad," he said, reclining on his white sofa and
patting the place next to him. She was much less enthused about
telling him of her adventures now, however.

"I borrowed the sweater from your study. I
was noticing the computer programs above your console. Did you
write them?"

"Oh, yes. I've been doing the
most
interesting studies on the
parameters of the trance state. You were always a wonderful
subject. You seem tense."

"I am," she said.

"Let me help you relax."

"No, really, I think I want to go for a walk
around the house before it gets too dark."

"Oh, now that's an excellent idea. I'll go
with you. Let me get a jacket."

He was gone a long time, and she slipped out
the French door onto the deck. The wind was blowing the bare
branches together with a clacking, creaking sound, and the little
stream seemed agitated. She started humming under her breath "Banks
of the Ohio."

A movement caught her eye down by the
stream, and she opened the door and shouted, "Hey, Lucien, I'm
going to start now. Catch up, okay?"

Her hands were shoved deep in her pockets as
she skipped down the paving stone walkway leading from the deck to
the creek bank. "And only say that you'll be mine / In no other
arms you'll twine," she sang the words to the song she'd been
humming as she wound her way as quickly as possible into the trees.
"He took her by the lily white hand / and threw her into the river
strand. / She cried, Oh Willie, don't murder me / for I am not
prepared for eternity."

Just in front of her, where two trees had
stood with space between them a moment before, the space filled
suddenly with the form of a woman. It wavered.

From the house Lucien called, "Where are
you, Julianna?"

Juli heard her words echoed by the stream
and thrown back to her. ". . . murder me . . . eternity . . ."

The hair of the apparition was long and
wild, the legs separate, as if encased in pants. "Is that you,
Marley Bethune?" Juli asked.

"Murder me . . . ," the creek continued to
echo, the branches clicking out the rhythm.

The shape moved quickly forward, and Juli
followed as quickly, wishing for underbrush, wishing for cover.
Behind her Lucien's footsteps stirred the dead leaves. The sharp
wind bit her nose and cheeks.

The ghost moved to the place where she had
disappeared the night before, but this time she stayed and pointed
into the hillside.

Juli excused herself and walked into the
apparition, pulling the little spare spruce boughs aside. Beneath
them was a hand, moldering and green, with bones poking through at
the knuckles.

Another hand, hard and crushing, grasped her
shoulder. She turned to face Lucien, whose face was impassive in
the moonlight.

"That's why you put wards all around the
house isn't it, Lucien?" she asked. "To keep the ghost from
bothering you. But there must have been others before Marley. Tell
me, are you the Black Widower or just a copycat killer?"

"You wound me, dear girl, to think me
capable of anything short of originality. Marley and the others had
their uses—as you would have had yours had you restrained your
curiosity long enough. Now, I think, you should return with me to
the house and write a note to Flora regretting that you will be
unable to play at the library because your friends elsewhere need
you."

"This kind of thing is really bad karma,
Lucien. You know that don't you? You're going to come back as a
cockroach for sure."

"No, dear girl, I shall come back even more
powerful than I have been in all previous lives, and you and the
others will be reborn as my servants."

He'd been herding her to the house as he
said this, a dagger in his hand. Between the wind and the trees,
the night was far from still. The front of the house was darkened,
but suddenly a light dazzled their eyes.

Juli, who had been a hero often enough in
the ballads to know a break when she saw one, leapt sideways and
back, slamming her head into Lucien's chin and knocking his hand
away from her before twisting back toward the stream.

"Mr. Santos," a voice called from the deck.
"It's Sheriff Snider. I've come to talk to you about the
disappearance of Marley Bethune."

* * *

"Well, my, wasn't that convenient?" Barbara
asked.

Ute shrugged. "Just made sense, really.
Flora got to thinkin' about Juli's suggestion that Lucien be called
in as a psychic to contact the Black Widowers victims, and the
sheriff was following up on that. Just happened that ol’ Lucien
knew a damn sight more than the sheriff figured. He probably would
have gone on foolin' everybody even longer if Julianne hadn't
showed up. See, her bein' a real psychic and able to communicate
with the ghost made things a lot easier for poor Marley."

"I suppose she had to testify and all
that?"

"Yeah, but she wasn't real necessary once
they found Marley's body and started puttin' together all the
evidence Lucien had magically obscured before. Meanwhile, Juli did
her gig at the library, and when she went to explain to Lucien's
old therapy group, she ended up singin' songs to them to comfort
them for their problems, and they asked her if she'd keep on
meetin' with them.

"She got a little famous then, as a witness
in a murder trial, but the papers mentioned her connection with
Lucien's old group, and pretty soon therapy groups all over
Missouri invited her to come and play for them.

"Real music therapists who had degrees and
knew how music worked but had somehow or other forgotten any actual
pieces of music asked her over for dinner or to lunch or to parties
and by the way, bring her instruments. They were very pleased when
instead of resenting their transparent ruses to acquire her
expertise without recognition or payment, she actually seemed eager
to teach them the songs she knew.

"She sometimes had as many as four gigs in
one day, like the morning she spent at the special-ed class for
children with learning disabilities in a Little Rock school, lunch
at a hospice for AIDS patients, spent the afternoon helping a group
of therapists learn a group of ballads that did not involve
unrequited love, sudden violent death, or dismemberment, and spent
the evening leading a veterans group in antiwar songs. She had
become quite the therapeutic flavor-of-the-month.

* * *

" 'I hate do-gooders,' the Plague and
Pestilence Devil said. 'Next thing you know, she'll be doing a
benefit for research.'

" 'Not on my station, she won't,” said the
Disinformation Devil, who always wore shiny brown shoes and
sunglasses and kept his hair mowed short.

" 'I got her, though,' the Plague and
Pestilence Devil said. 'After all that singing, I'm sending a
little strep virus to get her. She'll have such a case of
laryngitis, she won't even be able to whimper.'

"Well, the Plague and Pestilence Devil, or
Peepee as he was sometimes called by his associates, knew his
business, and the next time he caught Julianne singing to some of
his victims, he had a sick kid give her a big smooch that left her
sounding about as loud as that one hand the Zen people were always
talking about clapping.

"Unfortunately for him, Peepee set up
exactly the wrong response in Julianne Martin. Now, it is true that
some devils are as insightful as a good mother, able to guess the
moods and motives, the layers of need beneath each emotional
response, and that's what helps them manipulate people so well. The
Debauchery Devil, for instance, was pretty good at that sort of
thing.

"Not the Plague and Pestilence Devil,
however. For one thing, he did his most effective work with large
groups and depended on the germs and viruses and in some cases evil
spirits that were his minions to spread whatever his current poison
was. Rats and bugs, pollens and air droplets, the blood cells and
secretions of his victims, were a lot more important to him than
psychology, though he had been employing it with some success to
cause stress-related diseases, but that was almost too easy since
music and fiction and a lot of the other escape routes people used
to use against their troubles had been cut off. But he never had to
actually try to cause the stress, so he didn’t worry about it a
lot—he was a little like a maggot—just waited until people started
to decay, then moved in to feed.

"So he didn't figure that when Julianne
Martin lost her voice, it was going to remind her so much of the
period during which she was deaf and cut off from all music except
that which danced around inside of her. It did, however, and after
her first panic attack was over, she caught a number eighteen bus
to the deaf school and, using American sign language, set up a
concert for that afternoon. It was a big success. She didn't sing a
word, but she tapped her foot to the music and signed so that it
looked more like an elaborate kind of hula dance than it did like
singing. She played her spoons and entertained the kids with her
limberjack and had the audience sign and tap along with her, and
those who could still speak or who had learned to speak sang the
words after she mouthed the chorus to them.

"The Plague and Pestilence Devil was so
disgusted he gave up, and Julianne Martin has never had so much as
a cold from that day to this, and that's the truth."