The Unseen (17 page)

“No plates, either?” Brendan said behind her, and she jumped.

“I have plates,” she said, defensively, and found all four of them, the sole occupants of one cabinet. Brendan leaned in the doorway, swigging from his beer and watching her as she scooped rice and beans and heavenly smelling enchiladas onto plates. She could feel his eyes on her.

“All right, enough of this mysterious act. What are you doing here, Mickey? What made you bury yourself in Durham, North Carolina?”

She put down the fork and turned, bewildered. “Why do you keep calling me Mickey?”

He looked at her with surprise. “MacDonald? Mickey D?”

She stared at him. “You’re …”

“A nut, I know, thanks, you’re not the first to say so. You didn’t answer my question.”

“What are
you
doing here?” she countered.

“Ah, well. There was a little problem with a loan shark.”

She was wondering how to take that when he laughed. “Same as you, Mickey. The wait times for tenure track professorships in California are longer than the lines at Disneyland. You gotta follow the money. It hasn’t been a total loss, though,” he added, and eyed her in a way that made her warm and angry at the same time.

He held her gaze until she was breathless, then said “Dinner,” authoritatively. He tucked the six-pack under one arm, picked up the plates, and carried them out into the hallway, toward the front door. She had no choice but to take the rest of the food and follow.

The enchiladas were more than decent, more like divine, and the Coronas and the balmy darkness and the gentle motion of the rockers lulled Laurel into a dangerously comfortable haze.

They ate in almost silence at first, then Brendan leaned back in his chair to study her.

“So, Mickey D. Why are you resisting this so hard?”

“Resisting what?” she said, flustered. “What is
this?
”

“Only possibly the greatest adventure of your life.”

“Oh, only that,” she said, secretly charmed.
And that’s the problem,
she reminded herself.

He shook his head at her. “Please, it’s so totally obvious you’re just as into all this as I am. So what’s the holdup?”

She hesitated, not sure how to voice her thoughts about how badly the experiment might have turned out. She’d had no time to process her own thoughts yet.

Brendan pressed on. “First of all, what spooked you the last time we talked?”

Laurel felt her cheeks burn in the dark, remembering with humiliation how she’d run out on their last meeting after she’d realized Tyler had conned her with his phony stories of the haunted auditorium. But she wasn’t going to mention to Brendan that she’d been bamboozled by a student.

“I think a little too much of all this is just wanting to believe,” she said. “Researchers and subjects … they get excited and lose all objectivity. They miss the real life explanations that are right in front of their eyes.”
The dream
hovered … but she pushed it away hard.

“Absolutely agreed,” Brendan said instantly. “Absolutely no doubt. But doesn’t that make just as—well,
almost
as good a study? How desire and expectation influence perception?”

“It could,” she conceded. She’d had the thought herself.
But that was before …

“And you’ve gotta admit that it’s all a hell of a lot more interesting than vocational testing.” And before she could protest, he barreled over her. “And don’t start in on your human potential speech.” He leaped up out of the chair, startling her. “This is exactly what we’re talking about: human potential! The farthest reaches of human potential.” He was suddenly on his knees in front of her, gripping the armrests of her rocker. “Psi doesn’t happen all the time. It might not ever be scientifically quantifiable. But
it happens.
”

She could feel the excitement vibrating off him, like magnetism, like heat. He slowly released the rocker and stood, then sat back against the porch railing in front of her.

“So what’s the problem, Mickey? What’s bothering you so much that you’d turn away from an opportunity like this?”

And so she said it. “I told you. I think something bad happened in that experiment. I think that study might have gone terribly wrong.”

Brendan was quiet, so she continued. “Leish died the same month. And I’ve been looking for the student researchers: Subject A, Subject B, Subject C …”

Brendan frowned. “The high scorers? How did you do that? There was no information on them at all.”

She thought of Uncle Morgan, and hedged. “I looked at photographs in the 1965 yearbook—candid photos taken in the parapsychology lab—and then I tracked down those students. I mean, I tried.”

“How do you know the students in the photos were the ones from the Folger Experiment?”

“I don’t,” she admitted. “But I identified all the students in those photos, from yearbook photos, and I think I’ve found”—she hesitated—“two of them. There were two students who took work-study in the Psych department for the Spring semester of 1965.” She paused. “Victoria Enright and Rafe Winchester. They both dropped out of school entirely in late April. I haven’t found any information at all about them after that.”

Brendan was frowning, very focused on her. “I’m still not following. Why would you think those particular students were involved in the Folger Experiment?”

“Work-study,” she said again. “In the serious poltergeist studies I’ve read, the investigators went into the field. That was Leish’s M.O. If you’re right, and Leish came to the Rhine Lab to investigate the occurrences at that house in the police report, that would mean they couldn’t take ordinary classes—he’d have to put them into a work-study program. And you said yourself Leish’s name appeared on work-study requisition forms—”

“You’re assuming a lot,” Brendan pointed out. “But all right. I like how you’re thinking about work-study; that makes a lot of sense. So these students took work-study and then dropped out of school in April …”

“They didn’t just drop out of school. They dropped off the map entirely.” Of course she was leaving something significant out, but she wasn’t ready to talk to Brendan Cody about Uncle Morgan. She’d promised, and she agreed with her mother: she didn’t want to involve her uncle at all if she could help it; he was too fragile. Aloud she continued, “I haven’t been able to track down Victoria Enright at all, but I talked to Rafe Winchester’s sister.”

She relayed the conversation, watching Brendan grimace at her imitation of Mrs. Hapwell’s religious rants.

“Rafe ended up on the street, and the family lost track of him entirely.”

Brendan shook his head. “It was the sixties, Mickey. A lot of kids ended up on the street, or gone for good. And Atlanta was the South’s equivalent of Haight-Ashbury. But let’s say you’re right. Something big happened in that experiment. Don’t you want to
know?
”

He suddenly kicked the porch railing. “I am so sick of this burying crap. Isn’t that what we went into all this—psychology—for? To
un
bury stuff? My family, God, they take the prize. Illness, addiction, alcoholism: don’t talk about it, don’t even look at it—”

Laurel sat very still in her rocker, taken aback by the outburst.

Brendan stopped and pulled himself together, with effort. “Sorry. Sorry. What am I talking about, anyway? We don’t even know if the house exists.”

“It does,” she said suddenly.

He turned and looked at her. She hesitated.
Moment of truth.
Then she plunged ahead. “It does. I’m pretty sure it does. And I’m pretty sure how we can find it, if it’s still standing.” Going back to Uncle Morgan was a last resort, but she thought they might just be able to do it without involving him. She took a breath. “Tax records.”

He stared at her, uncomprehending.

“We need county tax records for 1965. For Folger. The Folger House.”

For the longest moment he was just staring at her, then he was on his feet with his arms thrown up in a “touchdown” gesture.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

He picked her up before nine the next morning and they drove in his Prius through the downtown of brick factories converted to condos and bistros and malls, toward Raleigh, the state capital. She couldn’t help teasing him about the car. “How Bay Area is this, anyway?”

“The ozone is shot everywhere, doll face,” he lasered back. “Not just in the People’s Republic of Berkeley.”

“I think it’s sweet,” she said innocently.

“Ahh, she thinks I’m sweet,” he grinned. And just as suddenly he switched gears on her, metaphorically speaking. “So how did you know?”

She knew what he meant, but didn’t respond until he added, “About Folger? That it’s a house?”

She looked out the window beside her at the—well, at the trees, that ever-present wall of green, as she quickly calculated how to respond. After Uncle Morgan’s distressed reaction to her last round of questions, she didn’t want to bring him into this any more than she had to. She felt an overwhelming sense of protectiveness toward him. Finally, she said aloud, “I’d rather not say, yet. I have a source, but I’d like to find it this way, if we can.”

Brendan looked at her sideways, one eye still on the road, and finally nodded. “Okay,
partner,
” he said dryly, giving her exactly the stab of guilt she knew he’d been trying for, but she pretended not to register it.

I promised,
she thought to herself.
We can spend one day looking without going to Uncle Morgan.

They’d already looked up and printed out the tax records for all Folgers in every county in North Carolina. It was the magic of the Internet: Four hours on the computer last night had yielded 492 property owners named Folger in North Carolina. Brendan and Laurel had eliminated everything built after 1965 and still had 241 properties. They had the addresses for every one.

But Laurel had a feeling the house wasn’t that far from where they were. It was just the way Uncle Morgan had said it, as if he were talking about a neighborhood place, a house he was familiar with. Laurel thought they might get lucky and find an obliging county employee who’d be able to help them narrow the search.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Brendan said from the driver’s side.

She regarded him obliquely. “I hope you’re feeling charming, today,” she said.

“You want charm, lady? I’ll give you charm.”

The courthouse in downtown Raleigh was a square block of marble. Laurel was shocked by the age and alienness of it—a classicist mausoleum of a building on the inevitable town square, canopied by the inevitable centuries-old oaks. And the inevitable Civil War Memorial to boot, some scarily realistic soldiers brandishing guns.

As they climbed the wide steps to the copper-framed doors, Brendan muttered beside her, “We aren’t in California anymore, Toto,” and she shot him an understanding look.

The lobby was all marble. The corridor was all marble. The Office of Records was all marble.

The woman behind the marble counter had on an electric blue dress stretched across a monumental bosom and wore half-glasses perched on a broad, freckled nose. Her hair was straightened and sprayed into an imposing helmet, and the nameplate on that bosom read EUNETTA, and Eunetta looked nohow interested in helping a couple of white professors stick their noses further into someone else’s business than they belonged in the first place.

She listened with a faint air of disbelief and disapproval while Brendan explained that they were looking for any houses owned by anyone named Folger in the year 1965.

“In Wake County?” Eunetta asked warily.

“In any county. Just in North Carolina.”

“Oh,
just
in North Carolina. Child, there are one hundred counties in North Carolina,” she said with relish.

“That many? That’s a lot.” Brendan flashed that grin at her, undaunted. “Sounds like we’re going to need some professional help here, then.”

“Mmm-hmm,” she remarked in that patented Southern prayer-meeting grumble that Laurel had come to find so charming—when it was not directed at her.

“I don’t suppose there are back tax records that you can look up online,” Brendan said, a tad wistfully.

Eunetta harrumphed. “You are right about that. There surely are not.”

“And there’s no central depository for tax records for the state of North Carolina.” Brendan looked increasingly crestfallen.

“No, sir. None.” Laurel suspected Eunetta was beginning to enjoy herself.

“So if we were looking for a house owned by a Folger somewhere in North Carolina in 1965, we would basically be shit out of luck, records-wise.”

“That’s
all
you know to be looking for?” Eunetta shook her head. “You best get ready to do some driving, son.”

Brendan glanced at Laurel. “Well, it’s a big house, we know that. There was an attached servants’ quarters.”

“And there was trouble in the house,” Laurel said. “A police report was filed of a—strange—incident.”

“Police got called out?” Eunetta looked at her appraisingly. “You don’t need to go driving around for that. Police reports are public record. You got a date?”

Laurel was momentarily flustered until she realized Eunetta meant the date of the police report.

“Yes,” Brendan practically leapt forward. “March 13, 1965.”

Eunetta shrugged. “So, you call around to the county police departments.”

“Except that we don’t know the town or the county,” Brendan said, frustrated.

Eunetta looked them over. “You have no clue where to start looking in the whole state?” Incredulity dripped from her voice.

Brendan was about to speak and Laurel said, “We think it’s fairly close to Durham.”

Brendan turned to her. Eunetta’s eyes narrowed. “How close?”

“An hour’s drive or less,” Laurel heard herself saying, and had no idea what made her say it. Brendan shot a questioning look at her, which she ignored.

Eunetta considered. “The family was named Folger?”

“We think so, yes,” Laurel said. She had a sudden, uncanny feeling Eunetta was about to be worth her weight in gold.

“And it was a rich family, a big house?”