Ghost Of A Chance Part 23

"You're scaring me, Karma. Did I make contact?"

Two faces came into focus, one worried, one puzzled. I gave myself a mental shake and summoned up a smile I knew was feeble at best. "Sorry. I didn't mean to scare you, Savannah. I was just taken by surprise."

"Then I did make contact!" She leaned over to look at the sheets I held. "

'Release.' What did you say the name was, Adam? Beth?"

"Bethany," I answered, quickly scanning the rest of the sheets. There was nothing else, just her name and the word "release." My throat ached with the swell of emotions brought on by the sight of my cousin's name scribbled on a sheet of paper. Had she really made contact, or was this just some sort of a cruel trick?

"Do you think it's she who wants release?" Savannah asked, going through the other papers. "I a.s.sume you know who she is, Karma. Do you see anything else? Just the two words?"

Adam's intent gaze was on me. It took an effort, but I put the papers back onto the table, just as if they were nothing more exciting than sheets with scribbles on them. "Yes, I know her. She was my cousin. She died three weeks ago."

"Oh, my dear," Savannah murmured, moving over to put an arm around my shoulders. "I'm so sorry. How traumatic for you. But you must set your mind at ease; if I contacted her once, I can do it again. You just sit there and handle the paper changing, and I'll reestablish contact."

"No!"

The shout echoed, starkly abrupt in the sleepy, sunny dining room.

Savannah pulled her arm away from me. I took a deep breath, pus.h.i.+ng down all the confusion and pain that roiled inside me. "Thank you for the offer, Savannah, but I really think it would be best to ... to not go forward with this."

"It would be no trouble to make contact again, I a.s.sure you."

Adam's eyes were rich with speculation. I avoided looking at him, pus.h.i.+ng myself back from the table. "I appreciate that. I know you must both think I'm crazy, but my cousin is much mourned. I do not think anyone in the family would want her to be ... disturbed."

"Of course," Savannah said with silky rea.s.surance.

There was a faint questioning note that I ignored. If she was pulling a cruel joke on me, I wouldn't give her the pleasure of getting any further reaction. If she wasn't...well, the least said there was the best.

"Your cousin?" Adam asked. "What's she doing in my house?"

I shook my head. "I don't know. She can't be here; there's no reason for her to be here. Unless ..." The words trailed off as a sobering thought struck me.

"Unless you are grieving her loss so much that her spirit is bound to you and unable to find the peace she seeks," Savannah said in a voice br.i.m.m.i.n.g with sympathy.

"Perhaps," was all I said.

Savannah handed me the sheets of paper. "Well, it would seem that my spirit guide, Jebediah, was right again. There was something I needed to do this morning. I shall write up my experience here for the PMS journal-without including names, naturally. I'll just go take a few notes now, while it's all fresh in my mind."

She bustled off, leaving me alone in the room with Adam. For some reason, I felt a bit nervy, my hands smoothing the paper over and over again. "I expect you'll want to hear about Bethany," I said finally, disturbing the thick silence of the room.

"I can get the facts from my watch captain, if you'd rather not talk about it." His tone was sympathetic but matter-of-fact.

"There's no need. I can tell you the details quickly enough. My cousin's body was found in the rubble of an apartment complex that was being razed in order to be rebuilt. The coroner determined that she'd been raped, and dumped there. She was fifteen."

Adam frowned, his fingers twiddling with a pen. "I don't remember hearing about a murder of a fifteen-year-old girl. You said this was three weeks ago? I was out of the state then on marshal business, but I should have heard about it from my watch captain."

I walked to the window, closing my eyes for a moment at the sensation of suns.h.i.+ne bathing me in its warm embrace. Sunny mornings always reminded me of my childhood, when I'd wake up to a day filled with exciting possibilities. "She wasn't exactly murdered. The coroner said she killed herself, but I know it was a direct result of the rape. My cousin wasn't a tramp. She was bright, and loving, and..." My throat closed up.

Adam moved behind me, his hand warm on my shoulder as he offered awkward comfort.

"I know it won't mean much, but I'll do everything I can to help find the person who did that to your cousin," Adam said.

I gave him a small smile. "Thanks. I'll be counting on you."

19.

Adam was right, I mused sourly to myself a half hour later as I emerged from the kitchen.

"Well?" he asked, following me as I stopped at the dining room table, now clear of paper but bearing a suede gla.s.ses case that belonged to Savannah. I picked it up and clicked the lid open and closed a couple of times.

"You're going to make me say it, aren't you?"

"Yep. Was I right, or was I right?"

I sighed, turning to face him. "You were right, and I was wrong. Happy now?"

He grinned.

"Smugness ill becomes you." I made an annoyed noise and mentally ran over the interview we'd just conducted. "I will admit that I didn't really think that Tony and Jules had the motive, let alone the ability, to kill Spider, but dammit ... if they didn't do it, and you say Meredith didn't, who did? We've talked to everyone, and only Meredith stands out, as the one who was on the scene at the time. Other than Amanita, and I agree with you that she's not at all the type of person to commit a cold-blooded murder."

His grin faded as he pinched his lower lip and thought. "I haven't ruled out Meredith completely. I just don't see any solid evidence he did do it. He might have been physically on the spot, but he has no real motive."

"There's got to be something." I turned the gla.s.ses case over, a faint c.h.i.n.king sound causing me to pop open the lid and pour the contents out into my hand. They were the apports Savannah had been collecting.

"If there is, Meredith isn't likely to tell us." Adam looked at the stones.

"What are you doing with those?"

"Hmm? Oh, Savannah was saving them." I showed him the stones.

"Goodness knows why. Probably a memento or something. She must have put them in here for safekeeping. I'll give the case back to her as soon as we see her.

What about hypnosis?"

"For Meredith, you mean? I doubt he'd consent to it, and even if he did, we only have slightly over two hours before the seal dissolves. There wouldn't be enough time to thoroughly interview him, a.s.suming we got him to that point. Where did she get these?" he asked, poking a long finger through the apports.

"She picked them up from all over. I don't suppose you have any truth serum or anything like that lying around the house?"

Adam raised one eyebrow.

I sighed. "I didn't think so. If we could only get Meredith to spill his guts, I'm sure there would be enough evidence to convince even you."

"I'm not going to torture a confession out of him, if that's what you're going to suggest next." Adam held up one of the jade green apports, rubbing his thumb on it.

"Rats. And here I was hoping."

"Where did Savannah find these apports, do you know?" he asked, showing me the stone.

"The green ones?" I frowned, sorting through my memories until I got to the one of the discovery of Spider's body. Adam's eyes were icy bright as I met his gaze solidly. "I'm pretty sure she found them in the bas.e.m.e.nt. Is it important?"

His face was an unmoving mask as he gave the apport back. "I'm not sure."

"We'll have to ask her, then. And speaking of asking...Adam, I hate to do this, but ..." I tried to think of a way to phrase the question that wouldn't offend him. I opted for the straightforward approach. "This is probably none of my business, but how did you end up with this house?"

"No, it's not any of your business. Nor is it pertinent."

If the closed look on his face was anything to go by, I'd clearly stepped on his toes. But I had a feeling that the house was important in some manner. "I'm sorry for prying, but I've been wondering about it ever since Savannah spoke up. I thought perhaps there was something in the history of the house that would indicate why she would want it so badly as to try to get me to sell it to her a few hours after Spider's death."

His eyes turned positively glacial. "Why wouldn't she want it? It's a wonderful house. It's very much in demand; I'm always receiving offers from people who want it."

"I'm not saying it isn't wonderful. I just wondered what happened to the family who owned it. Did their line just die off? Or did they ask you to take over owners.h.i.+p?"

"There's nothing in the history of the house to interest anyone." His tone was final, but I wasn't one to let a little thing like that stop me...

"Then there will be no harm in you telling me how you got it."

"You're d.a.m.ned persistent, aren't you?" His jaw worked a few times before he spoke again. "The Walsh family used to own the house, as you might have guessed from its name. It was pa.s.sed down via a Walsh daughter to the McConnaughts around the 1920s. All of that family but a son died in a car accident. The son was an obnoxious, self-centered little p.r.i.c.k who deluded himself into thinking he had a great career as an actor waiting. I offered to buy the house from him, but he ... well, as I said, he was a p.r.i.c.k. He and I didn't get along, and he was determined to sell the house to someone outside of the family who wanted to raze it and subdivide. I saw to it that he sold the house to me instead."

" 'Saw to it' being a euphemism for what? You roughed him up? Bribed him? Something worse?" I had no problem seeing Adam as a staunch defender of the house but couldn't quite picture him doing anything truly reprehensible.

He was just too honorable for that.

He cleared his throat, a look of agonizing discomfort clearly evident on his face. "I used ... er ... a little Otherworld pressure. Unfortunately, his mental state wasn't quite what I had guessed it was, and he went insane for a little bit."

My jaw dropped. "You drove the man insane to get the house?"

"Just for a little bit!" Righteous indignation s.h.i.+ned in his eyes. "It's not as if he was the most mentally stable person in the world to begin with! I just didn't know that at the time, or I wouldn't have put quite so much pressure on him. Regardless, he got the money he wanted, and after a few years in an asylum, he went back to Hollywood."

"What happened to him?" I couldn't help asking.

Adam looked away. "I don't know."

"Uh-huh. Look, I may not have inherited my father's ability to read emotions, but I can read basic body language, and you're looking guilty as h.e.l.l right now. What happened to the guy?"

"I'm beginning to regret ever saying anything," he answered, tight-lipped with exasperation. "He died a few years later of a drug or alcohol overdose. I don't remember which. The point that you seem to be missing is that there was nothing untoward about my taking over the house, and there was nothing in its past to work up any suspicion."

"No, I admit, there doesn't seem to be anything there," I agreed.

He picked up my notebook. "If you're done poking your nose into trivial matters, we need to-"

"There you two are! Come quick. Something's happened to Meredith,"

my father said, racing into the room, then zipping past us and out the other side before I could so much as blink.

"Oh lord, what now?" Adam groaned, running after Dad. I dumped the apports back into the case and tossed it onto the table before hurrying into the hall and up the stairs. Adam and Dad had used the back staircase and were already in Meredith's room by the time I got there.

Pixie and Amanita stood outside the room.

"What's going on?" I asked.

"It's not my fault!" Pixie said quickly, her frown firmly in place. "All I did was peek in to see what the noise was all about. I found him like that! I didn't do anything!"

It was with no little sense of foreboding that I stepped around her and Amanita to look into Meredith's room. Adam and my father were blocking the view, but both moved aside as I entered. My father had one arm around Savannah, who had a hand over her mouth, her eyes huge with horror as she looked at her husband.

At first glance, there didn't appear to be anything awry with Meredith. He stood in the middle of the room with no wounds, nothing apparently amiss.

But as I took another step into the room, a glimmer of green s.h.i.+ned briefly in the air before s.h.i.+mmering away to nothing. Meredith glared at us all, strangely silent and unmoving.

I pursed my lips and looked at Adam. "OK, who drew the wards on him?"

"That is the question, isn't it?"

We both looked at my father.

"Don't look at me; I was with the boys, having a little chat about the good old days."

"The boys?" I didn't see either Jules or Tony present. "Where are they?"

"We're here, just a little low on energy." Tony's disembodied voice came from the direction of the closet.

"Do you want us to materialize?" Jules asked.

"No, that's fine." I raised an eyebrow at Adam. "I take it the binding ward is solid?"

"So far as I can tell, yes. Which means it was drawn by someone who knew what they were doing."

"It wasn't me!" Pixie declared from the doorway. "I don't even know how to draw a binding ward."

"Hmm," I said, walking around Meredith, as if that would give me an answer.

Adam looked at Pixie curiously. "You don't know how to draw a binding ward?"

She cast a distraught glance at me.

"It's a long story. I'll tell you later," I said to Adam in Poltern. "Just drop it for now, if you don't mind."

"I'm not sure ... a ward? I don't think I've ever heard..." Savannah's voice trailed off as her hands gestured helpless confusion.

"A ward is a sort of spell that is drawn by the pract.i.tioner. Most are benevolent, like luck, but there are also a number of protection wards that can be used to bind someone to a place, or silence them, or keep them from going through a door or window, that sort of thing."

"All I know is a protection one," Pixie said, her posture still defensive.