by Mary Bowers
“No.”
“Did Wanda?”
The question struck Rita as odd, and she looked at him. “I don’t know. Anyway, I’m not coming in with you. I don’t want to seem like a Nosey Parker. It was very nice meeting you, Teddy.”
He kissed her hand, the fool.
Rita waved good-bye and set off for home on foot.
* * * * *
A comfortably plump little lady in a tropical shift was coming out of the front door by the time we got to her curvy brick walkway. She actually had her white hair in a bun, and I wondered if she had some kind of a good-witch complex. She had to be somewhere in her late 80’s, but even women that old didn’t wear their hair in buns anymore. There was something off about her, as if she were playing a role and not being a real person.
Ed was making formal introductions, presenting us to the lady, and she looked at me with bright interest when Ed simply referred to me as a psychic.
“I knew it,” she said to me. “I was watching you from my front window, and I knew it as soon as I saw you. ‘She,’ I said to myself, ‘is one of us, only I sense already that her power is far greater than mine.’ That’s what I said to myself.”
I nodded and tried to look wise and powerful.
“Of course,” Ed told her, “you’re aware of the reputation of my colleague, Teddy Force?”
“Oh, yes,” she said. I had expected the usual flutters I’ve seen when women meet Teddy, but there was none of that. In fact, she frowned at him, looking puzzled. “Hmmm. I reached out to you, too, but your abilities are more. . . covert, aren’t they?”
He didn’t know what she was talking about, but he agreed with her.
She went on, looking him up and down appraisingly. “Ye-es, more subtle. Though you certainly look the part. Well, come in. I have the water on to boil. You must tell me, my dear,” she said to me, “if there is any type of tea that you find disruptive to your powers. I myself never drink Earl Grey. The perfume is lovely, but overwhelming. The effect on my senses . . . no, I never drink Earl Grey.”
“I can pretty much drink anything,” I told her.
She seemed pleased, and said something else about my power. From then on, she mainly addressed herself to me, and when Ed quickly told her he wouldn’t be coming in, she didn’t seem to mind. Teddy, who was used to being the center of attention, looked unsure of himself for once. In the peaceful urban environment, his ominous black jumpsuit made him look like he’d just fallen to Earth from the mothership .
She seated us at a little round table with an embroidered tablecloth. In the center was a pink-glass plate with cookies arranged on it, and three antique-looking cups with saucers and matching dessert plates. Odd. She hadn’t known I was coming. But then she’d been expecting Ed, and he must have told her he was bringing Teddy, so it made sense after all.
She got us seated where she wanted us and was talking about varieties of tea when I looked down into my empty cup and was hit by a wave of despair.
It was a cup very much like the one Barnabas had used on Sunday night, and I suppose it brought it all back to me, the quiet, out-of-the-past atmosphere of his apartment, and the steady pulse of the waltz. He’d only played it through once, but I could have hummed it from memory. As I looked into the empty cup, the music welled up and drowned me. I felt a wild panic, and it took me a moment to fight it off. I put my hands on the edge of the table to steady myself, hoping Teddy and Wanda hadn’t noticed.
Well, Teddy hadn’t noticed. But Wanda was looking at me speculatively, balancing a round blue teapot by the handle and the spout. When our eyes met, she set the pot down on the table and nodded, as if I’d said something and she agreed.
She turned to Teddy and her manner became more artificial. “Will you be using any of your really interesting little instruments today?”
“Oh, that’s Ed’s part of things,” he told her. “I work on a more instinctual level.”
“Ah.”
“You’ve seen the show?” She had. “Then you pretty much know how I work. I tend to go balls out, if you’ll excuse the expression.”
Wanda tittered, but I wasn’t excusing him. I glared. He didn’t notice.
“Well, I’ll be interested to watch you do that,” she said without irony.
“Ed is usually the steadying influence,” he said. “He tends to keep us grounded. Unfortunately, he’ll be off-site doing research, so he won’t be around. We’ll be counting on Taylor, here, to keep things from going too far.”
“Actually, I won’t be part of this,” I said quickly, but Wanda was talking over me, telling Teddy she’d never worked with a professional of his stature before, and hoped it would be educational. “And I don’t mind telling you, I’m already finding it stimulating,” she added. “I feel quite excited. And hopeful.”
Teddy preened and began to rattle off a lot of technical-sounding jargon. She paid attention to him, the way one encourages a child, and poured out the tea, murmuring, “Ceylon,” which confused Teddy until I explained that it was the kind of tea she was giving us. He didn’t give a hoot, and went back to the polysyllables.
Just as I began to settle, the buttery, sugary fragrance of the cookies seemed to bloom around me, abnormally strong, making me nauseous. Wanda noticed, and she moved the cookies away from me and toward Teddy, who took it as an offer and grabbed one.
I took a sip of the hot tea and felt a little better. When I carefully set the cup back into its saucer, I looked up to see Wanda watching me.
“Better?” she said.
I nodded.
Teddy didn’t notice.
“By the way,” I said to Wanda when Teddy paused for breath, “before we get started, did you happen to go to the Carteret estate sale?”
“Oh, yes I did. I love estate sales. I always go to them, and of course, the Carterets are my neighbors.” She ended the sentence on a downbeat, and I knew something was wrong there.
“You two girls can gossip about the neighbors later,” Teddy said, mostly to me.
I backed him off with a look, then asked Wanda how well she knew them.
She hesitated. “It was hard to get to know them. They had come down in the world, you know, but they were still very conscious of their former status. I’m afraid my husband and I simply weren’t their sort. My husband George and I bought this house in in 1995, when he retired. Miss Phoebe was long gone by that time, and at first we tried to be friendly to Robin and Ginny, but there was a dispute about an orange tree that hung over the fence into our yard, and Ginny and George got into a fight about it. He called her a frustrated old maid, and she never forgave him. She was only in her 40’s at the time, but really, you couldn’t help but think of her as a bitter woman, even then. We kept our distance after that. Her father was always friendly, but vague, and he didn’t come out of the house much. I got the impression that he wasn’t all there,” she added, tapping her temple.
“What did you find at the sale?” I asked.
“These teacups. Aren’t they beautiful? They’re Collingwood. They have to be hand washed because of the gold trim, but there were seven cups and eight saucers, with five of the matching dessert plates, and I took them all.”
“When did your daughter move in with you?” Teddy asked brusquely.
She turned to him. “About two years ago. I’d been widowed for about twenty years by then, and I think she was worried about me. She taught school in Michigan, where George and I raised her. She never married, and I suppose after she retired there was nothing to keep her in Michigan.”
“The two of you were close?” he asked.
She hesitated, then said, “We didn’t always agree.”
“Ah,” Teddy said in a knowing way. “Too much alike? We see a lot of that.”
“No, actually I think we were too much different, if I can put it that way. She was more like her father – very levelheaded and literal. She didn’t believe in anything she couldn’t see with her own two eyes.”
�
��I know the type,” Teddy said.
She gave us a brave smile. “I think I rather embarrassed her.”
Teddy patted her hand, which seemed to startle her. “She moved in with you to keep an eye on you, didn’t she, and not in a good way? She thought you were senile, is that it?”
“Oh, she worried about me, of course. She was a good daughter. She loved me, but she also had it in the back of her mind that as I got older, I’d get deeper into the spiritual side of myself. People often do. And I’ve always been too spiritual to suit her,” she added with a laugh that wasn’t entirely genuine. “Not to put too fine a point on it, she thought I’d go batty. Physically, I’m as healthy as a horse, but it wasn’t my physical health she was worried about.”
Instead of reassuring her, Teddy nodded as if that made perfect sense to him. Then he took over and began to sketch out his plan of attack. “I’ll be pretty much flying solo this time, but I can handle it. My crew,” he added, “is on hiatus. The last investigation . . . let’s just say we all needed to recuperate before we tackled anything else, but when Taylor told me about your situation, I knew I had to help, whether I was ready or not. Now, here’s how I’d like to begin.”
He was off. I disconnected from the lecture and found myself blinking around, trying not to yawn. I’d watched Teddy work before. There was no plan. Ever. Mostly he just dressed up in rugged gear that made him look really buff and swashbuckled around, challenging the empty air.
Then he started telling war stories about past investigations, which were actually kind of interesting until I realized he was talking about one in particular that I had witnessed, and it wasn’t anything like what he was describing.
I shook my head when Wanda offered more tea, and looked around, noticing details of her kitchen.
It was at the back of the house, a comfortable nest of cream-painted cabinets and Formica countertops, with wallpaper patterned with cherries. There were wide windows overlooking the back yard, with a few knick-knacks set on the sills. Off to the side was a little desk with a fancy chair.
We sat quietly, Wanda and I, as Teddy sketched things out. His fine Italian hands gestured and described shapes and an easy flow of words rolled out, while a silent pool of knowledge seemed to form between Wanda and me. She seemed to know exactly what was going on. I began to feel more and more lost, while something definite began to tease at me, like an idea that’s just out of reach.
Eventually, Teddy ground to a halt, the teacups were empty and most of the cookies were gone, though neither Wanda nor I had taken any.
Whatever it was that I was feeling had settled over me, and I rose from the table feeling that something was inevitable. Something was there. Wanda knew it. I knew it.
Teddy didn’t notice.
Chapter 12
When Edson Darby-Deaver begins an investigation, he becomes fretful, even distraught, and he’s not above telling people to go away and leave him alone. Teddy Force goes at it more like a rock star, psyching himself up to storm the stage. The bigger the audience the better. His eyes glow weirdly and he begins to look like a psychotic with very specific plans. When he finally launches himself, it’s kind of a relief.
I wasn’t sure how he was going to pull it off with no cameras rolling and only Wanda and me to watch, but he surprised me.
He stood up from the tea table, inhaled deeply, centered himself and became larger somehow. He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them he moved with such suddenness that both Wanda and I gasped and leaned back. He spun on his heel and went down a hall, leaving us staring at one another.
“Do we follow him?” Wanda asked.
“It couldn’t hurt. I don’t think it makes any difference. Once he’s on the scent, nothing distracts him.”
She gazed at me a moment, then in a disappointed voice she murmured, “Really, Taylor?”
It came to me then that there were two teams on the ground here, and up until that moment, I had been on Team Teddy. But she knew it immediately when I was being disingenuous, and in that moment, I was drawn onto Team Wanda. I don’t know how, I don’t know why, but somehow I knew I was with her, not him.
The sound of Teddy’s voice suddenly thundering down the hall startled us, and I said, “Let’s go see what he’s doing.”
But she held back. When I looked around at her, she said, “Do you really think he can do this?”
I knew by then it was no use trying to fool her, so I stopped and thought it over. In the end, I just shrugged. “It can’t hurt to give him a chance. After all, he really wants to help.”
“You know what’s going on here, don’t you,” she said, calling me out rather than asking a question. When I didn’t answer, she said, “Whatever it is, I’ve begun to think it’s not my Alison. At first I hoped it was her. At first, maybe it was. But now I just don’t know.”
“Did you tell Ed that? Are you keeping him up-to-date as things change around here?”
“If he was any good at his job, he’d know.”
“I’m not sure that’s fair, Wanda. Do you think it’s her killer?”
She looked disappointed. “Her killer is alive. That’s the problem.”
I turned and walked back to her, going face to face. “If it’s not your daughter, who is it?”
“That’s why I need your help. I don’t know. What powers I have are weak compared to yours. Over the years, I’ve tried to hone my skills, but I’ll never have what you were lucky enough to simply be born with.”
I stared at the tea table, which she hadn’t cleared yet. Should I disillusion the woman? After all, she seemed so distressed – and hopeful. Then for no reason, the haunted sheet music popped into my head, and I asked, “Did it start . . . then?” I gestured at the teacups. “When you brought them into the house?”
“N-no. At least I don’t think so. Maybe it got worse then,” she added. I could tell she was only trying to be helpful, and I immediately doubted her.
“So there’s no connection between these things from the estate sale and your daughter’s death.”
“No. She was dead by then.”
“And she hasn’t, you know, come back? It’s not her, haunting you?”
After a long hesitation, she said, “Maybe it is. I just don’t know. If it is, she’s very angry, and I don’t know why. But it started then, when she first went missing. That night, or at least, the next night. Around then. You know.”
No, I didn’t know, but I’d figured out one thing: Wanda was highly suggestible. I wasn’t sure I could take anything she said seriously.
Our discussion had been quiet but intense. When Teddy came back into the room it nearly scared us out of our wits. We had forgotten about him.
“It’s more dangerous than I thought,” he announced. “I feel such power directed at me, pushing me back. I’d better move in with you for the duration. Taylor, go back to Ed’s house and pack my things. I’ll take the bedroom at the end of the hall. That’s where the trouble is. It was Alison’s room?”
Nonplussed, Wanda managed to say that it was. I was watching her closely and saw the gear switch as she decided to go along with what he was saying. I doubted her more than ever.
“Uh huh,” Teddy said, staring at her grimly. “Well, I’m not leaving you here alone, Wanda. Don’t thank me. It’s my duty to protect you. You couldn’t get me out of here now with a tow truck. I suppose I should be mad at you for not warning me, Taylor, but of course, you didn’t know.”
He nodded at Wanda gallantly and went back down the hall.
“Are you all right with this?” I asked her.
“I’m sure he’s harmless. But you’ll be here too, right?”
“I can’t. I have my animal shelter to run. I don’t live in town. I –“
“You could stay here, in the house. I have an extra bedroom.”
“Wanda, I just can’t. You do know that Teddy would never hurt you?”
“Of course he wouldn’t. Not that way, anyway. But I’m not
sure what he’s capable of stirring up, and whether or not he could deal with it once he did. You brought this man into my house, Taylor. This was your idea.”
I couldn’t believe she knew that.
“Don’t lie to me,” she went on, quietly, and not like an old lady with her hair in a bun. “Don’t ever try that again. Please. I know he’s just a pretty boy, and maybe he’s sincere, but the real power lies with you, and you can’t drop him on me and then just leave.”
Teddy was back. “I’ll need my own wheels, too. Taylor, call my garage in New Jersey and arrange for the Austin-Healy to be delivered to the house here. Have them bill the production company.”
“Call them yourself,” I snapped. “And what about Porter?”
“You can board him at Orphans in the Rain.”
He spun around and went back down the hall, while I yelled after him, “It’s Orphans in the – oh, never mind. I thought you needed Porter. Isn’t he the psychic dog on your show?”
“He can bring Porter,” Wanda said. “I love dogs, and I’ve seen him on the show. He’s adorable.”
“He’s a war machine on paws,” I told her. “You like those china cups? He’ll find a way to break them. And the table they’re sitting on, too.”
“I’m not sure that wouldn’t be a good idea.”
“Good call,” Teddy yelled to us. “We need Porter. Bring him back with you, Taylor. And you might want to wash my stuff before you pack it. I’ve just been shoving my dirty clothes into the duffel bag. Thanks.”
Wanda smiled. “I can wash his things. Just bring them. And Porter. And yourself.”
“Wanda, I can’t! I have a million things to do in my office.”
“So do them. Then come back here, at least to spend the night. You can’t leave me alone with that man . . . and whatever it is that even he can sense in my house.”
“I’ll see what I can work out, but please don’t count on me moving in with you.”
“Can you at least be nearby? You have friends in town, don’t you?”
“I’ll see what I can do. I’ll let you know when I come back with Teddy’s stuff.”