“It appears so,” I said.
Denise crunched her shoulders to her ears, kissed me goodbye on the cheek, and promised to call back with a report. I showed her to the door, then turned to find Wilson standing outside the study with his arms crossed.
“I assume you heard all that?” I said.
“The part about my sister stalking Hugh Jackman or the history of Zoey’s house?”
“Let’s stick with Zoey’s house for the moment, shall we?” I reminded Wilson while I was talking with Zoey, he had slipped away–something he had promised not to do–and I was anxious to know what he had seen. “Did you find anything unusual?”
“Like what?” Wilson asked.
“Like a ghost,” I said. “It’s what we went there for. I thought that’s why you wandered off. That you considered that to be an excusable offense and had connected with something.”
“Well, you thought wrong. I’ve rethought things.”
“Again?” I wasn’t surprised. Lacey’s unexpected death had changed the purpose of today’s visit, and shades, by their very nature, can be easily upset by the sudden death of others.
“Look, Misty...”
Misty? Was Wilson really calling me Misty again? Was it a slip of the tongue or a change of heart? I wasn’t sure. Only that I’d gotten rather used to him calling me Old Gal. His return to the proper use of my name concerned me.
“I know you asked me not to go snooping around, but if you thought I was going to go ghost hunting and give up the chance to comb through the Pink Mansion, well...I’m sorry. It just wasn’t going to happen. I was much more curious as to what Zoey had done with the place and what collectibles I might find from the Chamberlain estate than to chase after some ghost.”
“You didn’t see anything? No ghosts at all? Lacey or anyone else?”
“I told you, I wasn’t looking.” Wilson walked back into the study and began perusing the bookshelves.
I followed as far as the doorway. “And what happened to your promise to help me? To help Zoey?”
“You mean so I might earn my wings?” I sensed a note of sarcasm in his voice.
“That was the plan,” I said. “Or has that changed now that you’ve been inside the Pink Mansion?” I couldn’t believe we were going back and forth on this again.
“Yes, well, after giving it some thought, I’ve decided differently.” Wilson ran his index finger along the bookshelves, then stopped, and finding a bit of dust, rubbed the first two fingers on his left hand with his thumb and blew the dust in my direction. “You see, Misty, aside from my sister’s occasional visits to my home, I’m not at all certain I object to my current state. I’m in no pain. I’ve no bills to worry about, and other than your intrusion into my life, I’m not all that unhappy.”
I stepped into the study. Shades were known to live in a state of denial and waffle on their commitments. I needed to confront this head on.
“Perhaps, Wilson, if you were not so self-involved you might feel differently. But since you are, let me explain it this way. Nature, my friend, abhors a vacuum. If you don’t do something to attract positive energy in your direction, just like that dust you’ve chosen to blow at me so dismissively, you’ll be swept up with negative energy. When that happens, you’ll be gone. Poof!” I snapped my fingers. “In my experience, shades in your position don’t always end up in such a happy place.” I turned my back and got as far as the door when I heard a loud bang on the desk.
Wilson had taken a book from the shelf and slammed it onto the desktop. “What is it you want from me?”
I counted to three and then smiled obligingly. “I believe our ghost is a little girl, about four years old. Your sister says the original owner of Zoey’s house was an actor named Clayton Mann.”
“Ugh.” Wilson made a sour face. “My sister again. I wish you wouldn’t quote her to me.”
“Regardless, I’m going to need your help. Your sister believes the Manns had a daughter, and that she drowned in a pool accident. I thought somewhere in this grand library of books you have about Hollywood, there might be something about Clayton Mann and his family that may help to identify the girl.”
“It’s a possibility.” Wilson turned back to the bookshelves and ran his finger along the spine of several books, then finding what he wanted, stopped. “In fact, this might be exactly what you’re looking for. It’s an almanac of Hollywood stars from the thirties and forties and their homes.”
Wilson placed the book on the desk and began to thumb through it. He stopped at a large black and white photo of Clayton Mann and his wife Margaret with their daughter Alicia Mae Mann.
Chapter 8
I was still thinking about Alicia Mae the next afternoon as I worked in the garden behind Wilson’s cottage, transplanting my herbs from their clay pots in my van into the ground. If Alicia Mae was the ghost that haunted Zoey’s home, she had been dead or ghost-like for nearly seventy-five years. While that may have been a long time, she was still a child. One thing about child ghosts—they rarely age.
And they don’t kill people.
Child-ghosts, unlike Hollywood movies like to portray, are seldom violent or vengeful. Experience has taught me child-ghosts can be whimsical and playful. Above all things, they enjoy a good tease. Which might explain the disappearance of Zoey’s jewelry.
Thinking about all the possible scenarios as I tucked a small sprig of rosemary into the ground, my cell phone buzzed. I brushed the dirt from my hands, reached into my apron, and retrieved my phone.
“Misty?” Zoey’s sounded stressed. “Thank God you’re home. I need you to come back to the house.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, but the house...it’s a mess. Someone trashed the place last night. Can you come and take a look?”
I assured her I’d be right over. Difficult as it is for me to move quickly, I hobbled into the house to find Wilson. He was in the study reclining in his cane back chair with his feet up on his desk, dozing. Ghosts don’t sleep. They may hibernate or cocoon, adopting an almost trance-like state, but sleep is something only humans do.
“Wilson?” He sat upright as though I’d surprised him. “Zoey called. She needs me back at the house.”
“Is she alright?” Wilson’s concern for the young starlet didn’t surprise me. He may well have been on the fence concerning our ghost chase, but access again to the Chamberlain estate was an entirely different matter.
“She says someone trashed her house last night. I need you to drive me.”
I would have thought news of a possible break-in at the Pink Mansion might have motivated Wilson to put the move on, but instead of the Jag, which I knew could move through traffic in record time, Wilson suggested we take the Rolls. Evidently, he had always made it a practice of rotating his rides, and since we had taken the Jag out yesterday, the Rolls it was.
All of which was fine until I realized the Rolls moved at a snail’s pace. I could have walked the mile and a half from Wilson’s home to the Pink Mansion in less time than it took to drive. The only good thing about the Rolls—other than being an exact copy of the car Princess Grace had once owned, which pleased Wilson to no end—were the blacked-out windows. So dark it was impossible for anyone to see inside and notice the argument I was having with Wilson, trying to get him to put on a little speed as we turned onto Zoey’s street.
Zoey met me at the front door. She looked tired, her eyes strained, her skin even paler than the day before. I doubted even heavy stage makeup could camouflage the weary look on her face. Without saying a word, she opened the door wide, swung around and held out her arm. Like a game show host, she waved a hand to the mess behind her that only yesterday had looked like a room ready to be photographed for House Beautiful or Architectural Digest.
Today it looked like a tornado had hit. Lamps had been tossed to the floor. Tables and chairs wer
e tipped over. Every seat cushion and back support from the couch had been pulled from its frame, and decorator pillows had been stripped of their covers and lay scattered about the great room, leaving a dusty trail of duck feathers.
“And this isn’t all,” Zoey said. “Every room’s the same. The kitchen’s even worse. The drawers have been emptied, the cabinets are a mess, and there’s food everywhere.”
I stepped into the great room with Wilson behind me. On our drive over, I had instructed him, in no uncertain terms, that he was to case the place. We needed to find our ghost. No skirting the issue. Not like last time. With a slight nod, Wilson left my side and slipped down the hallway in the direction of the west wing.
“This happened last night.” The tone of my voice could have been as much a question as it was a statement. Either would have been appropriate. For psychics, time and space tend to blend together. It’s not always easy to pinpoint an exact time, but the damage was obvious. Whoever or whatever had torn the house apart wasn’t just angry, but wanted to send a message. And while an ordinary intruder would have left after such a scene, I sensed an anxious energy in the air, as though the presence still remained.
Zoey nodded. “I don’t know what time it was. I wasn’t here. The studio put me up at the Hotel Amarano in Burbank last night. I told them I couldn’t go home. Not after what happened. Chad met me at the hotel, and we spent the night together. We didn’t come back here until this morning, and then...this is what we found.”
Zoey’s fiancé appeared from the west wing. “I called the police as soon as we realized what had happened. Once the cops left, Zoey insisted we call you.” Chad put his arm around Zoey’s shoulder and kissed her lightly on the cheek. “Don’t worry, Zoey, the police will find who did this.”
Zoey bit her lip and Chad excused himself and said he was going outside for a smoke.
I waited until the front door closed. “But you don’t think so.”
Zoey shook her head. “Before I left for the studio yesterday, I asked my assistant Crystal to hire a cleaning service to come in. I wanted them to scrub the place top to bottom. I didn’t want anything in the house to remind me of what happened yesterday. When the detectives arrived with their forensics team this morning, they dusted for prints. If they found any prints at all, they’d be Chad’s or mine.”
I took Zoey by the hand and led her away from the front door lest Chad return and interrupt our conversation. “Let’s you and I talk. How about the kitchen?”
The kitchen was as much of a wreck as was the great room. Cabinets were open. Plates, pots, and pans were everywhere. I cleared an open space for us on the window seat to sit down, and, with our backs against the window so Zoey couldn’t see the backyard, asked her if the reason she had called me was that she thought the ghost had done this.
“Who else?” Zoey buried her head in her hands. “Chad doesn’t believe me. He thinks this is all a reaction to the sleeping pills I’m taking. But I know there’s a ghost in this house. I can feel it. And I think he wants to kill me. Even worse, I think when the ghost learned it wasn’t me in the spa who died but Lacey, he came back last night to find me. And when he didn’t, he trashed the place.”
I took Zoey’s hand away from her face and held it in mine. While I could understand Zoey’s fear, I didn’t feel she was in any danger or that the ghost intended her any harm.
“I don’t think so, Zoey. I believe you have a ghost, I really do. And I agree with you, I think a ghost may have done this,” I gestured to the mess in front of us. “But, not for the reason you suspect.”
“No?” Zoey grabbed a tissue off the kitchen counter and dabbed her eyes.
“I think it’s something else.” I had seen things like this before. My own experience with Wilson had taught me how upset ghosts can be about the movement of their things. I shut my eyes. In my mind I saw Detective Romero and the ring he had found in the spa. The vision of him handing it to Zoey. The look of surprise on her face. “Did you take your mother’s mood ring with you when you left last night?”
“I put it in my bag when I left for the studio, why?”
“Because I don’t think the ghost meant to hurt you, but may have been looking for the ring instead. You said yourself the ghost had taken it before.”
“You really think so?” Zoey squeezed my hand, a look of hopefulness in her eyes. “Then you don’t think I’m in any danger? That the ghost was here last night, looking for my ring?”
“I know one way to find out.” I said.
“How?”
“Leave the ring on your dressing table tonight.”
“And stay here?” Zoey pulled back, her brow wrinkled, eyes narrowed. “You think that’s wise?”
“I don’t believe you’re in any danger and, if you want to, yes. By all means stay here. If I thought for a second you would come to any harm, I wouldn’t suggest it. But if you leave the ring on your dressing table and it’s not there in the morning, we’ll both know who took it.”
“The ghost?” Zoey whispered.
I nodded. “I think she’s been looking for it.”
“She? You think the ghost is a woman?” Zoey’s eyes widened.
“I think the ghost is a small child. About four years old.”
“A child killed Lacey?”
“No. Not at all. I think what happened to Lacey was probably an accident. Exactly like Detective Romero said. After you and Lacey finished running lines, Lacey went into the backyard to check on the presence of a kitten and for some reason, was attracted to the spa and saw the ring. Maybe your little ghost had dropped it there, and when Lacey went to reach for it, the unfortunate happened. She leaned over, her hair got caught on the drain, and she drowned.”
“You said probably.” Zoey tilted her head skeptically and raised a brow. “You don’t know for sure? I thought a psychic could tell something like that.”
“There’s a lot of things psychics know, Zoey. I could tell you when I walked in the house yesterday I sensed something terrible had happened here, but as to how Lacey died, I wouldn’t know. For something like that, I’d have to spend more time in the house. But before I do, let’s see what happens with your ring tonight. Shall we?”
“If you’re certain I’m okay, I’ll stay. Chad’s convinced whoever came in and trashed the place was a fan who was following the news about Lacey’s death and used it as an opportunity to break in. I’ve had stalkers before.”
It wouldn’t be the first time a fan had broken into a celebrity’s home while they were away. Celebrity break-ins had become all too common. It was easy for fans to track their favorite stars’ comings and goings. A group the press had dubbed the “Bling Ring” had burgled the homes of several high-profile celebrities and had made off with more than three million dollars in cash and jewelry before they were finally arrested and convicted of their crimes. Anyone watching Zoey’s house, particularly after hearing the news of Lacey’s death in the spa, might have guessed Zoey might not be home. That she would take a day or two to process Lacey’s death before returning. With easy access to the Pink Mansion’s backyard from the canyon trails, it was conceivable a hiker might have broken in and trashed the place looking for valuables. But Zoey hadn’t reported any jewelry or cash missing.
“I don’t think it was stalkers any more than I think there’s an evil spirit in this house. However, I will agree with you. You do have a ghost, but like I said, she’s a child ghost, and I don’t believe she means you any harm. Spirits, regardless of their size or age, are subject to our control. They don’t dominate our sphere of existence—our here and now. We do. If your little ghost comes back tonight and bothers you, all you need to do is to tell her to leave. Use that actress voice of yours and command her to go away. She’ll leave.”
“For good?” Zoey sounded skeptical.
“Probably not until I’ve spoken to her and learned what i
t is she wants. But temporarily, yes. It’s a bit like sending her to her room. Meanwhile, my sense is, she’ll come back tonight, take the ring and leave. You’ll never know she’s been here until tomorrow morning. You’ve nothing to worry about.”
“Excuse me, Zoey. I’m sorry to interrupt.” Chad stood in the doorway to the kitchen, his cell phone in his hand. “Crystal’s on the phone. She needs to go over your schedule with you. She tried your phone, but you didn’t answer.”
“I suppose that’s my cue to leave.” I hugged Zoey goodbye and added, “Call me in the morning. You’ll be fine.”
Chapter 9
There’s a curious thing that happens to me when I begin to work a new case. I don’t know about other psychics, but for me, it’s as though the universe begins to throw breadcrumbs at me. Over the years, I’ve learned there are no accidents. People, ideas, or breadcrumbs, as I like to refer to them, often appear to me when I’m in a state of luminary-acceptance, and while on the surface some of the people and events may not seem to be connected, invariably I find they always are. And as Wilson and I drove home, I began to feel as though I was being pelted by breadcrumbs. They were coming at me from every direction.
The first crumb was innocent enough. We were two blocks from Zoey’s house when I spotted a string of nursery school kids dressed in their brightly colored coats with their little backpacks strapped to their backs. Like ducklings, they lined up at the school crossing and waited for the light to change. Holding on to their parents’ hands, the crossing guard escorted them all safely across the street. My mind flashed to Alicia Mae. Had her mother dressed her and sent her to school in the same fashion? Walked her to the local schoolhouse? Was there even a school here in the forties? Probably not. Most of this area back then, with the exception of the land around the Pink Mansion, had been citrus orchards. Hollywood’s outback for ranches and rural living. But the image of a small child, holding tightly to her mother’s hand, persisted. I let it find a home in the back of my mind, knowing at some point as I worked to connect with Zoey’s ghost, it would all make sense.
The House on Hallowed Ground Page 5