A Question of Ghosts

by Cate Culpepper

“You were afraid Becca and I would learn the truth about what happened to her parents. So you asked your son to come back to Seattle.”

  “I paid my son very well.” Rachel folded her veined hands in her lap, and Becca stared at them. “Loren has been in and out of prison these past years. I’ve had to cut him out of my heart. I’ve learned he’ll do anything to finance his habit. Anything at all.” She wouldn’t look at Becca.

  “You paid him to break into my office,” Jo continued. “And into the Bentley. To put that doll on the front porch. And to set fire to the house last night.”

  “Yes,” Rachel said.

  “And to plant a bottle of Scotch in my bedroom.” Becca’s voice was soft, and Rachel looked at her at last. “Rachel?”

  “Do you have any idea how much I loved her?” Rachel’s tone was equally tender. “Try to remember that, if you can. All of this tragedy was born in the purest love I’ve ever known. I would have given my life for her.”

  Rachel looked back at the window, and the stained glass threw a lattice of distorted color across her features. “If it matters, and I doubt it matters, I was out of my mind on prescription pills at the time. I had been for years.” She smiled mirthlessly. “Like mother, like son, I suppose. Loren’s addictions consumed him, but I conquered mine, finally. Well enough to help you tackle yours, Becca, when you needed me. But I was crazy that night. I wanted Maddie to leave Scott and run away with me, immediately. I would have left my son, my practice, everything. She refused, of course. I had hidden my feelings for her well until then, and I believe she was shocked by my proposal. Even repelled.”

  Rachel glanced at Becca. “Does any of this surprise you? It shouldn’t. I fell in love with your mother, but she rejected me entirely. She wouldn’t leave your father, wouldn’t even discuss it. Maddie was devoted to Scott, despite all his faults. Not to Mitch. Not to me. She never loved me.” She fell silent.

  “So you returned to the house that night, after the birthday party.” Jo was seeing it unfold, hearing Madelyn Healy whisper in her mind, telling her what happened. “You confronted Becca’s mother in the kitchen. Scott Healy joined you there. You’d brought a gun with you?”

  “In my delirium, I thought I would have to subdue Scott. When he interrupted Maddie and me in the kitchen, I raised the gun at him, and I fired. I didn’t see Maddie lunge in front of him before I pressed the trigger. I didn’t see her, Becca.” Rachel swallowed, and Jo heard the dry crackling in her throat. “I caught your mother as she fell, and I cradled her on the floor in my arms as she died.”

  But then Rachel’s face changed, and Jo realized she was looking at something much more atavistic, more alien even than her own strange distance from the world. Rachel looked serene; cruel and content. “I had to shoot Scott to keep him away from us. He had no business with us in those last moments. That was my time with Maddie. Finally, Mitch’s infernal little brother was out of the picture. It was right, at last. I carry those moments in my heart, Becca.”

  Becca resembled a chained prisoner who had just inhaled poison gas. She knelt beside Jo and looked up at Rachel like a child hearing a particularly dreadful bedtime story. “My parents died on my fifth birthday. They gave me a birthday party that day, in our backyard. I remember the grass, music, other kids around, my uncle and aunt. You were there, Rachel. You gave me a present.”

  “Yes, I did. I gave you a doll.”

  “The doll was bloody that night, as I held it in the living room. And it wasn’t my mother who handed it to me. Not at the party, and not that night. It was you.”

  Rachel nodded. “I wanted so badly to comfort you, Becca. You were so little. You were weeping, afraid, you looked so bereft and alone. I have always loved you, so much. I picked up your doll and gave it to you on my way out.”

  “There was blood on your hands,” Becca said. “And on one of the doll’s hands.”

  “Yes.” Air seemed to leak out of Rachel slowly, and she sat slumped on the bed. Her eyes closed with a relief that struck Jo as entirely genuine.

  “I can’t ask for your forgiveness, Becca. But in honor of our many long years of friendship—in honor of the healing I’ve given you—can you find it in your heart, please, to leave me in peace? Let the horrors of my conscience be punishment enough, for the little time I have left. I promise you, they are horror indeed.”

  And again, Rachel was telling the absolute truth.

  Becca sat motionless. “You paid Loren to kill me. To kill the woman I love.”

  “Yes,” Rachel whispered.

  Becca’s fingers were ice-cold as they closed around Jo’s, but her voice was low and steady. “You allowed the world to believe, for thirty years, that a woman you say you cherished was a murderer. You let her daughter believe it. I won’t save you from paying the price, Rachel.”

  Becca rose to her feet, and rested her lips against the top of Rachel’s bent head. She turned and went to the door, and Jo followed her. Becca didn’t look back, but Jo did. Rachel was sitting quietly on the bed, watching a red flashing light turn through the colored panes.

  Jo had no scathing last words for this particular murderer, but she found no pity in her heart. Rachel met her eyes one last time, and Jo left the room.

  *

  Pam Emerson was leaning against her cruiser, her uniform smartly crisp in spite of her long night. Another cruiser sat next to hers, and Becca could see the silhouettes of two officers inside. Pam spoke into the mic clipped to her shoulder as they emerged through the doors of the hospice. The revolving red lights on the cruiser shut off. Pam took one look at them and cut straight to business.

  “Mr. Perry is coming down off his high, and he’s suddenly very talkative about his mama. He’s got a long rap sheet and he’ll face multiple charges, but we’ll need your help making them stick.”

  “You’ll have it.” Becca felt the warmth of Jo’s arm in hers and figured she could find strength for this on some future day.

  “But Rachel Perry.” Pam stepped closer to them, eyeing the doors of the hospice. “No promises, Becca. We’ll charge her if she confesses today, but we won’t take her in, given her illness. She’s not exactly a flight risk. There’s no statute of limitations on homicide, but I doubt she’ll be prosecuted. If anything, they’ll set it on the docket a year ahead. She’ll be long gone, then.”

  “I know.” Becca shivered, but Jo pressed her arm and that pleasant, detached peace descended on her again. “I don’t need a bloodbath, Pam. I just want this investigation added to the official record.”

  “That’ll be done,” Pam promised her. “A damn thorough one. I take it I can get ahold of you guys by cell?”

  “I’m afraid not.” Jo spoke with the unquestioned authority of a goddess. “Neither of us will be available for the next three days. We’re going to find the most beautiful vacation house on Cannon Beach, and we’re going to rent it. We don’t want to be disturbed.”

  “Yes, sir.” Pam’s eyebrows rose, but she smirked. “Guess I’m going to have to live with that. Sounds like an important trip.”

  “We’re going to sleep.” Becca spoke reverently. She appreciated Pam’s innuendo, but she wanted no greater excitement than three solid nights of sleep, for them both. She was dizzy with relief at the prospect.

  “Three days,” Pam said sternly. “You call me when you get back. Travel safe.” She pointed at the doors, and two other officers stepped out of the cruiser. “If you two don’t want to be around for this, I’d make tracks now.”

  “We don’t.” Becca closed her eyes. “We’re going.”

  Pam gripped Becca’s arm, then moved past them with the other officers toward the hospice.

  Becca turned to Jo and took her hands. “I love you,” she said. “Just in case I haven’t been clear on that until now.”

  “I love you back.” Jo wet her lips, and Becca had to smile. Spontaneous displays of affection still made Jo a little nervous, but she was practicing, and their kiss was brief and sweet. “Now, let me
take you away from here.”

  Becca nodded. “You can take me away, to the ocean. But there’s a place I’d like to show you on the way.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  “Joanne. Dearest? I’m honestly not hungry.”

  “You will be. Any moment.” Jo was reasonably certain of this as she pulled the BMW away from Top Pot Doughnuts. They had already stopped at Ezell’s Chicken, and the lush interior of the car was filling with enticing fragrance.

  She hoped Becca would be hungry soon; she craved that hint of returning normality, nature coming back into balance. The last twenty-four hours were a blur in Jo’s mind, and she wasn’t having to cope with the betrayal of a lifelong friend.

  Becca had been silent since they left the hospice. She looked older in the harsh sunlight slanting through the window, but some animation was returning to her face at last. She still had tears to shed for Rachel Perry, and for old lies, old losses. Jo trusted she would be ready for them, whenever they came. “We’re not in any hurry. The ocean isn’t going anywhere, and neither is Mount Rainier.”

  “Neither are we,” Becca pointed out.

  “True.”

  Perhaps the morning of Gay Pride was not the wisest time to try to navigate Seattle streets. Jo braked at another intersection thronging with a rowdy crowd heading downtown.

  “If I were driving, we’d be halfway to the mountain by now.” Becca sighed. “I still can’t believe they moved the march from Capitol Hill to Fourth Avenue.”

  Jo sighed too, in relief. Becca’s remote melancholy seemed to be lifting. “Becca, that happened six years ago.”

  “It’s still a sacrilege. An injustice most dire. Don’t get Marty started on this subject.”

  Jo shrugged. “I never went to the march when it was on Broadway, and I don’t go now. I’ve never felt it had anything to do with me.”

  “Yeah?” Becca studied her with an odd smile. “Look again. Tell me what you see.”

  Puzzled, Jo stared at the laughing men, women, and other genders passing in front of them. “Well. They all seem so young to me, these years. Still lots of white men. But…I like them. I like seeing all their children, their dogs. They look happy today.”

  “They’re clan, Dr. Call.” Becca brushed Jo’s forearm with one finger. “Maybe distant kin, but still family, if you choose them. You’re starting to let people into your life. You’re seeing them with new eyes. Me, Marty, Khadijah, Pam. Mrs. Pam, when we meet her. You’re building that clan you’ve always wanted, Jo. I’m happy for you.”

  Jo swallowed. “Thank you, Becca. I—”

  “Now floor it,” Becca suggested.

  “Oh.” Jo saw the cleared intersection and floored it.

  Becca kept her hand on her arm as they drove out of the city.

  *

  Jo tried not to tramp wildflowers flat with her boots, but missing them was all but impossible. They grew so thick in this mountain meadow it was like wading through a carpet of snarled color. She shifted, balancing the boxes of food in her arms and trying to keep Becca in sight ahead.

  “You seem to know where we’re going,” Jo called hopefully.

  “I do.” Becca, carrying only a small satchel, gestured toward a copse of distant trees. “Just keep an eye out for the mountain Gestapo.”

  Jo took this warning seriously. She kept glancing over her shoulder toward the paved road far behind and above them, leading to the Paradise Inn. The leased BMW was parked just off a side path, reasonably hidden by brush.

  The low fence Becca had stepped over so blithely was clearly posted, marking this field as off-limits. Apparently, her beloved was quite capable of felony. Jo understood why the officials who guarded Mount Rainier deemed these lush wildflowers too fragile for human traffic. Her attention was divided between stepping carefully and expecting arrest at any moment.

  “This place wasn’t cordoned off thirty years ago.” Becca waited for her at the edge of the trees, panting lightly. “At least, I don’t remember my parents smuggling me down here in their picnic basket, way back then. Come on. Through here.”

  That dimple appeared in Becca’s cheek, and Jo would have followed her through the gates of hell. Or to prison, possibly, should any rangers find them in this field.

  Jo recognized the tall young trees they wended through as white pine and maple, but she wasn’t well versed in nature and couldn’t be more specific than that. Their cool shade was welcome as the sun crested noon. The long box of doughnuts almost slid off her arm, but she pulled a quick save.

  They emerged from the trees, and Jo’s mouth fell open. She had always believed in an afterlife, but she’d never had a clear image in her mind of heaven. This came close.

  Wildflowers exploded in wide swaths at their feet, cutting through the thick grass that layered the ground. But Jo’s eyes were drawn immediately from their beauty to the stark glory of Mount Rainier above them, looming white and crystalline against the blue sky.

  “Have mercy,” Jo breathed.

  Becca laughed. “That’s what Khadijah said when she saw this place. Her exact words.” She folded herself gracefully into the grass and Jo tried to follow suit, managing to set the boxes down without disaster.

  “Those red, lacey cups over there are Indian Paintbrush.” Becca nodded at a patch of scarlet blossoms dotting a small slope at their feet. “The little yellow claws are Glacier Lilies, and the ones that look like purple daisies are Alpine Asters.”

  “You know your wildflowers.” Jo watched Becca’s hair drift off her face with a breeze, grateful for the new peace in her eyes.

  “I know the flowers here. Marty and Khadijah drove me up here when I was nineteen years old. Well. They drove me up here several times. We circled Rainier for an entire summer, looking for this meadow. We had a guide to go by.”

  Becca opened the satchel in the grass at her side. She drew out a small framed square, her hands gentle on its wooden corners. She studied it, then handed it to Jo.

  It was a simple oil painting of Mount Rainier, well done, unsigned, less than a foot square. Its colors had faded slightly, but the perspective was unmistakable. Jo looked up and saw an exact image of the mountain reigning over the meadow.

  “My mother drew Rainier during our picnics here when I was little. She made that painting from her sketches. I knew we’d found the right place when the mountain looked down at us from precisely that angle.”

  “You found the right place,” Jo agreed. She imagined Madelyn Healy’s fine hand holding a brush, stroking the craggy peaks to life. Becca’s fingers were gentle in the grass between them.

  “I could always picture my parents so clearly in this meadow. When I’d been clean for one year, I asked my friends to help me find it. Khadijah and Marty were with me when I scattered my parents’ ashes here.”

  Jo could see them too, now. Scott Healy sitting at the base of this very tree, reading a newspaper. His lovely blond wife nestled in the grass nearby with a pad of creamy paper in her lap, sketching. And a very small girl dancing in the sunlight amid the riot of wildflowers.

  *

  Becca touched the frame of the painting and checked her heart. She was sure. “I brought this with us because I’d like you to have it, Jo.”

  Jo looked stunned. “This painting? Your mother made this. It has to be precious to you.”

  “It is, sure. I know you’ll take good care of it.” Becca sat back on her hands, the sun warm on her face. “Consider it a thank-you gift from my mom. And from me.”

  “But Becca, this is—”

  “Joanne. You made it possible for me to bring peace to my dead mother.” Becca smiled. “You’d be astonished how rarely this happens in relationships.” She nudged her gently. “Honey. It’s all right to accept a gift from a friend who loves you.”

  “A friend I love.” Jo was quiet, cradling the frame in her hands. “Thank you, Becca. I’ll treasure this.”

  Jo lifted the satchel and slid the painting carefully into it. “I wanted to
give you a gift, too. I was going to wait for a moonlit night on the beach, but I like this place better.”

  Becca realized the gift Jo intended before she drew the music box out of her shirt, and her throat constricted. Aside from her beloved Spiricom, this was the only personal possession she had ever seen Jo touch with true affection. She accepted the box and rested it on her knees. Jo was content to let her sit quietly for a moment, which was a good thing, because she couldn’t speak.

  The square she held in her hands was soft, covered by worn purple cloth. The wood beneath it was strong, and it held music, like Jo. Finally, she lifted the lid, and soft, tinkling notes issued from the small speaker. Becca remembered hearing this light Spanish melody the first time she saw the music box in Jo’s home.

  “Tell me about her,” she said.

  “Her name was Consuelo, and she was my mother.” Jo’s low voice was tender, like the music. “My parents hired her as an au pair. She was with me for six years, until I was ten. She only left me because her younger sister was deported to Mexico. My parents were kind enough, but Consuelo was all I knew of real maternal love. She gave this to me the day she left.”

  “And you’re giving it to me.”

  “You’re all I know of real love, Becca.”

  It would have taken her breath away if she’d had any air to spare.

  Jo kissed her, and there was nothing nervous or hesitant in her now. Becca was still aware of the sweet scent of the wildflowers and the sun on her face. She still heard music, but all of that pretty much faded in the warm blend of Jo’s lips against her own.

  “You’re getting really good at that,” she gasped finally.

  “I know.” Jo sounded proud. “You’re a good teacher. Becca?”

  “Joanne?”

  “We don’t have to spend the entire three days at the beach sleeping.” The contours of Jo’s side were quite close against her. “If you’d be willing to continue my lessons in Becca School.”

  “Hey.” Becca brushed her finger beneath Jo’s chin. “Please consider class in session.”

  The kiss lasted longer this time, and Jo’s light touch on her breast was welcome, very welcome, too welcome, and Becca lifted her head quickly.