NIGHT CHILLS: A Bracken and Bledsoe Paranormal Mystery

by Jones, Bruce Elliot

  I turned to Katie. “Oh?”

  “I thought the case was solved,” Liz said.

  “Not all of it,” Katie replied.

  “She’s still not answering,” Byron said, coming up. “Her parents either. Something must be wrong…”

  “Maybe they’re just visiting friends,” Liz offered.

  “Overnight?” Byron replied dubiously.

  “The phone lines?” from Katie.

  “I’m calling Donna’s cell. It’s recording, she just isn’t picking up.”

  “Maybe she turned it off,” Mr. Adams said, joining us.

  Byron shook his head. “She wouldn’t do that, not away from home.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t wanna talk to you,” from Adams.

  I glared at him. “Of course she does!” I scowled.

  “How do you know? Left in a huff, didn’t she?”

  “Mr. Adams--” I began.

  “Best start callin’ me Adam! Son!”

  I shut my mouth. Opened it again. “’Son’?”

  “Or Dad if ya please. Mr. Bledsoe, I’d like to take this opportunity to ask you for your mother’s hand in marriage!”

  “No kidding!” Byron brightened.

  Liz colored. “Oh, Adam, you don’t need permission! But that’s sweet, though!”

  “Byron, I’d like to ask if I can stay on here a day or so more,” from Katie.

  “But the case—“

  “I’m sure your family’s fine. But I’m not quite satisfied. May I stay a bit longer? The hotels are a bit expensive now; it’s tourist season.”

  “You and Elliot, you mean.”

  “No. Just me.”

  “Wait a second—“ I started.

  “Oh my!” Liz clapped her hands, “Is that a breath of romance I feel in the air?”

  “Damn it, Mom! Liz!”

  Liz grabbed Katie’s arm. “I’d be glad to do a Tarot reading for you two!”

  “Liz—“

  She gave me her lifted chin. “Day late and a dollar short, son! I told you to propose to this lovely creature, now she’s slipping away from you!”

  “Shucks,” from Mr. Adams, “lookin’ forward to havin’ her in the family…”

  “There IS no family!” I shouted.

  And every dealer and buyer in the house turned to look at us.

  Byron didn’t seem to notice them, or the ensuing silence.

  He stared at the cell phone in his palm. “Maybe she is that mad, like Mr. Adams said. Maybe she’s left me for good…”

  Liz clapped her hands together again. “Well, that leaves the door wide open for Katie!”

  “I want you to know, son,” Mr. Adams touched my arm, “it’s my intention to bring you into the antique business as a full partner!”

  I just stared at him.

  He waved a hand at the air. “Don’t try to thank me!”

  I think he was starting to tear up.

  Liz certainly was. She beamed at the group of us, hands laced contentedly atop her heart. “Isn’t this just the loveliest day!”

  * * *

  Maybe.

  But not the loveliest night.

  As the afternoon wore on I became increasingly restless. And right at the heels of that lurked the threat of actual depression.

  Part of it was simply the number of antique buyers and prospective home owners and local gawkers threading through the building; someone was always bumping just in front of me hurriedly, if not landing squarely on my toes. This last part, by late afternoon, no one even bothered apologizing for: as the day’s activities drew to an end, the flush of buying and wheedling rose proportionately among the guests. I was concerned about Katie, wanting to get alone and talk to her, but—when some old lady or anxious young man was getting in the way—she seemed to avoid my eyes just when I needed her most.

  In fact, unless it was my exhausted imagination, she appeared more interested in Byron’s welfare than my own. Poor, long-suffering Byron, trying to push antiques and answer questions about the plumbing with one ear to a cell phone that wouldn’t respond to his constant attention. I found myself glancing over at Liz and Mr. Adams, arm-in-arm, wandering about the crowd like happy teenagers oblivious to any world but their own. It gave me a queasy feeling. I mean, I loved my mother but eccentrically batty as she could be, she was also innately intelligent, almost atavistically elemental. Maybe she was right. Maybe Katie really was falling for poor old beleaguered hideously handsome beach boy Byron. Bastard. I kept having senseless temptations to change the ring tone on my own cellular. Help Me Rhoda my ass.

  That only made me feel selfish and childish, of course…and even more acutely desirous of my beautiful partner. Except Kate wasn’t my partner, at least not in anything more than the paranormal investigative sense, as Liz—for some obnoxious reason—kept making more and more deliberately apparent to everyone.

  ‘Deliberately.’

  ‘Atavistically elemental.’

  But nowhere in there was the word ‘naïve.’ Is that what my preparative little mother was up to?–pushing Katie into my arms via Byron’s? Hitting the donkey on the head, as they say, to get its stubborn attention? Or was I giving her more credit than she deserved?

  You can never give Liz more credit than she deserves. She’s smarter than the lot of you, maybe even Katie.

  Yeah, right. That’s why she’s obsessed with Tarot cards!

  Don’t sell her short, mister, she’s never not in control.

  Well, neither am I!

  Yeah, right.

  “Excuse me,” a young woman said next to me, “do you work here?”

  She was pretty in a patrician way, perfectly coiffed, wearing an ultra-trendy expensive Michael Kors dress and designer jewelry with the sublime patience of the sinfully rich.

  “’Work here’? Does this look like freakin’ Best Buy?”

  Only I didn’t say it: her ultra-trendy Gucci sunglassed boyfriend just behind her showed ropey muscles even under his Armani jacket, and he was bigger than Byron. What I said was: “How can I help you?”

  She held up the last onyx carpet ball in her hand. “How much is this?”

  I glanced at the remaining carpet ball. “I’m not sure, you’ll have to ask—“

  “It’s not for sale!” Katie cried behind me, coming up quickly on my left, already reaching for the onyx sphere.

  Which Ms. Patrician summarily pulled away from her grasp. “It was on the sale table over there…”

  Katie tried to reach it again, was again thwarted. “Sorry, it’s not for sale!”

  The other woman held the ball to her small, perfect breasts, stepping back into the protective circle of her boyfriend brawn. “How do you know?”

  “Because…” and for the first time in my life I saw Katie struggle with words, “…it’s mine!”

  I looked down at the long-fingered, green-lacquered nails coveting the ball. Spotted the tiny smudge of red “rust.” Oh, shit!

  “You left it sitting on the sale table with the other items?” said the rich girl, arching a perfect, accusing brow.

  Katie gave me a quick panicked look. We tossed the wrong ball off the bridge!

  But I’d already guessed that.

  “Excuse me,” I offered past a plastered-on smile, “I do believe I saw this young lady with the object first!”

  “Who’re you?” from boyfriend Gigantor, in a tone that said, ‘Who’re you, insect?’

  “I’m the guy selling the antiques,” I told him with authority. The authority of a housefly.

  “Please give it back!” Katie insisted too urgently, reaching out again.

  Patrician Puss held the ball out of reach. “The sign on the table say, ‘first come, first serve.’”

  “And I was the first to come!” Katie rejoined, just on the edge of real Katie anger.

  I had a vision of the mother of all catfights—Armani Jacket pulling away on one pair of shapely legs while Katie yanked at the ball and stood her ground. Byron’s entire f
ire sale was turning quickly to ashes.

  “Do you even know what it is?” Patrician purred.

  “It’s a carpet ball! And I did see it first!”

  Full throttle Katie now; the next instant would include bodice-ripping, and not the kind you find under Harlequin Romances.

  “Let’s all just settle down now,” I assuaged, glancing askance at Katie, “if that’s what the young woman says the sign reads, then it’s not our place to question her veracity. Madam, the ball is yours…”

  Katie gasped beside me as the lacquered nails dipped into the designer purse.

  “…that will be five hundred, please,” and I held up my hand professionally.

  The porcelain hand hesitated.

  But only for a moment, then it withdrew a checkbook and pen. “Done.”

  I could feel Katie’s eyes boring into my profile. Think of something!

  But I couldn’t. I just bowed slightly at the waist as the check was ripped off and handed to me.

  “Thank-you very much, sir!” Satisfied, she was more flirtatious than snobbish now.

  I held the smile, glanced at the check—Commerce Bank of San Diego—handed it back. “Sorry. That’s five hundred thousand.”

  The ingénue jaw dropped.

  The boyfriend made a sound like a Jack Russell terrier.

  “That’s ridiculous!”

  I shrugged innocence. “It’s cheap for an 1896 carpet ball!”

  The couple smoldered in tandem. Gigantor started forward but his girlfriend pushed him back in a way that said she was used to pushing him back. “Fine!” She wheeled on Katie. “If she can make out a check for five hundred K she can have the damn thing!”

  I turned to Katie, swallowing thickly.

  Katie looked up helplessly at me.

  Then she burst into tears, buried her face in her hands. “Oh, Elliot, just tell them! Tell them the truth!”

  I stood there like a forgotten wicket. “Um…”

  Katie sobbed. “Tell them! I don’t care anymore! I don’t care if the whole world knows!”

  I looked at the anticipatory couple, looked back at Katie. “Um…”

  “I told you it was a stupid idea! I told Byron not to put the thing on sale! Considering”

  Considering?

  “Um…”

  Patrician Puss had a what-the-hell expression on her face.

  Katie sobbed into her hands. “—considering where it came from!”

  A light bulb went off.

  I stepped back suddenly from the woman, from the sphere in her pale hand. “Right. I suppose…”

  “You have to tell them, Elliot!”

  “Tell us what?” Frankenstein growled.

  I moved further back, regarded the ball as if it were Kryptonite. “It’s just…it’s been in her family for several generations! What’s left of them, that is…”

  The young woman looked down at the ball. “’Left’?”

  I wrung my hands—the whole thing was a terrible mistake. “Look, you have my promise the ball was thoroughly disinfected! Thoroughly!” I sighed, eyeing it balefully. “There’s no clinical proof—rare as it is—that the family’s form of leprosy can be passed by inanimate objects…”

  The carpet ball thumped the floor.

  The couple stepped back. “What the hell!”

  I held up reassuring, apologetic hands. “I’m sure if you use soap and water—scrub vigorously—“

  “Say, where’s the bathroom in this museum?” Mr. Adams said, wandering up, “gotta drain the ole lizard!”

  I pointed.

  Mr. Adams turned and was nearly trampled to death by the young couple.

  “I’m so sorry!” Katie cried after them tearfully.

  The woman kept pushing her boyfriend out of the way before the bathroom door, cursing and beating at him despite the turning heads.

  Mr. Adams shook his own head. “When ya gotta go--right?”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Katie grabbed up the ball from the carpet and stuck it quickly in her shoulder bag as I pulled her out of earshot of Mr. Adams.

  “How the hell could you take the wrong one?” I accused, heart still beating wildly in my chest.

  “Gee, Elliot, I don’t know—maybe because they’re almost exactly the same size and color!”

  “Not quite the same size!”

  “I was in a hurry! So sue me!”

  “’An investigator never hurries’—one of the first things you taught me!”

  “Excuse me all to hell for being slightly human!”

  I pulled harder. “Could you shout a little louder—I don’t think the guests heard you!”

  She yanked away from my grip. “What guests? They’re practically all gone!”

  I slowed down past the staircase, accessed the living room. The last straggle of buyers and potential buyers was edging toward the foyer door.

  I took a deep breath and found that I was shaking slightly.

  When I turned to her, Katie was frowning up at me. “What’s the matter with you? You’re all…pinked up!”

  “Nothing!”

  “Yeah, right. C’mon, Elliot, what is it?”

  I found myself staring at Byron across the room, ushering out the last of the crowd, cell phone looking like it had grown into his ear. He looked haggard. Beyond haggard. He looked beat.

  Katie followed my eyes. “Poor Byron…”

  I turned sharply to her. “Well, I’m sure you’ll pick up his spirits after I leave! Put on your best bedside manner!”

  She gave me an incredulous look. “What--?”

  “You heard me.”

  She searched my face, holding the incredulous look. “What exactly in hell are you talking about?”

  “Gee, I can’t image!”

  I looked away quickly but I saw the incredulous look morph into humor before I did. “You’re not serious…”

  I refused to meet her eyes. “Liz certainly seems to be!”

  Katie stood silently, as if waiting me out.

  I still refused to turn to her. “She’s practically throwing you at him! When she’s not throwing herself at him…or anything around in pants!”

  Her voice was brittle. “That’s an awful thing to say, Elliot. Especially about your mother, but more especially because your mother is Liz.”

  I sorted, gazing off. “Well, it’s the truth. I’ve got eyes!”

  “Dr. Watson,” she murmured.

  “What?”

  “’You see, Watson, but you do not observe.’”

  “So you’re Sherlock Holmes now?”

  “Not even in the same league. You’re a real piece of work, you know that, Bledsoe..?”

  Now I had to look at her.

  “…you accuse me and poor, sick-with-love-for-his-wife Byron, and you haven’t had the decency to even make up your own mind about me! It isn’t Byron Liz is throwing me at. And you know it.”

  I didn’t like the look in her eyes.

  “You know, I used to feel sorry for you. Poor old Elliot, all these beautiful women around him and he can’t make up his addled professor’s mind.” She offered a little mirthless twitch of a grin. “I think my patience is wearing thin…”

  And she turned on her heel.

  “Katie. Hey—wait—“

  “May I have your attention, please!”

  We both looked up to find Liz standing at room’s center, arms raised high commandingly.

  “Now what?” I heard Katie mutter.

  Liz poked her hands on her hips, swiveling around to make sure she had everyone’s attention. “I hereby declare the fire sale an unqualified success.”

  Nobody smiled.

  “You’re not smiling!” she beamed. “C’mon, everyone, time to shake off the gloom! Shake off the blues! Shake your booty! Can I get an amen?”

  She couldn’t.

  I sighed heavily. “It’s been a long day, Liz…”

  “Don’t talk that way to your mother!” Mr. Adams warned, boxing up
the unsold antiques.

  I rolled my eyes heavenward. Great.

  She’s my mother, you knobby-kneed old toothless wonder!

  But what good would that do?

  “I further hereby declare that we take—Byron, dear, put that silly cell phone away—that we take the rest of the evening off!”

  Everybody just stared at her limply.

  Liz smiled wide, arms still in the air. “And get high!”

  Katie lifted a brow. “I’m in, if we’ve got any stuff.”

  Byron nodded. “Maybe a little left in the cigar box under my bed.”

  “I ain’t marryin’ no woman who smokes pot like a damn hippie!” from Mr. Adams.

  “Hey!” I lit up, “someone else remember hippies!”

  “I won’t do it!” Adams crossed his arms petulantly.

  “Adam, dear,” Liz smiled loving, bending to show cleavage. “If you want to play with Marabelle and Dewdrop again, I suggest you shut-up!”

  She turned to the rest of us. “I’m not talking about some candy-ass weed here! When I say high I mean diamonds!”

  I frowned.” ‘Diamonds?’”

  “Lucy in the Sky With!”

  Oh, Jesus! “Mom, please don’t tell me you’re shooting up.”

  “Now if you’ll all—including my rapier-witted son—will repair with me to the kitchen area, please… she grinned devilishly, pulling a long, lime-colored bottle from her purse, “I will introduce each of you to the pleasures of long forbidden eldritch lore!”

  “Say what?” from Katie.

  “The luminous landscape of the gamboling green fairy, dear!”

  “Ain’t hangin’ out with no fairies!” from Mr. Adams.

  Liz came to him, cupped his cheek in her palm. “Adam, darling, remember what I did with the sun tan lotion on the beach last night--?”

  Mr. Adams colored and hunched, probably for the first time in his life.

  “—it’s better than that!” Liz winked.

  * * *

  Katie, Byron, Mr. Adams and I sat round the kitchen table.

  Liz swept histrionically about the cupboards with florid theatrical gestures, blue peasant skirt fanning high like a 1950’s housewife in an Edsel commercial. “Is everyone cozy?”

  “Cozy,” from Byron.

  “Katie-love?”

  “Just brimming, Liz!”

  “Elliot, dear?”

  “My ass is squeaking, Liz.”