He sighed, gathered up his platter and his beer, and headed toward his parents.
His dad pulled his own plate out of the way, frowning in his direction. “What are you doing here?”
Danny glanced at his mother, who gave him a serenely bland smile in return. “I’m with the band,” he muttered.
His father shrugged and went back to his pinto beans.
“How about you?” Danny asked. “How did you end up at Bodacious Barbeque?”
“We’re here to listen to Biddy, of course.” His mother smiled again. “You didn’t tell me she was a musician, Danielo.”
Danny scooped up a spoonful of potato salad—celery, onion bits, mayonnaise and smashed potatoes. Heaven. “I didn’t know you’d be interested.”
His father snorted, but kept his attention on his ribs. Danny knew the idea of his mother not being interested in one of his dates was ludicrous, but he was still trying to recover from his surprise at seeing her there at all.
“Fortunately, Biddy told me herself.” Her smile ratcheted up to blinding. “I do like her, Danny. She’s such a sweetheart.”
Danny swallowed his suddenly dry brisket and told himself it wasn’t panic he was feeling. More like indigestion. “She’s a nice girl.”
His father raised his gaze again. “Friend of yours?”
His mother began studying the string band with great attention.
Danny wiped a smear of barbeque sauce off his mouth. “My assistant, also a friend.”
Dad’s forehead furrowed. “You’re dating your assistant? Doesn’t your office have rules about that?”
“Probably.” Danny shrugged. “We’re keeping it under wraps.”
That particular phrase kicked loose all sorts of images that he could have done without at that particular moment. Biddy under wraps, her breasts skimmed with moonlight, a crumpled sheet wound around her hips. Emerging from the shower with a smallish bath towel draped across her front.
Lordy, lordy. He spread his napkin more securely across his lap.
He had a feeling his father was fighting a grin. Danny decided not to notice.
“This band of hers any good?” Dad picked up another rib and contemplated the meaty end.
“The best.” Danny nodded once, hard. “You’ve never heard anything like them. Guaranteed.”
His father raised one skeptical eyebrow. “I guess we’ll see.”
Danny turned back to his mother. “So how did you happen to be talking to Biddy about her music?”
“Oh, we had lunch.” She began sorting through the chicken pieces on her plate. “You know how it is. You start talking, and one thing leads to another.”
He had a sudden sinking feeling in his gut. “What did it lead to this time?”
She raised her gaze to his, her lips spreading into another faint smile. “Some discussion of King William’s more interesting families and a very unusual conversation with a cat. About some demons in the carriage house. Oh, look, there’s Biddy!”
The opening song must have been a winner—the crowd cheered for a couple of minutes when it was over. Danny couldn’t have said one way or the other. He was still staring at his mother as the last few notes faded away in the background. For the first time since he’d started following the band around town, he hadn’t heard a single note of the song they’d just played.
***
Biddy told herself she wasn’t upset that Danny hadn’t driven her home. His parents had been there, after all, and his mother had wanted to meet the band and then had spent a lot of time telling them how wonderful they were until the tips of Gordy’s ears were bright pink and Skip looked like he was five years old. His dad hadn’t been quite as talkative, but he’d taken Biddy’s hand in his and told her he’d buy their CDs as soon as they had any.
His father didn’t look much like Danny until she studied him a little more closely. Danny had inherited the broad shoulders and the sense of power about the chest and biceps.
He’d also inherited the square jaw and the hard line around the mouth, both of which he was definitely showing. Biddy told herself it had nothing to do with her. And she even halfway believed it. Make that more like ten percent believed it. Or at least hoped it.
She had a feeling Deirdre had been talking to her son about things Biddy would rather she hadn’t.
She caught a ride home with Skip. If he noticed she wasn’t riding with her boyfriend/boss, he had enough sense not to mention it. She wasn’t sure what she’d have said if he’d asked, but it wouldn’t have been pretty.
Now she opened a Diet Coke and settled into her rocking chair to watch The Daily Show. Maybe it was time to return to reality anyway. Too long in cloud cuckoo land couldn’t be good for anybody.
The knock on her front door didn’t catch her entirely by surprise. She was already pretty sure she knew who it would be and what he’d have to say.
Danny leaned one shoulder on the doorjamb, watching her with bleak eyes. Biddy stepped back to let him in, then headed to the kitchen, pulling a bottle of sauvignon blanc out of the refrigerator. At least they could drink something civilized while they broke up.
He settled into one of her kitchen chairs, wineglass on the table in front of him. “So tell me—why exactly did you take my mother to the Steadman house this afternoon? And whose idea was it?”
“Mine.” Biddy slid into the chair opposite him.” I wanted her help.”
“Why?”
She took a deep breath and then plunged in. “Because I read about your family in a book at the Historical Society when I was looking for stuff about Palmer. I thought she might know how mediums worked. I mean your ancestors were real mediums, right? Unlike Palmer, who was apparently a phony.”
His face was as hard and smooth as marble. “I wouldn’t know. I never met any of the Riordans, other than my mother. I’m told they didn’t like men.”
Biddy’s eyes widened. “You mean they were lesbians?”
He rubbed a hand across his face. “No. Not that I know of, anyway. They had a long history of divorce, though. Apparently, the medium business didn’t need any males around to be successful. One of the reasons my mom decided to leave the family firm.”
“They had real power, though, didn’t they? I mean your mother’s a natural medium, judging from what happened this afternoon.”
He closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Yes, my mother has some weird abilities. But let’s get back on track, shall we? What happened at the house?”
“Weird?” She stared at him. “You think your mother is ‘weird’? Your mother is wonderful, Danny! You have no idea how lucky you are. You have no idea how much . . .” She managed to stop herself before finishing the sentence.
You have no idea how much I wish I had someone like her in my life instead of a sister who thinks I’m a loser because I’m not her carbon copy. And who’ll probably stop speaking to me when I quit.
She bit her lip, trying hard to ignore the tears that were hovering around the edges of her vision. If she ignored them, maybe he would, too.
Danny’s sigh sounded more irritated than sympathetic. “Look, Biddy, I’m crazy about my mother, but right now I’m trying to find out what’s happened and decide whether I need to do any damage control. Who else knows about the information you found on the Riordans at the Historical Society?”
“Knows about it?” She shook her head. “No one. Other than your mother, that is. And of course she knew already.”
“Not Gracie?” His voice was neutral, but his eyes burned. “Not Araceli?”
“Of course not!” She took a deep breath and kept her gaze on her hands. She didn’t want to snarl at him. “God, Danny, you know me better than that. How can you even ask?”
“Good.” Danny picked up his glass again. “I figured that
was the case, but I needed to ask. So tell me what happened. From the top.”
Biddy sighed. You’d never know from this conversation that they’d spent a large part of the last three nights in bed together. “After I found out about the Riordans, I called your mom. And she asked me to meet her for lunch.”
Danny narrowed his eyes. “Why?”
“I guess she thought I might be hungry,” she snapped. “Did she need a reason?”
“No, I meant why did you call her in the first place? What was it about the Riordans that made you get in touch with her?”
“Because of this book I found—Shadows of San Antonio.” She leaned back in her chair. “As I said, Prescott Palmer was a phony medium. A con man, according to this book. He fleeced a lot of rich men here in town with phony financial advice that he supposedly got from the spirits, and then he disappeared with all the money. I thought your mother might have heard of him.”
“And had she?” Danny’s jaw was suddenly a hard line.
She looked down at her hands again. Get off my case, Danny. “Yes. Your grandmother talked about him a little. Or maybe it was your great-grandmother.” Her shoulders ached with the tension of holding herself back.
He sat watching her for a long moment, his gaze flat. “In all my life, my mother barely mentioned her own mother to me, let alone her grandmother. In one afternoon’s conversation, you’ve gotten more information from her about the Riordans than I got in thirty years.”
Suddenly, she felt a welcome surge of pure exasperation. “What exactly are you pissed about right now, Danny? That I called your mother? That your mother wanted to talk to me? That I know something embarrassing about you? I’m not sure exactly what I’m supposed to apologize for here.”
He stood up quickly and began to pace the length of the kitchen—not that it was all that long. She stared after him, at the rigid set of his spine, as he stomped past her. For a moment, she wondered just how badly it was going to hurt if he walked out, then decided not to think about it.
“This is my problem, Biddy. I’m the one stuck with trying to unload this place, and I’m the one who saw the ghosts. It’s bad enough that you got pulled into it with me. But I really don’t like the idea of my mother being pulled in, too.”
She felt the weight of exhaustion settle onto her shoulders again. She so didn’t want to be having this conversation. “I didn’t try to pull your mom in—she wanted in. I know that’s no excuse, but there it is. And I didn’t take her into the carriage house where the bad ghosts seem to be, just the main house. I wanted her to talk to the cat.”
Something passed across Danny’s face so quickly Biddy wasn’t sure she’d really seen it. Except that she had. Her lips thinned. “Did you take her to the carriage house yourself?”
After a moment, he sank back into his chair, rubbing his hands across his face. “Okay, so I’m full of shit. I’m as much at fault as you are, so tell me what the freakin’ cat said to you. And why did you want to talk to the cat? And how the hell can a cat talk, anyway?”
“Because the cat is Mrs. Steadman.” Biddy managed to keep her voice matter-of-fact. “Gracie told me that Mrs. Steadman said she wanted to come back as a cat. So I put two and two together. Only it’s not just Mrs. Steadman, it’s also a real cat who belonged to the Palmers, which makes her sort of hard to talk to.” Leaving aside for the moment the fact that no normal cat could have any kind of conversation, easy or not. Down the rabbit hole, Biddy.
She took another breath. “Sometimes she’s sort of human, but mostly she’s not.”
A muscle in his jaw twitched. “Okay, leaving aside for the moment the whole What-the-hell? factor, what did this cat-who-was-Mrs.-Steadman tell you?”
“Demons.” She rested her elbows on the table. “The cat said someone, some man, called in demons to kill off someone else, also a man. But the one who called them in also got killed by them. And a woman was involved somehow, a woman who did something to turn the demons on the man who’d called them up in the first place.”
“And this has what to do with the carriage house?”
She shrugged. “The demons were in the carriage house. They still are, if you believe Mrs.-Steadman-the-cat. She claims she locked them in and they can’t get out. But no humans are supposed to live there.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” he muttered. “It would take a very special buyer to want to move into a demon condo. So who called them up in the first place—Palmer?”
She nodded. “That would be my guess. Maybe he wasn’t so phony after all.”
“And the woman who was involved and who’s now our faceless ghost is Mrs. Palmer?”
“She’s the only candidate so far, but I guess it could be some woman we haven’t come across yet.”
“So what about the man who was demon bait?” He rubbed his eyes again. “Is he Mr. Black? Or is Palmer Mr. Black?”
Biddy shook her head. “Not Palmer.”
“Why not?”
“His suit doesn’t fit. Mr. Black’s, I mean.”
His eyes narrowed again. “And this is relevant because . . .”
“Palmer had his suits custom-made—he used to claim they came from London. He’d never wear a suit where you could see his wrists because the sleeves were too short. Like Mr. Black does.”
He sat staring at her for a long moment, then sighed. “Okay, so we’re back to square one. We’ve got a couple of unknown ghosts in the carriage house. Maybe killed by Palmer’s demons. Or maybe they are Palmer’s demons. What the hell does a demon look like, anyway? Cloven hoofs?”
Biddy shook her head. “Your mother said that ‘demon’ is just a generic term for an evil spirit. I guess they could look like anybody. And Mrs. Steadman or Mrs. Palmer’s cat or both of them said the dead man was the ‘driver man.’ I don’t know what that means exactly, but I’m willing to bet that’s Mr. Black. Maybe he was the chauffeur.”
“Not in 1895. Coachman?”
“Maybe.” She chewed her lip. “Maybe Mr. Black was the Palmers’ coachman and Palmer killed him—or called up some demons to do it for him. The question is why would he do that? Why demons? Mr. Black doesn’t look all that formidable. Why wouldn’t Palmer just take care of him himself? Or hire some human being to do it?”
Danny shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe Palmer liked doing things the hard way. Maybe Mr. Black saw something, or heard something, or knew something. Maybe something happened in the carriage when he was driving—or in the carriage house when he was living there.” He closed his eyes, leaning his head against the back of his chair. “Does the motive matter? As long as we know Palmer killed him.”
“Do we know that for sure?” Biddy mused. “Do ghosts always tell the truth?”
He stared at her. “I can’t believe I’m having this conversation. Do ghosts always tell the truth? How the hell would I know?”
The thought floated between them unspoken. You could ask your mother.
He rubbed his eyes fiercely. “Mom said something about bringing some tuna to Mrs. Steadman tomorrow. What was that all about?”
“I promised,” Biddy said stiffly. “I said if she told us about the demons, I’d bring her a can of tuna. I’m going to do it tomorrow.”
“I’ll come with you. I’ve got a few questions of my own.”
“I don’t know if the two of us can talk to her. Your mother was the contact. I had to hold her hand to talk to Mrs. Steadman.”
“I’m not bringing my mother back there,” he snapped. “Her brief career as a medium is over, as far as I’m concerned. What do you think Araceli would have done if she’d found the two of you there?”
Biddy shrugged. “Araceli’s tied up with a sale in Grey Forest, the Tupper place. She won’t be in the office tomorrow until very late, if then.”
“Good.” He stood up again. “That me
ans the two of us can go in there without worrying about her. I’ll meet you there at three.” He stood watching her for a moment, then he closed his eyes. “Biddy, I’m more sorry than I can say that I got you into this. I’ll try to think of a way to get you back out.”
She managed a tiny smile. “Don’t blame yourself. I think Mr. Black got me in. And I want to help.”
“Him? Or me?”
She met his gaze. “Both of you. If I can.”
He stared at her a moment longer. Then he leaned down, brushing his lips lightly against hers. “Goodnight, Biddy,” he whispered. “Sleep well. No dreams.”
She nodded. “You, too.”
She watched him turn and walk away, listening to the door latch behind him. Biddy sighed. Apparently, she was sleeping alone tonight.
***
At midnight, Danny still sat at his computer and tried to think of some way to head his mother off. Knowing her, he was fairly certain Biddy was being accurate—it probably was Ma’s idea to go to the house, just as Ma had undoubtedly been willing to tell Biddy all about the Riordan family and their unfortunate profession. He was only glad his mother hadn’t shared her own conclusion that he himself was some kind of woo-woo throwback.
His fingers froze over the keyboard. Surely she hadn’t shared that idea, had she? If she had, Biddy would have said something about it. He leaned back in his chair, rubbing his burning eyes. Unless she was being polite.
Of course, the evening hadn’t been one of his finest hours overall. Snarling at Biddy for doing something he’d done himself didn’t strike him as a great way to keep the relationship going. And only now did it occur to him how much he wanted to keep the relationship going.
He leaned over the keyboard again, typing “Prescott Palmer” into the search box. Never overlook the obvious. Biddy had been concentrating on the Historical Society—she might not have gotten around to the Internet.
Google happily served up several Palmer Prescotts, some Prescotts who appeared in the same paragraph with somebody else named Palmer and some pages where the connection wasn’t clear even to him. He was just getting ready to check page two of the search results when his phone rang.
Medium Well (9781101599648) Page 21