Castle Moon

by Mary Bowers

  We’d been at it for about an hour when Elizabeth appeared in the doorway and said, “You can stop now.”

  We both straightened up and stared at her.

  “Are you going to do it?” Charlotte asked.

  “Nobody’s going to do it,” Elizabeth said flatly. “I just called our lawyer. Nothing leaves this room or her apartment in New York until a court-appointed representative of the estate can make an inventory. We have to seal the room. In other words, scram, both of you.”

  She stood to one side of the doorway watching us closely, as if we were going to slip things into our pockets on the way out. When she had closed the door behind us all, Oliver quietly locked it and pocketed the key. I’d noticed Fawn’s own key sitting on the mantel in her room, and we had left it there. I suppose I had been watching Elizabeth as closely as she had been watching us. I don’t know what I would have done about it, but I wanted to be sure she didn’t cross the bedroom and take the key from the mantel.

  As we walked away, Charlotte murmured, “She could have called the lawyer in the first place and saved us all that work. Or at least told us she was going to call the lawyer. They must have been through this kind of thing before. She must have known or suspected this would happen.”

  “I know.”

  I didn’t have a lot to say. I wanted to get upstairs and empty my pockets – especially the one with a few sheets of paper in it. I have to admit, I knew it was wrong to take them, even before Elizabeth came in and said nothing was to be taken from the room. But I knew as soon as I saw that stack of papers that it was important, and I’m not good at memorizing things. I wanted to show them to Ed and see what he thought about them.

  * * * * *

  Ed was sleeping, but he’s one of those people who never seem to be entirely asleep. He wakes up all-of-a-sudden-like, blinking, stammering, but ready to go. He must sleep with his glasses on. I didn’t check to see. I saw that he was in the bed in the darkened room and just went over to the window and threw the drapes aside.

  “If you’re sleeping in the nude,” I said with my back to him and my eyes out over the ocean, “get up and put something on. I think I’ve just figured it out, but I want to talk to you about it.”

  I heard him scrambling around behind me. “You figured out the haunting?”

  “No. I figured out why Fawn is dead.”

  * * * * *

  He finished reading and held the sheets of paper in his two hands, sitting on the side of the bed in old-fashioned striped pajamas. It turned out that I’d taken four sheets. I’d slipped them out of the middle of the stack, and they were numbered pages 46, 47, 48 and 49. At the top right there was a header reading, Damnation.

  “So Maxine wasn’t the only author in the family,” Ed said.

  “It looks like a thinly veiled tell-all about her family. It’s hard to be sure just from reading four pages, taken out of context, but I think the Mortimer character is obviously Horace the elder.”

  “Yes. Quite graphic. Who knew that Fawn would be capable of such an intricate and prolonged sex scene.”

  “More like a rape scene,” I said indignantly. “It isn’t over by the end of page 49. And she seemed like such a nice, boring lady.”

  “She was a nice, boring lady,” Ed said, ever gallant. “But do you realize what this means, if anybody in the family knew she was writing this and meant to publish it?”

  “Of course. It’s motive. While she was married to a State Representative, she could never have published something hot like this. It’s dynamite. But once he was dead, she was free to do whatever the heck she wanted, and even with just four pages to go by, it looks to me like it would have made her a fortune. A shocker of a tell-all about a wealthy dynasty, from the widow of a well-known politician who’s not fully settled in his grave yet? And more to the point, it was a reason to live. God knows what kind of picture she drew of her husband in this, if he pops up later on in the story. According to Jeralyn, he wasn’t a nice guy. Fawn had that beat-down look women get when they’re married to powerful control freaks. Now she’s free, and about to get her revenge, maybe on everybody from Grandfather to Hubby Dearest. Why would she kill herself? That’s why I snatched those and brought them to you. I don’t know what to do about it. They’ve sealed the room. Nothing should have been taken from it, and I took that. I can hardly admit that I’ve got it, but I think Detective Frane should know about it.”

  He regarded me steadily. “Good lord, Taylor, do you realize what you’re saying? You do realize that any good work we’ve done for Horace would go straight to hell, as far as he’s concerned, if you let this get out?”

  “I know.”

  “You understand what this would cost you? What it would cost us?”

  “I can put a precise price tag on it: fifty thousand dollars. Each.” I let my gaze drift away from him and tilted my head, suddenly struck by it. “You know, Ed, I haven’t thought about that money since we first got here. I guess other things began to seem more important.”

  “Strange. I haven’t either.”

  “So which thing tips the scales, the money, or justice for the lady?”

  I was so taken up with the question, I should have reared back and screamed when I felt something touch my ankles, but instead I just looked down as if I’d been expecting it. Bastet came out from under the bed, stretched herself so that she looked impossibly long for a moment, then arched her back and whisked her tail around. When she was through with the ritual, she turned to us, sat neatly and tilted her head.

  I flashed back to the first moment I’d seen her gazing down from the top of a semi-trailer in a dark warehouse. I’d gone there to rescue an abandoned litter of kittens, and while I searched for the babies, she had appeared out of nowhere and looked down upon me, thinking it over. I was being judged. She decided I would do, and then she disappeared until it was time for her to use me as her go-between with the human world. And it had all been about a murder.

  I didn’t tell Ed, but I made an illogical leap then and there. Fawn had been murdered. Bastet knew it. I knew it. I knew why, I knew how, and suddenly, looking down at the four double-spaced pages, I thought I even knew who had done it. Of course I knew who had done it! Who else would care about the book Fawn was writing?

  Only one thing kept me from discussing it with Ed right then and there: why hadn’t the typescript been taken? Granted, it had been hidden pretty well, but the guilty party had had all night to find it. The room didn’t even look as if it had been searched.

  “Ed,” I said suddenly, “do you think Oliver loved his sister?”

  “With this family, it’s hard to tell who feels what. They always act like they hate one another. When Fawn had breakfast on the terrace with us, Oliver just seemed bored by her.”

  “Damn. You’re right. I wonder how we’re going to get that key away from him. We need to get back into Fawn’s room.”

  His glasses nearly fell off. “You’re kidding, right?”

  I shook my head. “I need to see the rest of this book. I need to see if I can recognize other characters, and just who she decided to put into the book, and what they do in the book. The easiest way would be to go directly to Oliver and tell him what we want and ask him to let us into Fawn’s room.”

  “What we want?”

  “Okay, what I want. But once he knows I want to get into that room, there’s no way I’m getting in if he decides I shouldn’t. It’d be an all-or-nothing gamble.”

  “As usual, Taylor, you’re letting yourself get carried away. The police are investigating Fawn’s death. If somebody pushed her over the balcony, there are going to be indications on her body.”

  “Not necessarily. Just a little push would’ve done it.”

  “Forensics are extremely sophisticated these days. Who knows? But before you get carried away and do both of us out of the rest of our fees, give the police a chance. This is Tuesday. If Oliver doesn’t decide our work is done here, we’re staying on until Friday a
fternoon – another four days. If nothing changes before then, you and I will have a private conference on Friday morning and decide what to do about Fawn’s death – if we even still believe it was murder by then. The family seems to have already accepted that it was suicide. The three people who knew her best – Elizabeth, Ryan and Julie – are all firmly convinced that it was suicide. I’m an investigator. I’m trained to watch for fabrications.”

  “Lies? Especially self-serving lies?”

  “Yes. I’ve watched all three. I believe them. Julie, especially, was talking about how depressed and nervous Fawn has been lately.”

  “Julie’s the one I trust least of all.”

  He waved it aside. “We should wait until Friday.”

  I wasn’t happy about it. When I get an idea, I want to act on it immediately. And Bastet wasn’t happy about it. She regarded us with disdain, moved sinuously around at the door and meowed to be let out.

  “Leaving me for Jeralyn again?” I asked, opening the door.

  She strode out without even bothering to look back.

  “Yeah, well, I’m not happy about it, either,” I said to her retreating form.

  As events finally played out I didn’t have to wait until Friday. The killer, unmolested and unaccused by family members or the law, acted again.

  Chapter 18

  Ed left the Sensitainer at the gallery railing outside Oliver’s bedroom. Our employer seemed to be getting a savage pleasure out of bending down close to the top of it and listening to the awful music Clarice (in theory) was going to be listening to until the next Big Bang. I found him cackling over it when I came down that evening for our next official meeting.

  “Now that you’ve got Cousin Clarice, um, in the can,” I said carefully, “do we have to have our investigations in the middle of the night from now on?”

  He looked at Ed for input. “You’re the expert,” he said. “What do you think?”

  “I’ve never had significant results in broad daylight. I have a theory that sun energy is powerful enough to wash over and disguise the lower, cooler vibrations of those on another, or coinciding, plane of existence, but that’s just a theory.”

  Oliver transferred his level gaze to me and turned his hands palms up.

  “He wants to go ahead at night,” I said dismally. “But I know from personal experience that séances, for instance, can be performed after dark, before, say, three in the morning.”

  “Naturally, naturally,” Ed said. “It’s, ah, 8:37 now. Sunset was at 8:14, so it should be dark in just a few minutes.”

  “So, can we just wait for dark? Depending on our next goal, of course,” I added, looking at Oliver.

  “You know what our next goal is. And if it involves a séance, so be it. You both signed the nondisclosure agreement, so we can dance in a circle singing Oh Susanna! if that’s what it takes. I’m ready to do whatever you say.”

  “No, no,” said Ed, taking things literally as usual. “We can have a séance while sitting down in the comfort of your office, or your bedroom, or anywhere else where we can have privacy, but I do wish you would have mentioned this before. We have one of the country’s foremost sensitives just a few miles from here in Spuds. I could have called her.”

  “I thought you two could handle this by yourselves. I’m paying you enough –“

  “Of course, of course, of course,” Ed said quickly.

  “This isn’t a case of ‘the more, the merrier.’ I just want the place human again. I don’t want to send out an open call to every oddball in the area over this. I have my family name to protect.”

  “You won’t have to,” I said. “Ed and I can throw a séance like nobody’s business. But not in your office,” I added quickly.

  “I know what you mean,” Oliver said. “My bedroom is much more comfortable. Shall we?”

  We did.

  * * * * *

  I liked Oliver’s window seat, but Ed went into the room and began rearranging furniture, all business, and the window seat was out. Ed went across and pulled the curtains closed as soon as he had the small, round table set in the middle of the floor with three seats around it. It was a smallish-biggish table, depending on what you wanted to do with it. Oliver was in the habit of having coffee there while he read the morning paper in privacy, so it was just big enough to spread out an open newspaper and still have a place to put the coffee cup down: say 30 inches in diameter.

  I’d attended a few séances presided over by Ed’s favorite psychic, Purity LeStrange, but I was curious to see how Ed would do it. Purity shows up with the whole bag of tricks, including a personal selection of spirit guides. I don’t mean to imply that she’s a fake. I tend to be flip about things, but the “bag of tricks” remark wasn’t intended to be a put-down, and I certainly didn’t say anything like that to Oliver. Let’s just say I haven’t made my mind up about Purity, and that’s an improvement. When I first met her, I thought she was a complete phony. Now I just don’t know.

  Ed’s approach was more direct. In fact, as we went on, I began to suspect he was waiting for me to take the lead.

  If you’ve ever attended a séance you’ll remember that at some point you begin to realize that the thing is boring. Back in the day, mediums used to produce lots of entertaining stuff: strange sounds, ectoplasm, spirit hands, eerie voices. But in every generation, there seems to be a team of crusading magicians who dedicate themselves to exposing paranormal frauds. They know how the tricks are done, and they like to show off by proving it. With them on the prowl, séance-givers have toned it down a lot. It’s too easy to get caught producing yards of scrim coated with glow-in-the-dark paint when you want a bit of ectoplasm, for instance. So nobody talks about ectoplasm any more. Spirit photography? Everybody knows how to edit photos now. No, the only thing mediums have to get them by these days is the fact that their sitters believe.

  Which is a long-winded way of saying Ed didn’t produce any special effects. He just told us to clear our minds and concentrate on the lit candle in the middle of the table in the darkened room, and that gets boring pretty fast.

  My mind began to wander. Always ready to give it a try, I concentrated on picturing that little pastel of Orion, dashed off by his wife all those years ago. The pretty blue eyes. The look of life, somehow caught in a few strokes of colored chalk. The juicy pink of smiling lips. The crease that had gotten permanently folded into the place where his smile pushed his cheek against the corner of his mouth. The sound of his voice.

  He was such a nice man. I liked him. He was a small man, but he had scared me badly the first time, so he came gently this time, and when he touched me, it was cool and soft and comforting, like a lazy little breeze.

  I remember hearing Oliver’s voice, out there somewhere, in another room of another house.

  “I just want to know you’re all right,” he said in a trembling voice. “All of a sudden, you were just gone! Where did you go?”

  Poor man. I felt sorry for Oliver. I hadn’t realized what a shock his father’s death had been to him. It’s always so hard to know how to comfort people. I was glad when Orion came up with the right words. He’s such a nice man. Just to be near him is nice, nice, nice. Silly, really. Silly of Oliver, I mean. Orion was all right. He’d always been all right. His self-sufficiency had been the only reason he could survive being Horace Moon’s under-achieving son. He was all right then, and he was all right now. It was pretty, how he explained all that to his son. I cried. Not because it was sad. Because it was pretty. Beautiful. And eternally true.

  I woke up wiping my cheeks. They were slick and wet, and naturally, I was embarrassed. I got up without saying a word and left the room. The nice little man didn’t walk with me. I’m not sure he stayed in the room, either. I lost track of him then, somehow.

  As I passed through the doorway, I heard Oliver ask Ed, “Is she all right?”

  “I think so,” my friend said, “but I’ll go see.”

  “Where are you going?” Ed was
behind me, and asking stupid questions.

  Go play with your ghost-catching machine, I said to him, but I didn’t say it out loud, because talking was just too much work. I walked on. When I got to the door, I cocked my head and waited.

  Ed’s hands were on my shoulders, pulling me up out of myself somehow, and he said, “She’s gone. You shouldn’t be here.”

  I looked hard at the door, looked around, and realized I was standing outside Fawn’s bedroom.

  “Taylor, she’s gone,” Ed repeated. He shook me gently, and that did it.

  I turned and looked into his eyes, blinking. “Why are we here?” I said.

  He smiled affectionately. “You tell me. Come on. You did a good job tonight. Let’s get you to bed.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Nearly midnight.” He checked the atomic watch on his wrist. “Actually, just after. It’s Wednesday.”

  “You’re kidding! We just sat down at the table a few minutes ago.”

  “Three hours ago. Let’s go.” He took me gently by the arm.

  Before he could turn me away from the door, I said, “But . . . there’s somebody in there. I heard them.”

  “There’s nobody in there, Taylor. Fawn is gone.”

  Then he turned back sharply.

  “What is it?” I whispered.

  “Nothing.” He stood still a minute, listening hard. Then he said, “No, nothing. You’re making me jumpy, that’s all.”

  By then he was guiding me back down the hallway. Oliver stood in his doorway, staring.

  “She’s okay?” he said as we turned toward the spiral staircase.

  “I’m fine. I don’t know what you two are fussing about.” After that, I don’t remember anything until Ed, once again, woke me up with news of a death in the night.

  Chapter 19

  “Julie?” I sat straight up in bed and looked down at myself, wondering if I’d put my own pajamas on, or if Ed had. I looked at his owlish face and knew for a fact that I’d done it myself. Ed would never have had the courage to face a naked lady in the middle of the night. He’s not a coward, but he doesn’t have that kind of courage.