Tony, still holding my hand, turned to follow the restaurant’s hostess, but the spell hadn’t broken. I was drawn to Tony, hungry to look back into his eyes. The sensation startled me. I’d never felt like this about anyone before. Andy? No. I could hardly remember Andy’s face.
We were ushered into a booth. Eric pushed me in first, then slid in next to me. Tony sat across from me. As we ate and talked, Eric proudly told us about some of the practical jokes he’d played on unsuspecting friends—especially the mean, embarrassing practical jokes. I disliked Eric even more and wished he’d be quiet. I wasn’t interested in him. I was interested in Tony. But while Eric was talking, he had Tony’s attention, and that gave me a chance to study Tony without his noticing it. I liked his smile and the way he lifted back his head when he laughed.
Tony had a quiet nature. He was somewhat of a loner, he told me, when Eric finally gave him a chance, and we talked about books. We both liked biographies and mysteries. I was surprised that our tastes were so much alike and felt even more drawn toward Tony. I was eager to learn all about him.
As he reached across the table for the bowl of salsa, the sleeve of his long-sleeved sport shirt pulled back from his wrist and I noticed an irregular purple mark the size of a quarter.
Tony turned, caught my glance at his wrist, and tugged down the cuff of his sleeve. It surprised me. I didn’t think he would be the type to be self-conscious about a birthmark. Lots of people have them.
Eric suddenly gulped down what was left of his iced tea and looked at me with such a wicked smile, I was startled.
“What’s the matter with you?” I began, but Eric quickly turned away and squeezed out of the booth.
“I’ve got some errands to run,” he said.
Reluctantly I gathered up my shoulder bag and started to follow him, but Tony reached across the booth, his fingers closing firmly on my arm. “Don’t go,” he said. “I’ll take you home.”
“Good idea. Why don’t you do that?” Eric said. His face was serious, but that strange smile had moved into his eyes. Was he planning another practical joke? At my expense? I didn’t know how to protect myself against him.
Eric turned and said to me, “There’s a guy I’ve got to see. It will work out a lot better for me if Tony gives you a ride home.”
“You told Mom—” I began, but Eric was already halfway to the restaurant door. Flustered, I stammered to Tony, “I—I’m supposed to b-be home early.” My breath caught in my throat, and I felt a little scared, maybe because of the feelings I had for Tony. I didn’t understand them. I knew very little about him, but when he smiled at me, nothing else seemed to matter.
The waitress flew past, slapping the check on the table. Tony pulled out his wallet and paid the bill. He edged out of the booth, unfolding his long legs, and reached out a hand to me. “I’ll take you home now,” he said.
His black sports car, with its dark-tinted glass, had a clean, fresh, new-car smell, and the dashboard gleamed. He fussed with the car, adjusting the rearview mirrors, checking the digital clock light, and fiddling with the radio until he found a station he liked. He kept the music low as he drove north on Kirby. “Have you seen much of Houston?” he asked.
“Hardly any of it,” I answered.
Tony turned to me and smiled. “We can take care of that.”
I could feel myself melting into his smile, so I struggled to stay clearheaded, saying the first thing that came into my mind. “Tell me about yourself. Where did you meet Eric?”
“We used to be in school together.”
“But you’re older than he is.”
“Not much more than a year.” He grinned. “It’s the mustache that gives me that older, distinguished look.”
I laughed with him. “Are you in college?”
“Not right now. I’ve been busy with other things. I might go East to school. I haven’t made up my mind yet.”
“Do you know what you want to study?”
“I’ve been thinking about pre-law. I might like to be a lawyer.” As we turned left onto a tree-lined street named San Felipe, Tony reached over and took my hand. I could feel the warmth spread all the way through my body. I was glad it was so dark that Tony couldn’t see the flush on my cheeks.
“Enough questions from you,” Tony said. “It’s my turn to ask a few. “Eric told me that you were frightened by something in your house. What was it?”
I glanced at him quickly, but he looked straight ahead, waiting for my answer. I wasn’t about to tell him. I remembered too well the expressions on the faces of my friends when I’d been open with them about the spirit that had shadowed me. “It—it wasn’t really anything,” I managed to tell Tony. “It was just a—well, a feeling I had when I entered the house for the first time.”
“What kind of feeling?”
“I don’t know how to describe it.”
We stopped for a red light and Tony turned toward me, his eyes drilling into mine. “Try.”
I shivered, and Tony immediately began adjusting the vents for the air conditioner. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’ve been getting the full blast. Is that better?”
“Yes.” I paused. “I don’t know what you want me to tell you or why.”
His smile was easy. We were back in traffic, and his attention was on the road. “Just curious,” he said. “Your reaction to the house—according to what Dee Dee told Eric—was unusual, to say the least.”
“I never should have talked about it to Dee Dee. She blew it all out of proportion.”
“Do you know what happened in that house?”
“Yes. The murder.” I shivered again, and this time it was not because of the air conditioner. “Why don’t we talk about something else?” A short time before, I’d been trying to get more information about the Holts. But I didn’t want it now. Not from Tony.
“Don’t you think the story of the murder is interesting?”
“Interesting? No! I don’t want to think about it at all!”
“We knew Adam. Did Eric tell you?”
“Yes. Eric says that he and Adam are still friends.”
“That’s because Eric believed Adam’s claim that he was having a reaction to his medication and didn’t know what he was doing. Not everyone bought that excuse.”
I glanced at him sharply. “Do you believe Adam?”
“There’s no reason why I shouldn’t.”
I was becoming very uncomfortable with this conversation. “I don’t want to talk about Adam Holt,” I told Tony.
He looked at me sharply, then turned away. I couldn’t catch the expression on his face. “According to Eric, you had a lot of questions to ask.”
“I know, but—”
“Like wondering who in the household spoke Spanish. That’s a strange question. Why did you want to know?”
“Does it matter?”
“No. It just seemed like an unusual thing for you to ask. If there’s something about the house that bothers you and you want to talk about it, I won’t put you off the way Eric and Dee Dee did. I’ll listen. I’ll listen to anything you’d like to tell me, Sarah.”
Tony’s voice was deep and soothing, and I began to relax. But I was determined not to tell Tony what I had heard and seen. Strange Sarah. I couldn’t let Tony think that of me.
“Thanks,” I told him, trying to keep my voice light, “but there really isn’t anything to tell. Let’s talk about something else—anything at all.”
“Anything at all?” Tony’s eyes sparked with the kind of wicked gleam I’d seen in Eric’s. “Okay. There’s something else I’d like to talk about.” His fingers tightened on mine, and his thumb stroked the back of my hand. “Have you ever been in love, Sarah?”
Again he’d caught me off-balance. My hand tingled, and it was hard to breathe. “N-no,” I said, stuttering. “Not really.”
“A beautiful girl like you? That’s hard to believe.” We came to another stoplight and he turned to smile at me. “Have you ever wonde
red what it would be like?”
I leaned a little closer to him, as though my body were behaving independently of my mind, as though Tony and I were magnets being drawn together. The way I was reacting frightened me. I inched back against the seat and said, as firmly as I could, “Tony, I just met you. I’ve only known you for a couple of hours.”
“A lot can happen in a couple of hours, Sarah.” His voice was low, the way it was when he first said my name. Again shivers ran up and down my backbone.
“Please, Tony, take it easy.”
I was surprised to see him make a left turn into the driveway of our house. I hadn’t been paying attention to the route. I didn’t know we were so close to home.
I pulled my hand away from his. “Why don’t you come in and meet my mom and dad?”
“I’d like that,” Tony said. “But we’ll have to plan introductions for the next time. I’m supposed to pick up my own mom at nine-thirty.” He glanced at the digital clock on the dashboard. “I’m going to be late as it is.”
“They’ll ask about you, since you brought me home instead of Eric.”
Tony reached over and lightly ran one fingertip down the side of my face, resting it for just an instant on my lips. I trembled and sucked in my breath. His eyes were so demanding, so intense. He leaned back and smiled at me. “I’ll meet them next time, Sarah,” he said.
Obviously he was waiting for me to get out of the car. He must have been unaware of the effect he was having on me, and I was thankful. I didn’t understand the peculiar sensations in my body, or how to control them. “T-thanks for dinner. I—I liked the restaurant,” I said, still stammering. I was reluctant to see him go, and angry with myself for feeling that way.
As I walked toward the front door Tony lowered the window on the driver’s side and said, “I’ll call you soon. I got your telephone number from Eric.”
I gave a quick wave of the hand as I turned and hurried to unlock the front door. I desperately wanted him to call me, and I was afraid it must show in my eyes. My face still tingled where his fingertip had touched it.
Alone, in the entry hall, I heard the whispery noises again, and little scuttling sounds seemed to scurry throughout the house. Beside me the stairway creaked, and I ran to join Mom and Dad.
Of course they had questions about Tony. I knew they would.
Mom flipped off the television set and slipped her shoes back on. “He could have come in for just a few minutes,” she complained.
“Tony had to pick up his mother, and he was late.”
“We like to know who you’re going out with,” Mom continued. “Eric had promised he’d take you home.”
I was uncomfortable with the disapproval in her voice. I wanted her to like Tony. “You’ll meet Tony soon,” I told her. “He said he’d call me. And you’ll like him. He’s—well, he’s wonderful.” I couldn’t help blushing, and—to my relief—Mom laughed.
“When I was your age,” she said, “I had the most awful crush on a boy in my class. I blushed every time he looked in my direction.”
This wasn’t a crush. The feeling I had for Tony was very different. It was exciting and wonderful and scary all at the same time. I didn’t want to tell Mom that. I just wanted to hug it to myself, not sharing it with anyone.
“This has been an exhausting day,” Dad said. He stood and stretched. “I’m ready for bed.”
Mom said, “It takes a while, doesn’t it, to get used to new places and new ways.” She put an arm around his waist and rested her head against his. “Do you miss the Missouri office?”
There was such wistfulness in her voice that he hugged her shoulders tightly. “In any move there’s bound to be a few new ways to get used to, but everyone in the department’s been friendly. Well, almost everyone.” He smiled. “I suppose there’s at least one stumbling block in every office—maybe to keep life from getting too routine.” He paused before he asked, “Did I ask too much? Is this move too hard on you, Dorothy?”
“I’ve shed a few tears,” Mom said. She straightened and smiled at Dad. “But I’m a survivor. As soon as the house is put together, I’ll go job-hunting. As for tomorrow, I’m going to start hanging pictures.” She headed toward the kitchen, saying as she’d done for years, “I’ll check to see if the doors are locked.”
Dad turned off the reading lamp next to his chair and walked toward the hall. He stopped and waited for me. “Coming, Sarah?”
I realized that ever since I’d walked into the house I’d been waiting for another contact from the woman. A question suddenly popped into my mind. “Dad,” I asked, “that woman who was murdered—what was her name?”
He sighed. “I don’t think we should get into that again.”
“I’m not going to talk about it,” I said. “I only want to know the woman’s name.”
He frowned, trying to remember. “It was Darlene. Darlene what? Let’s see … Garwood? No. That’s close, but it was something else, more rhythmic. Garwood, Garlin. That’s it—Darlene Garland.”
“Are you sure? That name doesn’t fit someone who only spoke Spanish.”
“I don’t know where you got the idea that she only spoke Spanish. She would have had to speak English to hold the kind of job she had—especially in this neighborhood, where most of the people speak English.”
Dad looked at me with a kind of funny expression on his face, so I quickly said, “I guess I was confused. There was so much to think about.”
“Yes,” he said. “There was.” He put an arm around my shoulder and kissed my forehead. “I’m proud of you, Sarah. If you’d been afraid to live in this house, I don’t know what we would have done. You even managed to reassure your mother with your sensible, practical attitude, and that took some doing.”
I hugged him tightly, wishing I could tell him about the vision and the woman who had asked me for help. But I couldn’t. I wished we could be back in Missouri, but that was a stupid wish that wouldn’t come true.
Mom returned and kissed me good night. I left them and took the stairs one slow step at a time, trying to sort everything out.
Who was the woman who had contacted me? Was she someone who really needed my help? Or had the evil in this house twisted itself into demons who pretended to be what they were not? Nervously I turned on the light switch in my room before I turned off the light in the hall.
With trembling fingers I closed my bedroom door and leaned against it, waiting for—no, actually willing—the voice to return.
Chapter
Six
The spirit chose her own moments to make contact. When I realized she wouldn’t come, I was free to think about Tony, who slipped from my conscious thoughts into my dreams.
I woke to slotted ribbons of sunlight streaming through the mini-blinds and to a whisper: “Trate de encontrarlo.”
I sat up in bed, swinging my feet to the floor, and brushing my hair away from my face. “Trate de encontrarlo”? I said out loud. “What does that mean?” Had the words come from my dream?
If I’d moved, I would have missed the slight hiss of a breath taken and held. Hugging my arms to keep from shivering, I whispered, “Are you there?”
No one answered.
Anxious to escape whoever was with me, I rummaged through my shoulder bag to find a scrap of paper and a pen and wrote down the words so I wouldn’t forget them.
It didn’t take long to pull on shorts and a T-shirt and race downstairs to join Mom in the kitchen where she was still rearranging pans in the lower cabinets.
She looked up at me in surprise. “You’re out of breath,” she said.
“Hungry, I guess,” I answered, and kissed the top of her head.
“Help yourself to some cereal,” she told me. “The bowls are now in the cupboard on the far right.”
As I poured milk over my cereal I asked, “Mom, have we got a Spanish-English phrase book?”
She looked up, surprised. “No. Why do you want one?”
Hunching over my ce
real, I mumbled, “There are some things I want to look up. I need to brush up on my Spanish.”
“There are a number of bookstores near here,” she said. “Two on Memorial, not too far. Why don’t you buy one?”
“I think I will.” I waited until she was through rattling pans and asked, “What can I do to help you?”
“Nothing for the next few hours,” Mom said. “I want to get a little better organized first, then I’ll have lots for you to do.”
It was too early for the bookstores to be open, and I wanted to get away from the house—and the voice that haunted me. “I’m going to go for a quick bike ride,” I told Mom. “I’ll be back in about fifteen or twenty minutes.”
The sun was already hot, and as I wheeled my bike from the garage I felt as though I’d stepped from a hot shower into a room filled with steam. Moisture clung to my skin, and the hair at the back of my neck curled into damp ringlets.
“Wait up!”
Dee Dee ran barefoot across the lawn to the street. I pulled over to the curb, bracing one foot against it, and said, “You’re up early.”
She grinned. She was wearing a faded, ripped, over-size T-shirt with a purple dinosaur on it that she’d slept in, I guessed. Her hair was still tousled, and her face was scrubbed clean, making her look like a mischievous twelve-year-old. “I’m always up early. How was your date last night? Was he cute? I want to hear all about him.”
“The communication on this street is unbelievable,” I answered.
She giggled. “I was curious. I wanted to find out about this guy Eric told you about. I’ve never heard Eric even mention him, so I called Eric, and he just happened to tell me he fixed the two of you up with a date. So … what was Tony like? Was he cute? What did you talk about?”
I stared right into Dee Dee’s eyes without smiling. “We talked about the murder,” I said.
Dee Dee gasped, and tears filled her eyes. “Oh, damn!” she said. “You’re never going to want to speak to me again, are you?”
I got off my bike and laid it against the curb. “I’d like us to be friends, but right now I’m awfully mad at your mother.”
Whispers from the Dead Page 6