Whispers from the Dead

by Joan Lowery Nixon

  “Lupita?” Dee Dee shrieked. “But she wouldn’t know what happened to Rosa. Lupita said something about Rosa being deported, about Immigration.”

  I twisted around in the front seat to look at Dee Dee. “You told me she was so frightened, she was talking too fast for you to understand her. I think she was frightened for herself. She wants to be anonymous so that she won’t be deported. Let’s talk to Lupita and find out.”

  As we turned the corner into our street there was no sign of Tony’s car. But, as Sergeant Hardison parked on the Pritchard driveway in the shade of the house, he called in for a unit to stake out our house.

  Dee Dee rested her arms on the back of the front seat and watched. “I’ve never been in a police car before,” she said. “How do you make your calls?”

  “It’s a simple matter of pressing this switch.” He demonstrated for Dee Dee’s benefit, then said, “Come on. We’d better let Mrs. Darnell know that you’re both all right.”

  Dee Dee was the first one out of the car, and she led us into her house.

  Mom, who had Dinky in one arm, threw herself at me and held me so tightly, I could hardly breathe. Dinky protested loudly. “Sarah! Tell me what’s going on!” Mom demanded.

  “Tony is really Adam Holt,” I explained, pulling away so I could talk. “Getting us together was a joke to Eric. That’s all I think it was supposed to be—an ‘in’ joke I wouldn’t understand but that he could secretly laugh about. Only it went much farther than I’m sure Eric had imagined.”

  “A joke!” Furious tears filled Mom’s eyes.

  Dee Dee walked in, leading Lupita by the hand. Lupita’s eyes were huge, and she was trembling. “Immigration?” she whispered to Sergeant Hardison. Her knees wobbled, and she looked as though she were going to faint.

  “No,” he said. He took her arm, guided her to a chair in the Pritchard living room, and sat facing her. “Do you speak English?” he asked.

  “Un poco—a little bit,” she said, correcting herself.

  “I am not going to have you deported,” he said. “Understand?”

  She nodded but continued to look wary.

  Sergeant Hardison continued. “In fact, the district attorney’s office will even keep you from being deported if you’re needed as a witness.”

  Lupita was obviously a little confused with that sentence, so Dee Dee tried to translate. She finished by saying, “Sergeant Hardison is a police detective.”

  Lupita clutched the arms of the chair, her eyes wide with terror. “¡Policía! No!” she cried.

  “Please, Lupita,” Dee Dee said. “If you saw anything that happened at the Holts’ house, tell us.”

  “Is all over,” Lupita said, and pressed her lips together into a tight, thin line.

  “She’s still afraid,” Mom murmured.

  I knelt in front of Lupita and took her hands. “Rosa came to me,” I told her. “She showed me herself. Then she showed me how she was stabbed to death. She even let me know where her body is hidden.”

  Lupita understood this. She gasped. “H-how could she do this?”

  “In visions, in dreams,” I told her.

  Lupita jerked her hands from mine and shrank from me.

  “I’m not evil,” I said. “Rosa chose me so that I could help her. And she needs your help, too, so that she can rest.”

  Lupita began to cry and asked, “What does Rosa want me to do?”

  “She only wants you to tell the truth. Please. Tell the detective what you know about Rosa and what you saw the day Rosa was killed.”

  Lupita pulled a tissue from her pocket and wiped her eyes. In a whispery, shuddery voice, fluctuating between English and Spanish, she told us that she knew Rosa. Sometimes, during the day, when the Pritchards and the Holts were at work and school, Lupita and Rosa would meet for a cup of tea or hot chocolate.

  Adam Holt had frightened Rosa. Sometimes he’d acted very strange and had talked about evil things to her. Lupita ducked her head and said she couldn’t repeat them. Rosa had wanted to leave the Holts, but she had no family, no one who knew or cared where she was; so there was nowhere for her to go.

  “Do you know what happened to Rosa?” Sergeant Hardison asked.

  “En la tarde—uh … afternoon, I go outside. I uh—sweep—” She got lost in a tangle of words, so Dee Dee helped. “To sweep the front porch?”

  “Yes. But I did not sweep. I saw Adam Holt. I hid.”

  “What was Adam doing?” Sergeant Hardison asked.

  “He drove pizza automobile away. I go in house. Later I looked out window and saw him walk back.”

  “Had you heard any sounds from the Holts’ house?”

  “No. La radio—” She stopped and fumbled for the next word.

  Dee Dee interceded. “Lupita likes to play radio music while she’s working. She likes it loud too.”

  “All right,” Sergeant Hardison said to Lupita. “You were playing the radio and didn’t hear anything.” As she nodded vigorously he said, “Did you see Adam Holt go back into his own house?”

  “Sí But he came outside. Con dos—he bring two big bags from his house.”

  “Big bags? Trash bags?” Dee Dee asked.

  Lupita nodded. “Muy heavy bags, hard for him to carry. One at a time.” She made motions with her hands and said, “He put them in his automobile, in—uh—very back.”

  “She means the trunk,” Dee Dee said.

  “Sí—yes. Adam drive—” She finished the sentence with her hands, showing the direction.

  “What time was this?” Sergeant Hardison asked.

  “Dos o dos y quarto.”

  “Did you know what was taking place?”

  Dee Dee helped, translate, and Lupita shook her head.

  “But you knew later. What did you do when Adam Holt drove away?”

  Lupita could barely speak. “I go to house. Look in window. I pound on door and ring doorbell, but Rosa no es—Rosa not come. I know Rosa was not there.”

  I couldn’t help interrupting. “Lupita! When you learned about Darlene Garland’s murder, you remembered the two bags. You knew that Rosa had been murdered, too, didn’t you?”

  Lupita fell back in the chair in an explosion of wails and tears. I caught the words la policía, but it was Dee Dee who finally was able to understand.

  “She thinks she’ll be in terrible trouble with the police because she didn’t come forward with what she had seen. She thinks she’ll be put in prison.”

  Sergeant Hardison reached forward and patted Lupita’s arm, smiling at her. “No one will harm you,” he said. “You’re a valuable witness. You’re going to make our case solid by placing Adam Holt at the scene of the crime.”

  He made some calls and told us that an officer was already on the way to talk to Martin Holt, that every effort would be expended to pick up both Eric and Adam, and that the surveillance car was already in place on our block. Our house was being watched, and there had been no sign of Adam Holt in the vicinity.

  “Could I ride back with you to get Mom’s car?” I asked Sergeant Hardison. I didn’t want to be there if Tony—Adam—came. I didn’t want to see him arrested.

  “Sure,” Sergeant Hardison said. “I’ll want to take an official statement from you, anyway.”

  “I’m going with you,” Mom said. “I’m not going to let Sarah out of my sight!”

  “You can’t take Dinky,” I told her, and took the cat from her arms. “I’ll put her outside. She’ll be all right.”

  “I’ll need to take Lupita downtown for a statement too,” Sergeant Hardison said, but Lupita burst into frightened tears again, and Mom and Dee Dee tried to calm her.

  “I’ll be with you!” Dee Dee shouted at Lupita, but Lupita was making so much noise, she couldn’t hear her.

  I couldn’t stand it. “I’ll wait for you in the car,” I told them, but no one could hear me, either.

  The moment I stepped outside, Dinky squirmed from my arms and was off like a streak, heading for our house
. I didn’t worry about her. She’d be all right. I walked over to the driveway and climbed into the passenger side of Sergeant Hardison’s car, scrunching down so that I could lean my head back against the seat and try to relax.

  Suddenly a hand gripped my shoulder, and a voice whispered from behind me, “Don’t move, Sarah. Don’t make a sound. I have a knife.”

  Chapter

  Fourteen

  Tony!” I gasped for breath, and my heart began to hammer so loudly, I was sure he could hear it.

  “I’m not going to kill you,” he said. “I’m going to use you to help me get away from here.”

  I could tell from the direction of his voice that he was ducking low, behind the seat, so I knew he wouldn’t be able to see what I was doing. With my fingertips I fumbled for the microphone and I felt for the switch. There! I flipped it on.

  “Adam!” I said loudly. “There’s nowhere we can go. Sergeant Hardison took the keys to his car with him.”

  “I know that,” Adam said, and warned me by gripping my shoulder so hard that it hurt. “Keep your voice down!”

  I wasn’t sure how much of what we were saying could be picked up by the microphone. I wasn’t even sure that what I said was being transmitted. I could only hope. “You told me you have a knife,” I said. “What good is it going to do? As soon as the sergeant comes out to his car, he’ll find you here, and he has a gun.”

  Adam made a quiet, chuckling sound. “When you see him coming, you call out to him that I’m here, and you tell him to throw you his car keys. Then you’ll drive away with his car. He won’t use the gun. He couldn’t take a chance on hitting you, and he won’t know if I’ll make good my threat with the knife.”

  In the rearview mirror I could see the two officers in the surveillance car heading cautiously, with guns drawn, toward the back of the sergeant’s car. From the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of Sergeant Hardison as he moved slowly across the Pritchards’ front porch.

  When Adam spoke again, his voice was so low and soft that I shivered, remembering its spell over me. “Sarah,” he said, “don’t try to think of a way out of this. Your ‘spirits’ can’t help you now.”

  “I can help myself,” I told him.

  Maybe I sounded too confident. Something warned Adam. He rose behind me, just high enough to see the three policemen approaching. There was a flash of sunlight on metal as his knife appeared next to my face. I couldn’t help flinching.

  “That’s it,” he muttered. “Reach over slowly and roll down the window. Tell your sergeant to throw his keys inside the car.”

  “Give up, Adam,” I said, “because I won’t do it.”

  “If you don’t, I’ll kill you,” he snapped.

  “If I do drive away with you, it’s a sure thing that you’ll kill me. My chances are better here. Look at the police officers. Their guns are aimed at you. If you do kill me here, you’ll be caught immediately … or shot. And this time there’ll be witnesses.”

  “Witnesses,” he mumbled. I could almost hear him thinking.

  Suddenly he made a quick movement, and I braced myself, trying not to scream, but the pressure was lifted from my shoulder, and the knife fell to the seat beside me. I twisted just in time to see Adam, his hands raised, before the police descended on the car.

  I was jerked out in one direction, Adam in the other. I stood alone on the driveway, watching Tony—Adam—being led to the police car. His hands were cuffed behind his back, but his head was high, and there was even a slight smile on his face. I hated him for what he’d done, yet I remembered his kiss with a desire that shivered through my body.

  “Why does he fascinate me?”

  I wasn’t aware that I’d said the words aloud until Sergeant Hardison, who had come up beside me, answered my question. “Evil is often fascinating.”

  “Why?” It came out like a sob.

  “It has to be or it wouldn’t exist.”

  “Sarah!” Mom came running from the Pritchard house, and I rushed to meet her. Right now I didn’t want to think about Tony. Just like a little kid, I needed my mother.

  They found Rosa’s body in the clearing near the lake, just where I told them it would be. The murder weapon—the kitchen knife—was with her, and it matched the set that had belonged to the Holts.

  “Rosa wants to be buried in consecrated ground,” I told Mom and Dad. “Please, could we do this for her?”

  Mom looked at me in near desperation. “Has she told you this? Has she appeared to you again?”

  “No,” I said. “It’s just something I know she would want.”

  “We can do whatever you wish for Rosa,” Dad reassured me. “The poor young woman. She had no one.”

  “She had me.”

  Mom patted my hand. “When you talk to Dr. Fulton—” she began, but I interrupted her.

  “Cancel the appointment,” I said. “It’s over now, Mom. No more visits from the other world, no more visions. I feel sure of it. I don’t need Dr. Fulton.”

  “But—” Mom began, then abruptly stopped. From the corner of my eye I had seen Dad touch her arm.

  I walked to the window, held back the curtain, and watched the streetlights blink bright passages through the thickening dusk.

  For just an instant, with a great wave of sorrow, a jumble of faces appeared in my mind—Rosa’s, Tony’s, Marcie’s, Andy’s. Faces from the past.

  I took a deep breath. That’s all they were—part of the past. And the past was where they’d stay.

  But dwelling on the past wasn’t for me.

  I turned back to my parents, stepping into the brightness and warmth of the room, and smiled.

  “See you later,” I said. “I’m going to call Dee Dee.”

  JOAN LOWERY NIXON has been called the grande dame of young adult mysteries. She is the author of more than 130 books for young readers and is the only four-time winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Young Adult Novel. She received the award for The Kidnapping of Christina Lattimore, The Séance, The Name of the Game Is Murder, and The Other Side of Dark, which also won the California Young Reader Medal.