A Haunting Affair

by Ursula Bauer

  For a few seconds no one at the table moved. Mike had no choice but to take up the challenge, however, his hesitation spoke volumes to Emma. He had something to hide. Something he wanted to keep hidden.

  “Yeah, sure,” he said cautiously. He pulled his keys from his pocket and slid them half way across the table. It was obvious he didn’t want to risk personal contact.

  Emma palmed the keys. “Thanks.”

  The contact gave her nothing new immediately, but holding them put Mike on edge. His voice got tight and he kept fidgeting. Sam didn’t give any sign that he noticed the change. He remained relaxed, acting like this was more a chat between old friends than an interrogation.

  “I know it was tough on you and Lora afterwards.”

  Mike was quick to nod. “You don’t get over something like that, Sam. She expected me to forget it. When I couldn’t, she divorced me, found God and ran off to Africa to be a missionary. Like it would fix what happened.”

  “You stayed and faced things,” Sam said soothingly.

  “Damn right I did. I cowboy’d up.”

  “You ever hear from her?”

  “She solicits donations from time to time.”

  Sam shook his head. “I’m sorry, man, really. No one deserves that.”

  “Damn straight.”

  When a moment of silence had passed and Mike had calmed, Sam picked up again. “That night you guys were partying, did Wes and Audrey stay until you passed out?”

  “I told you, it gets fuzzy.”

  “Try taking me through it up to where it goes blank. Any detail you remember no matter how small may be critical.”

  “It was so long ago.”

  “I’m asking you as a friend, Mike. I really need your help.”

  Emma loved watching Sam work. If he’d played for the other team, he’d have given Dad a run for the money in the game of the con.

  Mike rubbed his jaw. Blinked a few times. Started running through the events list style, occasionally looking to Sam as he spoke.

  “We were all getting bored and drunk. Lora and Jen decided to watch a movie. Wes left to make a call to a patient. He came back. Jen left to get some more coke. She came back. Did that a few times. We started on the second bottle of brandy. We put on a chick flick. I don’t remember the specifics after that, Sam. I’m sorry. The next thing I recall is Jake Meyer screaming at me while I gagged on toilet water. Everything in between is a black hole.”

  “I can’t confirm times,” he added. “I know those things happened, I think they happened in that order, but I was really wasted. Didn’t they find Wes and Audrey asleep upstairs? They must have gone up at some point. You should ask Lou Preston. He was a deputy back then and the first cop to respond when the fire call went out.”

  “Lou’s on my list.” Sam then took Mike through variations on the theme three times, but each line of questioning resulted in the same dead end. After they got into the second brandy bottle, Mike’s memory went blank. Not fuzzy, not confused, but dark and empty blank. Like someone flipped the off switch to a light, and didn’t turn it back on until much later that night. He’d said as much to Sam, and Emma agreed from what she picked up psychically.

  She’d dealt with liars before, and she’d dealt with people who had memory gaps while on altered substances. The liars were usually obvious from body language or poorly constructed stories. Those with memory gaps invariably had memories she was able to pick up on. None had evidenced the complete lack of conscious activity as Mike. Spooky.

  While the men continued, Emma concentrated on the keys and any ambient sensations. The buzz of activity in the cozy cafe provided a nice backdrop for zoning out. She tried a variety of techniques, but each one was a bust. For what it was worth, Mike had answered Sam’s questions with information he believed to be truthful. He could have left something out, however, and excluding wasn’t so much lying as it was evasion. But in his case, was that simple memory absence? More questions, too little answers.

  She passed back the keys and Mike smiled toothily. “Hope you didn’t get the pin code for my bank account. Not that there’s much left. Vacation property and new construction aren’t selling so good right now.”

  Emma smiled in return, the gesture just as phony. “Would you be open to coming to the lodge?” She went out on a limb with the question. Sam had told her he’d carefully scheduled interviews, outside and inside the lodge, and she hated to disrupt his schedule. Only everything about this sad tale was too scripted. Too rehearsed and rehashed. She decided it was time to shake and stir and see what rose to the surface. “I’d like to walk through things. The way Jen did. Maybe even hold a séance.”

  Mike hid his shock well. Sam, not so much.

  “Anytime,” the former lawyer said. “How are things going? Any new leads from the spirit world.”

  Sam responded before she had a chance. “We’ve turned over a few new stones. It’s promising. Keith wasn’t crazy.”

  He fell right into line with her ploy to mix up the game, which shocked her to no end. Super cop was quick on the draw. Good thing she had a decent poker face. Mike fixed her with a penetrating stare, revealing the man he used to be prior to hitting rock bottom, or maybe the man he still was, but kept hidden behind a façade.

  “New stones? That’s good news. What kind of new stones?”

  “Leads mostly,” Sam countered.

  Mike turned on Sam. Tension reached a breaking point. “Tell me about them. Maybe it will jog a memory.”

  “Once I have more information, I’ll share.” Sam’s firm response brooked no argument. “I plan to resolve this case once and for all. I don’t want to risk things by making mistakes early on.”

  Mike nodded jerkily. The fight went out of him. “You always were the clever one out of our group. If anyone can figure it out, it’s you, Sam.” He stood, and nodded at Emma. “Nice to meet you Emma. I’m looking forward to getting together again.”

  Sam stayed silent until he’d left. “Bad case of the nerves.”

  “He’s hiding something.”

  “You sure that’s not his inner lawyer throwing you off the scent?”

  “I’m not picking up anything on the psychic wavelength, but my other skill set tells me he knows more. Unfortunately, it may not be relevant to Jen’s death, but he definitely has information he’s keeping to himself. I’d like to know is what the fear is about. Is he afraid of what he knows, or afraid of us finding out what he knows?”

  “I was wondering the same thing myself. You’d have made a great cop.”

  “It was bad enough me going legit. My dad would have dropped dead on the spot if I joined up with the enemy.”

  “You still stay in contact with your family?”

  “They’re my family. Dad relocated to Buenos Aires after my mother died, and gradually, the rest of the clan has migrated. We’re not super close, but we’re still close.”

  She couldn’t read his look. The scrutiny made her uncomfortable. She was suddenly very aware of the wide chasm of differences between them. Sam, with the sterling past, present and future, was a world away from Emma with the murky past, murky present, and uncertain future. She swallowed the insecurity. She wasn’t Polly Pure, never would be, so screw Sam if that was an issue. “What’s next?”

  “We visit the mayor, Jake Meyer. He’s picky about details and ran the investigation letter of the law. Right down to pulling in the state guys to process the scene.”

  “Mayor Meyer?” The absurd name combination lifted her spirits and she smiled. “Let me guess, a descendant of the founding Meyer?”

  “There’s descended Meyers everywhere in these parts. All straight talking, solid citizens as upright, and uptight as they come. Most are in the building trades but every so often one gets drafted into public service. As to Jake, don’t tease him. He’s liable to do something crazy. Before he was sheriff, he ran a division of the family construction company. If folks dumped stuff in his site trash bins, he’d go through the bags,
find mail, and track them down. Then turn up at their house and show them the error of their ways.”

  “That doesn’t sound uptight, that sounds vengeful and dangerous.”

  “Semantics. Jake’s a take charge kind of guy.”

  “And Meyerville made him Sheriff?”

  “It’s a weird town.”

  “I guess being the trash police gave him a taste for the life.”

  Sam laughed deeply. Emma found it irresistibly sexy. “He was also an MP in the army. He’s big on rules, and sticking to them, no matter what his line of work. At least as mayor, he doesn’t carry a gun anymore.”

  “You don’t think he was involved in any way?”

  “Jake? Hell no. He’s so by the book he makes me look like a stone cold criminal. Besides, he doesn’t like to operate outside of business hours. If he was going to kill someone, it would happen Monday through Friday, between the hours of seven a.m. and three thirty p.m., and not during his half hour lunch.” Sam grinned back at her. “He probably shoved Mike’s head in the toilet that night more because he was pissed he had to get out of bed and deal with trouble, than he thought the guy had something to do with Jen’s death.”

  “I’ll be on my best behavior.” The easy conversation and the warm atmosphere relaxed her. Being away from the oppressive malice of the lodge may have dimmed her psychic senses but it went a long way in restoring her energy levels and peace of mind. Sam’s company wasn’t hurting things either. She liked the lazy way he sprawled in the seat, owning the space around him. He had a pure and elemental maleness about him that was impossible to ignore. Or resist.

  When she wasn’t fighting her attraction to him, or telling herself how wrong he was for her, it was very easy to fall into a comfortable place with him. In a way, he was like an old friend, except she’d known him less than a week, and other than Eric, she wasn’t sure she had anyone in her life ever who qualified as ‘an old friend.’

  When had she become this sad? Had so much life slipped by her while she was working? After she finished with the Lodge and writing her book, she’d need to take a vacation and find a little more of a life. Maybe having such narrow focus explained why Sam loomed so large on her radar. Maybe it was time to change. It occurred to her then what a nice change Sam could make for her. Emma gathered her wayward thoughts close and shoved them away for later.

  “Why are we seeing him? Is there something in particular you want me to focus on while we meet?”

  “I can look at notes until the end of time, but they’re all from official interviews and reports. What we’re doing is more conversational. People reveal things in conversation. Inconsistencies. Things they forgot under the pressure of the police interview, or noticed but didn’t include in a report because it didn’t seem important at the time. Like the second bottle of brandy.”

  “How do you think that will be important?”

  “I don’t know. But it stands out to me so I’m going to follow it where it leads. Drunks aren’t noted for neatness. They drank two bottles of brandy. Why was only one found? And what happened to Jen’s Pellegrino bottle? If they were too wasted to notice someone get killed, then they were certainly too wasted to selectively clean the crime scene after the fact. Jake can act as a way for us to fact check. Who knows, maybe there’s something he tucked away in that keg head of his that will fall out now and help the case.”

  “Wouldn’t the first cop on the scene be a better place to start for validation?”

  “Lou Preston, deputy at the time, is sheriff now, and was the first cop to respond. We’ll see him next. He’s been playing possum with me and avoiding my calls. Jake will take care of that today. He owes me a few favors and I called one in about interviewing Lew.”

  “I can’t even imagine what kind of favor a guy like Jake Meyer owes you.” Emma gave Sam an assessing look. “You played right along with that line about the séance. Without missing a beat or giving up a tell. You’d have made a good con.”

  “What do you call going undercover for as many years as I did? No different from a long con, except I was on the right side of the law.”

  That was an interesting take on things. Emma didn’t fail to notice the note of derision that crept into his velvet smooth voice. “Do you have any regrets about what you did?”

  “No. But I was surprised by the aftermath.”

  The pain that flashed briefly in his eyes as he spoke told her volumes that his laconic reply didn’t. Emma knew all too well what happened when a con was exposed. She’d lived a life of retreat in the wake of the disappointment and recrimination. For Sam, though, she suspected it was a one-time hit he’d taken, and he lacked the perspective to put it in place. The chasm she’d felt earlier narrowed, bridged by the unanticipated connection.

  Emma took a risk and opened up, hoping to give Sam the benefit of her dubious experience. “We always moved quick after my parents finished running a con. But sometimes, not quick enough. The mark, you expect them to be angry and act out. You betrayed trust and worked them. What I learned over time, is that once people around you know you work scams, even if they’re for the right reason, they start to think ‘when am I next’, or ‘have I been played too?’. They think it’s only a matter of time before you turn on them, so they turn on you. Its self preservation. A part of human instinct. You learn not to take it personal.”

  “Cops don’t like rats.”

  “You didn’t do it for them, you did it for justice. That counts for more.”

  “I hope you’re right.” His expression iced over. The tenuous connection between them broke. He pushed his chair back and stood. “Let’s get moving. We miss our appointment with Jake, he’ll come looking for us and we don’t want that brand of trouble.”

  ~ * * * ~

  The meeting with Jake Meyer, the former sheriff, was a far cry from the encounter with Mike Foyle. Emma left feeling as though she’d been interrogated by the Feds, complete with glaring lights and rubber hoses. Except all the guy did was welcome them in, sit across a desk from them while they talked, make two calls, and then dismiss them. He was neither affable nor nasty, but he was direct, intense, and more than a little scary. Definitely not a man you wanted to cross.

  Jake warned them both in no uncertain terms that any new evidence, the admissible-in-court kind or otherwise should be relayed to him immediately. If not, there’d be hell to pay, and he would show to collect the tab. He also denied a second brandy bottle, and admitted to waking Mike in an unconventional manner. Emma got a solid vibe from the man who looked like he stepped out of an ad for Soldier of Fortune magazine. She found no vacillation in his manner. No reason to suspect him of anything other than being a straight arrow with a dangerous streak.

  Next, they attempted a meeting with Lou Preston, the current sheriff. A few minutes into it, though, he was called away to a fatal crash on the edge of town. Lou had all the markings of a man with ulterior motives and Emma knew a con artist when she saw one. She hoped the second shot at interview came soon because she knew she’d find gold.

  Afterwards, they drove into Lake Placid for lunch at Lisa G’s, followed up by a meet with the crime scene technicians. They confirmed Jake Meyer’s statements and backed up the police report info. The techs also claimed only one brandy bottle, refuting Mike’s confused recollection of events. They debated the information as they drove back but gained no more understanding. Emma had a nagging feeling she was missing something, a key piece of the puzzle, but she failed to lock on what it was that seemed out of place.

  By the time they returned to Holloway Lodge night had set in, along with another bout of driving rain. Sam heated up homemade lasagna, and they ate it in the library while pouring over Keith’s collection of journals. Emma was too exhausted to do any tarot readings so she tabled them for the next day, when they planned to tour the grounds. By one a.m., she’d had her fill.

  “I don’t understand something.” She rubbed her bleary eyes and shut the last journal. “Why has every p
sychic and medium and ghost hunter failed, and why are we succeeding?”

  Sam gave it a moment’s consideration. “Because we’re that damn good?”

  “Not that I doubt my skills, but what I’m getting is nothing short of extraordinary. Some of the people Keith brought in are industry heavies. There’s no way I can compete with them in terms of spirit manifestation or contact, yet I come here, and I’m the super psychic.”

  “Is that a problem?”

  Emma stood and stretched. Around them both were the leather covered journals, remains of what amounted to the fruitless five-year effort of a dead man. “I’ve clicked on cases before, but something this strong makes me wonder why.”

  “Keith researched you and Eric heavily. For some reason he thought you were the one to break the stalemate.”

  It wasn’t the first time he’d mentioned this information. Now she took a new spin. “Did he tell you why?”

  “No. He was actively dying from the car crash injuries when he told me. There wasn’t much time for long explanations.”

  “Prior to me, no living person had any luck piercing the veil. Not even Eric, my boss. And he’s as good as you get in this business.” Emma paced, letting the information sink in. “Other than Eric, did you bring anyone in after Keith died?”

  “I worked on piecing things together on my own. Other than meeting Eric I’ve had no other psychics out here. Where are you going with this, Emma?”

  “For the first five years, the spirit or spirits of the dead can’t break through. In any way shape or form. That implies something held them back. Keith is the force trying in life to reach the dead, who are almost held prisoner by something.” She leaned against the wide library table as she strung together her thoughts out loud. “Keith finds someone he thinks can do the trick, for an unknown reason, and then he dies before he can enlist them. Several months pass, and you bring that person in. They connect instantly with what was essentially a psychic dead zone.”