By Familiar Means

by Delia James

  “Anna! Are you all right, dear? Do I need to come bail you out? What’s that lawyer’s name?”

  “I’m fine, Grandma, I’m fine!”

  “Why didn’t you call? I’ve been frantic! If it wasn’t for Alistair, I think I would have lost my mind!”

  I heard a faint meow in the background, and I suddenly pictured Alistair sprawled on the couch, doing something reassuring like grooming or begging for extra nibbles. My familiar would know instinctively that I wasn’t in real danger. I felt a surge of gratitude that he was there to help look after Grandma.

  “I’m sorry, Grandma,” I told her. “But I couldn’t exactly be taking calls in the middle of questioning.”

  “Questioning! What kind of questioning?”

  “It wasn’t that big a deal.” Except if it wasn’t that big a deal, why were my knees still shaky? Suddenly, I was very glad we were having this conversation over the phone. I was pretty sure I didn’t want Grandma to see the way I was huddling in on myself. “The police just wanted some more details about how we found the body; that’s all.”

  “Oh.” Grandma sounded a little disappointed—and a little suspicious. “If that’s all.”

  “That’s it, Grandma, really.” Almost. Mostly. “They have to be thorough.”

  “Merow!” announced Alistair in the distance.

  “You’re not telling us something, Annabelle Amelia,” said Grandma. “We can hear it.”

  “It’s nothing,” I told them both. “I promise.”

  “It is not nothing, and if you hang up this phone, I will call you back, a lot, and I’ll make sure all your new friends know you left your grandmother worrying at home while you went sleuthing all over town.”

  She’d do it, too. Grandma B.B. had never been above playing the sympathy card.

  “I’m not sleuthing,” I told her. “And I don’t think that’s a real word anyway.”

  “Annabelle.”

  “All right, all right, Grandma. I just . . .” I sighed and glanced around. The sidewalk was deserted. A police cruiser was pulling into the parking lot, and another was pulling out. “I swear, I’m not in trouble, but I think Jake and Miranda might be. Lieutenant Blanchard doesn’t like them very much.”

  “He thinks that they had something to do with that poor man being in the tunnel?”

  “Yeah. The problem is my friend Kenisha—you remember her—”

  “That nice officer who’s in the coven? Yes, of course.”

  “Well, she said that”—I swallowed—“that we were right. Jimmy Upton was murdered. Somebody drowned him, probably in a sink someplace.”

  “Well, surely that means the Luces couldn’t have done it. There’s no sink in their new building.”

  “Except there is. There’s a utility tub in their basement. I saw it when we went down there.”

  “Oh. Dear.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “Listen, Grandma, I want to go check in on Jake and Miranda and make sure they’re okay.”

  “Yes, yes, of course. I think that’s a very good idea.”

  “Are you going to be okay, Grandma?”

  “Perfectly, dear. Now that I know you’re all right, I’ll find plenty to keep me busy.”

  * * *

  I got off the bus in Market Square and trotted down the steps to Ceres Street and Northeast Java. There, I was confronted by the inconceivable. A hand-lettered sign in the window read: CLOSED.

  My coffee-loving soul cried out in very selfish alarm. I was about to turn around, wondering who I knew who might have Jake and Miranda’s home phone number or address, when the door opened behind me. Jake, looking tired and more disheveled than usual, leaned out and beckoned me inside.

  He locked the door immediately.

  “Hi, Jake. I wanted to come by and see how you were doing.” But I could already see for myself that the answer was going to be some version of “not great.”

  “It’s the first weekday we’ve closed in . . . maybe seven years?” he told me. “Last time was Miranda’s dad’s funeral. But we just got rid of the last of the cameras and stuff and . . . well, I admit it, Miranda’s taking this whole thing pretty hard.”

  “You don’t look so good yourself.” There were dark circles under his eyes, and his cheeks were stubbled above his beard. He slumped, too, like he’d aged ten extra years overnight.

  “Yeah, well, it’s all kind of heavy, you know?” Jake gestured me toward one of the battered tables. I couldn’t remember ever having been in the shop when it was empty. The smell of coffee lingered, but the unnatural hush raised a distinct restlessness deep underneath my skin. “Here I am worrying about ghosts when it might have been somebody who really needed help and I just didn’t—”

  Miranda appeared out of the shop’s tiny kitchen. “You couldn’t have known, old man,” she said, coming over to plant a kiss on Jake’s cheek. “Neither of us could.”

  “Well, for what it’s worth, whatever you’ve been hearing, it couldn’t have been him,” I said. “Kenisha told me he was dead before his body was put in the tunnel.”

  I know I did not imagine the relief on Miranda’s face. I couldn’t blame her. Who wanted to think they’d been hearing a call for help and hadn’t recognized it? But there was something else as well. I could see it in the way Miranda was watching Jake. Jake wasn’t looking back at her, though. He was staring out the windows into the street and across the river.

  “How did he die, Anna?” asked Jake quietly.

  “He was drowned in a sink.”

  Miranda went ghost white. “Oh, no.”

  “And if Blanchard hasn’t noticed that old tub down in the basement, he’s going to hear about it really soon.” Jake laid a hand on her shoulder. “Man.”

  Miranda reached up and covered his hand. “You don’t believe we had anything to do with this, do you, Anna?”

  “Of course not!” Jake and Miranda were eccentric, sure, but they were not capable of such a thing. Even if I hadn’t believed that, I’d been in the basement with my defenses down and my inner eyes wide open. If there’d been a death in there recently, especially if it was murder, I would have picked up something.

  Wherever Jimmy Upton was killed, it was not in the old drugstore’s basement.

  I took a deep breath. “Listen, you guys should probably know I just got out from talking to Lieutenant Blanchard.”

  “Oh, Anna, I’m so sorry you had to get mixed up in this,” said Miranda. “If we’d known—”

  “It is not your fault,” I told her and Jake. “I guess he’d already talked to you?”

  “Oh, yeah, the big fuzz wanted to rap a whole lot.” Jake folded his arms. “Until, like, midnight.”

  “Jake,” said Miranda.

  Jake took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Sorry. Being in that station makes me forget what decade it is. Yeah, we got brought in. And, yeah, Blanchard was all over how we got caught with, like, three marijuana plants and a grow light in the attic forty years ago. And, yeah, maybe we lit up a few and talked revolution with some friends. We did the community service and we haven’t sold a joint since, and I haven’t been talkin’ ’bout a revolution since the Carter administration.”

  “We don’t even know who we found down there,” added Miranda.

  “Blanchard didn’t tell you?”

  Jake shrugged. “Not so’s you’d notice. It was all ‘the victim’ this and ‘the victim’ that. He wanted to see if we’d spill the beans ourselves, I guess.”

  “Do you know who he was, Anna?” Miranda asked.

  “His name was Jimmy Upton.”

  “Upton?” repeated Jake. I had the feeling that if he hadn’t been sitting down, he would have staggered.

  “Did you know him?” I asked.

  “Um, no. Not really,” said Miranda. “We met a couple of times after he came to
town. It was his sister we knew.”

  “His sister?”

  Miranda nodded. “She worked for us, it must have been three months ago?”

  “Four,” said Jake.

  “Right, four. It was only for a couple of weeks, and then she split. No forwarding address.” Miranda frowned. “You remembered to tell Blanchard about that, didn’t you, Jake?”

  “Yeah. He was real interested, too.”

  We all let all this settle in, and none of us liked it.

  “Wow. Man. Jimmy Upton.” Jake took off his bandana and rubbed it across his face. “Poor guy. Are you sure he couldn’t be our ghost?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know,” I told him. “I don’t even know if there is a ghost.”

  “Could you find out?”

  I admit that I’d been hoping Jake would bring this up. On the way over from the station, an idea had occurred to me. I might not believe in ghosts, but I definitely believed in my Vibe. Now that we knew more about what had happened, and what kind of trouble we were looking at, I stood a better chance of being able to understand what that Vibe was trying to tell me. There was only one problem. I couldn’t do this alone. I’d promised.

  “I think for this one, you should call in an expert,” I told them.

  “I’m not bringing in any bunch of ghost hunters,” said Miranda immediately. “We’ve already had enough cameras blocking our door. We don’t need some reality TV freak show messing up the scene.”

  “No, no, nothing like that.” I didn’t think so, anyway. “I just think you need somebody with more experience than I’ve got, like Julia Parris.”

  “Julia?” said Miranda.

  “You know her, right?”

  “Everybody knows Julia,” put in Jake. “And I mean, I knew she was into alternate religions, but I didn’t know she was all that serious.”

  “I did,” said Miranda. “She’s got an aura you could see from the International Space Station.”

  “And a stick you can’t,” Jake muttered.

  “Jake!” Miranda swatted him between the shoulder blades.

  “Sorry. Sorry, Anna.”

  “It’s okay,” I told them. I thought about mentioning the rumors that Julia had a nightclub in her past but decided against it.

  “Do you think Julia would help us?” he asked.

  “Yes, I do.” I might still be a little miffed at Julia for her attitude toward Grandma and for forbidding me from working magic on my own while only an apprentice, but I knew she took her role as a guardian very seriously. She would not turn down a request for help. Impulsively, I seized Miranda’s hand. “Ghost or no ghost, we are going to find out who did this. I promise you.” I had no idea how, but I was not going to leave these two to the mercy of Lieutenant Blanchard and his nasty grin and well-filled manila folders.

  Miranda didn’t say anything. She just pulled her hand out of mine and walked back behind the counter and stared up at the chalkboard menu and the battered sign, BETTER KARMA THROUGH BETTER COFFEE. I wondered if she’d painted it herself. I pictured the two of them hanging it up above the menu—laughing and optimistic.

  “Starbabe?” said Jake gently.

  “No,” Miranda said.

  Jake blinked. “No what?”

  Miranda turned around and faced us both. Determination radiated from every pore. “No ghost hunting. No poking the hotel hornet’s nest while Blanchard is drooling over the idea of finally catching us at . . . something. Old man, we need to let this one go.”

  “But we can’t, Starbabe. It’s on us now. We’re part of it whether we like it or not.”

  “No, we’re really not,” she answered flatly. “I mean, this is not anything we did. We just found him. That’s all. I feel bad for him, and for his . . . family. But if we keep asking questions about this, Lieutenant Blanchard is going to wonder why.” For the first time, a hint of fear crept into Miranda’s voice.

  “Miranda, come on.” Jake got up and leaned across the counter to take both her hands. “We can’t let the cops scare us. We’ve got to do what’s right. If we’re not part of the solution, we’re part of the problem, right?”

  She looked up at him miserably. “We’ve got a good thing, Jake; we don’t need to be looking for extra trouble.”

  “We’ve already found trouble.” He squeezed her hands. “Now we got to deal with it.”

  “And whatever you’ve been hearing, or whatever’s been happening, it might not have anything to do with Jimmy Upton,” I reminded her. “From what you said, the noises started long before he . . . died. We’d just be seeing if there’s anything else behind the noises and the impressions I was getting.” Because the whole building had been filled with secrets, not just the basement.

  A dozen expressions chased one another across Miranda’s face, none of them happy, but in the end she just sighed. “Okay, if it’s just checking out any energies the place might have, I guess that’d be all right.”

  “That’s my lady.” Jake gave her hands an extra squeeze. “Everything’s gonna be all right. Every. Little. Thing.”

  Miranda’s answering smile was weak, but it was genuine. “Do you promise, old man?”

  “I promise.” He stretched across the counter to kiss her.

  The view out the tiny windows suddenly became very interesting. There was the river sparkling in the autumn sunshine, and a barge sailing past, and if you stood at just the right angle, you could see the Memorial Bridge and . . .

  “Okay, Anna, show’s over.” Jake laughed.

  “Just giving you two the moment,” I said loftily.

  “And we appreciate that.” Miranda was smiling and her voice was much lighter. “So, here’s the thing: Despite how it sounds, we are glad you stopped by. We wanted to let you know that we’d definitely like you to do the murals for the new shop. If you’re still interested, that is,” she added.

  “I am interested,” I told them. “But you haven’t even seen any concepts yet.”

  Miranda waved this away. “We’ve seen the work on your Web site and how much you loved the space. I’m sure you’ll come up with something perfect. It’s going to be a while until they let us back in, but we can give you a down payment today if that’s cool.”

  “That is cool,” I said, visions of rent checks dancing in my head. “Thank you.”

  “Oh, I’m so glad,” said Miranda. “After the night we had, we figured everybody could use some good news. How about we celebrate? Can we get you something, Anna?” said Miranda. “Latte?”

  “Definitely.”

  14

  We toasted our new partnership with caffeine and cinnamon and a radically failed attempt on my part to draw a leaf pattern in coffee foam. Jake and Miranda insisted on writing me out the deposit check, and I tucked it into my purse. But when I left the shop, I did not turn left to head for my bank. Instead, I turned to the right. I also pulled out my phone and called Julia.

  “Anna?” my mentor said as soon as she answered. “Are you all right?”

  I was starting to understand how Val felt. “I’m fine.” I was walking down Ceres toward the far end and the other set of stairs that led to Market Street. “I’ve just been to see Jake and Miranda.”

  “Yes, I’ve been hearing something about it . . . Thank you. Have a great day.” I remembered Julia would be working right now. I heard her call her assistant over to the counter before she spoke into the phone again. “How are they?”

  “Not great,” I admitted. “Kenisha’s lieutenant has been questioning them.”

  “And you?” she put in, because Julia is not slow.

  “And me,” I admitted. “Did Kenisha tell you what they’ve found out so far?”

  “Yes, she did.”

  I took a deep breath. “Julia, I know since I’m still an apprentice, I’m not supposed to use my Vibe without supervision, b
ut I was thinking now that we know . . . what we know, maybe if I went back into the building, I could get some more hints about what actually happened.”

  Julia was silent for a long time. “It’s possible,” she said finally. “We’d need Jake and Miranda’s permission, of course.”

  “We have it. Kind of,” I added, for the sake of full disclosure. “Jake still thinks the building might be haunted, and he wants us to try to find the ghost.”

  “Well, of course we will do what we can,” said Julia immediately. “But I don’t . . .” She paused. “Anna, you did not suggest to them that their ghost might be able to help discover who murdered Jimmy Upton?”

  “No. Of course not. Because there’s no such thing as ghosts.” Right? Right. Please say right.

  “Well, that would depend on what you mean by ghosts,” said Julia. This was so very much not what I wanted to hear. The bright fall day suddenly seemed a bit too chilly.

  Julia heard my silence and made that particular sigh that people give you when they want you to know they are being very patient. “Anna, you know that a death can leave behind a psychic echo. If that echo is strong enough, even people who are not otherwise magically sensitive or trained can be affected by it. They can even think they’ve seen something or heard something. Actual spirits—entities that are trapped or in transition between one form of existence and another—those are exceptionally rare, but they are not unheard of.”

  “So . . . you’re saying Jimmy Upton might really be haunting the place?” I told myself to pull it together. I told myself that this was no weirder than working magic, or a cat who could vanish and reappear whenever the mood struck him. Myself was not listening. At all.

  “I’m saying it’s possible someone or something is, and if it will set Jake’s and Miranda’s minds at rest, of course we should try to find out.” Julia paused, and I pictured her brow furrowing in thought. “It has been a long time since I was confronted with the possibility of a lost spirit. I’ll need to do some research, but I’m positive we can at least reassure Jake and Miranda that their building is free of negative energies.”

  “Thanks, Julia,” I said, and I meant it. Lieutenant Blanchard’s accusations had me worried about Jake and Miranda. I might not have been crazy about the idea about meeting an actual ghost, but I couldn’t help hoping that my Vibe might turn up something to help with the investigation. It wouldn’t be anything we could take to court, but it still might point somebody in the right direction.