Dead Suite

by Wendy Roberts

  “Zack and I haven’t had sex since he got out of Whispering Groves,” Sadie announced.

  Maeva’s eyes grew huge. “Really?”

  Sadie nodded. “Before he left rehab he announced that he was going to get his own place and that we’d start over as a proper couple. Dating and stuff. It was part of his new life program to keep him on the straight and narrow.”

  “Well, that sounds kind of sweet,” Maeva said, nodding thoughtfully. “I mean, you met because he was your employee at Scene-2-Clean and you kind of fell into this idea of being a couple. The idea of starting off slowly by dating is very romantic. When does he plan to move out so you can get going on this then?”

  “That’s just it. When he got back home he caught sight of my stack of unpaid bills and said he’d stay until business picked up so that he can help chip in toward costs. I figured, in the meantime, we’d be back to being . . . us. But we’re not us. We’re not even the way we were before we became romantically involved. No hugs or kisses. Brief glances at each other, and he clings to his side of the bed like he’s afraid I might touch him. It’s just really awkward.” Sadie’s shoulders slumped. “Do you think he’s really just waiting until I can afford my own expenses again before he breaks up, or is he serious about starting this whole dating idea? Because when we talk on the phone he’s all sexy and flirty but when he’s here we’re back to being horrible roommates again.” Sadie threw up her hands.

  “First of all, you should be having this conversation with him, not me.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ve tried. Every conversation ends with me feeling like I’ve pushed him farther away. I also feel like I don’t want to rock the boat.”

  “Well, Zack’s a complicated guy. First he was a cop who took a bullet for his partner, then got hooked on pain pills and had to leave the force. Then he got hurt working for you and the addiction started up again. He’s fighting his own demons, right? He’s done his time at rehab and he’s back on track. I think, if you want him, you’re going to have to let this happen in his own time.”

  Sadie picked up her beer and took a sip. She really hoped that everything could be solved in time.

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “I am. In the meantime, you should keep yourself busy by coming out with me tonight.”

  Sadie laughed. “Fine. I’ll go. I’ll even pick you up. What time should I get you?”

  “Ten.” Maeva got to her feet, looking exceptionally pleased. Sadie was uncertain if that was because of her decision to go to the séance tonight, or because of the loud burp produced by the baby.

  “Isn’t ten a little late to just be getting started?”

  “Ten is Osbert’s best time,” Maeva explained. “He has a feeding right before and, if we hustle, I can be out of the house without him for three glorious hours before old Bessy has to be back in the barn for milking time,” she stated with a chuckle.

  When Sadie said good-bye to her friend and godson at the door she resisted the urge to go back to sleep. Instead she spent some time in the evening cleaning Hairy’s litter box, catching up on laundry, and losing herself in housework. Cleaning up blood and gore might pay the mortgage but tidying her own house made her feel normal. When a large portion of the world viewed you as a freak, normal wasn’t overrated.

  Sadie took the time to dial Hugh Pacheo to tell him she’d finished the work at his son’s garage. A recording said the cell number wasn’t in service. Sadie double-checked the number and it was the same she’d called him on earlier. Either Mr. Pacheo hadn’t paid his cell bill or there was a problem with the number. She decided to e-mail him that the job was complete.

  She still had one more thing she had to accomplish. There was a certain ghost she’d made a promise to. Sadie had put it off but she knew she’d feel better if she at least attempted to find May Lathrop’s cash and jewelry and drop it off at WATS.

  May Lathrop had given Sadie the address of a small basement suite in a house located on South King Street near Twelfth Avenue. She had no trouble finding it, but when she drove slowly past there was a man sitting on the front steps smoking a fat cigar. She didn’t want to have to deal with other tenants who might call SPD and report her for wanting to break into a dead girl’s apartment.

  While she thought about what to do, Sadie decided to grab something to eat at the Vietnamese restaurant across the street. She ordered the chicken pho and took the bowl of noodles to eat at a table outside. While she ate she kept an eye on the place across the street. Eventually the man on the front stoop was joined by a woman and two chubby middle schoolers. After some discussion out front, all four piled into a beat-up Chevy. The car noisily backfired and chugged right past where Sadie was sitting and disappeared up the road.

  After finishing her soup, Sadie casually crossed the street and walked up the rickety wooden steps. The front door hung off-kilter due to broken hinges, and where the doorbell should’ve been were bare wires. Sadie rapped at the door even though she had no idea what she’d say if anyone answered. Lucky for her nobody was home, so she took the weed-choked sidewalk around the back of the house and found the entrance to the basement suite.

  The door had been sealed off by Seattle PD. Sadie chewed her lip nervously. She didn’t like to break in and she sure as hell didn’t want to end up in a jail cell. Somehow she doubted she’d be released quickly once she revealed she was only obeying the wishes of a ghost.

  But a promise was a promise. Glancing around, she saw that the back of the house wasn’t visible to the buildings on either side. May had mentioned a rock painted with yellow daisies. It took Sadie a minute to find it in the overgrown garden. Whipping out a pair of disposable gloves from her back pocket, Sadie retrieved the key, opened the door, and then quickly closed the door behind her. The apartment was filthy and smelled of rotten food and mildew. Sadie wasted no time going to the bedroom, which boasted a saggy old mattress on the floor in the corner and a small lone window with tinfoil pressed against it to keep light from entering. The closet held an impressive amount of animal-print spandex and slinky dresses made from flammable-looking fluorescent fabrics, but this wasn’t the time to pause and admire May’s choice in hooker attire.

  Standing on tiptoe, Sadie retrieved the shoe box. She popped open the lid and searched through a stack of photos and memorabilia to uncover a thick padded envelope that contained a stack of cash and a couple pairs of small diamond-studded earrings. Sadie pocketed the treasures before carefully placing the shoe box back in its location.

  After locking up the suite, she returned the key to its hiding spot and hustled back to her car. She had less than an hour to drop off the loot at WATS downtown and make it to Maeva’s.

  She was lucky enough to find parking right in front of the brown brick low-rise. The only indication that she was at the right place was a small piece of paper taped to the glass door with “WATS” handwritten on it. Sadie pushed the door open and looked around. The space was cozy with a few round tables and folding chairs and a corner station with tar-like coffee simmering on a burner. Sadie stood next to a credenza littered with pamphlets that were free for the taking so that women coming in for help could pick up brochures on various helpful courses offered around town, and there were also pamphlets listing rehab centers as well as a sheet listing local shelters. She randomly picked up a handful of brochures and shuffled them in her hands.

  There were a couple older women who looked like they might be volunteers. One of them got up from her chair and greeted Sadie.

  “Can I help you?” asked the dark-skinned woman of about fifty.

  “Do you work here?”

  “I’m a volunteer. My name is Enid.” She looked Sadie up and down appraisingly, obviously trying to decide if she was a working girl or just lost.

  “I was a friend of May Lathrop’s,” Sadie said, mildly stretching
the truth.

  “Oh! That poor dear!” Enid’s hand flew to her mouth and her eyes welled up with tears. “She was one of our favorites, and she was trying so hard to leave the streets behind.”

  Sadie nodded. “She had a bit of savings and jewelry set aside for her future. She wanted your organization to have it.” Sadie handed over May’s treasures.

  “That’s just like her.” Enid clutched the envelope to her chest without looking inside. “Thank you so much for bringing it by. We’re always looking for donations of any kind. Did you know her long?”

  “Just long enough to know she thought highly of the work you do here.”

  “It’s just the few of us ladies and a couple of clergy who run this place, but we like to feel that we’re making a small difference.”

  Sadie assured her that May talked highly of all they did for her, and then she left the building. When she climbed back inside her car Sadie felt good. She was glad she’d taken the time to deal with May’s last request. She realized she still held a handful of brochures that she’d picked up off the table inside WATS. Absently, she tossed the papers into the side pocket of the car door as she pulled away from the curb and headed to Maeva’s place.

  ***

  When Sadie left the house that night, she was dressed in her black jeans, Nikes, and a T-shirt. She didn’t know if there was a dress code for séances, but she was going with comfort just in case. However, when she pulled up to Maeva’s house, her friend darted out the front door, a flash of purple in a flowing peasant skirt with a dozen gold chains around her neck. She looked like a wannabe-gypsy experiment gone wrong.

  Maeva hopped into the passenger seat of Sadie’s Corolla and smiled.

  “Is it over the top?” she asked, indicating her purpleness with a wave of her hand.

  “Oh nooo,” Sadie said, backing out of the driveway. “You look . . . like you’re ready to get out.”

  “Got that right,” Maeva said, blowing out an excited breath and then a giggle. “The minute Osbert was done feeding I passed him off to Terry and ran out the door.” She glanced at her watch. “By midnight I gotta be back for the next round, but right now I’m Cinderella off to the ball.”

  “I don’t know if I’d compare a séance to a ball, but whatever,” Sadie remarked.

  “Who said anything about a séance?”

  “You did.” Sadie frowned. “Didn’t you?”

  “I said Rick and Rosemary Thingvold were going to a home tonight. I never said they were going there to do a séance.” She pointed up ahead. “You’ll want to take the next right.”

  “Okay, so why are we going to some house then?” Sadie asked warily.

  “Oh you’ll see.”

  “You’re lucky I was dying for an excuse to get out of the house tonight,” Sadie remarked. She took the next right and accelerated. “This had better be good.”

  After fifteen minutes mostly spent with the two of them singing along to raunchy seventies rock, Maeva gave Sadie more driving instructions until they were turning from Twenty-Eighth Avenue onto West Halladay Street in the hilly Magnolia neighborhood. Halfway up the block Maeva announced they’d arrived, and Sadie steered to the curb and parked in front of a turn-of-the century home that was eerily lit from the overhead streetlights.

  “Wow, she’s a beaut.” Sadie whistled and nodded to indicate the house. “The place has to be a hundred years old.”

  “Give or take,” Maeva agreed, glancing out the passenger window. “Do you recognize it?”

  “The house?” Sadie asked. “Don’t think I’ve ever been here before.”

  “It was in the news a few years ago, so I thought you might remember it.”

  “In the news?”

  “Yeah. A mother believed her fourteen-year-old daughter, Iris, was possessed by demons and she tried to perform an exorcism.”

  “Oh yeah,” Sadie said, nodding slowly as she remembered the wild story. “The papers had a field day. They called it the Halladay Horror. The mother poisoned her, right?”

  Maeva’s face grew dark as they both stared at the house. “Good ol’ mom tied her daughter to her bed, then fed her poison to scare away the devil inside her. The next morning when mom saw the poison had killed Iris, instead of just exorcising a demon, the she ran around the neighborhood screaming the devil had killed her kid.”

  Sadie remembered reading that the mother had killed herself while locked up awaiting a psychological examination. It was just one of those sad tales of mental illness that ended tragically. Sadie shivered in spite of herself.

  Sadie and Maeva got out of the car and began walking up the staggered stone walkway toward the front of the old-style, storybook Tudor home. The massive oak front door showed the wear of battling the howling winds and Seattle rains.

  “Has the house stood empty since then?” Sadie asked.

  “The mom left it to a friend, and he sold it recently. The new owners hired Rosemary because they weren’t having any luck getting renovations done. All the workers they hired claim the house is haunted.” She turned to Sadie. “And that’s where Madam Maeva’s Psychic Café comes in.”

  “Why do I feel like I’ve been bamboozled?” Sadie asked dryly.

  Maeva just smiled and pounded her fist a couple times on the solid front door before opening it and stepping inside.

  “We’re here!” she shouted.

  Sadie followed her inside.

  “Come to the kitchen!” The reply came from the back of the house.

  Maeva kicked off her shoes and walked ahead up a long, narrow hall. Sadie held back. The air in the house felt heavy and thick. Although old houses might be considered beautiful because of their dark wood and quality craftsmanship, Sadie preferred new construction—where there was a lesser chance of running into ghosts. Sure she enjoyed helping recently departed spirits like May Lathrop, but those who’d hung around long enough to claim a location like this house tended to be territorial and harder to get rid of than cockroaches.

  Finally Sadie slipped out of her shoes and followed Maeva down the long hardwood hallway. Her footsteps echoed in the empty house and she found herself looking over her shoulder. The hallway opened onto a large eat-in kitchen, where Rosemary and Rick Thingvold were waiting, seated at a small card table and folding chairs. Their cue-ball shaven heads and jewelry piercings glistened in the pale overhead light. They’d each added a few new tattoos since Sadie had seen them last and, in some locations, it was hard to tell where metal and ink stopped and their own skin began.

  “Great to see you,” Rosemary exclaimed, offering Sadie enthusiastic waves and air kisses as if they were old friends instead of occasional ghost busters together. If Rosemary hadn’t been touch-sensitive and prone to feeling ill at Sadie’s touch, like Maeva used to be, it probably would’ve been a bear hug.

  Rick nodded hello.

  “We put some water bottles in the fridge. Help yourself.” To Sadie he said, “I’m glad Maeva convinced you to take the job.”

  Sadie turned to Maeva, her eyebrows raising. “Job? What job?”

  “I hadn’t gotten to that part yet,” Maeva said, scolding Rick. She turned to Sadie. “The new owners have been trying to renovate the house. As I told you in the car, they got it for a good price and would like to renovate it and then flip it for a profit.”

  “And what’s stopping them?” Sadie asked, already fearing the answer.

  “The workers they hired all quit because they were tired of dealing with what they call angry spirits.” Maeva drew air quotes around angry spirits and smiled as if this were the silliest thing she ever heard, even though spirits were her bread and butter. “The drywaller got a concussion from a flying paint can. Then they all walked off the job.”

  “So they called the ghost busters at Ma
dam Maeva’s? Why wouldn’t they just hire different tradesmen?”

  “One of the partners who bought the house attended that Wiccan conference where I was a guest speaker. Apparently I made an impression. She’s convinced we can solve the problem before the house gets a bad reputation among contractors and nobody is willing to work here.”

  “But what does all this have to do with me?” Sadie was getting an uneasy feeling.

  “We came, we saw, and we smudged the hell out of the place,” Rosemary explained, then broke out into a fit of giggles. “But, well . . .”

  “What she means to say,” Rick said, “is that although we tried to contact the spirit who resides here and encourage her to move on, she wasn’t exactly receptive to the idea. As a matter of fact, she tried to scare us off by throwing things at us. Lucky for us there isn’t much inside the house.”

  “We had flying paint brushes and a drop cloth tossed our way,” Rosemary added with a laugh.

  Maeva joined the Thingvolds and the three had a good laugh over a ghost tossing around painting supplies, but the hairs on the back of Sadie’s neck stood up and she began to feel distinctly unwell.

  “You referred to the ghost as a she,” Sadie said. “How do you know the ghost is female?”

  “We are assuming that the spiritual entity is Iris, the fourteen-year-old who was killed here,” Rosemary said matter-of-factly. “Of course, it could also be Della, her crazy mother, although she didn’t die inside the house.”

  “Or someone else entirely. This house is a hundred years old. The spirit could be that old too,” Sadie pointed out.

  “True, but that would mean it’s been haunted all along,” Maeva put in.

  “That’s my point,” Sadie said. “Maybe it was haunted. Maybe that’s why Della Prior thought it had to do with her daughter, and maybe—”

  “That’s a lot of maybes. You look beat.” Rosemary opened the fridge and tossed Sadie a water bottle. “Whoever the spirit is, we’ve tried to have a sit-down chat with them to find out what we could do to help them move on, but that only got us more angry tossing of items around the house. We were at a loss, but then it hit us.” She smacked the palm of her hand against her forehead. “Sadie Novak could do this because this is exactly the kind of stuff she does every day!”