“All the help said they'd stay. The place even makes money. Millie says it's been fully booked for years.”
“All the same . . . ”
“And people who come to inns are nicer, by and large, than people who go to hotels. They'll cut me some slack while I'm learning. ”
“Quoth Millie Jacobs?”
“Doc . . . you never did anything crazy?”
“Sure. But I was sane at the time.”
“Now you're being a shit.”
“Good luck, Michael.”
The Taylor House wasn't just any inn, either. Fallon, on his walks, had stopped to admire it many times. Especially at night. He would stand and look in the windows at the carved woodwork and the antique furnishings inside. You could do that in Edgartown without someone calling the cops.
The Taylor House stood high on North Water Street looking out over the harbor. An absolutely prime location. The architecture was Federal style, solid and square but softened by a graceful baluster along the roof, arched fanlights, and a columned portico entrance that had its own little balcony on top. It was three stories tall, painted white with black shutters, and it had a widow's walk on the roof. There was a small formal garden in front and a larger one in back. The front garden was all boxwoods and clipped yews, enclosed behind a delicate white fence at the edge of a red brick sidewalk.
Captain Isaac Taylor was a nineteenth-century whaling ship captain who, having made his fortune, decided nothing was too good for him. He brought carpenters and shipwrights all the way from Boston, had wallpaper shipped from France, fabrics from Italy, and furniture from England. Spend two or three years chasing whales, Fallon supposed, and you want something nice to come home to.
Built in 1829, the house became an inn shortly after the turn of the century. It had six large rooms that were strictly for guests, a dining room, and a library, plus two smaller rooms for seasonal help. All the rest of it was private. The master suite took up most of the third floor.
The wife of the present owner, one Polly Daggett, had been crippled in a hit-run accident during a visit to Boston. She would need long-term care and a hip replacement, said Millie Jacobs, which was why they had decided to sell.
Fallon placed a call to Brendan Doyle, who agreed with Sheldon Greenberg. It sounded nuts. But Fallon had already put a binder on the house, using most of his cash and travelers checks, and Doyle, in the end, relented. He would liquidate some of Michael's securities and advance whatever else was needed until the will was probated. He would transfer sufficient funds to the Main State Bank of Edgartown and would have the title search done through a Boston law firm.
“Michael . . . you're sure you want to do this?”
“You know who used to stay there? Jimmy Cagney.”
“Um . . . relevance, Michael?”
He knew damned well what the relevance was. Brendan Doyle was a lifelong Cagney fan. Had his picture taken with Cagney once. It's hanging in his office. And Cagney did stay at the Taylor House before he bought a place of his own in Edgartown.
“You can have his room if you come up.”
Silence.
“Sit on the very same toilet.”
“Michael . . . why do I hear your heart thumping?”
“Because I'm psyched about this.”
“And your voice is up an octave. I make note of these things, Michael, because this is the way you've sounded, all your life, when you've tried to put something over on your elders.”
“Like what?”
“Have you told me everything?”
Look who's asking. “Scout's honor.”
“You've left nothing out?”
“Come on up, Mr. Doyle. You've been in New York too long.”
Fallon did leave one teensy thing out.
The place was supposed to be haunted.
Chapter 10
Jimmy Cagney.
In Cagney's day, thought Doyle, gangsters knew how to get things done. If they needed answers they'd pull a snatch, hang the slob from a meat hook, and let him ripen for a day or two until he was ready to cooperate.
But Cagney, to be fair, didn't have to worry about wired phones, bugged restaurants, video cameras, and RICO statutes. Three weeks after getting that police report, after lunching with Johnny and Fat Julie Giordano and handing them a copy with the names, addresses, and even mug shots of the two black muggers who tried Michael, between them they still had zilch.
Well . . . zilch isn't fair either.
We now know some interesting facts. They are not, for starters, your ordinary street hoods. One of them isn't even black. The one with the dreadlocks is Jamaican but the one with the mustache who shaves his head is a Pakistani. Mohammed something or other.
The Jamaican is a parole violator who, even if he could talk through a jaw that still takes only liquids, is now back in custody. But wonder of wonders, whom did he list as his employer?
Parker Security Services, Inc.
And how many clients does Parker Security have? Only two of any size. The firm of Lehman-Stone and the firm of AdlerChemiker AG.
Knowing this is one thing. Getting at the Jamaican to ask a few questions is another. Fat Julie Giordano was somewhat more hopeful of getting at the Pakistani who is an illegal alien and is currently in the custody of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Word is, however, that he is to be given a conditional release by this weekend because they're short of jail cells and because risk of flight is minimal. Michael did a good job on him. Word is he walks like a duck and still farts through his cheek when he talks.
Fat Julie's plan is to intercept him between Riker's Island and the welfare hotel where they got him a room. That done, Julie will ask him if he'd care to fill in a few gaps or is he ready to play make-a-wish again.
It had better work.
Moon is hard enough to keep down as it is. This one clear connection, tying those two muggers to Lehman-Stone, would be all he needs to hear. Short of pumping him full of Thorazine, there would be no stopping him.
Michael's pen had been poised over the binder agreement when Millie Jacobs said, “By the way . . .” These three words made him freeze.
According to Sheldon Greenberg's book, when people say, “By the way . . .” whatever follows is almost always the key issue at hand and, chances are, they're about to try to diddle you.
“Not that this would bother you, Michael ... a worldly young man like yourself . . . educated . . . however . . . full disclosure and all that . . .”
Wouldn't bother you, my ass.
It was almost a deal-breaker. He had to take a long walk to think about it.
On the one hand, he didn't need this. He had enough ghosts of his own. On the other, it wasn't much of a haunting. No blood oozing up through the floorboards or anything like that. All it was, it seems that over the years quite a few guests have said they've heard the laughter of children coming from empty rooms.
”Hey, Dr. (JreenbergY”
“I told you so, Michael.''
“No, wait. This could even be good.”
That, in fact, was Millie Jacobs's argument. For openers, she said, everyone who lives here has heard the story and no one gives it much thought. The truth is, any number of Martha's Vineyard houses are said to be haunted. Try to find a town in all of Massachusetts that doesn't have at least one ghost.
“Watch out for ‘The truth is...'as well.”
“Will you listen for once?”
Most of the guests who've stayed there, Millie went on, either didn't know, didn't care, or assumed that any children they might hear were those of other guests. But here's the good news. Quite a few have come because the place is thought to be haunted. The Taylor House is listed in Haunted Houses of New England and a number of other such books. Those listings, she said, are as good as a four-star rating in the Mobil Guide. If the sort of clientele they attract are a bit eccentric, she asked, what's wrong with that as long as they keep coming and tell their friends?
“And they're very quiet,
of course.”
“Quiet?”
“The better to listen.”
Ask a silly question, thought Fallon.
“Are there any theories? Any legends about who these children are?”
“Several. But Polly Daggett invented them.”
“Why several?”
“So her guests could have charm or horror depending on what turned them on.”
“Polly, I take it, was not a believer.”
“She knew a good thing when she saw it.”
Fallon bought the place.
Or at least he signed the binder. The closing was three weeks off but he decided to move in. The Daggetts could not object as long as he paid the full off-season rate.
For the first time in months, he needed nothing to help him sleep. No Dalmane or Seconal washed down with a scotch. His stash was running low anyway. He decided that he would risk the return of the nightmares and the four-in-the-morning gremlins. If the place was going to spook him, let it be now while there was still time to back out.
He heard no laughing children.
His bed never levitated, he felt no sudden chills, nor did he wake from a sound sleep to see a beautiful young woman floating near the foot of his bed. But he had no nightmares either. Just a minor amount of tossing. Perhaps he no longer needed drugs to sleep. Or a Colt Python kept within reach. Still, after all the talk, he was a little disappointed.
On the third night, he had retired early. Something woke him near midnight. He wasn't sure what. He lay there, listening for a while. The only sounds were those of the oil burner kicking on and a faint low whistle that seemed to be in the wall that faced front. Fallon got out of bed, crossed to the wall, and put an ear up against it. He heard it clearly, more so near each of the windows. He smiled.
“Dummy,” he murmured. “It's the shutters. Just the wind off the ocean blowing through the slats.”
But he was awake now. He slipped into his robe and sat by the window, elbows on the sill, looking out over the harbor and at the dark mass of Chappaquiddick just beyond. It struck him that if any place on this island should be haunted, it would be Chappaquiddick. That Kennedy mess. The Kopechne girl who drowned. He wasn't here three days before he heard the absolute, guaranteed true story about what really happened that night. Everybody hears it. Same story. It seems that there was a second girl . . .
Movement on the sidewalk below caught Fallon's attention. He leaned closer to the pane and looked down. There was a man there. Just standing. He was dressed in a hooded black slicker and he seemed to be staring at the front entrance. His hands were raised to his temples as if to hide his face. Fallon felt a weight in his stomach. His mind, the rational part, said it was only another tourist admiring the house. But the darker part of his mind saw the faceless man of his nightmares. That man had found him.
Fallon backed away. He stepped to his night table and slid the Colt Python from the drawer. Fear was replaced by anger. This was his new life, goddamn it. He made his way to the staircase and started down. He moved slowly, pausing every several steps to listen. One of them, for all he knew, could already be in the house.
In his mind he saw those two from New York. The bald one, the taller of the two, could be the man outside. They're walking again. It's been three months. It's possible that they've healed by now.
But by the time he reached the front door and looked out through the side light, the man in the slicker was gone. He heard an odd grinding sound. It came from the street, just off to the right. Fallon fumbled for the latch and pulled the door open. He took a breath and ducked through. He followed the Python, held with both hands, and aimed it at the source of that noise. The man in the slicker was leaving. On a bicycle.
A bicycle?
He had climbed on, shifted to a lower speed, and started down the hill toward the center of town.
“That would be Parnel,” said Millie Jacobs.
Fallon had stopped by her office, said yes to a cup of coffee, and was almost out of small talk when he blurted a reference to the man in the hooded black slicker.
“Parnel?”
“Tall and skinny? Rides a green twelve-speed with two wire baskets?”
Fallon remembered the baskets. Mounted over the rear wheel like saddlebags. He also remembered realizing, after his heart stopped pounding, that on the first day of assassin school they probably teach you not to take your bike on hits. He answered her question with a nod.
“Parnel Minter. He builds lobster traps mostly, but he's also a sensitive.”
“Sensitive?” Fallon repeated stupidly.
‘‘It's like a psychic. He gives readings during the tourist season. Goes into a trance and leaves his body but he's back in five minutes with the keys to your success. Likes to tell that body leaving’s how he met his wife. He was flying over Marblehead one day, felt her psychic energy, and swooped down for a look-see. Liked what he saw, came back to get his body, and drove back up to court her.”
“Millie…”
“Wife reads Tarot cards when she's Madam Cassandra. When she's just Helen Minter, she stacks produce over at the A&P.”
“Um . . . why would Parnel Minter have been . . .”
“Staring at the Taylor House? Hands up like this?” She mimicked his pose. “He's listening for the children.”
Fallon blinked.
”A few days of that and you're bound to come ask him what he's up to. That's when he'll tell you who the ghosts are and offer to get rid of them. He tried that with Polly Daggett. She wasn't interested, even when he cut his price to fifty dollars but she let him paint her fence for that amount.”
Fallon felt a headache coming on.
“Millie ... am I going to get much more of this?”
“Oh, Parnel's harmless.”
Yes, but a Colt Python isn't. Fallon winced at how close he'd come. If he had been a little more frightened, if his adrenaline had been pumping any harder . . .
“And he's not exactly a fake. I mean, Parnel does hear voices but my husband thinks they come through his dentures. The barometer falls enough, he can pick up NOAA Weather Radio.”
Fallon closed his eyes. He rose to his feet.
“If you want the real thing,” Millie said, leaning back, “you might try to see Megan.”
“Megan?”
“She's close by. Lives over in Woods Hole.”
“Thanks all the same.”
“Of course, your happy little ghosts wouldn't interest Megan. She's big time. The Massachusetts State Police use her when they're stuck. One time she described a murderer for them. All she did was walk around some woods where two of the victims were found and she told them what he looked like, the house he lived in, the kind of car he drove, and even part of his name.”
Fallon's skepticism showed on his face.
“It was in all the papers, Michael.”
“What papers? The rags at the A&P checkout?”
Millie's eyes became cool. “If you're done with your coffee, Mr. Fallon . . .”
He spent the next five minutes apologizing.
No, he told her, he was not some smart-ass New York know-it-all who thinks all islanders are rubes and all realtors are talking heads. He had no doubt that much of that murder story was true—the papers, it turned out, were the Boston Globe and the Providence Journal—and that certain people do seem to have unusual gifts. His apology offered and accepted, it seemed only polite to show a modicum of interest in the subject that led to it.
Millie softened as well. She told him that she had never given much credence to ESP either, especially when its primary practitioners were Parnel and Cassandra. But if there was a genuine article, it would have to be Megan. For openers, the man she described had been totally unknown to the police. That means she could not have been influenced by some investigator who already had a suspect and hoped to panic him into confessing by getting a psychic to finger him.
“You'd never guess, to look at her,” Millie added. “She's such a pretty
little thing.”
Fallon arched an eyebrow. “You know this woman?”
Millie shook her head. “Seen her on her boat, is all. She lives on it. Seen her handle it, all by herself, in weather a gull won't fly in.”
She's pretty and she sails. Fallon was instantly intrigued. “Megan what?”
“Just Megan. They don't use last names.”
“Show biz, right? Like Cher or Madonna?”
The realtor shook her head. “Makes it harder for the weirdos to find them.”
This exchange had aroused Michael's interest because, until now, he had envisioned another Madam Cassandra. Probably fat, wearing a tasseled shawl, a turban, about two pounds of rings on her fingers, and at least one hairy mole on her lip. Certainly not pretty and not athletic. Nor gutsy enough to drive a good-sized boat through a gale. “Where did you say this boat is?”
No, Michael. Don't even think about it.
The Shadow Box Page 7