by Rebecca York
***
MICHAEL STRUGGLED TO SPEAK around the constriction in his throat. He’d come to Jenkins Cove thinking that ghosts were total nonsense. Now here he was in the psychomanteum throwing himself on the mercy of a spirit.
From skeptic to true believer in a heartbeat.
In answer to the ghost’s question, the truth came shooting out of his mouth with the force of a volcano breaking through the surface of the earth.
“You have to help me find Chelsea because I love her. And it’s my fault she’s in trouble. She went storming out of the house because she was mad at me. If anything happens to her, I’ll never forgive myself.”
Lavinia said nothing, and he felt his heart pounding as agonizing seconds ticked by.
When she spoke, it wasn’t what he wanted so desperately to hear. “Why was she mad at you?”
He gulped. “Because before I came to Jenkins Cove, I was mouthing off about how she must be a fraud.”
“A fraud because she claimed she’d seen me?”
“Yes,” he answered. “And now, if I have to get down on my knees and beg you to help me find her, I’ll do it.” He dragged in a breath and let it out. “I’ll do it now.”
He climbed out of the chair and sank to his knees beside it.
“Help me,” he said again. “Please help me.”
When he had finished pleading, he held his breath, waiting for an answer. And for long moments, he thought Lavinia was going to leave him in agony.
Then, to his profound relief, her voice whispered next to his ear, “Dr. Janecek is holding her at the old warehouse.”
The words were so unexpected that he blinked. Was she putting him on? “Dr. Janecek? Why would he do that?”
Her ghostly voice turned flinty. “He’s been bringing people into Jenkins Cove for years. Illegal aliens. From Eastern Europe. He speaks those languages, so he can communicate with them.”
Michael’s brain was on overload. They’d been to see the doctor after Chelsea hurt her hand. If Janecek was behind the killings, then they’d played right into his hands.
“What…what does he bring them in for?” he managed to ask in a cracked voice.
“Some are sex slaves. Some paid a lot of money to get into the country. Or they might pay for their passage with a kidney. Like me. Only I didn’t plan to do that. I saved my money so I could pay up front, but then the doctor said I had to donate a kidney anyway.”
The ghost was silent for several moments; then she made a strangled sound.
“What?”
“You must hurry. Chelsea is in grave danger. The doctor is going to take her heart for a transplant patient.”
Michael scrambled to his feet. When he almost lost his balance, he grabbed the back of the chair to steady himself. “Her heart,” he gasped. “Oh God, not her heart.”
He dashed out of the room and pounded down the steps to the ground floor. First, he ran to the living room and picked up the phone. Fumbling in his pocket, he pulled out the paper where he’d written down Rand McClellan’s number.
Centuries passed while the phone rang at the other end of the line. When McClellan answered, Michael started to shout at him. Then he realized it was a recorded message. The detective wasn’t there.
All Michael could do was spit out his message and pray the guy got it. “Chelsea is being held at the old warehouse on the edge of town where I told you I fell into that hole. Janecek is going to kill her.”
Slamming down the receiver, he charged out of the room and onto the porch.
Then he thought maybe he should tell Sophie to alert Chief Hammer. He’d just called out to her when a voice spoke behind him.
“Hold it right there.”
He whirled around again. Instead of Aunt Sophie, he saw a man step out of the bushes beside the house and onto the oyster-shell path. He was of medium height and weight. There was nothing much distinctive about him except that he was holding an automatic pistol.
“Hands up.”
Michael stared at him. “Who the hell are you?” But even as the question tumbled out of him, he was pretty sure he knew the answer. It was the man who had been watching the house. The man who had tried to run him over. The man who had tried to kill Chelsea in the kitchen with the blender and the water on the floor, before escaping in a boat from the dock. And probably the man who had hunted them out in the bog.
“It don’t matter who I am. You’re coming with me.”
“Where?”
“You’ll find out soon enough.”
***
THE DOCTOR TURNED AWAY from Chelsea, and she saw him set up another table a few feet from where she lay. When he had it in place, he walked back to the car and retrieved a black bag he’d brought. His back to her, he laid out a white towel, then began taking out shiny, frightening instruments.
Once more he returned to the car trunk, and this time he took out a carrying case. She recognized it from television programs she’d seen. It was the kind of container they used to transport human organs.
She wanted to scream, “No. Let me go. I haven’t done anything to hurt you.”
But she knew that was a lie. She’d done something to hurt him the moment she’d driven to the police station. She’d gotten in the way of his illegal operation, and he wasn’t going to allow her to trip him up that way.
She pulled at the straps that secured her to the table, but she was held firmly in place. She wasn’t going anywhere. This was it.
In a few moments she would be dead. Did the doctor plan to give her anesthetic when he cut her open? The question was too horrible to contemplate.
She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment because that was the only way she could be alone. She’d been a fool. She understood that now. But it was too late. All her hopes and dreams would end right here, in this warehouse.
She’d rushed out of the house because she’d been so hurt when she’d read Michael’s comments on that blog. But she knew he had changed his mind since coming to Jenkins Cove. She knew he’d tried to tell her about it before he’d made love to her. But he’d lost his nerve, and she understood why. He’d known she’d be angry and hurt. He’d told her part of it and he’d probably been hoping to find the right time to tell her the rest. Only she’d gotten ahead of him and found it out herself.
Oh Lord. If she’d only let him explain, she wouldn’t be in this mess now.
But his words on that blog had felt like the worst kind of betrayal—because she’d fallen in love with him.
Now she was in this old warehouse, strapped to a table, about to die. And she wouldn’t get a chance to tell Michael what she felt for him.
“Michael, I forgive you,” she whispered in a voice too low for the doctor to hear. “I wish I could tell you that. I wish I could tell you I love you.”
A whisper of sound answered her. Not Michael. Someone else.
Chelsea looked around her. The air seemed to stir.
“Lavinia?”
The ghost didn’t answer, but Dr. Janecek spun around, his eyes fixed on her. “What did you say?”
“Lavinia,” she said in as strong a voice as she could muster. “She’s here.”
“She can’t be. She’s dead.”
“But she came back. She spoke to me in the psychomanteum.”
“That’s just a bunch of crap.”
“Is it? Then how do I know her name?”
“You found the list of people coming in that shipment,” he shot back.
“Shipment! That’s a wonderful way to put it. And where do you think I would have seen it?”
“You came to my office. That Michael Bryant guy wasn’t with you every moment. He must have gone snooping around.”
“Is that where you keep your lists?”
“You know I do!”
She struggled to hold her voice steady, to sound logical. “You’re clutching at straws.”
The doctor’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t try to turn this around. You’re the one in trouble. You’ve be
en snooping into my business, and now you’re just trying to stall me, to keep yourself alive for a few more minutes.”
“Go on thinking that,” Chelsea said in a firm voice. “Until the cops come to get you.”
“I know you didn’t call the cops,” he shot back.
Ignoring the comment, Chelsea said, “That wasn’t you the other day out in the marsh shooting at us.”
“Hardly. I don’t go in for tramping around in the mud unless I have to. That was my assistant, Franz Kreeger—the man who was with me in the car. But you’re not going to get a chance to tell that to anyone.”
“He killed Lavinia?”
When Janecek didn’t answer, she asked another question. “Why are you doing this? I mean all of it—not just the part about me.”
“For money.”
“You don’t need it!”
He turned to glare at her. “How would you know what I need? I grew up in a family where there was never enough of anything to go around. I decided I wasn’t going to live that way ever again.”
“So, you took advantage of helpless people?”
“Stop asking questions,” he said with a snarl in his voice.
Instead, she changed the subject again. “I understand why you went after me. But why did Franz Kreeger try to run over Michael when he first arrived in town?”
“Did he?”
“You know he did.”
“We were keeping tabs on you and everybody who came to the House of the Seven Gables, in case they were there to help you make trouble for us. We knew that Michael Bryant was a journalist. But I didn’t tell Franz to run him down. If he tried it, that was his idea.”
So the doctor had been smart enough to look Michael up, long before she’d thought of it. Score one for him.
More than one. Because she was the person strapped to the table and he was the one with the surgical instruments.
As her thoughts whirled, the air behind the doctor shivered, then changed and thickened. Chelsea felt a sudden surge of hope. She saw a figure standing behind the doctor. A woman she could see right through.
“Lavinia?” she called out again as something unseen rushed at Janecek. He must have felt it, because his face took on a look of horror as the phantom flew past him.
Chapter Seventeen
Michael stood facing the man with the gun, his mind churning as it sought a way out.
Then from the corner of his eye, he saw someone else. Aunt Sophie. She had come around the side of the house and gotten behind the guy. In her hands she held a pot of something steaming.
He could guess her plan. But he could see that she was putting herself in terrible danger.
He wanted to shout at Sophie to get out of there. Duck for cover. Call the cops. But trying to communicate with her now was out of the question. The best he could do was keep the gunman’s attention focused squarely on him so that Sophie wouldn’t get hurt.
He cleared his throat and raised his head slightly. “Put down the gun.”
The man laughed. “You must be kidding. You’re coming with me.”
“And if I don’t?”
“I shoot you right now.”
Michael tipped his head to one side. “Don’t you think that will attract a lot of attention?”
“Not before I get the hell out of here.”
“This time you didn’t bring a boat, did you? You’ll have to leave by car. That’ll be more dangerous for you.”
Behind the man, Aunt Sophie raised the pot and hurled the steaming contents at the gunman’s neck.
The man screamed as hot liquid hit him, and the smell of cinnamon filled the air.
The gun fired. But Michael was already out of the way.
The man dropped the weapon and began scrabbling at his burning skin, but the hot liquid seared him like napalm.
Michael kicked the pistol aside, then leaped at the gunman, throwing him to the ground, pummeling him with his fists.
“You bastard,” he shouted. “Chelsea better be all right, or I’ll kill you.”
“Michael, no,” Aunt Sophie shouted. “Get away from him. I have him covered.”
He looked up to see that Chelsea’s aunt had grabbed the gun and was holding it in a two-handed grip like a lady detective in a cop show. Apparently, Chelsea wasn’t the only woman in the family who knew how to handle a firearm.
As he stepped away from the man on the ground, a noise filtered into his consciousness. It was a police siren heading this way.
“I called the cops before I came out,” Aunt Sophie said.
Two squad cars screeched to a halt in the parking area beside the house. Chief Hammer leaped out of one. The deputy named Sam Draper leaped out of the other.
“What’s going on?” the chief demanded.
“This man tried to kill Michael Bryant,” Sophie said, the gun never wavering from the suspect. “I was making Christmas candles, and I threw hot wax on him.”
“He’s working with Dr. Janecek,” Michael added. “The doctor has Chelsea out at the old warehouse. He’s going to kill her. We’ve got to get out there.”
“That’s a lie,” the guy on the ground shouted. “These people attacked me. The old lady pulled a gun.”
Michael answered with a curse. If they all ended up at the police station sorting through truth and lies, it would be too late for Chelsea.
Lord, what was he going to do, steal a police cruiser and go roaring out of town?
The tactic had a certain amount of appeal. The trouble was, there were two cop cars here. The officers would chase him, maybe shoot at him. And if he ended up wrecking the car, he was no closer to helping Chelsea than he was standing here.
***
FROM HER POSITION on the table, Chelsea watched the doctor turn back to his instruments. He sorted through the tools he’d laid out, then picked up a scalpel and examined it.
Apparently satisfied, he advanced on Chelsea. As she saw light gleaming off the blade, she tried to squirm away, but the straps held her fast.
The doctor had taken two steps forward when something whooshed at him again. This time it wasn’t just one phantom. The air in the warehouse shimmered with shapes Chelsea could barely see. Suddenly the shapes took form. The room seemed to be filled with a whole host of people. Men, women and children crowded into this one enclosure. She knew they had come to help her. These must be the victims Dr. Janecek had killed. Yet he didn’t seem to know they were there.
Or did he?
A low buzz filled the air, like the buzzing of a thousand bees. The doctor raised his head, looking around, his gaze darting from one corner of the warehouse to the other.
***
THOUGH MICHAEL WANTED TO SHOUT at Hammer or, better yet, rush the cop, he spoke slowly and clearly. “Let’s try again. Dr. Janecek is holding Chelsea out at the abandoned warehouse southwest of town. The one at the site of the old dock on Jenkins Creek. He’s been using it to bring in illegal aliens. This guy was helping him. He’s the man who murdered that woman out along the road. He’s the one who shot at us out in the marsh. He and Janecek have been stalking Chelsea ever since she saw the murder. If you keep standing here, questioning me, Chelsea is going to end up dead and you are going to be responsible. Do you want that on your conscience?”
The chief looked uncertain.
Aunt Sophie stood with her hands on her hips. When she spoke, her voice had taken on a hard edge. “Charlie Hammer, you know me. Would I throw a pot of hot wax on an innocent man?”
The chief looked from her to the guy on the ground.
“Well, consider this,” she continued, her face as stern as a teacher who has caught one of her students carving her initials on his desk, “if you let my niece die, I will never forgive you. And I will make sure the whole town knows what happened. Jenkins Cove is a small place. Is that how you want to be remembered?”
Without answering her, Hammer turned to his deputy. “Take the guy to the station.”
“I’ll sue you,” the man sh
outed as Draper escorted him to one of the cruisers and ducked his head as he pushed him inside.
“I doubt it,” Hammer muttered, then turned to Michael. “How do you know Chelsea is at the warehouse?”
Michael’s throat clogged. What would happen if he told Hammer the truth?
Once again, Aunt Sophie came to the rescue. Gesturing toward the other police cruiser, she said, “That man you’re taking away told us.”
The audacity of the lie made Michael blink. Neither one of them had heard the guy say anything of the kind. He had to believe, then, that Aunt Sophie had known he was in the psychomanteum and knew where he’d gotten the information.
His gaze shot to her, and she answered with a tiny nod.
In the middle of the silent exchange, Hammer spoke. “Okay, but was he telling the truth?”
“It’s our only lead,” Michael argued. “And if we don’t get there in time, we’ll all be sorry.”
To Michael’s profound relief, Hammer nodded. “Let’s go.”
Michael climbed into the police car with the chief, and they sped off.
“You know the turnoff to that old warehouse down by the water? The place where I fell into a trap.”
“I know where you mean.”
Siren blaring, they raced through town, and sped up when they reached the highway. Still, Michael’s heart was in his throat. If he was going to get to Chelsea in time, every second counted.
He had another worry, as well, one that twisted his gut. He couldn’t be perfectly sure that the police chief and the doctor weren’t working together.
***
THE DOCTOR ADVANCED on Chelsea, still clutching the scalpel in his hand. He raised his arm, and she wanted to close her eyes as the arm came down in a slashing motion. But, to her astonishment, instead of slicing into her chest, the blade slashed through the strap that held her right hand to the side of the table.
“What the hell?” he cried out as he saw what he had done. Obviously, it hadn’t been what he’d intended, but somehow the mass of ghosts in the room had influenced his actions.
She saw his features firm, and she knew that he was fighting their power over him.