Dark Dreamer

by Jennifer Fulton

  She had walked out of the bus station and flagged a cab to LAX. Now she was about to spend the next eight hours flying. To get to Portland, she would have a layover in Chicago. Would the CIA track her down and be waiting for her there? She couldn’t fly under her Diane Harris alias. Security regulations meant you had to carry a photo ID matching the name on the ticket.

  As the agent slid her driver’s license back across the counter, Cara wondered if her name had already triggered a series of alarms. She tried to read the ticket agent’s face for signs. He looked robotically cheerful as he handed over a couple of boarding passes and thanked her for choosing United.

  Cara made it through security without being arrested and vacillated over whether to kill the next eighty minutes in the Red Carpet Lounge or at the gate. She chose the gate, thinking her chances of making a getaway would be better if she was in a crowded public place.

  She flopped down into a plastic chair and refrained from laughing hysterically. In the space of a few days her life had spun so completely out of control it was almost funny. And now she had wantonly disregarded FBI instructions because she had a feeling she had to get home. She suspected the urge had filtered from Phoebe’s unconscious into her own. But what if it was more than that? What if Phoebe was sending a signal intentionally? I’m losing it, she thought.

  Only she must have said it out loud because the woman sitting opposite her lifted her dark head and said, “Hey, Cara,” like they were old friends.

  “Fran!” Cara knew she was blushing. She struggled for something cool to say. This was the first time she’d ever run into a one-night stand after the one night.

  Fran read her mind. “I know. Weird isn’t it?”

  “For you, too, huh?” She looked good, Cara thought. Hot, actually. And a little older than Cara had thought at Girlbar. Jeans. Button-down white shirt. Nice boots. Really nice boots. Cara gestured at them. “Valerie Coe?”

  “No one ever knows that!” Fran hitched her jeans up her leg a little. Her black boots were inlaid with midnight blue leather in a naturalistic pattern.

  “Outstanding.” Cara coveted them instantly. “Is she still taking no new customers?”

  “She only has one pair of hands, I guess.”

  “It’s just as well. I don’t need another excuse to spend money on boots.”

  “Tell me about it. Lucky I have a career. I could never buy these if I had to wait tables to finish college.”

  Cara tried to remember what Fran was studying and came up blank. “Remind me. What’s your career?”

  “Okay. I realize this will be the end of a beautiful friendship, so for the record I just want to say it was great while it lasted.” She grinned. “I’m a trial consultant.”

  “Is that like Gene Hackman in Runaway Jury?”

  “Kind of, although I think I’m better looking than him.”

  “I’d testify to that.”

  A busty woman two seats along from Fran fired off a frown in their direction. She wore heavy make-up and a fish emblem on her lapel. In her spare time she probably wrote letters to the school board insisting they teach teens abstinence instead of birth control.

  “I have a suggestion,” Cara said. “Why don’t we continue this conversation in the comfort and privacy of the United lounge? I have a spare guest pass. Want to use it?”

  “Best idea I’ve heard all day.” Fran got to her feet and picked up Cara’s cabin bag, dropping it on top of her own larger wheelie.

  “Where are you headed today?” Cara asked as they strolled along the walkway.

  “Portland, Maine.”

  “Me, too.”

  “That’s home for you, right?”

  “Almost. I live on Islesboro.”

  “No shit. That’s where I’m staying.”

  “At this time of year? You’re brave.”

  “My grandmother lives there,” Fran said. “She hasn’t been well lately, so I thought I’d go spend a few days.”

  “God, I probably know her,” Cara said.

  “Dotty Prescott,” Fran supplied. “She lives in—”

  “Ames Cove. My grandmother used to play bridge with them.”

  “Oh, my God. Are you Elizabeth Temple’s granddaughter?”

  “One of them.”

  “This is too bizarre.” Fran stopped walking so she could clap her forehead a couple of times. “I can’t believe I never made the connection.”

  “Why would you?” Cara asked. “We didn’t do last names.”

  “I’ve seen your photo. My Gran’s only been trying to fix me up with you for about five years.”

  “Wait…are you the granddaughter with the pet armadillo?”

  “I liberated him a while back.”

  Cara burst out laughing. “Every time you’re in town, I have to dream up some excuse Dotty hasn’t heard before so I can avoid coming to dinner.”

  “I promise I won’t let on.” Fran resumed walking.

  “I have a better idea,” Cara said on an impulse she didn’t feel like suppressing. “Let’s date. You know, just while you’re on the island.”

  Fran’s gleaming hazel eyes found hers in a look that said she hadn’t forgotten a minute of their night together. “I’d like that.”

  *

  “Are you sure I need to be there?” Phoebe glanced across the backseat at her minder.

  Marvin Perry was cleaning the sunglasses he wore on the rare occasions they left Langley to venture into the outside world. “Those are my orders.”

  “And I’m going home afterward?”

  “Yes.” Marvin Perry’s chill blue eyes registered an emotion she could not identify. Grudging respect? In a tone of mordant resignation, he said, “You’re a smart woman, Ms. Temple.”

  “Please call me Phoebe. I mean, we are spending rather a lot of time together.”

  A few muscles moved in his face, bringing him the closest to a smile Phoebe had ever seen. “Okay, Phoebe. And I’m Marvin.”

  Their vehicle, the middle car in a small fleet of three, stopped at a security gate, and their driver exchanged a few words with a uniformed guard before they were signaled through.

  Marvin slid on his eyewear and returned to his topic. “When did you decide to ransom your information?”

  “I didn’t. I decided to go home. But I got the impression that your bosses had other plans.”

  “You have to see it from our point of view. There’s only one of you. Given your capabilities, it is imperative we prevent other parties gaining access to you.”

  “What other parties? Aren’t you guys it?”

  “Phoebe, there’s not an intelligence agency in the world that wouldn’t trade damned near anything for an asset like you. If you fell into the wrong hands the consequences could be unthinkable.”

  “No one knows about me except you people,” Phoebe reminded him. “I think you’re being paranoid.”

  “We found out about you within twenty-four hours. So we may not be the only ones.”

  “You knew before the FBI director told you?”

  Marvin made a scornful sound. “Not much happens in Quantico that we don’t know about. And when you and your sister appeared in that television footage of Cordwell’s arrest…that was all the confirmation we needed.”

  It occurred to Phoebe then that people who made an art form of spying on others could probably find out anything they wanted if they had the power of the government behind them. The CIA probably knew everything about her. She would never have a private life again.

  “What if I’m wrong about the bomb?” she asked, picturing a squad of men breaking down a door and terrorizing an innocent Arab American family on the strength of something she’d seen under hypnosis.

  “You’re not,” Marvin said. “We authenticated a few details before we informed the Department of Defense. But even if you were, the deal stands.”

  Phoebe contained her relief. One thing she’d learned, being around Marvin and his henchmen, was that wearing a poker fac
e helped. “So, what happens now? We have this meeting, then what?”

  “The attorney general will issue arrest warrants once he’s satisfied that we have reasonable cause.”

  “But what if the terrorists try to do something?”

  “Your friend Agent Jefferson is setting up the surveillance operation with Eve Kent as we speak. The suspects aren’t going anywhere without us knowing.”

  Phoebe was happy they’d involved Vernell, and she could imagine Eve’s satisfaction with finally having the chance to catch some terrorists in the act. She hadn’t expected her session with Dr. Karnovich to yield any real information, but to her astonishment, she was visited by a Muslim woman who had died when the Twin Towers collapsed. Since then, the woman had hung around a mosque in Nashville where her son prayed. There she had overheard two men who belonged to an al-Qaeda cell. It seemed as if they were involved in something big. She took Phoebe to a place where they hid materials. These were clearly radioactive.

  Marvin had been stupefied when she gave him the address and described the canisters. His hands had even quivered as he took notes. Even now his face gave away something of his disquiet.

  Curious about his role, she asked, “Marvin, what exactly is your job?”

  “Right now, my job is to deliver you to the meeting in one piece.”

  “Thanks for sharing.”

  Phoebe tried to imagine the man next to her going home to a wife, and children who called him Daddy and stretched their arms out so they could be flipped up into the air. No, she decided, there was just him. If he ever went home it would be to a neat apartment devoid of personality. He would have a flat-screen TV and a collection of workout DVDs. Instead of houseplants, his few polished surfaces would feature one of those mind puzzles and maybe a wedding photo of his parents in a modern silver frame, or people meant to look like parents so his real ones were protected. Was Marvin Perry even his name?

  “Those men in the Black Hawk that day you came to Islesboro. They weren’t FBI trainees, were they?” she asked.

  “No, they were Marines from a special ops unit we work with sometimes.”

  Phoebe almost laughed. Only it wasn’t really funny. The CIA had sent in a team of military commandos to pick her up. Were they expecting a fight? Would they have marched her to their chopper at gunpoint?

  Appalled, she asked, “Was that supposed to scare me?”

  “Not at all.” Marvin seemed genuinely surprised. “Our assignment was to provide security.”

  “Is that what’s happening now too?" Phoebe gestured toward the cars at their front and rear. Each was full of agents. "It’s not like I’d try and escape or anything."

  “Escape is not the primary risk."

  Phoebe sighed. Marvin had already given her the scary lecture on abduction a few times and she didn’t want to get him started again, so she asked, "Where exactly are we going now, anyway?"

  “Our meeting is at the Pentagon,” Marvin informed her without inflection.

  “The Pentagon?” Phoebe croaked. Wait till Cara heard about this. “I didn’t think people like me were allowed there?”

  “You have a high security clearance, and we’re under DOD orders.”

  Department of Defense. Phoebe was getting used to the weird acronyms and jargon. “Who’s the meeting with?”

  “You don’t need to know at this time.”

  *

  “Un-fucking-believable.” Rowe stared around the shambles of her kitchen.

  Every cupboard door was wide open, its contents smashed on the floor. Shards of glass and broken crockery extended from the sink counter to the wall cabinets on the far side. A couple of carving knives were buried in the door. The place looked like a tornado had hit it. Surely this was not Juliet’s doing.

  Livid, she banged her fist on the counter and yelled, “Enough! This is my house, and I am not being driven out by a ghost who has toddler tantrums.”

  She kicked a path through the remains of her favorite dinner set and wineglasses, shoved open the rotting back door, and stalked across the frozen yard to the carriage house. There, among her seldom-used tools, she found a crowbar, a sledgehammer, and some heavy suede gloves. She lugged these items back to the kitchen and set them on the counter, then hauled every freestanding piece of furniture outdoors, leaving only her refrigerator in the room. When she was done, she swept the breakage into a heap and wrapped the fragments in newspaper before filling a couple of huge trash bags with them.

  “Okay,” she announced to the peeling walls, “you’ve had your turn. Now it’s mine.”

  She pulled on her gloves, picked up the crowbar, and began systematically ripping out the cabinetry. Half of it was worm eaten, so it fell easily from the nails that held it in place. Fueled by rage, she carried the timber outside, hurling it onto a pile in the middle of the yard.

  As the day progressed the pile grew higher until all that was left of her kitchen were bare walls and floorboards. Having a blast, she ripped out the back door and took a sledgehammer to the frame. Something about the way the door was recessed had always struck her as odd, but she had assumed poor building design. The wall on one side was a couple of feet deep, but on the other it was flush with the counter. Maybe there had once been a pantry, she mused, and it had been boarded over to provide a wall for a table and chairs. She scratched away some paint and paper and found bricks and mortar. Whoever had wanted to get rid of the pantry had made sure it was permanent.

  Curious, she lifted the sledgehammer and took a swing at the bricks around the door frame, amazed when several easily caved in, revealing a hollow behind. She was about to open the hole up some more when a voice arrested her.

  “Jeez, Louise.” Dwayne stepped into the room, his sky blue eyes wide below an advancing tide of carrot hair. Apparently his mother had been too busy to give him a trim recently.

  “Dude, what’s up?” Earl lowered a couple of steel cases to the floor and sized up Rowe like he was mentally taking measurements for a straitjacket.

  “I’m taking this wall out,” Rowe said. “I can’t wait for the builders to come in March. Whatever is in this shitheap of a room tried to kill me the other night.”

  “Right,” Dwayne drawled in a soothing tone. “Let’s just stop for a moment and take a breath. Are you feeling okay?”

  An excellent question.

  “His mom’s a shrink.” Earl just threw it out there, rubbing his chin with a pudgy knuckle.

  Dwayne manufactured a cough. “Uh…here’s what I’m thinking. We take some readings in here and maybe we discuss what you’ve found out about the Dancer and we try talking to her. Then we can tear the place apart if you still want to.”

  Earl plucked one of the carving knives from the door. “Class five, my friends. Maybe even demonic.” He opened one of his cases and hauled out a bunch of photographs. Flipping through them, he said, “We caught a bunch of globules on film in here. Take a look.”

  Rowe studied the example he handed over. Weird circular forms floated all over the picture as if light spots had rained on the camera lens. Amazed, she said, “This is the ghost?”

  “Not exactly,” Earl answered. “It’s energy disturbance. When we get this shit on a photo, we know we’re onto something.”

  “So, what have you got on the Dancer?” Dwayne asked her.

  “A friend of mine was over here. She’s the sensitive type. She found something in the ballroom.”

  Rowe led the para-nerds down the hallway, sliding her feet sideways to shift broken glass out of the way. She was thankful she’d left the dogs at Phoebe’s.

  Earl gleefully helped clear their path. “Man, this entity really can’t handle being ignored. I’ve had girlfriends like that.”

  Doubting it, Rowe opened the ballroom doors and counted the wood panels until she found Juliet’s hiding place. “The Dancer is Juliet Baker. She was pregnant.” Rowe removed the panel. “She hid some stuff in here. Her diary, some letters, and a few baby garments.”

&nb
sp; “She was pregnant when she died?” Dwayne was agog.

  “No. She had the baby, and her maid must have taken it to the Baker’s neighbor. Mrs. Adams adopted the child.”

  Dwayne could not suppress his excitement. “Man, you’ve cracked this wide open. I’m guessing the baby is what it’s all about.”

  “There’s something else. I don’t think it was Juliet who died in the snow. I think it could have been Becky O’Halloran, the maid. I think Mr. Baker killed the girl, and Juliet blamed herself, and that’s why her ghost is hanging around.”

  Her companions stared at her, not quite willing to suspend disbelief.

  “I don’t have any direct evidence.” Rowe avoided mentioning Phoebe. If the local paranormal community got wind of a psychic who was the real thing, they would never leave her alone.

  Earl asked, “Why would Baker whack the maid?”

  The pearl story would be a problem to explain without revealing Phoebe, so Rowe said, “He found out about the baby and went off. He killed Becky because she was the one covering everything up. Maybe he was trying to find out where the baby was and she wouldn’t tell him.”

  “The bad-tempered type.” Dwayne ran with it. “Violent. Drinking, maybe.”

  “And it turned out to be the perfect solution to his problems,” Rowe said. “He claims the body is Juliet’s and sends her off in disgrace to start a new life someplace where no one will ask any questions.”

  “This is what the Dancer’s been trying to tell people.” Dwayne seemed convinced.

  “Becky’s mother suspected,” Rowe said. “She must have thought her daughter was dead and that Thomas Baker did it. That’s why her letters are full of talk about his sin.”

  “An exhumation,” Earl declared. “That’s how we can prove it. There are O’Hallorans all along the Midcoast. We could compare DNA with theirs and with your neighbors. That way we’d know for sure who’s buried in there.”

  “Yeah, except how do we get a court order?” Dwayne frowned. “We need some actual proof that it could be Becky O’Halloran.”