by Shea Meadows
“Moon thought about putting a light in this stairwell, but it was extremely expensive for wiring, and it’s used only rarely by the extremely curious. It’s pretty dark up here at the top, but stick close behind me. The door is always unlocked.” Beth Ann reached out and turned the knob. Ricky could hear it rattling, then Beth Ann pushing on it.
“I’m not sure why, but someone seems to have locked it.”
Ricky laughed. “Maybe it was Nellie Reston.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, the door at the bottom of the stairs slammed shut with a bang, causing Ricky to reflexively grab hold of Detective Clark’s hand.
Even Beth Ann seemed a bit rattled. “No problem. There’s no lock on the pantry end of the stairway. We’ll just go back down. Detective, lead the way.”
Slowly, now in total darkness, the trio retraced their path. Ricky wasn’t sure if it was her imagination, or the tons of adrenaline coursing through her body, but the stairwell seemed cooler than before.
Detective Clark reached the bottom. He fumbled around until he found the knob and Ricky could hear it turning. Then, as Beth Ann had done, he rattled and pushed. “It seems to be stuck. Could Mr. Townsend be here? Do you think he closed it?”
“No, it’s too soon. Unless the cat did it, my next guess would be Nellie. She must be mad about something.”
Ricky started to sweat even though she was incredibly cold. She could feel her body shaking, and her breathing accelerating. The smell of dust became overwhelming. She couldn’t believe what she was saying in a thin, shaky whisper: “Tilda, if you’re around, could you please talk some sense into Nellie?”
They waited in silence for an answer.
Chapter 5
Ricky could feel Detective Clark’s arm around her shoulder as she started to slump and the vibration of his words as he spoke. “I can break the door down.”
Ricky heard a small voice, which sounded different from the other ghostly words: ‘No need to hurt the house. It didn’t do anything wrong. Sorry.’ Immediately, the pantry stairwell door swung open without help from the detective. A rush of clean, reviving air came in. The three rushed into the pantry. Even Beth Ann, who’d been the victim of Nellie’s tricks in the past, seemed relieved.
Detective Clark walked out to the porch and breathed deeply of the cool June air. Ricky noticed his hands were shaking just the slightest bit.
“It seemed like forever, but it was about five minutes,” Beth Ann said as she leaned against the kitchen counter for support. “Anyone for continuing the tour? Chester won’t be here for at least a few minutes.”
Ricky smiled. “I’d love to see more after my knees stop knocking and my legs are no longer rubber. Maybe we could have tea or something to settle us down. I want to talk about what just happened.”
Just then the phone rang again, and Beth Ann picked it up. “It’s your dad. Do you want to call him back or talk now?” She gave the phone to Ricky who’d extended her shaking hand, and Beth Ann then joined the detective on the porch.
Ricky took a deep, calming breath before speaking. “Hi Dad, how are you doing?
George’s voice was softer than usual. “Okay, I guess. Have you talked to Detective Clark yet?”
“He’s here. We’re waiting for Chester to get back. In the meantime, we started a tour of the house. You didn’t tell me it was haunted.”
George laughed. “Would you have believed me if I had? Anyhow, could you imagine Tilda living in any other kind of house? Have you encountered Nellie yet?”
“Yeah, I recently had the pleasure. I’ll tell you about it later. I’m still trying to understand how all of this could be happening, and you didn’t say a word.”
The line was silent for a moment, only George’s breathing betrayed his presence. “Tilda asked me not to talk about it. She said it would upset you. She didn’t want any heated discussions.”
“Am I that much of a bully that you were afraid to tell me about Tilda’s strange occupation?” Ricky asked with a sigh.
George laughed. “Maybe you come off as a tad inflexible. Tilda didn’t want negative feelings messing up her work. She said it was a matter of personal safety.”
“What the heck is that supposed to mean?” Ricky could feel her throat tightening and a slight headache starting at the base of her skull.
“I’m not sure what she meant, but she said it was important. If Detective Clark is there, I won’t keep you. I wanted to talk about the reading of the will. You found it, right?”
“Yes, but I haven’t looked at it. We’ll do that together.”
“How about tonight at seven? I can bring Chinese or something at about six, then we’ll go through it after dinner. Stan Jacobs, Tilda’s lawyer called me. I’m bringing him along to sort out legalities.”
“Sounds fine with me, Dad. I’m not sure who else will be here.”
“Better have Chester and Beth Ann stay. I know what they like to eat. See you at six.”
Ricky put down the phone, and turned to the detective who had sat down at the table when her phone call was ending. “Sorry for the interruption, Detective Clark.”
He smiled. “After what we’ve been through together, please call me David. Ms. Aims insists I call her Beth Ann. She brewed us some chamomile tea while you were on the phone. Good for the nerves.” He put a steaming, fragrant cup in front of Ricky and stirred honey into his own mug.
“I agree, David. Please call me Ricky. Chamomile tea sounds good.”
“I heard your end of the conversation. It sounds like your dad is coming over this evening,” Beth Ann said. She had come from the kitchen and put a tray of butterscotch brownies on the table and sat down next to Ricky.
“Yeah, Chinese food at six and the reading of the will at seven. Tilda’s lawyer is coming too. It sounds like Dad has brought Chinese food here before. He knows what to order for you and Chester.”
Beth Ann nodded. “George came over often when Moon was in town.”
“Beth Ann, do you live here, or just visit a lot?” Ricky asked.
“Somewhere in the middle. I have a suite of rooms rented in a house a couple blocks from here where I keep the majority of my stuff. I was here most mornings for Moon’s business dealings and many evenings to register people for classes and appointments. Moon kept me busy. I’m not sure what I’ll be doing now.” Beth Ann’s fingers drummed softly on the table as she spoke. Tears filled her eyes.
“I guess we’re all in foreign territory. Maybe we’ll be able to sort things out after we read the will.” Ricky reached over and gently rubbed Beth Ann’s shoulder.
The front door opened with a creak, causing all three of them to jump. “Hello?” Chester called from the living room. He’d arrived earlier than expected.
“We’re in the breakfast nook. Come back and join us for tea.” Beth Ann answered.
Chester walked into the room. His hair stuck up wildly and his wrinkled clothes looked like the ones he’d worn yesterday and had a faint sweaty odor. The bluish circles under his blood-shot eyes were a dead giveaway that he hadn’t slept.
David stood up and introduced himself and shook hands with Chester across the table, as Beth Ann brought in an Earl Grey teabag and poured hot water over it.
Chester cupped the mug in his hands. “Glad you didn’t give me the chamomile that I smell in the air, it would put me to sleep. I’ve been at the airport dropping off Sam Reading. He flew up from Georgia to say goodbye to Moon. He was disappointed he wasn’t allowed in her hospital room.”
Beth Ann’s forehead scrunched in confusion. “I missed him completely. Is he coming back for the memorial?”
Chester shrugged. “Let’s talk about that later.” He turned to David. “The voice mail from you on my cell said you wanted to talk.”
The detective nodded. “Do you want to speak privately?”
“I have nothing to hide. What do ya need to know?”
David took out Tilda’s file, and the tape recorder, and told Chester he’d tape
the conversation. “There’s a statement you made to Dr. Jenson at the hospital when you brought in the living will. I want to verify that you said: ‘Moon told me this morning where to find the living will with instructions about how a situation like this should be handled.’ Is this accurate?”
Chester nodded, head in his hands, elbows on the table. “Yes that’s what I said. Now, the next question will be: How did she tell you that when she was in a coma? Am I right?”
“Yes, I’d very much like an answer to that.”
Chester rubbed his hands across his eyes. “How much do you know about Moon?”
“Beth Ann and Ricky filled me in on her work. They mentioned you were Moon’s assistant teacher.”
“Right, and even before I trained with Moon, I studied with Avery Sweet and several other spiritual teachers. I’ve been psychic since childhood, so all of this comes easy to me.”
David nodded.
“Well, part of what Moon taught was communication with people in comas. She saw them as in an in-between state, neither here nor there. Often clients had her speak with unconscious relatives, to encourage them to wake up. You don’t have to be in the same room with them. She taught how to do this in her fourth level classes. I’ve completed that training, so I’ve done some coma communication before, see?”
“So you spoke to Moon while she was unconscious?”
“Yes and I made contact. I was sitting in Moon’s meditation room, after seeing her at the hospital. I figured it was the place to try, ‘cause it was her place of power, see? It took about an hour, but she came through.” He smiled at the memory. “She was laughing up a storm, full of joy. She was excited that she was about to cross over, so she could work without the burden of her body.” He looked at Ricky. “And she was excited about you coming, Ricky. She said she couldn’t wait to see you and was happy when she did.”
Ricky slumped against Beth Ann. Her headache was back and her throat again tightened. “Chester, she didn’t see me. She never woke up before she died. All of this is fantasy. You are so full of it.”
“Ricky, it sounds like you and Chester aren’t on the best of terms. Even if you don’t believe him, please let him tell me his version. You can dispute it later if you wish.”
She looked down at her cup of tea. “Sorry, David, I’ll keep my mouth shut.”
David turned back to Chester. “What do you say Moon told you exactly?
“Well, I was in the meditation room, see? Which was very convenient, ‘cause that’s where Moon had hidden the living will and other stuff about her death,” Chester said as he took a sip of Earl Gray tea. “She told me where to look, then asked me to bring the living will to the hospital, that it was needed right away.”
David nodded as if he heard things like this all the time. “You worked a lot with Moon, didn’t you? Maybe she told you about the documents sometime within the last year. Maybe you fell asleep and the memory came back while you were relaxing in the meditation room.”
Chester gave a lopsided grin, which looked almost maniacal in his disheveled state. “No, it wasn’t like that at all. I didn’t know Moon had those papers. She came to me in a vision. That’s how it happened, see? I’m not going to sanitize it to make it socially acceptable.”
“Are you in communication with Moon still?”
Chester leaned back in his chair and rested his head against the wall behind him, with eyes closed. For a moment, he didn’t answer. Ricky thought he’d gone to sleep. Then he replied after a long, slow yawn.
“Well, she talked to me one other time. I thought we’d have an ongoing conversation after the vision. I kept trying to contact her, but I couldn’t get through. I’ve never encountered such resistance. I don’t think it’s coming from Moon, but I’m not sure. It’s really depressing me. I thought we’d keep up our friendship, and I’d be her channel, but she seems to have other ideas.” He opened his eyes a crack and looked at Ricky. “She wants to work with her sister. She said so in the vision, but I thought she was kidding.”
Ricky opened her mouth to protest, but David put his hand up to stop her. “You said she spoke to you one other time. When was that?”
Chester rocked forward and leaned on crossed arms on the table. “At the airport, see? Sam Reading and I talked for hours last night in my apartment which isn’t too far from the hospital. He offered me a job in his healing center in Athens Georgia. I’d decided to fly down there with him and check it out. Well, I couldn’t stand the thought of going to the memorial service. It’s all too final. I was going to come back later for my stuff if I decided to stay in Georgia.”
He shook his head, confusion evident on his face. “Then, just as I was about to get my ticket, I heard her voice. She said: ‘Ricky and Beth Ann need you. They’re waiting at the house. Leave town after the reading of the will, if you still want to go.’ I tried to get her to say more, but that was it. After that, I checked my voice mail and drove back.”
Beth Ann glared at him with this revelation.
It was obvious to Ricky that Chester hadn’t changed too much in the last ten years, even if he’d studied with the best spiritual teachers on the planet. It took Tilda talking to him from the dead to get him to follow through with his responsibilities. Ricky had to bite her tongue to keep from saying anything.
Chester’s voice took on a whinny tone. “I kept talking to her all the way over here, but she didn’t answer. You’d think that after all I’ve done…” He got up and walked out to the porch, looking like a little boy who’d been left behind in a shopping mall. He gazed out into the yard for a moment, then plopped down on the futon on the porch, stretched out and was immediately asleep, snoring loudly.
David smiled. “I guess that’s all I’m going to get out of him.”
Beth Ann started to get up. “Want me to go out there and rudely awaken him? It would give me great pleasure to make him uncomfortable. Moon put up with a lot from him, but I’m not as patient.”
David stood up and stretched as he shook his head. “I doubt if he’ll tell me anything different. He’d have to admit that he’s being less than truthful. Who knows, with Moon and all her talents, maybe it was just as he said. I’d like to talk to him again though. Maybe he knew something about her secret project. I have a strong feeling that it’s somehow connected to the accident.”
“Is there anything else you need us for?” Beth Ann asked, as she and Ricky walked David to the door.
He pulled out two business cards from his jacket. “Call me at work or on my cell if you think of anything else. Also, I want to come to the memorial service. When you decide where and when, give me a call.”
Both women smiled when the door shut behind him. “Pretty nice for a cop,” Beth Ann said, as they watched him get into his car.
“Yeah, he didn’t seem all that surprised about anything he heard, almost like he believed in this stuff. Well Beth Ann, you have his cell phone number, and I didn’t notice a wedding ring. You could always think of some reason to call him.”
Beth Ann turned toward Ricky. “He looked more like your type. I can almost imagine Moon saying ‘go for it.’ But it would be to you, not me.”
“That’s not something I’d think about right now. I’m in an emotional quagmire. I just broke up with yet another fiancé right before Moon’s accident. It’s too soon for anyone new.”
Before another word was spoken, “Unchained Melody” drifted through the room from some unseen source. It took Ricky a moment to realize it was her cell phone, calling to her from the pocket of her jeans. It was so much a part of her former life, it was suddenly foreign. The voice on the other end seemed like an echo from the past as well.
“Hello, Ricky? This is Em. I haven’t heard from you. How’s your sister doing?”
Ricky chocked back a sob. “Oh, I’m so sorry Em. I should have called this morning. Tilda died last night. We’re all in shock, but that’s no excuse to keep you hanging.”
Em made consoling sounds. “It’s
a perfect excuse. You must be going nuts. When’s the funeral?”
“She’s being cremated. It’ll be a memorial service. We’ll start planning that today.”
A pause on the other end. “Do you still want me to bring your car? I was going to leave tomorrow.”
“That’s a good question. I’m really undecided. We’ll be reading the will tonight. After that, I’ll have a better idea how long it will take for Dad and I to wrap things up with Tilda’s estate. I don’t know enough right now. Are you going to be home tonight?”
“Yeah, Phil planned to drive down with me. He’s paying for his own plane ticket back.” Another pause. “Maybe I’ll get some time off and stick around for the service, then you and I can drive back if you decide your life is still in Chicago. I talked with Roy. He hasn’t had your stuff packed for shipping yet. He plans to this weekend.”
Ricky sunk down to the couch, the phone felt suddenly heavy. “I’ll call you after we read the will and let you know. I promise to call by ten. Okay?”
“That’s fine. Talk to you later and hang in there. Tell your dad I send my love.” The phone clicked off, leaving Ricky deep in chaotic thoughts. She shook her head to clear it, then smiled at Beth Ann.
“That was my good friend Emily Patterson. She and her boyfriend are coming here with my car in a couple of days. Let’s start on the memorial service. I left the safety box in Tilda’s meditation room.”
On the second floor, Beth Ann went first to a plain door with a simple latch at the end of the hall. She pulled it open and inspected the mechanism. “Just as I remembered, there’s no lock here.” She opened and closed it several times, trying to make it stick, but it didn’t. She even went in the stairwell and tried it from that side with the same results. She shook her head and smiled. “Nellie is such a brat. At least you and David got to experience one of her tricks”
Ricky shivered. “Maybe I’ll see if Dad has room for me at his condo. I don’t like the idea of staying here with someone who’s been dead fifty years.”