The Haunting of Josie

by Kay Hooper

  Even with that reassuring thought, she felt more than a little jumpy, but forced herself to begin methodically searching among the jumble of boxes, crates, and old furniture. There were remarkably few cobwebs, and no signs of bugs or mice, which was a definite relief since she didn’t like either. And Josie didn’t have to open anything, after all; Pendragon must have found the key hanging from a box or hook, something like that. All she wanted to do was find out where it belonged.

  It couldn’t have been much more than ten minutes later, when she’d been distracted by a stack of paintings leaning against the wall and draped with canvas, that a hail from upstairs made her jump.

  “Hello?”

  “Down here,” she called, recognizing Marc’s voice instantly. Leaving the paintings still covered, she began making her way through the clutter toward the stairs.

  He met her at the bottom. “Hi. Sorry to just barge in, but the back door was open—”

  “It’s all right,” Josie reassured him. “Was there something you needed?” Realizing belatedly how that question might sound, she felt a tide of heat rise in her face. But Marc either found no reason to comment or chose to pass it up.

  “Yeah, I wanted to take you up on your offer and ask you to get a few things for me when you do your shopping this afternoon,” he replied easily. Then he peered past the circle of light where they stood, and added, “Why is it so dark down here?”

  “Because it’s a cellar.”

  “Funny.” He reached over to a light switch Josie hadn’t seen on the wall near them and flipped it a couple of times. When nothing happened, he took the flashlight from her hand and made his way toward the switch box, saying over his shoulder, “When the place was rewired, I added more lights in a few places, including here. That switch should be on….” He opened the switch box and aimed the flashlight in. “But it isn’t.”

  Josie blinked as the click of a switch being thrown was followed by generous light. Now illuminated by three more simple, bare-bulb fixtures, the cellar appeared relatively neat and certainly innocent, and Josie felt a little foolish when she remembered her earlier thoughts.

  “This is much better, thanks,” she said as Marc rejoined her.

  “My pleasure.” He turned off the flashlight and set it on the fourth tread of the stairs. “So you decided to explore down here after all?”

  “Sort of. That key Pendragon found is beginning to bother me.”

  “Oh? Why?”

  Josie started to tell him about the key turning up in places where she hadn’t left it, but chickened out. She really didn’t want to admit to something that sounded so odd, especially when she wasn’t a hundred percent sure she hadn’t moved the key herself. So, instead, she merely said, “I guess I’m more curious than I thought I was. You don’t mind?”

  “Mind your exploring? Of course not, Josie, I told you that. As a matter of fact, if you’d like some company, I wouldn’t mind looking around down here myself. Lord knows what we’ll find, but the search might be fun.”

  Josie barely hesitated. “Why not? I was planning to spend at least a couple of hours down here before lunch; that should satisfy my curiosity.” She told herself she agreed to his suggestion only because she’d feel better about exploring in the presence of the owner of the house, but she didn’t believe that rational reasoning.

  She showed the key to Marc and explained her thinking on where the cat must have found it, and they began searching different areas of the cellar. For half an hour or so, the search was brisk and they said little to each other beyond brief comments on what they found.

  “What is this?”

  “An iron. I think.”

  “For clothes? You’re kidding.”

  “No, and thank heaven for progress; permanent press is wonderful, and so are clothes dryers. A decorator would probably pay you a fortune for that thing—turn it into a cute bookend or something. Country chic.”

  “Well, there’s a whole box of them here. I’ll remember if I need some quick cash.”

  “You do that. Hey—I found a birdhouse. It must have been on that post in the garden. I wonder why they took it down.”

  “I wonder why they put it down here. My relatives kept the damnedest things…. Here’s a pair of shears with only one blade. Why keep that?”

  “In the days before planned obsolescence, somebody probably meant to repair them. The way they must have meant to fix this two-legged stool.”

  “For God’s sake…”

  Though ostensibly helping Josie to look for the key’s origins, Marc didn’t hesitate to open trunks, boxes, and crates “just for the hell of it.”

  “We have to look for that lost Rembrandt,” he told her, peering into an old steamer trunk that held an astonishing variety of peculiar kitchen utensils.

  “Yeah, right.” But it reminded Josie of the paintings she had been about to look through before he arrived. Abandoning, without much regret, her exploration of shelves full of canned preserves and somebody’s rock collection, she made her way back to where the paintings leaned against a wall.

  She had to push a box labeled books out of her way in order to get to the paintings, and that box came in very handy when she flipped back the canvas and saw the first painting—because she sat down rather suddenly and the box made an adequate seat.

  “Marc? Who is this?” Josie thought her voice sounded very peculiar, but he didn’t seem to notice anything as he came and knelt beside her.

  “That is—or was—Luke Westbrook,” he replied. “I’d forgotten there was a painting of him.”

  It was a good painting, well done and beautifully lifelike, and the years had done surprisingly little harm to it. Stored in its heavy gilt frame and covered with the canvas, it hadn’t even gotten dusty. But that wasn’t the reason Josie felt so dazed. She felt dazed because this was the man she had seen at the top of the stairs last night.

  He looked enough like Marc to have been an older brother. Features handsome but more rough-hewn. Gleaming black hair with that arresting widow’s peak. Striking gray eyes a shade lighter than Marc’s—less tarnish and more silver showing through. Painted as a writer would have been earlier in this century, sitting at his desk with a fountain pen in one well-shaped hand and a sheaf of papers before him, wearing suit and tie. A small, slightly off-centered smile curving his lips.

  A male Mona Lisa, mysterious and enigmatic.

  “Josie?”

  She had never seen a picture of Luke Westbrook until this moment; Josie was absolutely sure of that. She’d had no idea that Marc so resembled his kinsman. So—even if she’d taken it into her head to conjure a ghost out of her own imagination, how could she have been so on target?

  She turned her head slowly. The light here was especially good, illuminating the painting as well as her and Marc. Still kneeling at her side, Marc was looking at her, frowning. She wondered what her expression was like to cause him to look so concerned.

  “Josie, what’s wrong?”

  “I thought you said this place wasn’t haunted.”

  His eyebrows shot up. “As far as I know, it isn’t.”

  Without taking her gaze off Marc, Josie jerked a thumb toward the painting. “Tell that to him.”

  Marc shifted so that he was turned toward her, still on one knee. He rested the cast covering his left arm on his raised knee and studied her with a gaze that was very concentrated and not a little unnerving. She decided that just so would he turn his scrutiny into a silver-sheened rapier to skewer a difficult or deceitful witness in the courtroom.

  She didn’t like it. At all.

  Fierce, she said, “I did not imagine it! I saw him upstairs, in the hallway, last night—as clearly as I see you now. He might have been a bit transparent, but I saw him. Even the cat saw him, for God’s sake—”

  “All right.” His right hand reached out to touch her knee. “I believe you, Josie.”

  Convinced he was only humoring her, she moved her knee to escape his hand and then ro
se to her feet. “I’d never seen a ghost in my life until last night,” she muttered, picking her way through the clutter to head toward the stairs. “And I’ve discovered I don’t particularly want to share a house with one. I’m telling you now, if he starts rattling chains or doing anything else spooky, I’m out of here.” She tried to keep her voice light, but didn’t think she quite pulled it off.

  Marc followed her across the cellar and turned off the secondary set of lights before going up the stairs, accepting her obvious decree that their exploration was over for the day.

  “I thought you didn’t scare easily,” he said as they emerged into the bright airiness of the kitchen.

  Josie might well have fired up at that, but his tone was absentminded rather than provocative, and when she turned to look at him, it was to find him obviously bothered by thoughts darker than simple teasing or mockery.

  “Maybe I was wrong about that,” she said mildly.

  “What was he doing when you saw him?”

  Since the question appeared to be serious, Josie replied in a serious tone. “He was standing at the head of the stairs. I had just come out of my bedroom and—and there he was. Just standing there looking at me. I thought it was you at first, but his features were harsher and the clothes weren’t right. He seemed anxious, frowning a little. He lifted a hand, his left, almost as if…”

  “As if?” Marc prompted.

  “Well, I got the impression he was…asking something. That he wanted something of me.” She tried to laugh and knew the sound held little humor. “Then I heard Pendragon speak, the way he does when he’s saying hello, and I looked at him. He was standing in the doorway of the bathroom, and he was staring toward the head of the stairs as if he saw somebody. When I nerved myself to look back there…”

  “The…visitor was gone?”

  “Yeah. I told myself he couldn’t possibly have been a ghost, so I checked every door and window in this house, and nothing was unlocked. Absolutely nothing. There was nobody here but me and the cat.”

  “I see.”

  Marc was looking at her so oddly that Josie was convinced he thought she was nuts—a profession of belief in her story notwithstanding—and was seriously considering calling a padded wagon and having her hauled away. She couldn’t really blame him, except for the tiny fact that she knew she wasn’t crazy. Tension stole through her.

  “Look, never mind.” She turned away to discover he’d brought back the thermos and set it on the counter. Just wait and see if I fix him anymore coffee, dammit. “I probably imagined the whole thing. Do you have a shopping list for me?”

  “Josie, I believe you.”

  She put the thermos into the cabinet with a rather final air and went over to get her purse. “I think I’ll go now and get this done—”

  “Josie.” He put his hands on her shoulders and turned her to face him. “I said I believe you.”

  He didn’t believe her, she was certain of it, and her tension increased to the point that it actually hurt. On some level of herself, Josie was aware that she was abnormally sensitive to anybody—anybody at all—doubting her word. She had spent too many years watching her father try to convince people he was telling the truth, only to fail time after time and be openly viewed as at best a liar and at worst a callous monster. The experience had destroyed her father, and had left Josie with a painfully heightened awareness of skepticism and disbelief—and a violent reaction to either.

  If everyone had a “button,” a sore spot deep in the psyche that, if touched, was guaranteed instantly to provoke them beyond reason, being doubted was Josie’s.

  But being aware of that did nothing at all to control the reaction. Stiff, she moved back away from him until his hands fell, wondering vaguely if her face looked as frozen as it felt. “Skip it,” she said flatly. “I’m going shopping now, so if you have a list, hand it over.”

  He hesitated only a moment, gazing at her with a frown, but then reached into his shirt pocket and produced a folded list and some money. “Just a few things, if you wouldn’t mind. Spend whatever’s left on Pendragon,” he told her, his tone a bit preoccupied. “Cat food, toys—whatever.”

  “Fine. I should be back in a couple of hours or so.”

  Instead of returning to the cottage after being so brusquely dismissed by Josie, Marc went only as far as a stone bench in the overgrown garden. He heard her van start up a few minutes later and caught a glimpse of her driving away, and then the quiet day settled over him.

  What the hell had just happened?

  From a friendly, humorous, and companionable woman enjoying their exploration of the cellar, she had turned into a stiff—no, dammit, frozen—woman with eyes that looked through him and a voice as flat as a copper coin run over by a train. Why? Because he hadn’t instantly believed that she had actually seen a ghost last night?

  Okay, maybe some people were touchy about things like that, but her reaction went far beyond touchy.

  Marc leaned forward on the bench and rested his forearms on his knees. He looked up as a hint of motion caught his eye and watched Pendragon stroll down the narrow path toward him. The cat sat down a couple of feet away, tail curled around forepaws, and regarded the man with his faintly crossed and oddly Siamese-blue eyes.

  “Yaah,” he said softly.

  “So you saw the ghost, too, huh, cat?”

  His face wearing a permanent cat-smile, Pendragon blinked and made a throaty cooing sound.

  Marc frowned at him. “No court I know of would believe a feline witness—and I have to admit having a few doubts myself, old chum. But, her now…do I believe her?”

  “Yah,” Pendragon replied briefly and emphatically.

  Throwing off the notion that the cat had actually answered his question, Marc brooded silently. Did he believe in ghosts? No, he didn’t think he did believe in them, although he hadn’t given the matter much thought until now. Serious thought, that is. As a boy, he had certainly lain awake on more than one summer night listening eagerly for the creak of a ghostly step on a stair tread, but now, as a grown-up lawyer trained in reason and logic as well as the laws of probability, he discounted the idea of spirits wandering through his house.

  But he had to admit he’d never before known anyone personally who had had a close encounter with a ghost, and so he had always been able to view the matter with detached objectivity.

  Until now. And, even now, he tried to consider the possibility objectively.

  Had Josie really seen Luke Westbrook last night? Logic said it was unlikely, even absurd. There were no such things as ghosts, and besides, if Luke had been haunting the house all this time, why hadn’t anyone else seen him? As far as Marc knew—and he was pretty sure he would have known if it were otherwise—in the fifty years since his death, nobody had so much as caught a glimpse of Luke. So why suddenly would a complete stranger to the family be the audience of his belated appearance?

  Logically, it was doubtful that Josie had really seen the ghost of Luke Westbrook.

  Marc was, however, not so wedded to logic that he wasn’t willing to suspend his disbelief—provided he saw old Luke himself. Until then, until he was presented with something his own eyes could verify, he knew he wouldn’t be able to pretend a belief he didn’t feel.

  But why had she reacted so strongly to his doubts? Any rational person would expect to face skepticism on the subject of ghostly visitations, after all, and he was reasonably sure Josie was a rational person. Reasonably sure.

  So why had she frozen up on him? Why had her reaction been so…extreme? He had enough experience dealing with people to feel sure there was a reason; people’s strongest reactions tended to spring from the hurts they carried around with them, and those hurts rarely existed without cause. So what—or who—had hurt Josie Douglas?

  It was Marc’s nature to seek the solution to a puzzle, but with this one he felt an unusual sense of urgency. He hadn’t liked being frozen out by Josie, he hadn’t liked it at all, and he had no in
tention of allowing her to go on freezing him out. He told himself it was simply because he disliked being on bad terms with his neighbor/tenant, especially when she was a lovely woman with unusual eyes and a smile that had mysteriously found its way into his dreams last night….

  He sat there for a few moments longer gazing toward the big house, frowning. He had the distinct feeling that Josie wasn’t going to confide in him and would probably, in fact, continue to freeze him out unless he found a way past that protective shell. Without her help. So…how?

  He certainly couldn’t get into the house while she was gone and look through her stuff for his answers—that would be an inexcusable and unforgivable intrusion even if he could bring himself to do it, which he couldn’t.

  Marc got up and headed toward the cottage, vaguely aware that Pendragon was accompanying him. His right leg was aching a bit, and he rubbed the upper thigh with the heel of his right hand absently. It was going to rain soon. His doctor—and good friend—had told him that people who’d had bones broken could often literally feel in those bones changes in the weather, and he certainly could.

  There was probably some scientific explanation, of course, like the pin in his thigh reacting to a change in barometric pressure or something. Broken bones never knit precisely, and the asymmetry probably had something to do with it as well….

  Marc shook his head and went into the cottage, automatically holding the door so that the big black cat could come in. Pendragon had already chosen a favorite chair close to the fireplace, and he went immediately to make himself comfortable there. Marc got the portable phone and sat down on the couch. He didn’t have to concentrate to remember the number, because it was a familiar one.

  “Tucker? Marc.”

  “Hey, shyster, how’re the bones knitting?” Tucker Mackenzie had played cops-and-robbers with Marc when the two had been boys in Richmond, and they were such close friends that any casual listener might have thought them enemies.