Second To Nun (A Giulia Driscoll Mystery Book 2)

by Alice Loweecey

  The other sound returned. Now Giulia recognized it: Crying. Perhaps the same voice that woke her up at two in the morning. She couldn’t tell yet.

  Anthony and Frank had turned their faces away from the Ouija board, one looking at the mantelpiece, the other down the hall toward the lighthouse.

  The planchette remained still. Solana repeated her statement. The room grew tense. All the fingers touching the planchette except Solana’s trembled enough to rattle the wooden instrument.

  Solana said: “How can we help you?”

  “G.”

  “E.”

  “T.”

  “O.”

  The crying stopped when the letter game restarted. Giulia refused to believe that a hundred-plus-year-old ghost couldn’t manipulate the Ouija board and make that echoey weeping sound at the same time. By this time the ghost ought to be able to give a TED talk on multitasking.

  “Get out of my house,” Frank said. “Not much of a host, is she?”

  Giulia tried to send Frank a psychic “Play along” message of her own.

  The planchette flew to the words “good” and “bye” at the bottom of the Ouija board. Back and forth, over and over, “good” “bye,” “good” “bye,” “good” “bye,” “good” “bye.”

  Still in her non-threatening voice, Solana said, “Let us help you. We want to share this house with you. Talk to us.”

  Giulia expected more disembodied weeping and a quick séance wrap-up. The planchetters glanced at each other. The moment stretched.

  A shuddering gasp broke it.

  Solana’s back arched and her eyes bulged.

  Seven faces gawked at her. Marion pushed back in her chair like she was trying to escape, but the chair legs scraped the floor and Solana’s head snapped down. Those distended eyes focused on Marion, who enacted a perfect imitation of a rabbit mesmerized by a snake.

  “I protect this house.” Solana’s voice, but different. A higher register and a more formal syntax. One at a time, she pinned all seven of them with that gaze.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Giulia caught movement from Gino but kept her attention on Solana.

  “You are obliged to respect this house,” Solana/not Solana said. “I am its warder. No one will remove the treasure from this family.”

  A quick intake of breath from somewhere else in the room.

  Solana/not Solana’s face looked past the table; Giulia glanced quickly in the same direction. Mac stood by the glassed-in bookcase, also performing the rabbit-versus-snake pantomime.

  “Who are you?” Mac whispered.

  Solana/not Solana took her left hand off the planchette and pointed at Mac. “Do not shirk your duty.”

  A flash from Gino’s chair. At the same instant, the power came back on. Light from the hallway spilled over the coffee table. Solana/not Solana gave another huge, dragging gasp and collapsed against the back of the couch. The candle flames blew out.

  Twenty-Eight

  Cedar jumped out of his chair and shoved Frank aside.

  “Solana. Solana, wake up.” He patted her cheeks.

  Joel, CeCe, and Anthony backed away from the planchette, rubbing their fingertips.

  Before Giulia could offer to help with resuscitation, Solana opened her eyes. She raised her hands and inspected them, turning them front to back and rubbing the gold manicure.

  “My hands look wrong.” Solana’s voice sounded like itself again. “Why do I have painted fingernails?”

  “Solana?” her husband said.

  She blinked several times, sat up, and looked around at the faces surrounding the table. “Who ended the Ouija session?”

  Everyone started talking at once.

  “It moved on its own. We didn’t manipulate it. Did we?”

  “Mac really has a ghost.”

  “Are you serious? The spirit spoke through me?”

  “Oh, God, I’m not going to sleep for a week.”

  “We’ve got a bottle of Jameson in our room.”

  “I’ll pay you for a shot.”

  Giulia scooped up her phone and stood. As though that movement broke a second trance, chairs were pushed back and the pacing started. Giulia aimed directly at Gino, who was speaking in a low voice with Joel.

  “Let me see the picture, please?”

  Gino gulped. “You saw my flash?”

  Giulia bent her neck backwards to favor Gino with her patented Teacher Glare. “If no one else saw it, you can thank the well-timed return of electricity.”

  He hung his head. The touch came through for her yet again.

  “Solana was freaking me out. I wanted to see if she’d, like, mass-hypnotized us or if a ghost really took over her body.”

  “And?” Giulia caught her hands clenching and unclenching.

  “I haven’t looked at it yet. I have no spine.”

  Joel tugged the phone out of his hand. “It’s a good thing I know your password.” He typed it and opened the photograph. “I’ll be damned.”

  He turned the phone to show Gino, whose skin paled beneath his beard.

  Then he handed it to Giulia.

  Gino had snapped the photo at the moment Solana/not Solana pointed an admonishing finger at Mac. The bulging eyes had been real. So had the stern facial expression, unlike Solana’s general air of competent serenity.

  “You heard her voice change, right?” Joel said to both of them. “I didn’t imagine it?”

  “More important,” Gino said, “is whether you four pushed that planchette around the board yourselves to mess with the rest of us.”

  “Swear to God, no,” Joel said. “Frank,” he raised his voice to cut across the babble, “tell me you didn’t mess with that planchette.”

  “Swear to God,” Frank said.

  “Neither did I,” Anthony said.

  “Me neither,” CeCe said.

  Eight heads swiveled as one to Solana, still on the couch.

  Cedar got to his feet, emanating righteous indignation. It transformed his five foot seven hippieness into Mighty Protector of His Woman.

  “Solana has never manipulated a séance and never will.”

  “Sorry,” Joel and Roy mumbled.

  Solana held up a hand. “It’s all right. They witnessed something extraordinary. The natural defensive human reaction is to protect the one-dimensional world they’re used to seeing.”

  Giulia stepped forward, ingenuous mask in place. “Solana, tell us what we saw. You four who worked the planchette, what did you feel? Sorry, sorry, I meant you four who touched the planchette.”

  “I felt nothing at first,” Joel said.

  “Not for, like, five minutes,” CeCe said. “Then it got warm. Didn’t it?” She pointed her index finger at the three men.

  Frank nodded. “First I felt warmth and then it started to vibrate.”

  Anthony said with a show of reluctance, “Yes, I felt the warmth, but the vibration could have been our unsteady fingers.”

  Joel said, “The temperature increase could have been body heat from our fingertips transferring to the wood.”

  “Those phenomena occur during all of my Ouija sessions,” Solana said. “My website has many testimonials regarding them.”

  “If you’re that skeptical,” Cedar said, “examine the planchette for yourselves.” He picked it up and held it out.

  With an apologetic expression, Giulia took it. She made big motions of shaking it and trying to unscrew the little balls on the bottom for the four legs with her right hand. While doing that, her left fingertips searched for a minuscule switch or heat and vibration triggers.

  Both hands came up empty.

  “I can’t find anything.” She handed it back. “I apologize.”

&n
bsp; Color returned to Solana’s face. “No apologies necessary. I’m glad you inspected the planchette. Cedar tells me that the Woman in White spoke through me.”

  “It was freaky,” Joel said.

  A benevolent smile touched Solana’s lips. “Truthfully, such a connection has only happened once before. Back in college, wasn’t it?” she said to her husband.

  “Yeah, for that Day of the Dead festival.” He didn’t look pleased at the memory.

  She nodded. “That spirit was powerful and unpleasant. I only expelled it with the help of my professor in Occult Studies.”

  “Well, butter my butt and call me a biscuit,” CeCe said.

  Startled laughter answered her.

  “My grandmother used to say that,” Joel said. “I grew up in Georgia.”

  “South Carolina,” CeCe said. “What part?”

  They moved away from Solana into the sunroom too quickly for a casual change of topic, talking Southern food and family in shaking voices. Gino and Roy followed at a pace an unkind observer might have called “scurrying.”

  Solana said, “I wish we had thought to bring the video equipment.”

  Giulia’s hand went to her pocket, where her phone was probably recording the swish of cotton fabric against the speaker.

  Cedar folded the Ouija board. “We couldn’t use a video on the website without getting signed permission. Too awkward after the fact. I know you’re for real and so do your followers.”

  Frank and Giulia held out their hands to Solana. “Thank you for a fascinating experience,” Frank said.

  Solana and Cedar shook hands. “It was our pleasure,” she said.

  Anthony and Marion said, “Yes, thank you,” as they read through Marion’s notebook.

  As Solana passed Mac, she said to her, “I need to rest after a session, but I’ll be happy to discuss any part of it with you tomorrow.”

  “Thank you.” Mac’s voice was brisk again. “I’ll call you. That would be very interesting.”

  Mac turned away and began checking light switches in the living and dining rooms. Giulia waited until she returned to her office, then opened the glass front of the single bookcase in the living room.

  “What’s up?” Frank said.

  She beckoned him next to her. “Did you hear that voice crying when the planchette wasn’t moving?”

  “I thought I did, but I wouldn’t swear to it.”

  “You did. So did everyone else. At one point or another, everyone who wasn’t touching that thing looked for the source. Mac wasn’t in the room at first, then conveniently she was standing next to this when Solana became Mac’s ancestor ghost.”

  “You believed that?”

  “Of course not.” She felt under the lip of the highest shelf. “You know that crying that woke me up in the middle of the night? I’m betting we missed a recording device on a timer hidden in here.”

  Frank started from the bottom. “That would mean she’s definitely playing you.”

  “I know. I won’t get angry unless we find something.”

  They found nothing on the undersides of the shelves. Giulia returned to the top shelf and tilted forward the first books on the left-hand side.

  “These are half an inch farther forward than the ones on the next shelf.” She bent over and pulled out some of those books. “The backing here is brown pressboard, but up at the top it’s fake wood grain.”

  “Not for aesthetics?”

  “I’ll bet my next three cups of mint brownie coffee it isn’t.” She felt the backing with her right hand and stretched her left around to the back of the bookcase. “Aha.” Abandoning the shelves, she pressed herself against the wall and squeezed her hand into the gap between the bookcase and the wallpaper. “We have the tip of a standard toggle switch back here.”

  “No shit.”

  “Just enough sticks out for my little fingernail to flip it on and off. I bet it’s painted black to match the back of the pressboard, too.” She took out her phone and hit the flashlight app. “I win.”

  Twenty-Nine

  They escaped to their room to avoid meeting Mac.

  “I’m surprised,” Frank said. “She didn’t seem like the type to screw with you.”

  “I’m disappointed.” Giulia poked at her phone. “I think the lure of more publicity seduced her. Think of the Trip Advisor and BedandBreakfast.com spotlight blurbs: A Real Detective Spent Four Days at Stone’s Throw and Witnessed Irrefutable Evidence of the Stone’s Throw Ghost.”

  Frank, checking his own phone, said without looking up, “I suggest hiding a ten percent exploitation fee in all the charges on her bill.”

  “It’s a thought. Did you happen to be looking at Cedar when the candles blew out?”

  “No, Solana’s ghost possession had all my attention. Why?”

  “He might have blown out the candles. There. Got it.” She moved from the chair onto the bed next to Frank. “I recorded the séance.”

  He dropped his phone. “You are brilliant.”

  “True.” She pressed play.

  The séance played out as they’d experienced it, with added rustles and occasional sound obstructions from Giulia’s feet brushing the throw rug.

  Frank hit stop after the second letter-by-letter Ouija message. “Those pauses weren’t as long as they felt, with us wondering whether that freaky piece of wood was going to drag us around the board again.”

  “What do you think moved it?”

  “Who, not what. My money’s on Solana.”

  “Alone?”

  “I think so.” His phone rang with the ESPN update sound. He ignored it. “Joel was too nervous to work with her and CeCe tensed up like the planchette was going to bite her.”

  Giulia got to her knees on the other side of the bed and closed one window. “That storm killed the beautiful warm night.” Stretching to the limit of her reach, she closed the other. “Anthony was in the planchette group for research. Marion took notes up to the ghost possession moment. You know, would a haunting add to or subtract from the bottom line of the B&B they plan to open?”

  Frank pulled her back against him. “Okay. Solana by herself. If Cedar planted magnets under the table to work the planchette, I didn’t see them. Fishing line wouldn’t have worked because you sat on the far end, not a plant of theirs to play tug-the-wood with.”

  Giulia reached over his chest and hit the play button on her recording. “I can’t hear the crying. We found the switch. It must be a recording.”

  “It wasn’t loud. The mic may not be sensitive enough to catch it.”

  She cranked the volume. They listened to more of Solana’s cajoling.

  “The big surprise should be right about now,” Frank said. “Her hands got all stiff and jerked the planchette and then she did her impression of Whoopi Goldberg in Ghost.”

  “That sound is Marion pushing back her chair,” Giulia said.

  Solana/not Solana spoke her first sentence.

  “Play it again,” Frank said.

  “Shh. She’ll talk some more in a second.”

  On the recording, Solana/not Solana continued: “You are obliged to respect this house. I am its warder. No one will remove the treasure from this family.”

  Giulia stopped the playback. “If she’s faking it, she’s good. Change to a more formal style of speech, throw in an old-fashioned word, keep the pronouncements generic.”

  “Except for the treasure,” Frank said.

  “She was looking at Mac when she said that. Everyone and their pet goldfish knows the treasure story because of that newspaper article.” Giulia scrolled the recording back and replayed the possession monologue. “Can my eyes bug out on command like hers did?” Giulia stretched her eyelids.

  “You need more practice,”
Frank said. “Unless it’s genetic, like being able to curl your tongue or wiggle your ears.”

  They finished the recording. The last part was useless after Giulia hid her phone in her pocket.

  “Nothing but thumps and swishes,” Giulia said, frowning. “I couldn’t think of a good way to hide it and still record.”

  “You got the meat of it, for what it’s worth. We can’t prove or disprove anything on the recording alone. Or on our visuals.”

  “Joel’s idea of hypnotism is out too, since she looked more or less the same in real life and in the picture he took.” Giulia switched her phone for her iPad. “We’ve got a phony psychic and a client with a loose definition of honesty. Yippee.”

  “As long as she’s honest enough to pay the bill.” Frank listened. “It stopped raining, but I don’t want to go out for food now. Any more ghost chasing planned for tonight?”

  “I’m not chasing anything unless I hear that crying again.” Giulia typed notes on the séance into a single document. “I need to make separate research pages for everyone here.”

  “But not ’til tomorrow morning, right?”

  “Mm-hmm.” Giulia stared into the blackness outside the window, trying to pin down a detail about Solana.

  Frank headed to the bathroom. Giulia remembered the last bit and put the tablet away. She turned down the quilt and tossed her clothes in the bottom dresser drawer. No sound from the bathroom. Now. The silky crimson nightgown slid over her bare skin. It hugged all her curves. One side was slit up to her hip socket. The bodice was lace everywhere and the spaghetti straps were held in place by snaps covered with tiny crimson rosettes.

  It was the most daring thing she’d ever worn, including the wedding nightgown she’d received from Laurel and Anya at her bridal shower.

  Frank came out of the bathroom and stopped cold in front of the window. Giulia leaned against the bedpost, unsure if his reaction was negative or positive. After all, this was the man who was once too shy to talk to her because she used to be a nun.

  He ended her uncertainty by wolf whistling as he stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her. As his hands stroked along the nightgown, he pulled just hard enough to pop one of the little rosette-covered snaps.