She looked at him and picked up a magazine. “I do not see you. You will go away.”
She forced her attention onto the magazine. She felt a chill, a movement in the air, and something seemed to touch her knee. She finally raised her head.
Julian crouched in front of her, one hand resting lightly on her knee. Mesmerized, she gazed into his eyes. Julian had been a good-looking young man with deep green eyes and dark hair that curled over his brow—perfect for new-age rock music and for performing as a historical interpreter. When she wasn’t annoyed with him, she’d always cared about him as she would a younger brother.
“Please, Allison, who else can I turn to? Please, see me. Help me.”
Her tone was husky. “Julian, I can’t help you. You’re dead. I would’ve done anything. I was ready to perform CPR, but I could see from the doorway that…that you were gone. I could see the blood—oh, God, Julian, you hit a vein or an artery. There was so much blood. But you were staring at the wall. And you…”
She couldn’t go on. Tears stung her eyes. Maybe that was it. She hadn’t been able to really mourn a friend. Maybe she did feel guilty; maybe she felt she could have done more for him in life or prevented his death.
“Julian, how can I help you now?” she wailed.
“You will help me. I know you, Ally. Something in the house isn’t right—and I know you’ll figure out what it is!”
7
Tyler was surprised when Allison answered his next call, and more surprised when she said she’d go to the Tarleton-Dandridge House and start straightening up the attic whenever he wished. If he thought she needed help with that, she could call Annette or Jason or both.
She could have walked over but he was out, anyway, and had the car; he said he’d pick her up. She agreed.
He was a little shocked when he arrived at her house.
He tended to think of her as tall, elegant, classically beautiful, but reserved in many ways—as academics were often assumed to be. Of course, he’d first met her when she was costumed and in disarray and exhausted.
But tonight…
She opened the door with a strength that sent it banging against the wall. She watched it happen, then stared at him and grinned. “Whoops.”
“Are you ready?” he asked her.
She looked all right. She was wearing jeans and a tailored shirt with a casual jacket; her hair was brushed—except for a few strands that seemed to be standing straight up on top of her head.
“I am so-o-o ready to get out of here!” she said.
“Okay.” He nodded slowly.
“Oh! I should get my bag.” But she remained standing there.
“Yes, you should,” he said.
She turned to head back into the parlor. She bumped into the wall as she did.
He stepped inside, closing the door behind him.
“Allison, are you okay?”
“Fine. Oh, yeah, just fine,” she said cheerfully.
He caught her by the shoulders when she’d picked up her purse and had come back to join him. “It’s not that I know you well, but…you really don’t seem to be you this evening.”
“I’m the new me,” she proclaimed.
It hit him then. Not the odor of booze, but rather the potent smell of a minty mouthwash.
“You’ve been drinking.”
“We all drink. Water, staff of life. Wait, maybe that’s bread.”
“I think we should start in the morning,” he said. “You should go to bed.”
She shook her head. “No, no, I shouldn’t go to bed. I should go with you. Too bad it’s the Tarleton-Dandridge House—actually, too bad it’s anywhere in Philly at the moment. But no, not staying here. Not tonight.”
She was different. Very different.
Afraid.
He was thoughtful as she looked up at him hopefully.
“Really, I have to leave here. Now,” she told him.
He didn’t answer.
“Your people are coming tonight, aren’t they? Your people!” She laughed. “I guess I made that sound as if you’re all part of an alien nation or something. I didn’t mean that. I meant, your coworkers are coming tonight.”
“They’re driving up. They’ll probably get here late.”
“I can’t wait to meet them. Lots of people, right? Or several, at least.”
“Yes, several people,” he said. Tyler thought about the situation, somewhat amused. She wasn’t exactly drunk, but she was pretty darned tipsy. He had a feeling it wasn’t a condition with which she was really comfortable, and he wondered where she’d been or what she’d been doing to bring her to such a state.
She’d found a dead friend. That would do it for most people. She’d spent the night after finding Julian at the police station, being relentlessly questioned. Surely, her behavior now, her reaction, was quite normal.
“Yes, we’ll go—first to a nice crowded restaurant with a coffee bar, and then to the house. How does that sound?”
She blinked and then smiled. “Restaurant, yes, that would be great. Food would be good. Oh, yes. Food.”
He escorted her out onto the porch. “Allow me, please,” he said politely, taking her keys to lock the house.
“Thank you,” she said with great dignity.
“I have my car. I was shopping,” he told her. “I’ll have to stop by the Tarleton-Dandridge House to drop off a few perishables.”
“Okay.”
When he got to their destination, she was looking straight ahead.
“Do you want to wait in the car?” he asked.
She raised huge frightened eyes to his. “Alone?”
“Well, yes—if I’m leaving the car and you’re waiting in it, you’d be alone.”
“I’ll come with you.”
She stepped out of the car as he reached into the backseat for the one plastic bag that held butter, milk, cheese and eggs.
She stared at the house.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Sure.”
She followed him up the path to the house and waited behind him as he opened the door. She kept looking around nervously as if she expected someone to pop out from behind the closet door in the mudroom and shout, “Boo!”
Inside, he started to tell her he’d only be a minute. But she was right behind him, so close, in fact, that she was nearly touching him. When he walked into their employee room and bent down to open the refrigerator door, he nearly pushed her over by accident.
He reached out for her when she stumbled.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Just fine.”
She was standing by him with her eyes closed.
“All right, we’re leaving now.”
“For the restaurant.”
“Yes.” He started to walk. She followed. She’d opened her eyes but only a slit—just enough not to crash into walls or furniture.
He decided to let it go for the moment. He felt her behind him—almost on top of him—as they exited the house. “You okay to walk to the restaurant?” he asked her.
“Of course!” she said with the indignant tone of one who wasn’t really okay at all.
He took her arm. She didn’t protest.
“There are so many places around here,” he said.
“So many.”
“Do you want to go to your friend’s pub?” he asked.
She shook her head, flushing. “No, um, somewhere different tonight.”
“Okay.”
He knew it didn’t matter where they went; she just wanted people to be there. He’d seen an Italian place that looked interesting down a side street and he headed toward it.
“Luigi’s,” she said.
“Is it any good?”
“Sure! Warm, friendly, always busy.”
There were a number of people at the restaurant, but the staff seemed to handle the bustling activity well. They didn’t have to wait more than a minute or two before they were seated at a table with a red checkered cloth.
>
He didn’t give the waitress an opportunity to offer them a cocktail or wine. “Two coffees and waters please.”
Allison didn’t argue. She told him they prepared an extraordinary eggplant.
When the bread came, she was happy to devour a piece.
“Did you eat at all today?” he asked her.
She thought about it for a minute. “No.”
“I don’t want to tell you how to run your life or anything, but if you’re going to swig booze, you really should add food to the mix.”
She threw him an evil glare but didn’t deny his words.
“What brought this on?” he asked.
“What brought what on?”
“Your apparent affair with a booze bottle.”
She stiffened. “I’m twenty-eight, nearly twenty-nine. A responsible, voting citizen often charged with forming the minds of the coming generation. I am certainly entitled to a drink if I choose.”
“Yes, you are. But I get the impression you don’t drink heavily that often.”
“I didn’t drink heavily,” she told him. “I drank quite casually and lightly.”
“Alone?”
“Now that’s rude and personal.”
“So, all alone, you decided to get smashed.”
“I am not smashed.”
“True—I’ve seen worse. Actually, at various times in my life, I’m sure I’ve been worse. It just doesn’t seem to be you.”
“Ah, but you don’t really know me!”
“The only thing I can tell you is that booze isn’t going to make it go away.”
“Make what go away?” she asked, frowning and intense.
Their server arrived; Allison ordered chicken with broccoli and ziti, while he chose the lasagna. He was glad to see that Allison quickly drank down the water. She set the empty glass on the table and picked up her coffee.
Tyler leaned toward her, placing his hand on hers. “It won’t make the demons in your mind go away. They only get more vicious.”
She jerked her hand back. “I have no demons in my mind. I lost a friend, okay? I was distressed by his death. I’m just having an off moment—or an off hour, or whatever. I’ll be fine. And I don’t know what you want at the Tarleton-Dandridge House. You can’t change the past.”
“No, you can’t. But you can discover the truth about it and sometimes the truth about the past can change the present or the future.”
She sipped her coffee again, then pressed her fingers to her temples.
“After we’ve eaten, if you want, I can walk you back to your house and you can get some sleep,” he said.
“No,” she said firmly. “I want to be where you are.” The last words were tremulous, and somehow, the tone of her voice seemed to seep into his bones, his bloodstream. She was a beautiful woman, tall, slim, elegant. The blue of her eyes seemed like a deep sea, sparkling as if it lay beneath a brilliant sun. He couldn’t help being affected.
Tyler raised his brows, studying her. He knew he was attractive to the opposite sex, but he was sure she hadn’t suddenly decided that she cared for him and would be lost without him by her side. Something had unnerved her.
And he realized that he yearned to help.
“Okay. You want to be with me.”
She wagged a finger at him. “Your Krewe is coming.”
“Yes, they are.” He hesitated. “I think you’ll like them. Logan Raintree heads up my unit. He’s an ex-Ranger like me. He’s now officially engaged to Kelsey O’Brien, who used to be a U.S. Marshal. Kelsey has a cousin on our Krewe, Sean Cameron, who’s a whiz with cameras and special effects. We have Jane Everett, an artist, who can take a spoken description of someone and turn it into something that’s almost an absolute likeness. And…” He shrugged. “Our last Krewe member is Kat Sokolov.”
“She’s an artist? A vocal recognition specialist? A forensics guru?” Allison asked.
“She’s…a medical examiner,” Tyler said.
“Will she see Julian?”
“Yes.”
Their meals were put before them and Tyler thanked their server. Allison picked up her fork, pushing her food around.
“You really should eat,” he told her.
“Yes, I’m eating, I’m eating!” she said, spearing a piece of broccoli as if to prove it. She was beginning to sound fine again.
When she’d finished—consuming everything on her plate—he offered her a few ibuprofen caplets to minimize the headache that seemed to be coming on.
She took them with a second glass of water and then sipped her third cup of coffee.
Again, he set a hand on hers. This time, she didn’t pull away. “I can help you,” he said.
She nodded. “You’re a decent person, and I appreciate it. But I have to help myself.” She sat straighter, appearing more controlled than she had been, her tone suggesting it was business as usual.
“Well, if you want any of us to help you in any way, just say the word.”
She smiled—a real smile. A sincere smile. “Thank you. I do feel much better. You’ve helped me already.”
“So, what would you be doing if we weren’t investigating the house? If it was your day off?”
“Since I’m not teaching right now, you mean? Research and writing.”
“About the house?”
“Academics need to publish.”
“I know. You’re working on the history of the house?” he asked.
“Not the house itself. Well, in a way. I’m doing a study of the British occupation, and the social and political ramifications. The situation between Lucy Tarleton and Beast Bradley and his relationship with the Tarleton-Dandridge family are an excellent example of the complex political climate at the time. That we won the Revolution was pretty much a miracle, you know. The British had the finest fighting forces, on land and sea. Taking nothing away from George Washington’s abilities—he had no money, deserting troops and he was facing horrendous firepower—we were losing more battles than we were winning. That’s why I admire the founding fathers. Signing that declaration made you a dead man if you were apprehended, but so many signed it, knowing they were up against unbelievable odds. I wonder if I could have done it,” she admitted.
“So the work you’re doing is on Beast Bradley.”
She picked up her coffee cup. “I started researching him more or less by accident. The story that we know has been handed down, more oral history and even legend than anything. Oh, the foundations are fact—Beast Bradley did take over the house, the Tarleton family did pretend to be Loyalist during that period and Lucy Tarleton was murdered there. But I couldn’t find anything written about the event that wasn’t secondhand. I realize Lucy couldn’t have told the story herself, but Angus never wrote about it. The first person to put anything on paper was the first Dandridge to own the house—Sophia’s husband, Tobias.”
“There have to be more records somewhere, letters, something,” Tyler said.
“I’m sure there are. They just have to be hunted down. I had figured I’d try to get to a few places where they’ve preserved letters and journals from the period. I’d thought about taking a trip to Valley Forge and maybe one to Saratoga. I was hoping I could find more information, particularly at Valley Forge. I’ve been in touch with an amateur historian there who’s really interested in this period. We know Lucy went from the house to Valley Forge several times during the occupation. She must have been acquainted with a number of the men there. She was being a patriotic angel of mercy and brought through anything she could—shoes, bandages, blankets—things that were desperately needed. Of course, her main mission was to provide information, so what she could sneak through the barricades was limited. She must have been a truly heroic and sympathetic woman.”
“I’m very curious about the two paintings,” he said.
“The paintings in Lucy’s bedroom and in Angus’s study?” Allison asked. “They are very different. The one in Lucy’s bedroom is rather surprising, but that’s
where the Dandridge family had it, and supposedly, it’d been there since the British occupation.”
“Don’t you think that’s odd?”
“Yes, but we never really know why people do what they do,” Allison said. “Unless they tell us, and even then…” She started to lift her cup; it clattered as it fell back into the saucer.
“What’s wrong?” Tyler asked. She’d seen something behind him. He turned to look.
There were other diners, nothing more.
She stared down at the table.
“Allison?”
She shook her head, then picked up her cup again. Her fingers were long and elegant with silvery polish on the nails. She held her cup firmly, almost tightly enough to snap off the handle. “Can we go now?”
“Of course.” He gestured at the waiter, then quickly paid the check when it came. He escorted her from the restaurant with his hand on her back. She seemed to want to be touched; again, he wasn’t lacking in self-confidence, but he didn’t think she was dying to be in his arms.
As they walked, he began to smile. He’d seen it before—he’d been there before, right where she was now.
Seeing those he should not see.
Allison was seeing a ghost.
If he suggested it, she’d deny it. She’d give him psychological explanations.
But she was afraid.
“I went to the hospital today,” he said.
“Oh!” She flashed him a guilty look. “I should have gone by. How is Mr. Dixon? How’s Haley—and the boys?”
“The boys weren’t there. Mr. Dixon’s condition is unchanged. Haley seems to be holding up fairly well.”
“I do need to see those kids.”
“Tomorrow, maybe. I know they’d appreciate it. But I believe Todd in particular will appreciate that you’re going through the house. He’s convinced you’re the key to making his father better.”
“But I’m not!” She looked at him earnestly. “Tyler, honestly, how could I help? Even if I were one of those crazy dial-a-psychic people and thought I could have a conversation with every soul who ever spent time in the house, how could that help Mr. Dixon?”
“Coma is a complex condition, and it can be brought on by so many things. Kat is our medical specialist, but she’s the first to remind us all that, so far, science has shown that the human brain’s capacity is far greater than we use. There may be scientific answers that coincide with a great deal of what we consider to be paranormal. Maybe just talking to Mr. Dixon will bring him back. I’ve heard of cases where someone’s been in a coma for an unknown reason for years—and then come back. No matter how far we think we’ve gotten in our technological age, there are many things we have yet to understand.”
Krewe of Hunters, Volume 2: The Unseen ; The Unholy ; The Unspoken ; The Uninvited Page 94