by Mary Bowers
He shot up and nearly ran.
Once he was gone, Bruno looked from Ed to Taylor. “Well, now,” he began. “What have you two been up to in the last couple of hours?”
Ed leaned forward, dividing his attention between the two detectives and said, “I had the opportunity to examine Bastet for her reactions.”
Bruno nodded broadly, but Stetson said, “Bastet?”
“Taylor’s cat,” Bruno told him, and Stetson continued to gaze at his partner for a long moment, open-mouthed. Then he glanced at Taylor, but she had already shut her eyes and dropped her head.
“Is she going into a trance?” he asked Ed.
“No,” she answered without opening her eyes. “I’m counting to ten.”
Ed whispered, but Taylor still heard it. A single word: “Denial.”
“And what does Bastet think?” Taylor heard Detective Stetson say.
“I was unable to interpret her general reaction, but she did arch her back.”
Taylor decided it was time to come back to the 21st Century and start living in the real world. She opened her eyes to see both detectives regarding Ed much more seriously than she expected, but she reminded herself that homicide detectives always look like that. Who knows what they’re thinking?
“I negotiated a sweet deal for that séance,” she told Bruno.
“A remarkable deal,” Ed said. “Ten times the going rate.”
“I’m a good negotiator. Not everybody is. For instance, Ed, here, said he’d come back and tell you everything we talked about – even conversations with the cat – but he didn’t ask for anything in return, did he?”
Bruno lifted an eyebrow and Stetson slowly smiled.
“Like what?” Ed said, blinky behind his wire-rimmed glasses.
“I’m very fond of Ed,” Taylor said. “He’s like a little brother to me. I feel protective toward him, you know? It worries me that he keeps getting himself mixed up with questionable characters. Take Dobbs, for example. Should I be worried about my friend Ed just now, since he’s hanging around with Dobbs a lot?”
“We’re working together, Taylor,” Ed said. “Not hanging around.”
Taylor ignored him and kept herself focused on the cops. Stetson gave a questioning glance to his senior partner and sat back to observe.
Bruno gazed at her almost affectionately. “You want my take on Dobbs. Okay, here it is. Is he a murderer? Don’t know. Maybe; maybe not. Is he a relentless self-promoter who would trade his grandmother for a shot on your friend’s reality show? Absolutely.”
Taylor murmured, “You might even say he’d kill for it, huh?”
“As a figure of speech, yes. Literally? I wouldn’t laugh at the idea. Not yet.”
“Is my little brother in danger?”
Ed made some kind of protest and everybody ignored him.
“I’d keep an eye on him if I were you,” Bruno said at last. Then he shrugged. “It couldn’t hurt. Your boyfriend has a gun, right?”
The question startled Taylor. It also snapped her into focus. “Yes. Why?”
“Has there ever been a pistol-packin’ medium?”
“Absolutely not,” Ed spluttered. “Our researches into Spiritualism have very little to do with the corporeal world. Bullets are of no use against ectoplasm.” He said it with considerable irony, but still nobody paid any attention to him. He began to feel as if he’d been invisible all day.
“If I ask Michael for his gun, he’s going to insist on coming with me.”
“Would you like us to be there?” Bruno asked, hooding his eyes.
“Now you’ve gone too far,” Ed declared, shooting out of his seat.
“Sit down, Ed,” Taylor said without taking her eyes off Bruno. Ed sat, invisible still. “You think it’s that serious?”
Bruno relaxed, letting out air and backing up into the iron spikes of the chair. “Lady, you tell me. My investigation is just beginning, and what I’ve heard from Dobbs can’t be corroborated, or refuted. He claims that Jessamine Pissarro said she was walking to the beach, she wanted to be alone, and she just never came back. He got worried, he called the police, yada yada yada. We’ve interviewed everybody on the other side of Paradise Island, fronting on the ocean side, and nobody saw a thing that night. There was a half-moon, but it was cloudy and there are no lights on the beach houses this time of the year. It’s illegal, since it’s still turtle nesting season, and the lights confuse the little hatchlings. They come out of their eggshells and run the wrong way. So whatever happened to Mrs. Pissarro on the beach that night happened in the dark.”
Looking intense, Taylor said, “Did Jessamine Pissarro kill her husband?”
“We’ll probably never know that now,” Bruno answered. “Her story was plausible. Alan Pissarro really did have a problem with depression going back for years, and marrying a younger woman didn’t make him feel younger himself – in fact his friends who stuck with him after the divorce say it made him feel older and even more depressed – and the M.E. says it could have gone either way. But now she’s dead, and nobody said she had a problem with depression. Quite the opposite.”
“Who did you ask? Did she have any family?”
“No family, not even a dog. Lady friends from the St. Augustine cocktail party circuit. They say marrying a rich man was her goal in life, and when she got Alan Pissarro, she was happy. He wasn’t wonderful to be around all the time, but her friends say she liked him well enough, and he wasn’t abusive.”
“What about Jessamine?” Taylor asked. “Was she murdered?”
Bruno gave his partner a lightning glance, then looked back at Taylor. “She’d taken a mild sedative, and she was full of booze and seawater when she was dragged out of the ocean. She drowned. Now, Dobbs says she wasn’t drunk that night or he would’ve never let her go off alone. On the other hand, he also said she was a high-functioning social drinker, and you couldn’t always tell when she’d had a few. Mostly, she was spittin’ mad that night. They had a fight about something and were barely speaking by the time she left, so he didn’t know if she took a bottle along or not. He says he doesn’t think so.”
“What were they fighting about?”
With a straight face, Bruno said, “Her husband’s ghost.”
Taylor gazed steadily for a moment. “Sheesh! And there was no bottle on the beach?”
“There were lots of bottles on the beach. Oh, hell, not lots, but when one washes up, nobody goes into shock. We found one.”
“Wine, or hard liquor?”
“Vodka.”
“Could the M.E. match the booze in her stomach with the bottle?”
He slowly smiled. “No comment.”
“Fingerprints?”
“No.”
“You say she’d taken a sedative? Was she in the habit of taking drugs?”
“The lady friends say no. No, in that case, would be a relative thing. People usually mean street drugs when they talk about addiction. They think that just because they take an occasional painkiller, even the addictive kind, and it was prescribed by their doctor, they’re not addicts. Dobbs says she was really upset that night. She probably took a pill to try to settle herself down, but she wasn’t staggering-around high when she left, according to him.”
“So she’d taken some kind of drug,” Taylor said speculatively, working it out for herself. “She was really upset, and she was blasé enough about the pills she was taking that she wasn’t careful about taking them with alcohol. That means she’d been taking them for a while. And they were the kind you shouldn’t take with alcohol?”
“Definitely.”
“So she just walked out the door, possibly with a bottle of vodka, possibly not, carrying nothing except her house key.”
“Not even that,” Bruno said. “Remember, Dobbs was there. He said she stormed out the door without bothering to lock it behind her. In fact, he said he went to the door to call her back, but she just kept on going. We found everything in her bedroom: purse, keys in
the purse, cellphone sitting next to the purse, dirty tissues next to the cellphone – looked like she really had been crying – a lipstick tube next to the tissues. Does a lady need to reapply lipstick after drying her eyes and blowing her nose?” he inquired.
“It depends on how much enthusiasm she puts into it. From what I’ve heard of Jessamine Pissarro, she could manage to keep the lipstick looking fresh through a five-course meal.”
“Her lipstick was very fresh when she stormed out of my office,” Ed said helpfully. “And technically, she’d been crying then, too.”
“‘Technically?’” Bruno asked, eyebrows raised.
“The tissue I gave her wasn’t very wet after she wept into it. Nevertheless, there was emotion, and her lipstick never left her face. Is that important?” He blinked. “If so, why?”
Still invisible, he got no answer.
“So she kept the tools of her trade handy,” Taylor said pensively. “She did her lips before she left for the beach, because she was leaving her purse behind. Force of habit? Or was she meeting someone?”
“Dobbs says she stormed out on impulse, because they’d had a fight,” Bruno said. “If you believe Dobbs. Personally, I’m skeptical about several of the things he said.”
“And only the one prescription bottle in the medicine cabinet,” Taylor murmured, gently probing. “She wasn’t on six different drugs?”
“Paradise Island doesn’t run to good-old-fashioned medicine cabinets with swing-door mirrors. In these digs, one has cachet drawers within the boudoir cabinetry. In Jessamine’s case, French Provincial. At least that’s what I’m told by my lieutenant, who knows about these things.” He got prissy. “She says that Mission is absolutely over now, and French Provincial is in, if you know your decorating trends.”
“And the answer is . . . ?” Taylor said, sticking to the point. “Drugs in the boudoir cabinetry anywhere?”
Detective Bruno repeated, “No comment, but nothing that gave me a Sherlock Holmes moment. Nothing illegal stashed away. And now that you got payment up front for whatever you’re about to tell us, let’s have it.”
Taylor made a graceful gesture toward Ed and he began to go over everything he’d already told the detective, Taylor and Michael, and even the cat, Bastet.
* * * * *
The detectives left after that. Once they were in their unmarked car and driving away, Stetson said, “What was that all about?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. Mr. Ghost didn’t tell you anything just now that he didn’t tell you before he left to cry all over his big sister, or whatever she is.”
“They’re just friends,” Bruno said with a smile, opening up a little. “You have to get to know them. They’re . . . different.”
“But harmless? Is that why we’re feeding them information they don’t need to have?”
Bruno’s smile faded slightly. “Taylor Verone,” he said, and stopped.
“You mean you really think she’s psychic?”
“Of course not. Even she doesn’t think that; only Edson Darby-Deaver thinks that, and he believes in magic cats. But she has a way of putting things together, and she’s usually got some inside information or gossip or – hell, I don’t know – vibrations. Whatever it is, she’s hit the nail on the head before. I find it’s usually worth it to have a conversation with her.”
After a long pause, Stetson looked out at some passing coastal scrub and said, “If you say so.”
* * * * *
Ed and Taylor sat in silence for a long time after the detectives left. Finally, fatalistically, Ed stretched, looked at Taylor, and said, “Well, are you coming inside?”
“No. They’ll just try to convince me to let them come to the séance, and I’m done with that. I think I’ll go home now.”
“Am I,” he said tentatively, “still coming to dinner tomorrow night?”
She stood up and grinned. “Of course. Good luck with the ghost hunt. Try to get it all mopped up before the séance the day after tomorrow. It’ll make things neater.”
“You’re not being logical. The objective of an investigation is not just to detect; if we find a residual spirit, we try to lay it to rest, making it unavailable for séances.”
“If you manage to get him on board the train for Summerland, I’ll just send my troubadour to find him over there on the other side. Besides, I know how to put on a show, even when the guest of honor doesn’t show up.”
“Oh, Taylor,” Ed said, shaking his head. “You’re talking fraud now.”
“No, I’m giving a guy who’s not very nice a chance to rack up a few points in heaven by helping me save some puppies and kittens. See you tomorrow, Ed.”
* * * * *
When Ed went back inside the house, Carly sidled up to him, smiling and acting kittenish. This was a side of Carly he’d never encountered before, and it made his hair stand on end. When she threaded her arm through his, he froze.
“So who is this client of Taylor’s who wants the séance?”
“She told you. Alan Pissarro’s business partner. Down boy.” From ignoring Ed, Porter had suddenly awaked to the fact that he loved this guy and he was making up for lost time. With Carly caressing his arm and Porter climbing his thigh, Ed started to come unglued.
“And what’s his name?”
“It’s in the file. Didn’t you read my notes?”
“No, honey, and I haven’t read War and Peace either. Your writing style is a tiny bit – how shall I put this? – bloated. Just give me the name, please.”
“Roy,” Ed said, trying to keep Porter from shredding his pantleg. “Roy Angers. He lives right next door, there.”
“Thanks.”
“Down boy.”
Chapter 14
“Ten jars,” Dobbs was saying as Ed came into the kitchen. “I swear to God, ten jars. No jelly, no jam, no marmalade. Just ten jars of peanut butter, five smooth, three crunchy, and two extra crunchy. He must save those for the really bad days when he needs to grind his teeth on something.” When he noticed Ed, he stopped and looked guilty.
“You abused my hospitality by snooping around,” Ed said witheringly. “I am disappointed in you, Dobbs, but I must say, at this point, I am not surprised.”
Dobbs became charmingly sheepish. “I just peeked into the pantry, that’s all. Everybody says that’s all you eat, and I wanted to see for myself.”
The rest of the crew stood around with shining eyes, looking as if they were trying not to pop.
Ed glared until they visibly settled. “I keep an adequate supply of nutritious food on hand, and I try to keep it simple,” he said stiffly. “I detest repeated trips to the grocery store, and I find it a waste of my time to decide what to eat three times a day. Peanut butter supplies all dietary needs.” He stopped, because he could see that Dobbs was memorizing his every word so he could repeat it all later, either to his friends, or even worse, on that curse of a blessing, the internet.
Ed rose above it. “I presume by now you’ve settled on a shooting schedule, and have formulated a plan of attack? Let’s hear it.”
He was still toting his spy satchel around, and he dropped it on the floor near a tallboy chair at the breakfast bar and hiked himself up. Porter came tapping his nails across the lovely hardwood floor and sniffed the bag. Ed informed the dog that it contained no food. When he noticed that Teddy was looking at the bag as if he were trying to remember where he’d seen it before, he quickly turned to Carly and asked her to begin.
Carly went to the dry-erase board and began to explain, drawing arrows and making circles around things, and they were off.
* * * * *
By the time she was finished, Ed was becoming drowsy. How many times, he asked himself silently, must we do this? In real life, his investigations were varied. He never knew what was going to happen next. But when the cameras were rolling for Haunt or Hoax? it seemed to be the same thing over and over and over again: Teddy explains the haunting
in his best ghost-stories-around-the-campfire manner, emoting on the tragedy of it all and pledging to do something about it, dammit. Then Teddy introduces the scene of the haunting while Wyatt anonymously follows him around, moving the shot when Teddy points at something, adding a few effects, making sure to catch Teddy’s gorgeous eyes with just the right angles and lighting. There would be hell to pay in post-production if there were no money shots of Teddy’s big green eyes.
The on-camera talent begins to move, tentatively at first, calling, calling to the spirits. Porter barks a few times. Then – a slight hesitation; a frisson of fear.
Then back to Teddy, talking into the camera at all times, ratcheting things up until he reaches a sudden peak of terror. Ed, instrumentation in hand, follows along saying, “No, Teddy, I think that’s just a result of the house settling. These houses are built on sand, you know, and over time they become imperceptibly tilted, making doors close slowly by themselves. Eerie, but easily explained,” and so it would go, time after time, ad infinitum. Ed was dismayed that people continued to watch. However, he did continue to deposit his paychecks.
“Questions, comments?” Carly said, sweeping the breakfast bar with bright black eyes.
Nobody said anything. Elliott stifled a yawn.
“Yes, Ed?” she said, homing in on him.
He blinked in confusion. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You were thinking really loud.”
He thought, Oh, all right, and took the plunge. “It’s just that we seem to be doing the same things over and over.”
“Any suggestions?” she asked him.
“Well, for instance, in my recent trans-astral-plane investigation in Destin, I had to deal with a multiple-personality situation. Let me tell you, when the patient is a ghost, things can get complicated. You see, it all began with – ”
Teddy began to howl, and then Porter did too, only doggy-style. Teddy was howling verbally: “Where’s the action in that? Are we going to put the ghost on a couch and ask him if he had a difficult childhood? I need to move, I need to attack, I need action. And so does the audience, or we’re going to lose them. We’ve got a winning formula and we should stick to it.”