Topaz Dreams

by Patricia Rice

  “Xavier is working on the contract. I’ll leave you to your entertainment.” Kurt’s tone was dry, but his curiosity was high, Teddy noticed.

  “The ghost is trying to reach us,” one of the ladies said worriedly, studying the speaker Kurt had discombobulated.

  “We’d better ask Aaron and Harvey to join us,” Tullah agreed, with a similar frown of concern. “The entity has proved powerful recently.”

  “Not just recently,” Amber corrected. “She was a full-blown poltergeist while I was here.”

  “Why do you refer to her as a she?” Kurt asked, heading for the door. “Can’t ghosts be male?”

  “Because whoever she is thinks of herself as female,” Tullah said with dignity. The tall African-American shop owner dressed as regally as she spoke, although her fashions tended toward the slim ones from half a century ago, ones that emphasized her curves. She wasn’t a small woman, by any means, but a statuesque goddess.

  Before Kurt could respond, the speakers whispered, “Kill him.”

  Five

  June 26: late morning

  * * *

  Kurt would have walked out the moment the speakers produced the ludicrous whisper, except a crash reverberated through the old walls—and his electrician yelled. Screamed, actually. Screaming was never good. He raced for the back door shouting, “Stay here,” at the women.

  Of course, the women did no such thing. Half followed him. Half headed straight for the stairs, probably to look for the ghost.

  The worker had been on a ladder to the second story. The ladder lay now on top of the newly-crumpled fence, with the upper branches of the downhill pine tree holding it up. The electrician dangled from a rung, desperately trying to find a safe purchase, but the fence was on the brink of collapse, and pine branches were too far away—and too weak to hold the ladder for long.

  Kurt scrambled up on the unstable fence to grab the electrician’s dangling ankles, but his precarious perch couldn’t stabilize him. They’d both tumble down the steep hillside shortly. “The ladder is going to give,” he called to the women. “Get some help out here.”

  Teddy had run upstairs to the children first, which was a relief of sorts. They didn’t need to watch this, especially if the fence sent them crashing into the cottage roof below.

  The tallest of the women, Tullah grabbed rungs and tried to steady them. “Will the stepstool in the front room reach?”

  “If it doesn’t, I can at least climb it and hold the ladder up,” Kurt said. “If you order your friends to bring it out here, will they listen?”

  She cocked her stately head and gave him the evil eye but nodded. Unaccustomed to communicating with the weird women who seemed to run this town, he was relieved that she acknowledged his request.

  Before Tullah could go in and ask the women to do as suggested, Teddy appeared with the stepstool in hand, as if she’d heard them.

  The long ladder tilted. Kurt hung on to the bravely silent worker while the women uttered muffled gasps of horror. After opening the stepstool near him, Teddy sat down on the bottom rung of the longer one to steady it from tilting more. Kurt shifted his weight from the shaky fence to the more stable stool and climbed higher to catch more of the electrician’s weight.

  He couldn’t see how they could possibly coordinate this effort, but by the time Walker and Monty arrived, he’d walked the electrician down from rung to rung until he could almost reach the tall stepstool. Kurt had never been so glad to see his slow-walking, slow-talking jock brother in his life. The deputy was a bonus. One held the long ladder, the other climbed up to shoulder the weight of the dazed worker. Between the three of them, they maneuvered him to solid ground.

  “Drinks all around, boys, I’m buying!” Teddy cried.

  “I think that’s my call,” Kurt said, shaking the electrician’s hand while steadying him at the same time. The surge of adrenaline required release, regardless of the time of day. “Drinks are on me. What the hell happened?”

  The man shook his head. “No idea. I was double checking the line into the house when it was like a big wind caught me and blew me backward. I held onto the ladder, and you saw the rest.”

  “The window upstairs was open,” Teddy said soberly. “I’m pretty sure we left it closed.”

  The window they’d looked out to watch the electrician work? The window with the cold draft? Kurt gritted his molars and fought down irritation. “I refuse to believe in ghostly killers. There’s a rational explanation.”

  Deputy Walker brought down the long ladder and heaved it across the back yard. “Better keep the kids and dog out of here until the fence is repaired.”

  Since the hairy monster was lying lazily in a sunny spot, tail wagging, Kurt had the notion the animal wouldn’t willingly go anywhere of its own accord. But Teddy caught it by the collar and led it inside. He’d feel ten thousand times better if she stayed at the lodge instead of this disaster-prone flophouse. Looking anxious, the Lucys returned inside with her.

  While the electrician took a seat on the ground and buried his head in his hands to steady himself, Walker and Monty lingered in the yard to examine the wreckage.

  “The place isn’t safe,” Kurt insisted, which was why he’d chosen this structure for the first knock-down. “Don’t we have a law condemning dangerous housing?”

  “Nope,” Monty said, mayor hat on. “Since we made ourselves a town, people can live in houses without roofs around here if they’re so inclined.”

  “Then pass a law. Even if their aunt is crazy enough to stay, those kids need to be protected.” Still flying high on an adrenaline overload, Kurt paced the decrepit yard.

  Monty snorted. “Control issues, much?” he asked.

  From the house, the voices of women rose in excitement. Walker helped the electrician to his feet. “Sound like they’re going anywhere?” the deputy asked.

  Kurt rubbed his head where the ache was returning. “They’re arranging a séance.”

  “Then let’s leave through the alley. No way am I getting caught in that gaggle of hens.” Monty led the way to the side yard.

  Kurt hung back. He couldn’t help feeling the house wasn’t safe, and he didn’t want to risk another disaster that might end more tragically than this one. If he hadn’t been here. . . Imagining the electrician tumbling through tree branches, screaming, he shuddered.

  He let the others go without him. Monty could ply the electrician with drinks, if needed.

  In the kitchen, the refrigerator hummed normally. Kurt stopped to look inside while he listened to the chatter in the front room. The light functioned. Maybe he should go upstairs, check on the kids, and stay out of it. He was so far out of his element that he was treading water and in danger of going down.

  But for the first time in years, he felt as if he were alive and not a cardboard stick figure. How had it come to this?

  The static from the speaker escalated to an electronic shriek.

  Teddy yanked out the wires on the speaker Kurt had loosened, but the racket continued from the one in the ceiling. Damn. She needed to get into the attic, but that wasn’t happening until she demolished the ceiling.

  “Perhaps the speaker will give the spirit voice,” the dignified older lady who’d been introduced as Cass Tolliver said, taking a seat at the old oak dining table. With her gray hair pulled back in a severe bun, emphasizing her starkly angular bone structure, Cass was another one who looked like she ought to be teaching at a university. Weren’t psychics supposed to dress in Gypsy garb and wear turbans?

  Teddy hung out behind the counter, but Tullah gestured for her to join them at the table. “You have already made contact with the spirit. Since this is your house, you may have some connection that will help us.”

  There were only chairs for six. Amber—who did resemble a Gypsy in long skirts, amber rings and bangles, and flowing lace top—spread a garishly embroidered cloth over the old wood. An older woman to whom Teddy hadn’t been introduced settled a crystal ball in t
he center. Samantha and Mariah joined them at the table, only because Cass pointed at the chairs and silently commanded it. There was only one chair available after Amber and Tullah took seats, so Mariah remained standing.

  Teddy tuned in to the children, but they’d fallen asleep in front of the laptop with Prince Hairy on guard duty. These past weeks had been stressful. She was glad the adult disturbances hadn’t penetrated their world here as it had done in the city. She sent up a prayer to the Great Whoever for Syd’s safety.

  Someone had hung black-out drapes over the shop window. Black-braided Mariah closed them at Cass’s nod. Tullah lit candles. The women sprinkled herbs and chanted. Teddy had to make herself tune in to all the differing wavelengths. She’d tried this sort of thing in college, but her Inner Monitor had seen through the falsity of the perpetrators too easily for it to be interesting. This time, she only felt a reassuringly consistent belief in the women around her.

  The instant they all clasped hands, the anger of the unknown entity sliced through Teddy’s empathy. Crap damn. It was bad enough being battered by the emotions of live humans. She didn’t need to be assaulted by dead people.

  She shut off her monitor when Cass began speaking in an irate voice not her own.

  “It’s in the triptych! Find my art. You’ll see!” The last words emanated from Cass’s throat as a cry of frustration.

  Teddy fought a shudder at the eeriness. Was Cass faking it or could there possibly be a spirit strong enough to speak? This really wasn’t her sort of thing.

  “Where do we find the art?” Tullah asked in a deep, somber voice.

  A wail emerged from the speaker, one so grieved and furious that it shivered down Teddy’s spine. She glanced around, and the others seemed as uneasy as she did. Cass had sunk into a deep trance. Her head had been upright when she spoke a moment ago, but it slumped now.

  “He hid me,” the speaker hissed.

  “Who, who hid you?” Teddy demanded, needing more than airy warnings.

  “Lucinda knows all,” the speaker whispered, before even the static died.

  Tullah led another chant, then released the circle of hands. “She is strong, that one.”

  Sam rubbed her aunt’s bony hand while Cass came around, muttering under her breath and looking weary. Mariah produced a bottle of wine from her bag.

  Teddy entered the kitchen in search of glasses, nearly running into a frowning Kurt as she did so. “Why are you still here?”

  “You expected me to leave while the wiring screeches and those witches are plotting revolution?” He raised his eyebrows and sipped from a water bottle, looking darkly handsome and self-assured while she was shaking in her shoes.

  At least he didn’t ask if she believed any of that crap. Teddy had no idea what she believed right now. “We don’t seem to be in any danger, and I see no revolution. You could leave through the back the way the others did.”

  “I know when I’m not wanted.” He set down his bottle. “But I think we need to look into opening that attic you claim is up there.”

  Teddy nodded in relief. “I agree, and the sooner, the better.” Although she wasn’t certain she was prepared to find what had been concealed.

  Picking up his discarded suit coat and tie, her landlord saluted her like a boy scout and ambled out. She wished he didn’t have to be so damned attractive. Or that she wasn’t feeling so weak as to be attracted to his heroics in saving the electrician. She had feared she’d swoon watching the muscles in his arms bulge under the strain. Men in suits shouldn’t look like jocks.

  She gathered up the collection of eccentric glassware that had accumulated in the kitchen and carried it back to the shop.

  “Do we ask Dinah to send over lunch or just get quietly drunk?” Sam asked, accepting her glass and studying it with interest. It appeared to be a jam jar.

  “Did you get in touch with the art dealer you said knew Lucinda Malcolm?” Mariah asked, sitting cross-legged on the floor as if it were her natural position.

  Teddy had decided Mariah had to have Native American genes, but now she wondered if they didn’t include a healthy dose from India as well. With those big, heavily-lashed brown eyes, Mariah would look good in either sari or buckskin.

  Sam cautiously tasted the wine, as if unaccustomed to it, then nodded. “Elaine has promised to be up this week to look at Dinah’s mural and the artwork at the lodge. But the ghost never said where to find the art.”

  “She said he hid me, in response,” Mariah said, frowning. “Not helpful unless the spirit is a work of art.”

  “Kurt said he’ll open up the attic. Aren’t ghosts supposed to hang about where they died?” Instead of sitting down, Teddy studied the dangling speaker wires in the wall. She had about a million questions, but she didn’t want to appear completely ignorant.

  “Not always,” Mariah answered, surprisingly. “Unless we want to believe a whole lot of people died at the lodge. It’s ectoplasmic heaven over there. I have no way of testing my theory, but I think the spirits might be following the vortex energy and simply get caught somehow.”

  “The vortex is near the cemetery, so it’s more likely the dead are being swept up in the energy and thrown out at the lodge,” Tullah suggested.

  “But I understood this vortex acts in reverse, drawing down instead of lifting up. I think it’s just the energy in this place that holds onto whatever ghosts consist of—ectoplasm, spiritual forces. . .” Sam shrugged.

  “Emotion,” Teddy offered. “I sense them as emotion, which might be why we think of ghosts as people who left things undone or people who died violently.”

  “It’s all the same, dears,” Cass said, sipping her wine and frowning. “We are our emotions, our spirits, our energy, our souls, however you wish to color your word choice. But I really do want to look into whoever lived here before. Someone had time to seal the attic, if there was a stairway, as you say.”

  Mariah wandered around, inspecting her ghost catchers. “I’m not seeing any remnants of other spirits. And this one certainly isn’t ready to move on. Are you going to stay here?”

  “I want to,” Teddy said, setting her jaw. “I need my own place, and the kids need normal. So far, she’s only attacked men. Do you think it’s safe?”

  “We’ve done all we can,” Amber said worriedly. “She mostly threw things when I was here. She never attacked me personally. But she shattered my best crystal ball, and I got tired of picking up my tarot decks.”

  As if in response, Sam’s wine glass went flying, knocked by an invisible hand.

  Six

  June 26: early afternoon

  * * *

  Kurt wandered around the narrow front room of Hillvale’s town hall, studying the artwork strewn haphazardly across the dirty walls. It had been forty or fifty years since the world-famous art commune on Samantha’s land had known notoriety. Could any of these pieces be worth anything?

  Looking like a surfer with his overlong hair hanging over his bronzed brow, Monty emerged from his office to join him. “What now?”

  “The Lucys are up in arms about art for some reason.” He wasn’t about to say ghosts were complaining about art. He figured Cass had some bee in her bonnet and was about to let the whole hive loose. The Lucys were impractical tree-huggers who had been complaining about the resort since it was built. They’d staged sit-ins over clearing the land, the logs used in building, and currently, Kurt’s desire to upgrade the area from shanties to condos. Cass was almost always behind the protests.

  “The whole town is littered with paintings,” Monty said, bending over to peer at a canvas half-hidden in shadow behind the pamphlet case in the reception area. “I figure the artists in the commune used them as cash to pay for services rendered.”

  “Probably. Think any of them are valuable?” Kurt lifted a canvas from the wall and carried it to the room’s front window. “We have it all over the lodge as well, although I assumed most of it was Uncle Lance’s.”

  “We could call
an art dealer. I wouldn’t have the foggiest.” Monty shrugged at the one Kurt was holding. “Those same figures turn up pretty often, I’ve noticed. I think they used each other as subjects, although there don’t seem to be any faces on that one. There’s a big mural at Dinah’s behind the counter with the same people. You really think the Lucys are on to something?”

  “I can’t imagine what. I assume without documentation, the art is owned by whoever possesses it, so the town and the lodge stand to profit most.” Kurt returned the painting to the wall. He wasn’t much of an art critic. It was a pleasant painting, unfortunately hung, nothing more.

  “If you haven’t noticed, profit is not what concerns the Lucys. It will be some mystical magical reason they’re looking into. If you really want to know what they’re up to, you need to hang out at Dinah’s more. Want to go get a burger?”

  “I won’t get ptomaine?” Kurt asked, checking his watch. It was well past noon. “I ought to be back at the office.”

  “Doing what? Looking at bills we can’t pay? C’mon, let’s eat.” Monty headed for the door.

  Admittedly, it was much more interesting to play with money when there was money for playing. Deciding which bill to pay was monotonous. So maybe it was time to take a closer look at the town he meant to overhaul.

  Kurt followed his younger brother across the street. The lunch crowd of locals and guests from the resort filled most of the seats inside the café. At Walker’s wave, they joined the deputy in a booth.

  “Sam working?” Monty asked, sliding in across from the lawman.

  “Yup. When her shift is over, we’re moving my stuff into the Ghost House. I am seriously uncomfortable with the nesting process, so if you have a more valuable use for my time, I’d appreciate it.” The half-Chinese deputy deliberately lowered his eyelids in his best enigmatic expression and watched the women chattering at the counter. Samantha was in the middle of it. Despite Walker’s attempt at inscrutability, Kurt thought he looked like a man in over his head and falling fast.