Death at a Seance

by Carolyn Marie Wilkins

  DEATH AT A SÉANCE

  – A Carrie McFarland Psychic Mystery –

  by Carolyn Marie Wilkins

  Copyright  2019 Carolyn Wilkins

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner, including electronic storage and retrieval systems, except by explicit written permission from the publisher. Brief passages excerpted for review purposes are excepted.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Though this is a work of fiction, many of the stories and anecdotes included were inspired by actual events. Some names used in this book are those of real people; however, any dialogue or activity presented is purely fictional.

  ISBN: 978-1-68313-214-1

  First Electronic Edition

  Pen-L Publishing

  Fayetteville, Arkansas

  www.Pen-L.com/

  Cover design by Kelsey Rice

  Books by Carolyn Marie Wilkins

  – The Bertie Bigelow Mystery Series –

  Melody for Murder

  Mojo for Murder

  – The Carrie McFarland Psychic Mystery Series –

  Death at a Séance

  This book is dedicated to my parents, who gave me the gift of storytelling.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Bonus Pages

  Did you enjoy this book?

  CHAPTER ONE

  Aronsville, Indiana

  January 1920

  They laid my daddy to rest in the graveyard behind the colored Methodist church on Bland Street. The bitter wind blowing in off the Ohio River sliced right through my winter coat as I wrapped my arms around my mother’s waist. Mama was an imposing, dark-skinned woman with broad shoulders, full hips, and the high cheekbones she inherited from her part-Cherokee grandfather. With my skinny legs, tan complexion, and long braids, I didn’t look much like her, though I’d like to think I inherited her toughness. Despite the cold, Mama had worn her best dress for the funeral—a gossamer summer frock that had been Daddy’s favorite.

  As the small group of mourners clustered around Daddy’s open grave, Reverend Johnson cleared his throat and began to speak.

  “The Good Book tells us there is a season for everything. A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted.” His voice was thin and reedy, barely audible over the sound of the wind rattling through the trees. “We gather to celebrate the life of Jeremiah McFarland, a man who never gave up. Six months ago, the Ku Klux Klan ran Jeremiah out of Blockport. Took his house, his land, and his animals. Under the circumstances, a lesser man might have given up. But Jeremiah was not a quitting man. He packed up his family, moved up here to Aronsville, and started over.”

  As we shivered in the January wind, my mother stood as tall and stoic as the wooden Indian outside McGee’s Tobacco Store. Not once did she take her eyes off Daddy’s coffin. Not even when our downstairs neighbor, a spindly old man who’d always given me the stink-eye for running up and down the stairs, offered her a sympathetic pat on the arm and muttered a quiet “Amen.”

  “Jeremiah was a master craftsman,” Reverend Johnson continued. “A man who could make a piece of wood sing. But he soon found out that factories here don’t hire colored to do skilled labor. But did Jeremiah give up?”

  “No suh,” an old woman murmured from the back of the group. “Jeremiah McFarland never gave up on anything.”

  “Right you are, Mrs. Martin,” the reverend replied. “He was not a quitting man. He got himself a job sweeping floors at McKinney’s Sawmill. The hours were long and the pay was short, but Jeremiah had a family to feed. When the dust got up in his lungs, he kept on working. Just kept on working till the Good Lord called him home.”

  With a sigh, the reverend read another verse from the New Testament—something about the power of love outlasting gongs and clanging cymbals. Truth be told, I was too cold and too miserable to pay very much attention.

  If we could have stayed on our farm, I thought bitterly, my daddy would still be alive. I hated living in Aronsville. They called our neighborhood Churchtown because of the Baptist church colored folks had built there just after the Civil War. But church had little to do with what happened in the neighborhood those days. There was a saloon, gambling joint, or whorehouse on nearly every corner. It didn’t help that the two rooms my family shared were dark, crowded, and crawling with roaches. Or that, at sixteen, I was the oldest girl in the seventh grade at Frederick Douglass Colored Elementary School, where the city kids teased me relentlessly for my yellow complexion, country drawl, and hand-me-down dresses.

  When the reverend finally shut his Bible, Mrs. Carey, my mother’s best friend, closed her eyes and began to sing:

  Lift me over yonder, Lord.

  Take me home beyond the river.

  Lift me over yonder, Lord,

  For my time has come.

  As she sang, the grave diggers, their dark faces wrapped in scarves, lowered Daddy’s coffin into the grave. Reverend Johnson raised his arms in benediction, led us through the Lord’s Prayer, and then it was over. My beautiful Daddy, stuck forever in the dark, cold ground. Never to return.

  After the funeral, neighbors stopped by with platters of fried chicken, cake, and cornbread. Through it all, Mama maintained her composure, thanking each one graciously for their gift and promising to let them know if we needed anything more. But when the last of the guests had gone, Mama sat down at the kitchen table, put her head in her hands, and wept. Great guttural sobs wracked her body as she rocked from side to side.

  “Don’t cry, Mama,” I said, wrapping my arms around her. “Everything’s going to be all right. I promise.”

  I’d never seen my mother cry like that before, and it scared me. The mother I knew never let anything defeat her. When the white boys in Blockport had thrown rocks at me, she had taught me to be strong.

  “If they see you’re afraid, they’ll never let up,” she had said. “Keep your feelings on the inside, where no one can get to them.”

  The mother I knew had a solution for every problem. When Daddy had trouble finding a job, she started a business reading tea leaves for the women in the neighborhood.

  “Your grandma was half Creole,” she told me. “The gift of second sight runs in the family. But don’t go telling your daddy, hear?”

  I’d nodded solemnly, pleased to be considered adult enough to share secrets with my mama.

  “Is that why I hear a buzzing sound in my ear before something happens?” I asked. “Daddy said it was an earache, but it didn’t feel like one.”

  My mother’s rich laugh filled the room. “Sensitivity runs i
n the family,” she said, giving me an approving pat on the arm. “That buzzing is the sound of an angel coming to get your attention.”

  But in our sad and lonely kitchen that dreary January evening, I did not feel the presence of a single angel. My daddy had gone home to heaven, leaving Mama and me behind to cope the best we could without him.

  After what seemed like forever, Mama wiped her eyes, sat up, and took my face in her hands.

  “Your daddy and I had hoped you’d be the one to finish school, make something of yourself,” she said, sighing heavily. “But the little bit of I money I make telling fortunes is not going to be enough to cover next month’s rent. Tomorrow we’re both going to have to go out and look for work.”

  Day turned to night as we watched the snow pile up outside the kitchen window, each immersed in our own thoughts. We both knew that no matter what happened next, our lives would never be the same.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The temperature was well below freezing the next morning as Mama and I boarded the streetcar and headed across town to River Street. Half an hour later, the conductor let us off at the end of a wide, tree-lined street overlooking the Ohio River. As we walked past the stately homes set back from the road and surrounded by elaborate wrought-iron fences, I couldn’t help but stare. Nothing in my life on the cramped streets of Churchtown had prepared me for such opulence. Instead of being built from scraps of wood and held together with a lick and a promise, these homes were brick, with large windows, spacious front porches, and manicured front yards. Amazingly, each house was large enough to hold two, possibly three of the rickety tenement in which we lived.

  “Stop gawking and start walking,” Mama said brusquely. She squared her shoulders and took my hand. “We’re gonna stop at each one of these places and enquire. Good Lord willing, one of these rich folks be looking to hire some coloreds to do for them.”

  She marched up to the first house on the block and pushed open the gate. I was about to run up the walk and ring the doorbell when Mama pulled me back.

  “Not here, Carrie. The back door. Some of these folks are funny about colored coming to the front.”

  With a nod of understanding, I followed her down a long brick walkway to the rear of the house, our footsteps crunching on the newly fallen snow. The hawk-faced Negro cook who answered the back door took one look at us and shook her head.

  “Mizz Jones ain’t hiring,” she said and closed the door.

  The response was same at the next house, and the next several after that. Some of the folks were nicer about it, adding a sympathetic smile or a “sorry” at the end to let us know they understood. But after ten houses, even Mama was beginning to show signs of discouragement.

  “If we can’t get anything here, we’ll have to look in West Acres,” she said. “It’s a lot further

  from Churchtown, but maybe we’ll have better luck.”

  As we trudged toward the last house, an imposing Victorian mansion set back from the street and surrounded by a low stone wall, I gave her hand a squeeze.

  “Look at the address,” I said. “Eleven Eleven Water Street.”

  Mama gave me a wan smile. “My lucky number,” she said, “but don’t get your hopes up too high. No use courting disappointment.”

  I nodded and followed my mother through the gate and around to the back of the house.

  Peering through the window of the kitchen door, we watched a buxom Negro woman pull a slab of bacon from the ice box and place it in a frying pan. She had a round, moon-like face and wore her hair pulled back in a bun. She sang loudly as she worked, shifting her hips from side to side in time with the music. Her voice was clearly audible.

  Gonna walk that line

  Toe by toe

  Kitty kitty Maybelle

  To and fro

  Gonna walk that line

  Yes indeed

  Walk till I get

  The love I need.

  I’d just learned that song the week before from one of my friends at school. Carried away by the melody, I began to clap my hands and sing along.

  Keep on walkin’

  Kitty Maybelle

  Gotta walk that line

  Cause you never know

  When love gonna

  Come around.

  Startled, the woman turned off the stove, walked to the back door, and glared at us through the window.

  “What are you people doin’ back here? You scared me half to death.”

  “Sorry, ma’am,” Mama called out. “We don’t mean no harm. Just lookin’ for work is all. Anything you need, we’d be happy to do it. Think we could come inside? It’s awful cold out here.”

  The woman studied us silently for a long moment. Finally, she shrugged her shoulders, opened the door, and told us to come inside.

  “My name is Theodora, but everybody here calls me Aunt Teo. I’m the cook here and this,” she said, gesturing at the large, well-appointed kitchen with a regal hand, “is my domain.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Teo,” Mama said. “I’m Annie McFarland, and this is my daughter, Carrie. Like I said, we’re lookin’ for work. We’re strong, healthy, and smart. We can wash, cook, scrub pots, anything at all. Whatever you need doin’.”

  “Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Teo said. “Don’t rightly know if Mrs. Kerchal is hiring or not, but she should be. God knows I could use some help in the kitchen.”

  As Teo talked, she pulled a pan of corn muffins out of the oven and set them to cool on the stovetop. Though I tried to suppress it, the sight of so much food set my stomach to growling. Even my mother was not entirely able to keep her eyes off that cornbread.

  “I’m awful sorry I startled you with my singin’, Aunt Teo,” I said. “I sure didn’t mean to bother you.”

  Teo’s resonant laugh reminded me of church bells at Christmas. “No bother, chile. No bother at all.” Waving a plump brown hand in the direction of the kitchen table, she said, “Wait here while I fetch the missus. If she likes the look of you, she just may decide to take you on, at least for a trial.”

  “Thank you,” Mama said. “Anything you can do, we’d really appreciate it.”

  As the minutes ticked by, my mother and I sat, quiet as church mice in our chairs, too nervous to speak. When Aunt Teo reappeared, she was accompanied by the lady of the house, a tiny woman, barely five feet tall. The woman’s bearing was that of a queen—spine rigid, head erect. As she walked into the kitchen, my mother and I stood up awkwardly, feeling every inch like the destitute supplicants we were.

  “These are the women I told you about, Mrs. Kerchal,” Teo said.

  “I can see that,” the woman said curtly. “Go down to the root cellar and see if we have any carrots. I want to serve Mr. Kerchal a beef stew when he comes home from work this evening.”

  Although Teo was nearly a head taller and a good fifty pounds heavier than Mrs. Kerchal, she seemed to shrink in her employer’s presence.

  “Yes, ma’am. Right away.”

  When Teo had left the room, Mrs. Kerchal turned to face us. She wore her graying hair pulled back in a bun and had the most piercing blue eyes I’d ever seen.

  “You,” she said, pointing at me. “Turn around. Slowly. Let me get a good look at you.”

  When my mother started turning as well, Mrs. Kerchal shook her head impatiently. “No, not you. Don’t need any older help. It’s the girl I want to see.”

  As I turned around slowly, I felt her cold blue eyes burning a hole in my back.

  “Can you read?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I stammered, keeping my eyes on the ground as my heart pounded wildly.

  “Good. I’ll not have any ignorance among my staff, not even the coloreds. Can you sew?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I made this dress here. Made my mama’s dress as well.”

  Mrs. Kerchal’s hand reminded me of a bird’s claw—that is, if birds had claws the color of alabaster. She took hold of my sleeve and inspected the stitching closely.

 
“Any work experience?”

  “Carrie’s been working on the farm since she was old enough to walk,” my mother said eagerly. “She can do whatever you need—the washing up, the scrubbing. She can help out in the kitchen or with the sewing and the mending. She’s a real hard worker, ma’am. Just give her a try.”

  My mother was a proud woman. It cut me to the quick to hear her beg like that. As I stood perfectly still, Mrs. Kerchal continued her inspection. Having satisfied herself as to my ability as a seamstress, she inquired into my health.

  “Any communicable diseases?” she said. “Mumps, measles, influenza, anything like that?”

  Teo, who had returned from the root cellar carrying an armful of carrots, flashed me an encouraging smile and winked.

  “No, ma’am,” I replied. “I am healthy, as far as I know.”

  Mrs. Kerchal nodded and stood silently for a long moment, deep in thought.

  “Very well,” she said. “I will keep you for a week to do the mending and washing up. If you do a good job, I will keep you on at two dollars a week plus room and board. But understand me clearly,” she said, spearing me with a no-nonsense look. “If I am not satisfied with your work for any reason, I will put you out. Find out the girl’s particulars, Teo. When you’ve finished, clean her up and bring her to my sitting room. I have linens that need mending.”

  With a brisk nod, Mrs. Kerchal left the kitchen, leaving the faint scent of rose water to linger in her wake.

  Until that moment, I had not thought about what having a job like this would entail. If everything went as planned, I’d be staying here, in this big house, working for Mrs. Kerchal’s family.

  “She’ll get Sunday afternoons off, won’t she?” my mother said.

  Though I considered myself a big girl, it took all my willpower to keep from clinging to her skirt and bawling.