Grant’s eyes softened at the kiss. “Fine. But once his car is out of the shop, I want him on his way back home.”
“Fine by me,” Ethan said.
With a final glare at Ethan, Grant put his arm around his wife and led her towards the dining room.
The dining room table was set with china and crystal. Candles flickered in the center. “Annie outdid herself,” Tessa said. She took a seat at the foot of the table, across from Grant who sat at the head. Dr. Rosenbaum was already sitting. As he stepped fully into the room, Ethan suddenly realized that he was holding the doctor’s shoebox under his arm. He couldn’t let her see it.
Ethan backed out of the room and ran into Jeremy who had come up behind him. “Be careful,” the attorney said, annoyed. He edged around Ethan and pulled out a chair next to Tessa.
“What’s that you have?” Grant asked, looking up at Ethan.
Caught. Ethan’s heart tripped over itself. He was no good at lying, especially lying on the spot. Where was David anyhow? “It’s just something I found when I was poking around.”
Grant’s eyes narrowed. “Poking around where?”
The doctor’s eyes widened when she recognized the box. “That was in my room! You were looking in my room?!”
“I was…I thought…” Ethan stuttered out his answer, unsure of what to say.
“So now you’ve become a thief as well as a charlatan?” Grant demanded. His mouth was a thin line, and his eyes stormy. That temper was as strong a force as the winds outside the manor.
Ethan backed away from the table. He must look guilty as hell. “I did this for Tessa’s sake. Look!” He tore the lid off of the box. “Dr. Rosenbaum’s been given her all kinds of strange things. Rowan berries. Bloodwort.” He took one of the labeled, plastic bags full of dried herbs from the box and held it up. “It’s all on these labels.”
Grant blinked. “Bloodwort? What the devil is that?” he muttered. He waved to Ethan who handed him one of the plastic bags. Grant took a sniff. His face scrunched up when he caught the scent. “You say that you found this in the doctor’s room?”
“Under the wardrobe,” Ethan said. “I think the doctor has been putting this stuff in Tessa’s herbal tea.”
“It must be medicinal,” Grant said.
“It is medicinal,” Dr. Rosenbaum said stiffly. “Why else would I use it?”
Grant frowned. “You think I would allow someone I didn’t trust to treat my wife? I’ve known Maude for years, and she would never hurt anyone.”
“Has Tessa gotten better or worse since the doctor’s been treating her?” Ethan asked. He watched anxiously as Grant’s expression went from angry to wary.
Grant looked at the doctor. “Can you explain this?”
Dr. Rosenbaum got to her feet. “Don’t you trust me?”
“Just answer the question, Maude. What is this stuff?”
Dr. Rosenbaum glared at Ethan. Her bejeweled hands clenched at her sides. “It’s herbal remedies. Perfectly safe herbal remedies.” She took the box from Grant and sorted through it. “There’s nothing in here that would hurt Tessa. I would never do such a thing! Grant, you of all people should know that.”
Grant’s lips were pressed into a tight line, but he nodded. “Yes, I believe you.”
“I don’t,” Jeremy said angrily. “What kind of a doctor are you?”
A smile touched Maude’s lips. She glanced at Grant. “The kind who saves a man from cancer.”
“Cancer?” Ethan asked, surprised.
Grant’s face relaxed. “Maude treated me for my non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma several years ago. Thanks to her, I’m still alive.” He gave the doctor a fond smile. “Not only did she diagnose it, but her herbal remedies helped me through the chemo.”
That explained why Grant trusted her so much. She’d been at his side when he was passing through the shadow of death.
Seeing that she’d won the argument, the doctor sat back at the table. “Grant, if there’s anyone in this room whom you shouldn’t trust, I believe it’s the young man who just rifled through my room. And his boyfriend.” Her eyes went to a spot over Ethan’s shoulder.
Turning, Ethan saw David standing in the doorway. He was holding a sheaf of papers and glaring at the doctor. “Those herbs are not all medicinal,” he growled. “The morning glory seeds and the nutmeg are hallucinogenic.”
The doctor paled but remained calm. “Those weren’t for Tessa,” she said. “I was using them for something else.” Her eyes darted from David to Grant and back again. “What possible reason would I have for wanting to hurt Tessa?”
Ethan flashed back to the e-mails he had found. “Maybe it has something to do with the messages you’ve been sending to Michael Rooks.”
The doctor gasped. “You’ve been on my computer?”
“What’s this about my old partner?” Grant demanded, coming to his feet.
Old partner? Ethan’s eyes widened. That’s where he’d heard the name before! It had been in the newspaper article David had sent him a few days ago. Michael Rooks and Grant had gone into business with each other for a short time, and the end result had been the patent that had earned Grant millions.
“Rooks and Rosenbaum are lovers,” David said.
“Liar!” Dr. Rosenbaum cried.
“Then why do you call him your darling?” Ethan shot back. “And why are you sending him pictures of Grant’s financial records?”
Grant’s jaw dropped. “Maude, is this true?”
The doctor looked like a cornered animal. Her eyes were wild and her shoulder hunched. Seeing five pairs of angry eyes staring at her, she straightened her spine. “You cheated him out of millions,” she said. “Every cent you earned from that patent should have gone into his pocket!”
“So you poisoned my sister to get back at him?” David asked, horrified.
“I never poisoned her,” the doctor snapped. “The things I put into her tea were not toxic.”
“But they messed with her mind,” David said. He shook the papers he held. “The morning glory seeds and the nutmeg act like LSD. They cause hallucinations.”
For a moment, David’s announcement was met with stunned silence. Then Grant uttered a roar of rage. “You’ve been poisoning my wife?!”
Suddenly, piano music came from the music room. It was a rollicking, discordant tune played so loudly that Ethan knew it had to be amplified.
Tessa got to her feet. “I know that song! It was playing the night that Faith died. Grant, I remember it!”
David and Ethan hurried out of the dining room to find the mysterious piano player, but halfway to the music room, the lights went out.
Chapter Fifteen
Candlelight flickered in the dining room. Then a gust of wind blew out the flames, pitching the room into darkness. Something shoved against Ethan’s chest, knocking him into David who grabbed him by the shoulders to keep him from falling.
“What the hell’s going on?” Grant demanded.
Ethan jerked his cellphone from his pocket and brought up the flashlight app. David did the same. Tessa grabbed the matches that had been sitting on the sideboard and re-lit the candles. Then she gasped. “Dr. Rosenbaum is gone!”
That must have been who had pushed Ethan in the chest. Ethan darted into the hallway and raced towards the entry, David at his heels. When they reached it, all they found was the open front door. Car tires squealed on pavement, then an engine roared as the vehicle took off down the driveway.
“Was that her?” Grant asked, coming up behind them. When David agreed that it was, Grant said, “She won’t get far. Give me your phone.” David surrendered his, and Grant called the police.
In the wake of the melee, the eerie music had fallen silent. Ethan shined the light from his phone around the music room. The sheet music on the piano had blown in every direction, and the air was heavy with the smell of roses. Tessa, carrying a candle, came into the room. “As soon as that music started playing, I remembered something about the
night Faith died. It was very late, and that song woke me up. I went into the nursery to check on the baby and saw someone by the crib. They were holding Faith.” A sob clenched her voice. “I can’t remember the rest!” she cried out in frustration. “I know there was someone in her room, but I just don’t know who it was.”
Or what it was. Although Ethan didn’t speak his suspicions out loud, he couldn’t help but feel that there’d been a supernatural presence in the nursery on the night the baby died. Something had harmed that child, and something didn’t want Tessa to remember it.
“Could it have been Rosenbaum?” David suggested.
Tessa shook her head. “I don’t think so. The figure was taller than that.”
“We’ll get to the bottom of it,” Ethan assured her. “I won’t leave until we’ve figured this out.”
Ethan, David, and Tessa returned to the entry just as Grant was hanging up the phone. “Are you sure that Maude was involved with my former partner?” he asked.
“Positive,” Ethan said, “and I can prove it.”
Ethan led everyone up to the third floor and into the doctor’s room. Although the power was off, her computer glowed with life from its battery. Ethan opened up the e-mail software and showed Grant the sent messages. Grant sat at the desk to read them, and as he did, his mouth drew down more and his hands clenched into fists. “I can’t believe it,” he said. “How could she do this to us?”
Tessa laid a hand on her husband’s shoulder. “She’s a perverse woman.”
Grant covered his face with his hands. “I had no idea that she would hurt you. Not after she’d what she’d done for me.”
“She must have dealt with your lymphoma before she hooked up with Rooks,” David said. “Then once the two of them were together, she went after you.”
“She once told me that the worst pain people endure is watching their loved ones suffer,” Ethan said. “She knew she’d hurt you more by hurting Tessa.”
Tessa’s face paled. “And the baby? Do you think she hurt Faith?”
“I wouldn’t put it past her,” David said darkly.
Grant shook his head. “It was all happening right under my nose, and I didn’t know. I can’t believe I trusted her! David, I thank you for bringing this to my attention.”
“It wasn’t me,” David said. “It was Ethan. He’s the one who discovered it.”
“You can thank Meredith for this,” Ethan said. “She brought me here.”
“Meredith,” Grant said scornfully. “I would take you more seriously if you didn’t drag ghosts into it.”
“You should believe him,” Tessa said. “I do. Ethan, what you’ve done for me is a miracle. I’ll never forget it.” In the glow of the computer and cellphone screens, Tessa smiled. “Maybe now I’ll be able to rest.”
Ethan smiled tightly. Tessa and Grant might have been convinced that their problems were over, but he wasn’t. Meredith was still out there, and she was still angry. If he didn’t do something about that spirit, she would only cause more trouble. “I’d like to have that séance in the nursery,” he said.
“You’re still going on about that?” Grant asked.
“Didn’t you hear the piano playing in the music room?” Ethan asked. “You know that none of us were in there.”
“There’s a logical explanation for it,” Grant insisted.
“There is no logical explanation,” Tessa argued, giving her husband’s shoulder a shake. “Of course, you can conduct the séance, Ethan. I want to hear from this ghost. Maybe she knows the truth about what happened to Faith.”
“I want to hear from her as well,” David said.
“Will you join us?” Ethan asked Grant.
Grant huffed in annoyance, but relented when he saw his wife’s eager face. “I suppose so. If only to prove to you that there’s nothing there.”
“Then let’s go,” David said.
“But first let’s get the lights on,” Tessa said. “I’m creeped out by what happened in the dining room.”
“You don’t think that the ghost turned the lights off, too, do you?” Grant asked.
“No. That was due to old wiring,” David said. “It’s been windy all day, and that must have knocked the power out. I’ll get the generator running, and we’ll have lights in no time.”
Ethan followed David out of the doctor’s room and down the stairs. “The generator is outside,” David said. “I know that there’s gas in it because I checked it last fall. Now all we have to do is hope that it works.”
As they left the house, they nearly ran into Jeremy who was standing outside the back door. The smell of cigarette smoke hung in the air making Ethan crave a nicotine hit. He would have asked Jeremy for a cig if he hadn’t been so determined to kick the habit.
“Sorry, but I had to get out of there,” Jeremy said. “That house makes me nervous.”
“I’m sure that goes for all of us,” David said. He clapped Ethan on the shoulder then walked away to start up the generator.
“So Dr. Rosenbaum was at the bottom of all of this?” Jeremy asked.
“I think she was at the bottom of most of it,” Ethan said.
“But not all of it.”
“Tessa knows she saw someone in the nursery on the night Faith died, but she doesn’t remember who it was.”
“So we may never find out the truth.” Jeremy dropped his cigarette butt on the ground and put it out with his shoe.
“I think it may have been Meredith,” Ethan said.
Jeremy’s head jerked up. “The ghost?”
“I know it doesn’t sound rational – ”
“No! I believe you,” Jeremy said quickly. “I’ve seen the things that she’s done. I’m sure she’s capable of hurting a child, too. Does Tessa believe it was the work of a ghost?”
“I think so,” Ethan said. “We’ve having a séance in the nursery to see if it’s true.”
“Good luck with that,” Jeremy said. “I’m going back home. I’ve had enough of this house to last me for a while.” He threw Ethan a mock salute and walked towards the driveway.
The lights inside the house suddenly blazed to life. A moment later, David rejoined Ethan. “I guess that old generator works after all,” David said. “Good thing, too. We might be without power for a few days.” He shoved his hands into his pocket and dropped his head. “Of course, that probably won’t matter to you since I’m sure you’ll want to be on your way.”
The thought of walking away from David wrung Ethan’s heart. “Do you want me to leave?” he asked quietly.
David shook his head. “No.” He took a step closer to Ethan. “I never wanted you to leave. Not even when my family had me convinced that I was a sinner. I always wanted you near me.” His voice was husky. “I’m sorry, Ethan. God, I’ve hated myself every day knowing what I did to you!”
Instead of answering, Ethan pulled David into his arms. His lips found David’s. At first, David was hesitant, but then he relaxed and deepened the kiss, daring Ethan to go farther. As Ethan darted his tongue into David’s mouth, fire erupted in Ethan’s lower belly. David’s hands tangled in Ethan’s hair, forcing the two of them closer together. Ethan dropped his hands to cup David’s tight ass and pressed his pelvis against David’s. It was as if no time had passed. They were as passionate as they had been three years before. This was right. It was exactly right.
Finally, David broke off the kiss. “You have no idea how much I’d been wanting that,” he panted. “The minute I saw you standing out there in the rain alongside the road, it was all I could think about.”
Ethan grinned. “Me, too.” He leaned in for another kiss, but David put his hand against Ethan’s chest, stopping him.
“I want this,” David said. “More than anything, I want us to be together, but I still need time.” His shoulders drooped. “I want to take things slowly and not rush the physical.”
“I understand,” Ethan said. They had a connection, and that was all that mattered. “Are we ba
ck together?”
David smiled. The light in his blue eyes went straight to Ethan’s heart. “Definitely.”
Ethan, David, Tessa, and Grant sat in a circle on the nursery room floor. Ethan’s Scrabble tiles were spread out in front of him, and a candle flickered in the center of their circle. Before Ethan had started the séance, he’d polished the silver baby rattle until it was mirror bright. Now, it lay next to the candle, reflecting a tiny image of the flame.
Ethan wiped his sweating palms on his jeans. “We’ll all hold hands,” he said. “Hopefully, our combined energy will call her in.” He took David’s hand and squeezed it. “If there’s any trouble, I want you to get everyone out of here.”
“I won’t leave you behind,” David said.
“You will leave me behind,” Ethan said. “I’m the only one who can deal with her.”
“Are you expecting any trouble?” Tessa asked nervously.
Ethan wanted to tell her no, but he wasn’t sure, so he settled for a shrug. “I hope not.”
Outside, the wind continued to whip against the house and rattle a loose window sash. Ethan inhaled deeply and closed his eyes. He took a moment to center himself then said, “Meredith? Are you there?”
Tessa gave a soft sigh and the wind moaned outside, but nothing else stirred.
“Meredith? I want to help you.”
“This is a waste of time,” Grant muttered. Tessa shushed him.
Ethan let another moment pass. “Meredith?”
This time, a floorboard creaked. The back of Ethan’s neck prickled, and his mouth went dry. There was something standing right behind him. “She’s here,” he whispered.
The silver rattle spun like a top then flew up and hit the ceiling. “Meredith!” Ethan called. “Can you hear me?” Cold sweat soaked the back of his shirt. His hair felt as though it was standing on end. Even the library’s visitation hadn’t been this intense. “I know what happened to you,” Ethan said.
The candle sparked and crackled light lightning. Grant lunged for Tessa and yanked her backwards while David and Ethan flung themselves away. As Ethan hit the deck, the candle exploded with a whoosh, releasing a giant fireball that smacked the ceiling and went out.
Restless Spirits Page 16