Seance on a Summer's Night

  Not good. An empty swimming pool with a concrete floor? Not good at all.

  The more I considered the possibility of Liana blindly racing around in the dark, chasing the bouncing ephemeral ball, the more alarmed I became.

  Because as much as I did not trust Liana, as much as I wanted to believe she was playing along with some scheme of Ogden’s, her grief seemed genuine. Granted, she was an actress, but if she was faking her despair, she was one of the best actresses I’d ever seen—and I’d seen plenty of great performances by now.

  I started in the general direction of the pool, pushing my way through what felt like a long, endless tunnel of cobwebs and vines and dead branches. Sharp, twiggy stems snatched at my robe and scratched my face and hands. At this rate, I’d be lucky not to end the night with an eye poked out.

  I crossed an overgrown path, shoved my way through another thicket, and felt the scrape of stone beneath my soaked slippers. I turned my phone flashlight downward. There, beneath the dead leaves and dirt, was the path to the swimming pool.

  At least I was headed in the right direction.

  I followed the uneven walk for a few more yards, and then, as suddenly as the curtain rising on a performance, the mist cleared and I reached an iron gate in the middle of a wall of relatively tidy hedge. The gate was open, hinges creaking mournfully in the morning breeze. I went through and found myself on the long grassy lawn separating the maze entrance from the swimming pool.

  By then it was dawn, and in the red-gray light, I could make out a faraway figure in white walking along the edge of the pool.

  What the hell was she doing? Where did she think she was going?

  I kicked off my slippers, shrugged out of my dressing gown, and took off running across the grass. My heart was in my throat, my stomach in knots. Every moment I expected to see Liana tumble off the coping and plunge the thirteen feet to the bottom of the cement floor.

  “Liana!” I shouted.

  The white figure never turned, never hesitated. She continued her wobbling progress down the length of the pool—moving toward the ladder of the high diving board.

  This can’t be happening. Except it was. I saved my breath for the last sprint across the cement deck.

  She was halfway up the ladder when I reached her. I sprang up the rungs and grabbed her ankle. A little too enthusiastically as it turned out because she nearly toppled off.

  Clutching the railings, she shrieked, “Whaa—?! What’s happening? Let me go! What are you doing?”

  “What are you doing?” I shouted back. “Are you out of your mind?”

  Liana stopped kicking at me and cried in a feeble voice, “Artie?”

  “Yes, it’s Artie. What the hell are you doing up there?”

  She didn’t answer, bending over the ladder. Her shoulders shook. She began to sob in harsh gulps.

  “Liana?”

  No reply. Only those terrible, tearing sobs.

  “Liana, get down here, or I’ll pull you down,” I warned. I still had her ankle in a death grip, and I wasn’t kidding. I’d cheerfully help her break an arm or a leg before I’d watch her kill herself.

  She wailed, “Why did you have to come? Why couldn’t you leave me alone?”

  “Why couldn’t I…”

  “I want to be with Ogden!”

  “You’re not going to be with Ogden!”

  She screamed and gave a ferocious kick at my head with her free leg.

  I couldn’t block her and still hang on to her, so the kick connected. For a split second I saw stars, and she was free—and using that freedom to scramble up another rung.

  I shook the stars out of my eyes and lunged after her, grabbing a fistful of her filmy nightdress and yanking her back. The nightgown ripped. Liana screeched, lost her hold, and came tumbling off the ladder. We both landed on the cement deck.

  It hurt, no question, and it hurt Liana more than me because her screams changed noticeably in tone and tenor.

  “My arm!” she cried, writhing around on the deck. In the pallid light she looked like an agonized cloud. “You broke my arm!”

  “It’s better than you breaking your neck.” I bent over her. “Here, let me see.”

  “Don’t touch me! You bastard, Artie. You had no right to stop me. Ogden wants me. He needs me. He sent the light for me…”

  Better he had sent the men in the white coats, but whatever. I let her rant and rave while I tried to check her over. She was holding her right arm to her chest, but otherwise seemed sound enough, given the energetic slapping and flailing going on.

  “Can you stand, Liana?”

  “Leave me alone. I’m going to tell Halcyone to send you away.”

  Yeah? Likewise. But I didn’t say it. I was sorry she was injured, but I’d have been a lot sorrier if she’d jumped off the diving board.

  “Can you walk, or should I carry you?”

  “Go to hell!”

  I wasn’t sure I could lug her all the way back to the house. She wasn’t a big woman, but I wasn’t exactly in training. On the other hand, I didn’t dare leave her, in case she decided to finish the job. I could use my cell to call emergency services, but the last thing we needed was to give the local gossip mill more fodder. They’d have a field day with this story. Somehow we had to keep this hushed up.

  “Liana, you can walk or I can carry you, but I’m not leaving you here. Which is it going to be?”

  She sat up and said, “Don’t. Touch. Me,” in classic actressy accents.

  I made an as-you-wish gesture and stepped back. But of course she couldn’t get to her feet without the use of both arms. After a couple of pained tries, she glared at me, held out her good hand, and I helped her stand.

  We had to take the long way back, and it was not pleasant. Even knowing what I did about Liana—or rather, Lacey—I didn’t enjoy hearing her anguished gulps and whimpers as we dragged our way up the drive to the house.

  Midway there she faltered, and I caught her right before she swooned. I hauled her the rest of the way, carried her in through the kitchen and up to her bedroom. I deposited her on the bed, where she lay limp and waxen-faced, and hurried downstairs to phone Dr. Tighe.

  By then the sun was up, but when I reached the ground floor, I found the kitchen was still cold and empty, the shades over the double sink drawn. The coffee machine was off.

  I’d been trying to come up with a suitable story for Betty and Tarrant, but it seemed to be unnecessary, though usually by this hour Betty would be fussing over the stove and Tarrant would be sitting in his shirtsleeves, listening to local radio and making revolting sucking sounds as he dunked his doughnut into his steaming cup of coffee.

  Was Betty ill again? Was Tarrant officially on strike? I filled the coffee machine with water and measured out the grounds. After the night I’d had, I needed fortification before I tried to explain to Dr. Tighe why Liana needed to be locked up where she couldn’t harm herself or my aunt STAT.

  I was closing the refrigerator, carton of cream in hand, when my gaze fell on something pink. I went rigid with shock. There on the floor, protruding from behind the long wooden farm table, was a foot. A woman’s foot encased in a worn, rose-colored slipper.

  “Betty?” I could hear the alarm in my voice.

  She’s fainted, I tried to reassure myself. That was why the kitchen was still dark.

  Dark and unnaturally quiet.

  I set down the cream and walked over to where she lay. I stared down.

  Betty had not fainted. Even without feeling for her pulse, I knew she was dead. She sprawled utterly, unnervingly motionless in her faded, flowered bathrobe. The eyes in her gray face bulged up at me with horror.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I jumped as the coffee machine made a sound like a death rattle and squirted dark liquid into the glass pot.

  Betty dead. Despite the evidence of my eyes, it seemed unbelievable. Betty was practically an institution. She was part of Green Lanterns. Part of my childhood—though sh
e wasn’t really that old. I hadn’t thought people died of high blood pressure these days. She took medication, after all.

  Where the hell was Tarrant?

  Did he know? He had to know. Father and daughter always rose at the same hour.

  On autopilot, I turned and crossed to the door leading to the Tarrants’ living quarters. The door was closed. I knocked, and when there was no answer, I opened it and went inside.

  There was no sign of Tarrant. I checked the bedrooms. Tarrant’s room did not appear to have been slept in. Betty’s room was a different story. The bedside lamp was on. The bed was unmade, the sheets and blankets rumpled.

  Perhaps sometime toward morning, Betty, alone and feeling unwell, had gone into the kitchen for a glass of water and suffered some kind of seizure. But then what? What had happened to Tarrant that he still wasn’t back from his nighttime prowling?

  Or had Tarrant returned, found Betty dead, and…what? Panicked and fled? No way. Why the hell would he? He would have phoned for help, right? Even if he had panicked—and I’d never seen Tarrant panic; I’d seen him angry, offended, outraged, but not panicked—but even if he had panicked, he wouldn’t have left her lying there, surely?

  Or maybe he had phoned for help and was outside waiting for emergency services to arrive? I returned to the kitchen, went to the window, and looked out at the wide spread of driveway. Two small brown birds rose from the ivy, skimmed the asphalt surface, then fluttered upward toward the trees and out of view. A pale sun was soaking up the last remnants of overcast. It was going to be another lovely day.

  Not for Betty. God. Poor Betty.

  Impatiently, I shrugged the maudlin thought aside. Anyway, that scenario didn’t make any more sense than the previous. Liana and I had been walking up the driveway less than fifteen minutes ago. We’d have seen Tarrant.

  But there was no sign of him anywhere.

  The whole situation was crazy.

  I glanced back at where Betty lay. The sight of her sad pink slipper made my stomach curdle. How long had she been like that?

  I made myself walk back to the table, kneel, and touch her hand. She was cold. Cold like I’d never felt another human. And that terrible expression…

  I rose, went back into the Tarrants’ rooms, took an afghan from the sofa, and carried it to the kitchen to cover Betty. Then I ran upstairs to Aunt H.’s room and tapped softly on the door.

  She murmured inquiry, and I opened the door, peering through the gloom until I spotted her sitting up in bed. “Artie? What is it, dear?”

  “It’s bad news, Aunt H. I’m sorry.”

  “What bad news? What’s happened?” She was fully awake now, her voice sharp as she reached for the bathrobe lying across the foot of the bed.

  “It’s Betty—Ulyanna, I mean. I’m afraid she’s…dead.”

  “Dead?”

  “Yes.”

  Aunt H. sank back on the bed. “But she can’t be. How? What happened?”

  “I don’t know. She must have had a stroke or a heart attack or something. I found her when I—” I broke off, suddenly remembering Liana and the events of the night before. I’d completely forgotten I was supposed to be summoning the doctor.

  “When you what?” Aunt H. asked, staring at me.

  “It’s a long story. In other news, I think Liana’s had some kind of breakdown.”

  “Over Ulyanna?”

  “No. No, I’ll explain later. The thing is, can you sit with her while I phone the doctor and look for Tarrant?”

  Aunt H. was looking more bewildered by the minute. “Has something happened to Tarrant?”

  “I don’t know. He doesn’t seem to be around anywhere. I don’t know if he found Ulyanna and went for help or—”

  “Went for help? Why wouldn’t he call 911? I don’t understand.”

  “I don’t understand either,” I admitted. “Maybe he panicked.”

  “Tarrant? Panic?”

  “I know it doesn’t seem likely. None of it seems likely, frankly.” With increasing desperation, I said, “Look, me old darling, could you please, please go sit with Liana so she doesn’t chuck herself out a window or something? As soon as I know anything, I’ll report back.”

  Without another word, my aunt rose from the bed, slipped on her robe, and firmly tied the sash. “Go,” she told me. “Leave Liana to me. And never mind about phoning the doctor. I’ll take care of it. The thing for you to do is find Tarrant. This news is liable to break him.”

  I was thinking about my aunt’s words as I returned downstairs and found the kitchen still deserted—barring the blanketed form behind the wooden table.

  Maybe Betty’s death had broken Tarrant. Maybe it had been the final straw.

  I went out through the kitchen door—keeping an eye out for Tarrant—and jogged across the sun-dappled grass to the garage. I slipped in the side door, flipped on the light, and counted cars in the gloomy illumination. The green station wagon was not there.

  Did that mean that Tarrant had gone for help?

  Leaving Betty behind?

  No. That made no sense.

  But this made no sense either. Why would Tarrant flee Green Lanterns without a word—in what was technically my aunt’s station wagon.

  I headed upstairs to knock on Seamus’s door. By the time I reached the landing, I could smell the coffee brewing, and my stomach knotted unhappily as I remembered Betty and my earlier attempt at scoring caffeine.

  Seamus opened the door almost immediately. He was wearing jeans and holding an electric razor, which he switched off at the sight of me. His brown hair was damp and scented of Herbal Essences; his smile was lopsided.

  “Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s bad manners to leave without a word in the middle of the night?”

  “Uh, no, as a matter of fact. Anyway, it was dawn. Or nearly. But I apologize. I’d like to do it again. Not the leaving in the middle of the night part. The earlier stuff. Meantime, something’s come up—and I don’t mean that in a playful, flirtatious way.”

  His brows drew together. “Are you okay?”

  “So far, but our numbers are dwindling fast. Betty—Ulyanna, that is—is dead, Tarrant is missing, and Liana tried to kill herself last night, supposedly on orders from Ogden.”

  “You—” His jaw dropped, his eyes widened, and for a gratifying instant he seemed speechless. “Are you— This is for real?”

  “Only too real. I just checked downstairs, and the station wagon is gone. Do you have any idea when Tarrant left?”

  “I’m not even sure when you left. I was out.”

  I nodded automatically. He had been out, which, considering the days he was putting in trying to whip the garden into shape and the nights he spent watching the house and searching the grounds, was probably not surprising.

  “I think I might have heard Tarrant leaving while I was wandering through the maze trying to find Liana.”

  “Wandering through the…” I saw him make the conscious and determined decision to let that pass. He said instead, “Have you phoned the police?”

  “No. Aunt H. is phoning Dr. Tighe.”

  Seamus frowned. “You can’t keep this hushed up, Artemus. If Tarrant killed Betty—”

  It was my turn to gape. “If Tarrant killed— What are you talking about? Tarrant never killed Betty. I didn’t say Betty was murdered. I think she just had a heart attack. She looked…”

  I started to say she looked natural enough, but remembered her expression—I doubted I’d ever manage to forget it. Her features had been frozen in horror.

  “I’d better take a look,” Seamus said grimly.

  I felt a wave of relief. Yes. Great idea. This was Seamus’s area of expertise, after all. And the truth was, it hadn’t even occurred to me that Betty’s death might have been a violent one. Maybe Tarrant had lost his mind and struck her. Stranger things had happened at Green Lanterns.

  “Pour yourself some coffee, and I’ll finish dressing.” Seamus stepped aside.

&n
bsp; I went into the kitchen and found a clean mug in the cupboard. Seamus had closed the bedroom door behind him, but after a minute or two, I heard his voice. He was on the phone. I sipped my coffee, eyeing the broken lamp in the trash bin—the bent linen shade sat on the linoleum counter—and tried to hear Seamus’s half of the conversation.

  I couldn’t make out the words, but his tone sounded official.

  A short time later he opened the bedroom door. He wore his usual jeans and a blue Reading Diver T-shirt. He also wore an air of authority he hadn’t displayed before. Or at least not so obviously.

  “Who did you call?” I asked.

  He hesitated. “My boss at SFPD.”

  “I see.”

  His eyes met mine steadily. “Instinct tells me things are going to happen very quickly now.”

  “Which means what?”

  “I meant what I said last night. If I’m able to return the money Foxworth stole, there’s a very good chance I can keep your aunt out of trouble. Assuming she’s willing to cooperate.”

  I said slowly, “You think Tarrant found the money and is on the run?”

  “I think there’s a very good chance that’s what we’re looking at.”

  I smiled sourly. “And you think he killed Betty?”

  “Clearly you don’t.” His smile was wry. “Okay. Maybe she did die a natural death. Maybe they argued and she had a heart attack. We won’t know until we hear from the coroner. Meantime, I think we should go take a look.”

  I put my coffee cup in the sink. Said with a briskness I didn’t feel, “Let’s do it.”

  When we reached the house, Dr. Tighe’s car was already parked in the driveway. We went into the kitchen and found him kneeling beside Betty’s body. Seamus offered his ID, and Dr. Tighe said, “You’re full of surprises.”

  Seamus shrugged.

  “All right, Sergeant Cassidy. I’ve already sent for the coroner’s van. There are no signs of violence. It looks to me like a massive cerebral hemorrhage. Ulyanna was always a little too lackadaisical about taking her medication. I warned her about it more than once.”