Murder House

by Jordan Castillo Price

  “Open your eyes. And embark on a mindful day.”

  Dutifully, I opened my eyes. The teacher frowned at me. Terri-Anne took the clip out of her hair, shook it out, and reassembled it twice as messy. “Well, Vic? What did you think?”

  I couldn’t exactly be honest in case I had to come back for Hale at some point. “It was…interesting.”

  “Totally. I just love all the energy work. Brian calls it ‘pseudoscience,’ but that’s because he’s not open to new experiences.”

  I pried myself off the mat—ow—and turned to look for Hale.

  He was gone.

  Terri-Anne followed my gaze. “He always leaves early.” Damn it. “So rude.”

  When I grabbed the yoga stuff off the floor and straightened back up, a wave of lightheadedness washed over me. Served me right for exercising.

  “Did you want to check out the ellipticals?” she suggested. “The equipment here is really good, state-of-the-art.”

  “I think I’d better get home and…write. Strike while the iron is hot, and all that.”

  We shoved the foam blocks onto the pile and headed out into an expanse of treadmills, step-climbers, and various other torture devices I couldn’t exactly name. They held no interest for me, but luckily I was paying enough attention to grab a glimpse of a purple tracksuit. Across the vast room, Hale was dismounting an exercise bike. He retrieved his walking stick, and began tapping his way toward the locker room.

  Finally, somewhere Terri-Anne couldn’t follow.

  “So, I’ll just grab my coat,” I said abruptly, and strode off toward Hale with the big ground-eating steps I use when I need to break ahead of the pack. Hale turned down a hallway, and I was closing in fast. I was so focused on catching up to him, I almost collided with the broad, hunky guy rounding the corner.

  And as I staggered back, I realized the broad, hunky guy was Jacob.

  We both froze…and stared at each other stupidly. Seconds ticked by, both of us at a total loss for words. I eventually managed to say, “It’s not even noon yet.”

  “It’s leg day,” he said. As if that meant squat to me.

  “Oh.”

  He leaned in closer, dropped his voice, and said, “It’s Valentine’s Day, too.”

  Was it? All I knew was that while my assignment’s projected duration had stretched the rest of the month, I hadn’t actually anticipated being in the murder house more than a couple of days, tops. “I figured I’d be done by now. Did you make plans for us you’ll need to cancel?”

  “No formal plans, but….” He sighed. His breath ruffled my hair and tickled my earlobe, and I swayed with post-yoga floatiness. “I was really hoping we could celebrate.”

  In bed.

  Me too.

  I took a deep breath and inhaled his scent. He hadn’t started working out yet, so he still smelled like his shampoo and our dryer sheets—he smelled like home. I missed him. Missed the cannery. Missed our life. The thought of bedding down anywhere else just plain sucked, and his tantalizing closeness made the pangs even worse. I wanted to kiss him—wanted it so bad I could taste it—but there’d be none of that for me. Not until I finished my damn assignment.

  “I’ll need to tell Veronica I ran into you,” I said regretfully.

  “That’s for the best. For all we know, headquarters is already well aware.”

  “I don’t want to get you banned from your own gym.”

  “Whatever it takes.” He wanted to kiss me too. I could tell by the angle of his head, and the way his tongue skimmed his lips as he wet them, and the way his dark eyes went all molten. Our bodies both tried to assume the liplock position, but with great effort, somehow, we managed to resist.

  I love you, I was aching to tell him. I miss you. But I couldn’t. Instead, I could only pull my douchebag mantle around me and say, “See ya later.”

  “Yeah,” Jacob replied softly. “Take care.”

  14

  It was hard, but I forced myself not to turn around and watch Jacob walk off into the weight room. Made myself put one foot in front of the other and step into the locker room alone. I’m not sure who was out of context: him, or me. Leg day. Lunch hour. And I knew full well it was the gym he’d gone to several times a week ever since we’d known each other. Even so, I felt a level of unreality, like I was walking through a dream. Except in a dream, there wouldn’t be any reason for the two of us to say goodbye.

  I was so disoriented, I didn’t notice Hale until he spoke to me from the changing bench. “So…that’s why you ditched your wedding ring.” He finished lacing up his wingtip shoes. “I wondered why you were worried about what that harpy yoga instructor thinks. This makes much more sense.”

  “It’s not what it looks like.”

  “I’m sure it isn’t—I have a very active imagination—but I suspect at least part of my tawdry fantasies are rooted in fact. So, does Tall, Dark and Beefy have a name?”

  Every bone in my body was screaming at me to cut off the conversation and flee, but then I realized I had him exactly where I wanted him, thinking he had something over on me. I was about to float the invitation to share a cab so I could explain myself when someone in toilet stalls butted in on our conversation. “How much responsibility do you think the staff has in regard to the patrons?”

  “What?”

  Hale answered me before the toilet guy did. “Never mind, you keep your little secret a secret. It’s so delicious to skirt the rules, isn’t it?”

  “I know we all sign a waiver,” the other guy said, “but still, there are standards, right? If somebody is clearly overdoing it, someone on staff needs to stop them. It might not be a legal responsibility, but an ethical one. As a human being.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said.

  “Indeed,” said Hale, smirking. “Indeed.”

  It was the douchebag getting caught, I told myself, not me, and I forged ahead with, “I can explain.”

  But toilet guy didn’t let me. “I was only forty-six, y’know. If these machines are dangerous enough to kill a forty-six-year-old, that makes them a clear hazard.”

  Well, crap. I looked up, and saw the voice wasn’t coming from the toilet stall itself, but the shimmery, man-shaped distortion beside it. I sucked down white light and threw up a barrier so the ghost didn’t decide he’d found a shortcut to having a thin body. But in that moment when I was distracted and no explanation was forthcoming, Hale pried himself off the bench and shuffled toward the door.

  “Don’t you worry your pretty little head about your dalliance,” he said. “I can be the soul of discretion.”

  Wait a minute, can be? That’s a hell of a lot different than am. I reminded myself I didn’t care. Bly already knew. I even had his permission to “cheat.” Not only that…but if ever there was a chance to see how Hale reacted to a ghost—not that it was entirely ethical to shove a medium in front of a haunted toilet stall to see if he got the willies. But my own psychic initiation occurred in a public toilet at the hands of Dead Darla, and I’d turned out okay.

  That was just a repeater, though. Repeaters don’t possess people.

  “There should be a warning on every machine,” the shimmer whined.

  Then again, complainers generally didn’t possess people, either. They just bitched about the way they died.

  But before I could grab the old man and put that theory to the test, a couple of power-lifter types on a mission to get swol barged into the locker room and got between us. I watched the door swing shut behind Hale, then turned to glare at the dumb gym rats (who didn’t care) and the thing over by the toilets (who didn’t care, either). “How long have you been lurking around?” I whispered at the toilet ghost. “And you pick now to start doing your dead-guy song and dance?”

  “I only just noticed you could hear me. You’re all lit up—figured you wanted to talk.”

  Ghosts can spot hopped-up mediums? That was news to me. I pulled down even more light and shored up the barrier b
etween us, just in case. One of the lifter guys looked at me funny for just standing there staring at the toilet stalls. I tried to play it cool—turned to my locker and pulled out the douchebag’s winter coat. And when the gym rats were gone, I told the ghost, “Don’t go anywhere,” and went out to look for Hale.

  Terri-Anne was waiting for me by the exit. “Are you okay?” she asked. “You seem a little off.”

  I ignored her concern. “Did you see Hale?”

  “Sylvester? I did—he just left.” Sonofa…. “I noticed he looked awfully pleased with himself, and wondered what it was all about.”

  “Just…critiquing my form.”

  She shuddered. “He might think he’s some great wit, but he’s nothing more than a mean old man. I can’t count the number of times he’s been absolutely horrible to Madison and—Vic? Where are you going now?”

  “Left something in my locker,” I called over my shoulder. But when I went back in to dismiss the toilet ghost, he was already gone.

  On the walk home, Terri-Anne regaled me with a story about Hale summoning the cops repeatedly over a barking dog. Having regularly been on the other end of a noise complaint in my beat cop days, showing up to knock on the door of an obnoxious party and tell everyone to tone it down, I could see both sides of the story. Ideally, neighbors work out their issues themselves. But the world we live in is seldom ideal.

  As we neared our houses, she said, “Did you have lunch plans? Because I’ve got way too much leftover lasagna and I’d hate for it to go to waste.”

  How anyone could possibly have leftover lasagna was beyond me, but I wasn’t there to socialize…at least, not with her. “Sorry, I’ll have to pass. Now that I’m all yoga’d up, I’d better get to work.”

  Once I closed the door behind me, my off-the-cuff remark sank in. Was I yoga’d up? Was that why toilet ghost felt the burning need to burden me with the story of his untimely demise? There’d been chakra work involved, and a bunch of unfamiliar positions. I’m no rocket scientist, but it didn’t seem improbable to me that yoga could stimulate the subtle bodies and act as a temporary, natural psyactive.

  I thought about the first time I’d seen a UV light in action out in the field, back when I was a rookie. Perfectly clean motel room wall, but when the tech subjected it to the purple glow, it lit up like a carnival of semen. That’s how ghosts are, so it was with no little trepidation that I headed upstairs to put my yoga theory to the test.

  Mediumship talent is counterintuitive. The stronger your ability, the less likely something can creep up on you and nudge you out of your skin—but having your reception tuned to high feels vulnerable. It’s not unlike a UV light. Sometimes you see things you just can’t unsee.

  Pausing at the foot of the stairs, I stilled myself, envisioned the whirling chakras stacked one on top of the other along my spine, and pulled down white light. Woozy. And here I’d figured, back at the gym, it was just the giddy surprise of running into Jacob that had my head spinning.

  I scanned the staircase. Nothing.

  I headed up.

  Hard to say which yoga position cranked my dial up to eleven, or if it was even any single pose in particular, or the combination of the whole routine that did it. Mediumship didn’t come with a user manual. We varied so much from one to another, the only thing that seemed to encompass all of us was it depends.

  Still, I tried. I breathed and focused and drank down light.

  The home gym was nowhere near as cooperative in giving up its ghosts as the gym I’d visited earlier. I got nothing. Not even a whiff.

  How annoying.

  Maybe I couldn’t see, hear or smell anything, but I wasn’t gonna linger upstairs. I headed back down, called Bly and ran through my morning.

  He said, “Veronica will have to let Agent Marks know when you’re tracking Hale at the gym, so he can steer clear when you’re there. Just know that if this were a hazardous assignment, his membership would be revoked entirely, no explanation given, so he didn’t blow your cover. Now, go figure out how to set up a meeting between you, me, Hale and your new ghost.”

  We hung up, and I went to the front window, lifted the corner of the blinds, and peered through. Did Terri-Anne’s curtain just move? Maybe it was above a heating vent. Or maybe she was lurking right behind it, waiting to see if she could ply me with camaraderie and food.

  I spent the rest of the day skulking around the bookshop and the cafe, but no Hale. The paperback I’d bought to keep myself company while I lurked was pretty dull, but the cruller that accompanied it made the waiting bearable.

  All the other customers looked pretty relaxed about sitting around for a few hours and doing a bunch of nothing. Me? By the time night fell and I decided Hale was a no-show, I was just about ready to crawl out of my own skin. Thankfully, Bly texted me and told me to be at home when he got back so we could put on another show for the neighbors, so I wolfed down my last donut and headed back to the townhouse.

  According to the plan he sent, the FPMP car alarm would go off. I was to wait sixty seconds, then go outside and look annoyed. When he showed up with a Valentine’s bouquet, I was supposed to make a big fuss about it. Looking pissy about the noise would be easy. The enthusiasm would take some doing.

  I stood behind the closed door as I waited for my cue, and I tried on lines. Wow, they’re beautiful. Gee, you shouldn’t have. Everything I could think of sounded as forced and stilted as the last. When the car alarm started whooping, I timed it with my phone, and hoped the adrenaline surge would provide me with some inspiration.

  The timer counted down to zero, and I still had nothing.

  I went out onto the stoop and looked around. The car alarm was doing its job, all right. The sound was particularly obnoxious. I tried to pinpoint the car it was coming from. Still couldn’t. And I noted that I wasn’t the only one who’d come out to glare at the annoyance. Blinds and curtains flickered all up and down the block.

  Bly pulled up to our waiting audience, parked in front, and hauled a giant bouquet out from the passenger seat.

  Do people actually do this, I wondered, or were flowers just the FPMP’s go-to gift because the Polish florist was so conveniently close to headquarters?

  Bly strode up the walk with his armload of vegetation. His posture said, Look how great I am. His eyes said, Please react in some plausible way.

  Like a carriage at midnight, some folks turn into pumpkins at critical junctures. Apparently, I turn into a carrot.

  I gawked at him. He stopped a few paces away, and prompted me with the word, “Well?”

  They’re fine, they’re dandy, golly gee, how amazing. A tickertape of forced enthusiasm scrolled through my brain, but I just couldn’t do it. Frustration, though? I could definitely do that. And the point wasn’t for me to react positively. Just loudly.

  “What the hell?” I said.

  Bly’s mouth opened. Shut. And very subtly, he nodded for me to keep going.

  “A bouquet?” I said. “On Valentine’s Day? How much did that run you?”

  “What difference does it make?”

  Bly had raised his voice over the car alarm, so I raised mine too. “We’ve got a mortgage to consider now, buddy boy. Moving expenses and property tax. And here you are, blowing God knows how much on this banal gesture.”

  “Oh—and suddenly you don’t like flowers? Damn it, Vic, nothing makes you happy. You’re impossible to please. You know that, right?”

  Me? I’m pretty easy. But the douchebag wouldn’t be. The car alarm died, but I kept right on yelling. “Here you come, marching up here with your attitude and your overpriced flowers, and I’m supposed to overlook the way you ignore me?”

  “If you’re so worried about money, then don’t start riding me about the overtime again. I was at work.”

  “Oh—and now I’m not carrying my own weight!”

  “I didn’t say that.” Bly’s gaze flickered to the front door to signal our conversation had done its job, and I turned around and
stomped back inside. “Vic,” he called as he scrambled after me, “I didn’t say that.”

  He charged in behind me and slammed the door, and we both stood there in the entryway for a second while I let my performance sink in. Once I really got going, it felt good. No, even better…exhilarating. Bly gave me a nod. “Not bad. But don’t get too carried away with yourself. Getting lost in your cover isn’t always fun and games.” He stuck me with the bouquet. “Now get yourself over to Hale’s house and tell him you need a vase.”

  15

  As I tromped around the snowbank and up Hale’s front walk with the flowers in tow, I wondered how elaborate I’d need to be if he asked me about my problems with Bly. Unlike my attempts to construct a reaction to the flowers, finding reasons to be dissatisfied came easily. Why? I’d heard so many before over the years—aimed at me. I’m consumed by my job. I’m unwilling to put forth the effort. I’m always checked out.

  I wasn’t, really. I just had a lot on my plate.

  Kinda drove home exactly how well Jacob got me.

  I rang the doorbell. As shadows moved behind the frosted glass, I realized I could be construed as bringing the old man a bouquet, so I shifted my grip and left it dangling face-down at my side. He opened the door in a vintage sixties smoking jacket. All he was missing was a martini and a fez. “If it’s not the beefcake magnet. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  “I need a vase.” I flapped the bouquet. “Got one that would work for this?”

  “Perhaps I can spare something.” He gestured, and I handed off the flowers. And then he made to close his door.

  “Wait,” I said. “It’s like, fifteen degrees out here.”

  “Then it appears you should have dressed for the weather.”

  “Can’t I come in?”

  “Unfortunately, you may not. The house is in disarray.” And with that pronouncement, he shut the door and left me standing there in the cold on his tiny front stoop. I wrapped my arms around myself and shifted foot to foot. Normally, my rusty cop instincts would tell me he must be hiding something. But Hale was such a weirdo, I could very much see him leaving me outside just to prove some nebulous point.