I snickered as I jotted down the information, “Ten bucks says she’s got a dog named Buster.”
Theresa laughed as well. “I wouldn’t be surprised. Good luck Abs, and please be careful, ’kay?”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said as I shrugged off my own reservations. “I’ll call you next week, T, thanks again.”
After Theresa and I disconnected I went back over the notes I’d taken during our quick minisession. Nothing in particular seemed to ring any bells, so with a sigh I started the car and pointed my Mazda in the direction of the county clerk’s office.
Ten minutes into the drive my cell phone chirped and grabbing it off the seat I flipped it open. “Abby Cooper,” I said, keeping my eyes on the road.
“I’m hungry,” purred a familiar baritone.
“There’s soup in the fridge,” I suggested.
“I’m not that kind of hungry.”
“Dutch . . .” I admonished.
“Where are you?”
“Telegraph and Square Lake Road.”
“Why so far from home?”
“I’m headed to the county clerk to research the title on Fern Street.”
“Good idea,” he praised. “Looking for anything in particular?”
“I’m not sure, but I just had an interesting conversation with Theresa, and I’m hoping a clue in the chain of title will back me up. I’ll tell you all about it when I get home.”
“Sounds good. Milo’s coming over around two. Think you’ll be back by then?”
I glanced at the clock on the dashboard just as I felt a light and airy feeling on my right side—my sign for yes. “Count me in.”
“Hey, on your way back can you stop by Spago’s and pick me up the usual?”
Rolling my eyes I asked, “And do you think Milo will want his usual too?”
“Do you really need me to answer that?”
“See you later, mooch,” I said, and clicked off.
An hour and a half later I arrived back at Dutch’s with two full bags of Coney dogs, chili fries and a folder full of notes. I’d hit pay dirt at the clerk’s office, and I was anxious to share my findings with Dutch and Milo.
“Hey, Abby!” Milo said jovially as he greeted me at the door.
“Here,” I said, giving him one of the bags. “No onions, extra mustard, right?”
“On the money, honey,” he said, taking the bag and trotting into the living room.
I closed the door with my foot and followed him, then set the other bag and my folder on the coffee table while I shrugged out of my coat and took a seat next to Dutch on the couch. As I was unloading the second bag for Dutch and me, I got an unexpected smooch on the cheek and an impromptu hug from him, which made me turn and look a question mark at him.
“What?” he asked.
“What’s that for?” I asked, smiling a little. Dutch and I hadn’t exactly been . . . uh . . . familiar with each other recently. Since his injury we’d been acting more like Nurse Ratched and her whiny, irritating and annoying patient, so the PDA was a pleasant surprise.
“I’ll tell you later,” he whispered, ignoring Milo’s probing eyes.
“You mean after two weeks of sponge baths, cooking, doing your laundry, cleaning up after you, and taking care of your cat all I get is a peck and an I’ll tell you later?”
Milo stopped munching on his Coney dog and leaned in, smirking at Dutch’s obvious discomfort.
Dutch paused for a moment then turned to me, “You know, Abby? When you’re right, you’re right. You’ve been great. As in exceptional. And the moment these stitches come out, you and I are heading to Toronto, because I’ve missed you.” And with that he leaned in and gave me one of those long, lingering kisses that make your hair curl.
It was now my turn to blush. “Thanks,” I said after the smooch, then reached for my Coke, taking a long sip and resisting the urge to fan myself. Milo chuckled softly and shook his head, while Dutch grabbed a chili dog and flashed me a toothy grin.
When I’d had a moment to compose myself, Milo asked me, “I hear you talked to your friend, what’s her name? The one that sees dead people?”
“Theresa. And she doesn’t actually see them,” I explained. “It’s more like she gets a name or an initial and references to places and events.”
“And what’s the difference between you two again?” he said.
“For one thing, Theresa is able to hit on names, and that’s not something I’m particularly adept at,” I said, as I nibbled on a chili-covered fry. “For another, Theresa is able to distinguish individual energies and their connection to the client a whole lot better than me.”
Milo gave me a quizzical look and said, “Huh?”
“Maybe it’d be better if I gave you an analogy?”
“That might help.”
I paused for a moment to collect my thoughts, then said, “Think of it like this: if Theresa and I were each going to tell you about a movie, she would describe it in terms of the actors, who their characters were and their relationship to each other. I, on the other hand, would tell you all about the plot line and the special effects. You’d get the same general information, but in two completely different formats.”
Milo nodded his head. “So she focuses on the people, you focus on the events.”
“Exactly,” I said beaming at him. Milo had a charming curiosity about all things psychic and I liked the fact that from the first time I’d met him he had regarded my gifts with an open mind and lack of judgment. Which is more than I could say for my boyfriend, who continued to harbor a heavy dose of skepticism for all things metaphysical. Secretly, I was happy Dutch had tasted a bit of something at the house on Fern that he couldn’t readily explain.
“So what’d Theresa say?” Dutch asked, wiping his hands on his napkin after polishing off his first hot dog.
“She confirmed a few of the clues I’d already hit on—”
“Excuse me?” Dutch interrupted. “What clues? And when did you get them?”
I smiled sheepishly at him. I hadn’t shared any of my intuitive thoughts about the house with him because I wasn’t sure what to make of them. “I know, I know,” I said, waving my hand. “I should have said something earlier, but when I first talked to Dave about the house I got a couple of hits right away, only I didn’t know how they fit until now.”
“What’d you see?” Milo asked.
“For starters there was this connection to World War II and a café with a French flag above a doorway. Theresa picked up almost exactly the same thing.”
“What else?” Dutch prompted.
I reached over to my folder and pulled out my notes, rearranged some pages and gave the men the highlights. “Theresa picked up the name John-Paul, although she thought it might be John or Paul. However, as it turns out, the house was owned by Avril and Jean-Paul Carlier from 1946 to 1968 when a death certificate for Avril was recorded. Jean-Paul held title solely from 1968 to 1990, when his death certificate was recorded and the house was inherited by his grandsons, James and Jean-Luke Carlier. Title then transferred from Jean-Luke to his brother through a power of attorney in 2002 where it remained until two days ago when it was sold to me.”
“So Jean-Paul must be your French connection and quite possibly your World War II reference,” Milo said.
I nodded at him. “Yep. We are definitely on the right track. I gotta believe with an energy as powerful as the one we encountered, that someone living in that house had to know it.”
“So what did you turn up, Milo?” Dutch asked, switching gears.
Milo sighed and said, “Bubkes.”
“Nothing?” Dutch and I said together.
“ ’Fraid so. I pooled through about a hundred years of police records, and the only thing I turned up were some complaints from neighbors in the late nineties about the house being an eyesore. The department logged the complaints but no follow-up was ever recorded. It looks like the neighbors all gave up after a while and put up privacy fences to
block out the view.”
“But that’s not possible!” I insisted. “Dutch and I saw a woman lying at the bottom of the stairs—she had to have died in that house to still be inhabiting it. There must be a police record of it. Even if she slipped and fell there should be some sort of police report or something, right?”
“Not if it wasn’t a slip and fall,” Dutch said ominously.
I gave him a quizzical look. “What do you mean?”
“Well, if she were murdered, and it was never reported, then there would be no record of it. The other obvious question to ask is, where’s the body?”
We all pondered that for a long moment until Milo asked, “Did Theresa pick up anything else, Abby?”
I paused, thinking for a minute before I remembered the female energy T had touched on. “Actually,” I said, shuffling through my notes again, “she mentioned the woman on the landing. She kept getting the name Liza, but I couldn’t find any reference to her in the chain of title. I really don’t think Liza is short for Avril, so I gotta believe they’re two different people.”
“Maybe she was a sister or daughter?” Milo suggested.
My left side felt thick and heavy. “My spidey-sense says no.”
Dutch began to pile up all of the trash from lunch and as he smunched wrappers and napkins together into one big pile he said, “Let me run Jean-Paul’s name through the national index and see what I can come up with. Sometimes the FBI has more on a local name that the police files do.”
“And now that I have a name to go on, I’ll head back to the library and look through old newspaper articles for anything on Jean-Paul and his grandsons.”
“Good idea,” Milo said as he stood up to go. “You two let me know if there’s anything else you need on my end.”
“Thanks, buddy,” Dutch said, as he pushed himself up off the couch, wincing the whole way. “We’ll keep you posted.”
Later that night as Dutch and I were watching television, his phone rang. He looked at the caller ID and promptly handed it to me. “It’s your sister.”
Frowning a little at the prospect of having to tell Cat we couldn’t work on the house until we solved the mystery of our ghost, I took the phone into the kitchen. “Hey, Cat!” I said brightly.
“You have got to help me!” she squealed into my ear.
“What’s the matter?”
“Our parents,” she said flatly. “I’m now convinced that you and I were adopted.” I had forgotten that Claire and Sam were due to make a pit stop at Cat’s on their way back to South Carolina. They must have just landed and I was now getting my first of many painful phone calls from Dysfunctionville, USA.
“That bad?” I asked, already knowing it was likely worse than even I expected.
“Claire is refusing to stay in the guest house! And Sam won’t do anything without Claire’s approval—so that means that I’m stuck! What am I going to do if they won’t stay in the guest house?!” Last summer my sister had begun construction on a two-thousand square foot guest house on the very edge of her property in anticipation of my parents’ visit. During construction, Cat had spared no expense knowing full well our mother’s natural inclination to be unhappy with anything less than spectacular. And so she’d gone to great lengths to ensure that Claire would be comfortable under a roof half an acre away.
“But I thought you furnished it with all of Mommy Dearest’s favorites. Why wouldn’t she want to stay there?”
“She doesn’t like the wall color.”
I blinked a few times in confusion. “Didn’t you go with off-white?” Our mother detested bright colors, and knowing this, Cat had gone as neutral as possible.
“Yes, but apparently it is not ‘off ’ enough!”
“Oh, you poor thing,” I offered, feeling her pain. “What are you going to do?”
“After I take a Xanax?” Cat said, with a heavy sigh. “I’m going to call the painter and pay him any amount of money it takes to repaint all the walls in twenty-four hours.”
“So, where’d you put her in the meantime?” I asked, privately chuckling at the messes my sister got herself into.
Cat groaned and said, “She took our room.”
“Claire and Sam are actually going to stay in your room?” Cat had the most luxurious, truly gorgeous bedroom suite I’d ever seen. It was as large as Dutch’s entire downstairs and besides accommodating a California king-sized bed, sitting area, separate office space and huge plasma TV, with individual his and her bathrooms, it also had the largest walk-in closet in New England.
“No,” my sister said tersely, “Claire is staying in our room. Sam has decided he wants to stay in the downstairs guest room.”
The guest room Cat mentioned was the second-largest room in the house and it was built to accommodate many of Tommy’s golfing buddies when they came into town. It too was a complete testament to luxury. “So where does that leave you, Tommy and the boys?”
“At the Four Seasons.”
I laughed, thinking she was making a joke, but when she didn’t join me, I asked, “You’re kidding, right?”
“Nope. I’m having our luggage loaded as we speak. I just wanted to call you and tell you where I’d be in case you needed me.”
“Wow. Well, have fun at the Four Seasons,” I said.
“Thanks, Abby. By the way, how’s our investment coming along?”
“Uh . . . we’re definitely making progress,” I hemmed.
“Good. At least one of us is. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Say hello to your man for me.”
“Will do. Good night, Cat.”
After hanging up the phone, I walked back into the living room and sat down next to Dutch, who wrapped his arm around me and pulled me in close. Kissing me on the forehead, he asked, “So did you tell her?”
“Not really.”
“How do you mean, ‘Not really’?”
“Not at all.”
Dutch began to cluck like a chicken and I flashed him a warning eyebrow. He smiled ruefully and asked, “What’s the worst that could happen?”
“My sister could show up here with a demolition crew and plow down the house.”
“Really?”
“Sugar, when it comes to making money, Cat is all about time. She doesn’t believe in waiting. The longer we take to figure out what the hell happened in that house, the more Cat’s profit gets postponed.”
“Maybe we’ll turn up something tomorrow in the FBI database or in the newspaper articles.”
With relief I felt my right side go light and airy. “Maybe we will.”
Chapter Five
“Holliday,” I heard a woman’s crisp voice announce through my cell phone as I pulled into a parking space near the Birmingham Public Library.
“Good morning, Miss Holliday. My name is Abigail Cooper and I got your name from a friend of mine who suggested you might be able to help me get rid of a certain unwelcome guest.”
“Hello, Abigail, please call me M.J.”
“Then please call me Abby,” I said, liking this woman immediately.
“Now talk to me about your problem,” she said, getting right to the point.
“It seems that I’ve purchased an investment property with a rather checkered past.”
“How so?”
I told her the story about purchasing the home with the hopes of fixing it up when my handyman encountered a violent energy that tossed his tools around like paper, and finished by describing what Dutch and I had seen. I also revealed what I did for a living and that her name had come to me by way of Theresa and what her own insights had been.
“Sounds like you’ve got yourself a doozy,” M.J. said when I was done. “What are you interested in having me do for you?”
“To be honest, I’m not sure what you can offer me—I mean, the only thing I know about ghost busters is what I learned from Bill Murray.”
M.J. laughed politely and replied, “Just don’t mention marshmallows and we’ll get along fine. I can offer you
a couple of different options. The first, and most expensive, is to uncover what happened in the house, confront the entity with that event and help them to cross over. Your investment property sounds like a pretty typical scenario, where a ghost is reliving the night of their death because they haven’t fully accepted their demise. In order for us to convince your ghost, we need to uncover what happened to cause their death, and force them to accept the truth.”
“As it happens, I’m already working that angle, but just for curiosity’s sake, what would that run me?”
“Two grand.”
I gulped. “Gee, that’s just slightly higher than I’d wanted to pay. Do you have anything more in the bargain basement category?”
M.J. chuckled. “I know I’m on the expensive side, but it’s more work than people realize. I suppose if you were willing to do your own detective work, and just needed me to confront the energy and help it cross over, I could cut you a deal for—say—five hundred?”
Five hundred bucks to avoid encountering a violent nasty poltergeist? “Sold,” I said without hesitation.
“Great. I’m in the middle of another case right now, but I should be finished in a week or two. Why don’t you call me when you’ve finished your research and I’ll hop a flight.”
“Where are you now?” I asked.
“Georgetown, D.C.”
“Cool. I’ll call you when I’ve figured things out. Thanks, M.J.”
“Good luck, Abby.”
We disconnected and I got out to shove a couple of quarters into the meter. I’d decided to head to the neighboring town of Birmingham to check out their records because it was a bigger and better funded library, and I figured it might have a few more resources than the one in my hometown. As I got out of the car I heard someone call my name, and turning, I saw one of my regular clients come trotting over. “Hey, Miriam,” I said when she drew close.
“Abby! I’m so happy I ran into you! I called your office yesterday, and your message said you were out for the month of January. I really, really need some advice.”