Bijou Page 3

  “Cut that shit out.” I moved between her and the car “You know why I summoned you.”

  She dipped her head, and her hair slid around her shoulders like a heavy curtain. “You summoned me? Believe that delusion if you want, but I came to see you. They got you here, that pair of losers. Just as I had hoped. Right on time.”

  “Is that why you have been harassing them, just to see me?” Later to ask her about Hollis. Afraid to ask her about Hollis. Folding my arms, I kept her in plain view. “So here I am. Tell me what is bothering you.”

  “It’s complicated.” Mae regarded the lily in her hand. “The first thing you can do is make something right, and then we shall see.”

  I sighed. She was going to make this a game, and it wasn’t going to be an easy game; it was going to be one where the rules changed and penalties mounted. Anxiety crept into me, a feeling I remembered from when Mae looked at me the way she was looking at me now. As if I were prey and she were one of her enormous stuffed leopards.

  “First, a warning.” Gray ladies always had a warning. My heart slipped out of my rib cage and landed somewhere in my pelvis.

  “Your little girl.” Mae turned, her hair flowing as if she were underwater. “Is in danger.”

  “From what,” I demanded. Quickly demand before the ghost can prevaricate. But Mae was ready for me. First she put one finger to her lips, then added two more fingers to the one on her mouth.

  I wished the crushed beer cans I saw scattered in the dry grass were full and one of them was in my hand. Not that, not another of Mae’s impossible lists of tasks, as if I were a princess seeking to free the sleeping prince. I nodded, slowly, my throat dry.

  Taking a deep breath that made no sound, Mae straightened her shoulders. Her skin was very white.

  “OK.” It was better not to argue with a ghost. Cooperation was key, along with firmness. “What must I do?”

  Now she smiled, and I remembered how beautiful she had been. Beautiful, as popular as she was, she was not an easy person to be around. Except for Sawyer, Hollis and me.

  “First, you must find the last volume of my diary. It’s hidden in the old Novak house, your old house, on Pine Street. You have to get it.”

  I held my ground, but looking at her was starting to hurt my eyes. I wanted to bolt, run back to the car and hug my daughter and get the hell out of here. But it was too late. I had brought Zoe from one danger straight into another. “And the second one?”

  “You have to talk to that baby.” Mae’s chin jutted out. She snapped the lily in half. “You will find out what really happened. Someone has to let everyone know what really happened.”

  I knew better than to ask a ghost to confess to anything. Ghosts were fond of rumor and riddle and giving tasks to the living, especially if they felt unusually wronged. I nodded, burning crawling up my throat.

  “And the third thing is,” She pressed her hand onto her cheek and tilted her head. Was she making this up as she went along? “This FOD thing. You have to stop it. Someone is going to die. Maybe more than one. The anniversary is tomorrow, and someone will die.”

  “Where, who? What are they planning?” The anniversary. I should have known. The very date, 16 years ago, when Mae died.

  She threw the lily on the ground. “That stupid book you’re holding. Meredith picked my worst work. My most pathetic whinings.”

  She took a strand of her hair and twirled it around her finger.

  I picked up the lily. It felt warm and weirdly waxy to my fingers, like a snake that been in the sun. “Mae, did you cause Hollis to die today?”

  Her eyes blazed, as if the sun unexpectedly came up behind me. “I lost my temper. I didn’t think—well. It doesn’t matter now. Although I don’t see him over here yet. It’s kind of strange. This whole place is out of kilter.”

  “I hear wraiths everywhere,” I admitted. “I didn’t know there were so many here.”

  She reached a hand toward me. I could see the frame of her bones under the skin the color of opals. My knees wavered, the bile crept closer. Not Zoe, what did she mean by Zoe being in danger?

  “You’re the only one, Annie. The time is crooked, dislocated.” As if to emphasize, her wrist snapped and her hand drooped unnaturally.

  Swallowing, I forced myself to look, not to waver, to keep her here as long as I could. But she was very strong, and a frosty sheen covered her body—she touched my neck and her ice-bound fingers sent an arctic chill snaking through my blood.

  “Only you, Annie Lee. You have to act fast. They are getting closer, and they like Zoe. Yes, they like her a lot.”

  I doubled over as if a chunk of ice whacked my stomach. Gasping, I fought to straighten, to keep her there, to show her that I too had grown strong in life, where she could only be strong in death. But when I straightened, she was walking away from me, lit up as if the sun had not set where she was. It glowed orange on her skin, and sent bolts of fuchsia colors through her hair.

  "Wait, what was the baby’s name? I can’t remember," I croaked after her.

  Doing windmills with her arms she did not turn around, but I heard her voice just as clear as if she were speaking into my ear..

  "Justin. Ask for Justin Nash."

  Passing through the barricades, Mae seemed to shrink more rapidly than she would if she were merely walking away. A fast-motion moving picture, her image dwindled, hovered for a moment like an uncertain firefly. Then she was gone.

  The sky darkened and stars salted the sky. The breeze’s sharper note disturbed the grasses more urgently. The stem of the lily in my hand had blackened where Mae grasped it. Such was the touch of Death’s hand.

  Chapter Three

  Old Flame

  On Ivy’s patio a strand of tiki lights illuminated three people. Off to my left the pool lights caused the water to take on a milky sheen. Rich odors of night—juniper and moonflower—filled my nose. Curious, not frightened, I stopped a few feet away from the three on the patio.

  An hour before, weak as hot lettuce when I staggered back to the car after my conversation with Mae, I made Bruce drive us home. He and Zoe were standing beside the car when I arrived, poised to find me as ordered; I was too relieved and exhausted to reprimand Zoe for disobeying me.

  When we got home I didn’t get as far as my bedroom. Sprawled on the couch, I sank into a rough stupor, my muscles flaming and a particularly evil rack of burning coals behind each eye. Now I remembered why I disliked summoning, but I had never felt this ruined by it before. Dimly I felt someone drape a blanket over me.

  Ivy had to pry Zoe out of my arms, I recalled. I had been clinging to her, my eyes shut against the pain. As I lay unable to move, I thought I could still smell Zoe near me, and opening my eyes I saw her curled in one of Ivy’s big plushy chairs, her head on one arm, asleep. Darkness and silence filled the room; the clock on the bookcase tsked rhythmically, calling out the minutes we were losing.

  But I had to rest. There was so much to do. I felt sleep pull me down.

  Five minutes later I was startled awake by harsh voices. Had Mae appeared here, making a scene, demanding action? Sliding my feet to the floor, my arms quivered as I sat up. I would tell her to leave us alone for tonight. The Novaks would not stand for the intrusion! The bookcase clock sneered that I had been asleep for a mere hour. My burning eyes said it was a liar. Now I stood at the entrance to the rear sliding doors, looking at this strange scene.

  Ivy stood just outside her open sliding glass door, a bottle of beer in one hand, a book in the other. Behind her Bruce wavered, a huge custodian, and as I lurched to a stop he stepped in front of his mother. I couldn’t see whom he was protecting her from.

  This was not a ghost. The man they faced was the same height as me, sandy hair combed to curl on his forehead. In tidy blue madras shirt with the sleeves rolled up and khaki Dockers, he appeared to be fully of the flesh.

  Bitter and high-pitched, Ivy’s voice cut through the cricket-song. “I tell you she’s not here and I h
aven’t seen her. You don’t have a right to barge in here accusing my son.”

  I cringed, embarrassed for my sister. Then Bruce spoke in a deeply soft way. “I’m sorry, Mr. Webster. I don’t know where she is, either.”

  In a flash I got what the tableau was all about. The strong nose, exaggerated shapely lips. I had seen them before. The memory stabbed me with a sweet nervous joy. The moment I recognized the man, his face tight with anger, his right hand in a fist, he noticed me. I took a few steps toward him

  I swallowed. “Hi, Sawyer, how are ya?”

  Narrowing his eyes, he pondered only a moment. “Annie!”

  A wild, lonely part of my mind wanted to run to him with a hug, but I hesitated; animosity simmered between my old best friend and my sister. Best friend and old flame, one might say.

  He smiled in a way I remembered from high school, with one corner of his mouth, looking, and I realized I stood there in only tank top, panties, and nothing more.

  Finding dignity from somewhere, I held out my hand. He took it, still smiling. His was warm and dry.

  “You look great, Annie.”

  Certainly, I thought. Half-naked, wearing crooked wire-rimmed glasses, my hair standing on end. I looked like Miss Universe.

  “So Libra is your daughter,” I stepped back a little, positioning myself in the place I was expected to be, between my sister and old friend who obviously despised each other.

  “I hate that name.” His voice was edgy again, and he glared over my shoulder at my nephew, the boyfriend, the natural focus of a father’s suspicion and vituperation. “Her name is Agnes.”

  I didn’t blame her for changing it, but I didn’t like the name she chose, either.

  Sawyer’s glance shifted over my shoulder again. “Young man, I have told her to stop seeing you. I know you were with her tonight.”

  Behind me came Bruce’s voice his voice deep and very respectful. “No, Mr. Webster, I’m sorry, but I didn’t see her. We were out, you see, and—”

  “We went out for a late pizza. You know, that new 24 hour pizza joint?” I waved my hand behind me at Ivy, begging for help. Sawyer didn’t need to know we had just talked to Mae’s ghost.

  “Ah, right. Over in Dublin. Great pepperoni.” Ivy’s voice lost its edge.

  “She’s too young for you, you understand?” Sawyer’s fists opened and closed. I remember he did have a temper, throwing his books across the room in class one day when the teacher told him his opinion of Ronald Reagan was rubbish. “Wait a minute. She didn’t go with you?”

  Worry clouded his face; his smile vanished. I reached for his hand. “When did you see her last?” What in the world was a fourteen-year-old girl doing out after 1am on a Thursday night? Even if it was summer break?

  “This morning” Sawyer stared at me, yellow, green and red light patterning his face. In the distance, we all heard a siren. “She said she was going swimming, then having dinner at her friend Madison’s house, then a movie. She always tells me the plot of the movie, but she could be getting that off the Internet, for all I know.”

  He swung a hand down, turned from me. Fear for Zoe turned me around, but to my relief I saw her standing in the sliding glass door, Pepper beside her, watching us. I knew I should send her to bed, but I didn’t want to let her out of my sight.

  I said, “I’m sure she’s alright. Maybe she’s staying over at Madison’s?” My words sounded false, lame, but I couldn’t think of what else to say. “Call them, make sure. Even if you wake them up, they’ll understand.”

  I understood that the humiliation of being unable to control his daughter pricked at him as he gazed at the pool.

  “Sir,” Bruce stepped forward, his cell phone in hand, and Sawyer shifted quickly, closed the gap. I wished I knew martial arts as I stood between them. “Sir, she texted me a half an hour ago. They’re at the cemetery.”

  We all stared at him. Ivy’s cheeks flamed and I stopped myself from grabbing him and shaking him. Might be six inches taller and twice as heavy, but I wanted to wring his neck.

  The cricket song seemed to falter and dim. All I could hear was Sawyer’s breathing as he tried to calm himself. Ivy punched her hand into Bruce’s chest. “You aren’t going anywhere near that cemetery.”

  A few more tense seconds passed before Sawyer inhaled, swallowed as if the words he was about to say burned in his throat. He pointed at Bruce. “You tell her to call me.”

  Then he walked toward the breezeway between the garage and the house. Ivy’s shrill voice pierced the air as he left. “Don’t you just walk in here like that again, Sawyer Webster. I’ll call the cops next time.”

  I ran after him and he stopped on the driveway. He turned to look at me. He stood barely an inch over me. The intervening years had cragged his face, but I could still see the old Sawyer in his eyes.

  “Annie, your sister is still crazy. And that son of hers, he’s a mental case.” His voice was sharp.

  His words chipped at me. “I know Ivy is crazy, and probably crazier than ever. But Bruce, he’s a good kid. He really loves Agnes.”

  Sawyer’s lips became a firm, irritated line. “Annie, he started this whole thing. He showed Mae’s book to my daughter. Meredith had to go and get it published, and now look what’s happened. Aggie is out all night, she slumps around negative and depressed, and that boy is the cause of it all.”

  I had no reply. I didn’t know the truth yet, and I certainly had heard a lot of lies and half-truths today.

  Sawyer gazed out at the street. In the driveway was a nearly new BMW. Whatever he was doing, he was doing it well.

  “I’m sorry, Annie. I have to go. I’m going out to the cemetery. Third time this week I’ve been out there to get her. Damn this age. They are insane at this age.”

  Walking around his car, I saw his shoulders broader than I remembered. He was still working out, building a fortress against the inevitable attack of middle age.

  I didn’t want him to go. I wanted to go with him. Strange and insane were all the Novaks. I called over the hood, “Can we get together? Soon? I need to ask you something.”

  The smile again. At least his mouth, if not his eyes. “I’ll call you. Sorry I’m in such a bad mood.”

  “That’s OK. Tomorrow? Call me.” He nodded, got in the car, backed down the driveway. I stood rooted in my underwear. Dread settled over me, chilling my stomach. My bones ached as if a fleet of semis had run over me, then turned around and come back for another try. But yes, perhaps talking to Sawyer could help with the puzzle before me.

  Back on the patio, Ivy smoked alone at her table. Bruce had vanished, likely hoping to sneak out to meet Libra. I stood beside my sister a moment, and she raised her hand as if to silence what I wasn’t ready to say.

  Pepper swiped my thigh with her slick, cold tongue. Behind her, Zoe stood in the doorway, looking small and frightened. Shoving aside worrisome ghosts, not the ectoplasmic kind, but the ghosts of memory like Sawyer Webster and Hollis Bettencourt, I picked up my girl, all nine-years-old of her, and carried her to bed.

  I slipped in beside her and we fell into sleep together. Crickets called down several lullabies that I could never have croaked with my reedy voice. Tomorrow, I thought as the shade of sleep pulled down, I will begin.

  Outside, shapes wavered, floated like marsh candles over Ivy’s still pool, muttered through the ash tree leaves, and laid their silver paws on the cooling concrete. If Mae walked among them, I didn’t hear her. For tonight, she would leave me alone. But someone out there, alive or dead, was waiting for the fun to begin.

  Chapter Four

  “How I arrived there, it was hard to tell”

  Behind gray hanks of feathery pepper tree fronds, the old Novak house stood concealed from the road. Leaning on my car for the past fifteen minutes, I had seen no evidence of human activity. The For Sale sign, declaiming the phone number and name of a Vineyard Realty agent, lay on its side on a pile of branches, leaves, and broken concrete. It didn’t matter
. Ivy told me the house was sold.

  The driveway pepper trees Dad had kept trim wore shaggy beards and ragged branches. The drive made a circle, ended in the garage to the left; moss rimmed a jagged hole in the garage roof; its doors stood open, and I could see broken toys, clothes, plastic garbage bags leaking from it like the entrails of a kill.

  The house itself still looked mighty, built of quarried stone carried here more than 100 years ago by some enterprising pioneer. Arches spanned a long veranda; the second story windows, still intact, amazingly, looked down on the weed-choked lawn. Dad had planted dichondra there, a blue-green ground cover where we built fortresses and staged history-bending battles, my brother Dick and I. Before Ivy came.

  The property was sold and scheduled to be torn down, according to Ivy. She also told me squatters resided here, runaways. I thought it odd that a small burg like Quantum City could even harbor runaways, but the ills of big cities visited small towns, too. Perhaps they were part-time runaways, pissed off at whichever parent had charge of them at the moment, spending a few days scrounging food and getting high before wandering home to X-Box and frozen pizza.

  I left Zoe at home, asleep, Pepper charged with guardianship, a role she relished, and left early. Morning traffic swished past behind me; a busy street, good place for condos or whatever was going in here. But the owners of the condos might not sleep very well at night. The Novak place was haunted, after all.

  I worried not about residents wakened by what could not be explained by subterranean waters, but about a certain place in the cellar. Not for the first time did I wonder if Mae’s instruction to get her final diary out of what had once been my house was also a clue to something else, a threat to the very being of the Novaks.

  Seeing no squatters or real estate agents, I left the sidewalk where morning sun multiplied the heat units, and strolled up the driveway into the relative cool of the pepper trees. The smell of sage and eucalyptus filled my nostrils—behind the house a stand of the milky-trunked, gray crescent-shaped leafed trees still stood. Beyond them I could see the concrete wall of a housing encampment, where 20 years ago there had been a pasture for Herefords.