A Question of Ghosts (23 page)

“You went back into a burning house,” Jo panted, “for your
sticks
?”

“I smacked him good, too,” Becca pointed out proudly. “You sure you’re all right?”

“I’m peachy.” Jo touched her brow and winced. She lifted her head and heard the far-off whine of a siren. “I think we woke the neighbors.” The clattering of the toolbox down the stone steps would have roused the dead. She nodded across the street toward the cemetery. “Perhaps all of them.”

“Good.” Becca sighed. She took Jo’s hand and cradled it on her knee.

They sat side by side on their unconscious stalker and watched the house of Becca’s nightmares erupt in flames. The night air crackled now with the ugly snap of burning wood, and scarlet light flooded over them. Becca rested her head on Jo’s shoulder, an odd take on a couple seated before a romantic fire, and they waited together quietly, content, for the moment, with safety and silence.

*

Becca’s first bout of shakes had taken her and passed by the time Pam Emerson pulled up in her efficient Kia. The neighborhood was still awash in revolving red lights and the flickering gold of the smoldering house. Their arsonist had been treated by EMTs and was strapped to a gurney, and Pam had grilled her and Jo thoroughly. Becca was distantly aware that they were standing in a puddle of water, one of several left dotting the ground by powerful hoses.

Dawn was at least an hour away. Smoke still wafted through the street, but the fire was under control. At least the adjoining houses were no longer in danger from showers of sparks. Clumps of people stood on the dark sidewalk on either side of the property, kept at bay by firefighters and assorted police. The distant warbling of radios cut through the air at intervals.

Becca looked around for a place to sit, but benches were in short supply. She had allowed Jo to leave her long enough to put her bag in the rented BMW, but she still cradled the Spiricom in her arms. Becca realized she was stroking it like an electronic cat, and she leaned against Jo ruefully.

“I’m glad you saved this. You already lost one very pricey vehicle and every precious toy in your office in this deal. At least we salvaged your favorite Spiricom.”

“We salvaged everything that’s precious to me, Becca.” Jo slid her arm around her shoulders with an ease that touched Becca as much as her words.

She closed her eyes against Jo’s breast. With the house in flames, Jo had rescued her Spiricom, and her bag, and Becca. Becca had rescued only her chobos and the flat bottle of Scotch she still carried in her shirt.

“Okay, ladies.” Pam joined them, looking rumpled in the shorts and loose tank top she probably slept in, but her dark eyes were snapping and alert. “Medics checked you both out, right?”

“Yes, we’ve been checked.” Jo shrugged off the light cotton blanket the EMT had insisted on draping over them. “What do you know so far?”

“Well, the gentleman over there is awake. Might have a concussion, but he’ll live. We’re running him to Harborview’s ER. No ID, and he won’t tell us his name, no big surprise. But we’ll print him, and I intend to sit with him for the next twenty hours or so, and ask him lots and lots of questions.” Pam smiled like a shark. “We’ll find out who he is.”

Jo nodded. “I’m taking Becca to my place. We’ll call you once we’ve had some sleep.”

“Can I talk to him first?” Becca couldn’t believe she was sug-gesting this, but it felt important. “Now, before he’s fogged up by meds?”

Pam squinted at her. “Yeah, if you’re up to it. He might spill something to you he wouldn’t to us. He’s strapped down,” she added unnecessarily, but Becca appreciated the sentiment.

She looked up at Jo, who stayed right beside her as they made their way to the cluster of police and medics around the gurney. Pam spoke to two of them, who parted to let them come closer.

The man wasn’t as young as Becca had assumed. That was her first impression. This was no kid. He looked older than her or Jo. And sick, or at least chronically malnourished. His weathered face turned toward them, and he stared at Becca.

“All right, Smoky,” Pam addressed the man dryly. “Those rights I read you are still in effect. You remember, anything you say, can and will.” She lifted her chin at Becca.

Becca cleared her throat, and the circle around them fell silent. “Do I know you?”

The man didn’t answer, and for a long moment Becca thought he would refuse. Then he smiled, displaying the distinctive, ruined teeth of a chronic meth user. His voice emerged in a harsh drawl.

“You tell my daddy hello for me, Becca.”

Becca stood still. He said no more, and she didn’t ask anything else. She didn’t have to. She recognized his voice.

“Becca?” Jo’s warm breath stirred her hair, but she couldn’t move.

Music played in Becca’s head. The experience didn’t feel psychotic or particularly alarming, just a soft and happy sprinkling of notes.

Olivia Newton-John, a song from
Grease
. Becca had just seen the movie, and loved it. A brief but clear vision of a party outside on the grass. A cake with candles. Hands holding out a wrapped present, the one that delighted Becca the most that day.
The box that contained the doll she would clutch so desperately late that night, after her parents died.

“The gift held blood.”

The hands that gave her the wrapped box at the party were the same ones that pressed the doll into Becca’s arms that night. And they were not her mother’s hands.

Finally, the medics wheeled the gurney away and loaded it into a waiting ambulance.

“Hey.” Pam touched Becca’s arm. “What gives, Bec?”

Becca shook her head. She looked up at Jo, moved out from under her arm, and walked toward the cemetery.

She was starting to remember who shot her parents, and she wanted a drink.

Chapter Nineteen

“Leave us alone.” Jo’s words were abrupt, but Pam was clan and she understood; she just nodded.

Becca wasn’t hurrying and so Jo didn’t either, but she was unstoppable as a truck, or a brakeless Bentley. Barefoot and still clutching the Spiricom, Becca found no hindrance in the barred iron gate of Lake View Cemetery. She simply climbed over it. Jo could have caught her there, but she let her walk ahead, into the silent darkness of the grounds beyond.

Jo tried to count down from a hundred, but only made it to seventy before she had to follow. She climbed the gate mechanically and dropped to the other side. Becca’s white T-shirt glowed in the distance. The moon was thin but intensely bright and shed patches of silvered light on the grass. Jo knew this path by now, and could have found her way in complete darkness.

She came over the small rise and stopped short, and her heart gave an uneasy snap in her chest. The Lady of the Rock was shrouded in smoke.

Perhaps a breeze had carried the smoke from the burning house this far, but no smoke Jo had ever seen held the ethereal, witchy quality of this shimmering fog. The Lady’s face was masked by its light tendrils, and it swirled at the base of the statue, around Becca, who sat leaning against it. Jo corrected herself. She had seen this eldritch mist before, cloaking the Lady in her dream, and gooseflesh rose on her forearms.

Becca sat still, her back stiff against the base of the statue. Jo couldn’t see her features clearly from here, but she was holding something in her hands. She stared at it with a fierce concentration Jo could read in every line of her body.

Jo walked closer, and her heart gave another uneasy pang when she realized Becca held a small bottle. But when she looked up at Jo, there was no uncertainty in her. This wasn’t the laughing Becca or the frightened one, this was the Amazon.

“I’ve beaten this,” Becca said. She held out the bottle to Jo.

The mist swirled around Jo’s knees as she went to Becca and took the bottle from her. In deference to the sleeping dead around them, she made her way to the path between graves before twisting off its cap. Jo poured out the liquor on the ground, mumbling some vague version of a prayer of thanks. She rested the empty bottle at the side of the path and returned to the Lady.

The statue awaited her silently, holding watch over both her daughters.

Jo sat in the soft fog beside Becca, who cradled the Spiricom in her lap now. She said nothing, and Jo wished fervently, not for the first time, that this woman came with some kind of online manual. She didn’t know what to say.

“You know who he is, don’t you?” Jo asked finally.

“Yes, I think I do.” Becca was gazing at the Spiricom.

“Once we weren’t sitting on him, he looked familiar to me.” Jo grimaced. “My head’s just too busy right now. I can’t place him.”

Becca handed her the Spiricom. “Tune this in, please?”

Jo looked around. They couldn’t hope for much beneath the open canopy of the sky in the expanse of a cemetery, but she complied, turning dials. To her relief, the small screen flickered with light under her touch.

“I’m going to ask you to do something hard, Jo. I don’t want you to ask me any questions right now.”

“You’re asking me to stop breathing.”

“I know.” Becca leaned her shoulder against her briefly, and a ghost of a smile crossed her lips. “But there’s a lot to work out in my head before I can be sure. And we need to talk to other people first. Be patient with me, okay?”

“Becca…”

“Try.”

“Okay.”

Becca took the Spiricom back and held it in her lap. The screen cast a mild gold light across her face.

“Hey, you.” Becca spoke as easily, as normally, as if she were sitting across from her mother, sharing a cup of cocoa. “I hope you’re listening. I want you to know I understand what happened now. Not all the details. I still don’t understand why. But I know who, Mom.”

Jo felt a shudder go through Becca, a quick and hard grimace of the soul, but it passed.

“You didn’t do it. You didn’t kill Dad. You didn’t leave me.” Becca’s eyes filled with tears, but she smiled with a sweetness that made Jo fall in love with her all over again. “I get that. You never would have left me.”

The Spiricom hissed softly. Madelyn Healy answered from a great distance, and her voice was calm and free.

“
Thank you, little girl.
”

“Rest well.”

The hissing fell silent. Becca touched a switch on the Spiricom, and the small screen went dark.

“I doubt we’ll hear from her again. I think she’s gone.” Becca looked at Jo wistfully, as if she were newly orphaned. “You were right. That’s all she wanted. She didn’t do it, and all that ever mattered to her was my knowing that.”

Jo slid her arm around Becca’s waist and let her rest against her. Questions were all but exploding out of her throat, but she curbed them firmly. “Tell me what you need from me.”

“This is what I need from you. I want you to sit here and hold me until the sun comes up. Then you’re going to drive me to my place so I can get some clothes.”

“And then?”

“My mother may not need justice, but I do.” Becca’s voice grew quietly savage. “We’re going to visit my Uncle Mitchell.”

Chapter Twenty

Patricia Healy waited for them in the open doorway of her stately house.

In Jo’s experience with Becca’s aunt, Patricia had been anxious and rather remote, but never haggard, as she appeared this morning. She wore a tailored ensemble appropriate for the office, but her skirt and jacket were rumpled, as if they’d been donned the day before.

When Patricia saw Becca, she slumped against the door in visible relief and lowered her head. She said nothing; only stepped back and opened the door wider to admit them both. Jo learned something else as she walked into the elegant entry. Judging by the fumes issuing from Patricia Healy, she was drunk as a lord.

The neighborhood was wealthy enough to foster trees that attracted songbirds, and their lilting music drifted through the Healy house. It wasn’t a fitting score for Jo’s mood, which was leaning decidedly dark. Her nerves were wound like clock springs turned tight, her body shaky and weak. She tried to mirror Becca’s composure as they walked into the large dining room.

Mitchell Healy had apparently passed a more peaceful night than any of them. He sat at the cherry wood table, neatly robed, silver hair brushed, legs crossed at the knee. He was lifting a cup of coffee to his lips but paused when he saw them.

Jo realized his sleep wasn’t as untroubled as she’d thought. His eyes were ringed with shadows. When he saw Becca, he betrayed the same quick flicker of relief that Patricia had shown. As far as Jo knew, no one had yet notified the Healys of the arson. She didn’t understand why they seemed so attuned to Becca’s recent danger.

“There, I told you, Pat.” Mitchell set down his cup, got up, and went to Becca. He took her arms gently, and she allowed it. “Becca, you look just fine. Your aunt has worried herself into a frenzy for nothing. Doctor.” Mitchell nodded tersely at Jo.

She returned it, just in case Becca’s dictum that Jo be nice to her family was still in effect. She kept an eye on Patricia, who had followed them into the dining room. She wore her alcohol as if it were new to her, moving with the studied care of the inexperienced inebriate.

“Please sit down.” Mitchell led Becca toward the table. “We can’t offer you much in the way of breakfast, I’m afraid. We weren’t expecting company this early on a Saturday morning. But there’s cof—”

“Mitchell.” Becca removed his hand from her arm carefully. “You need to tell me why we were almost killed last night by a man who’s been dead for thirty years.”

Mitchell went still. Jo saw a spark fire behind his eyes—clear disbelief, denial. But Patricia’s features, even blurred by drink, revealed only acceptance.

“Loren Mitchell Perry.” Becca spoke the name with no venom. “I’ve never forgotten his voice. Even as a kid, Loren spoke with that affectation, that tough drawl. Rachel’s dead son set the house on fire last night, with Jo and me inside.”

“Oh, sweet…” Patricia sagged into a side chair, but Becca kept her eyes on her uncle.

Mitchell sighed harshly. “They’ve caught him?”