A Stir of Echoes (21 page)

  "She just left us a note," said Mrs. Sentas.

  I tried to hold back the thunderous beating of my heart.

  "I see," I said. "Well… shall we try to-?" I gestured toward the card table and chairs.

  "Come on, Mildred, let's get the hell outa here," Sentas said.

  She waved his words aside, looking at me intently. "What do you hope to accomplish, Mr. Wallace?" she asked. "I may as well tell you I don't believe a word of this talk. But I am concerned about Helen."

  "It's very simple," I said. "We sit around that card table and I try to-locate your sister, so to speak."

  "Oh, for-!" Sentas stood up with a heavy thump. "Maybe you're crazy enough t' stay here, Mildred, but I ain't!"

  "We'll stay." It was all she said but, in a second, I sensed the entire relationship between her and Sentas: the ignorant, loud-mouthed man married to the ugly but well-to-do woman; the woman preferring this to sterile spinsterhood.

  I stood up. "Shall we sit down then?" I suggested.

  Without a word, Anne and Mrs. Sentas took their places at the table. Mrs. Sentas sat very stiffly, her face an emotion-stripped mask. With a muttered curse, her husband sat across from me, the chair creaking beneath his bulk. He crossed his arms and looked balefully at me. There was something animal in his eyes-and in his mind. I felt waves of it buffeting at me, cold with animosity.

  "All right," I said, trying to ignore him, "just sit quietly, please."

  Mrs. Sentas didn't move. Anne looked at me fearfully and shuddered. Sentas leaned back in the chair and it squeaked. "Lota crap," he muttered.

  Then it was silent. I waited until they were settled fully and closed my eyes. The only sound I could hear was the heavy breathing of Harry Sentas. I tried to blank my mind, feeling positive that something was going to happen. I don't know why I felt so sure; it was just a conviction in my mind.

  After a while I began to wonder why Sentas was breathing so hard. Until, abruptly, with a last fleck of consciousness, I realized that it was me. My chest was laboring with breath and clouds of darkness were settling over my mind. I felt my feet and ankles, hand and wrists going ice cold. My breath grew heavier yet, until it was a violent, body-wrenching intake and output of air. I caught a momentary vision of the three of them staring at me. Then I was gone.

  Anne told me later what happened.

  Almost as soon as I closed my eyes my breathing became agitated. My head went limp on my neck and lolled from side to side; my hands which started on my lap slid off and hung limply, twitching once in a while; my features went slack, mouth slipping open, all my features losing definition, becoming plastic and devoid of personality.

  This went on for many minutes.

  Then, suddenly, the accelerated breathing stopped and it was dead quiet.

  They gasped as my head snapped up alertly, eyes still shut. There was a dry clicking in my throat, a rattling, a gagging crackle-like the sound of an idiot attempting speech.

  Which speech came.

  "Mildred," I said, flatly, expressionlessly.

  Mrs. Sentas gasped and cringed in her chair, her dark eyes fixed to my face.

  "Mildred," I said. "Mildred."

  There was a quick, dry exhalation from her.

  "You-you'd better answer," Anne told her in a whisper.

"Mildred?"
I insisted.

  "… yes," she said.

  My face fell abruptly into an expression of utter despair.
"Mildred"
I said, my voice breaking with emotion. "Oh, God, Mildred. Where
are
you?"

  "Oh…" Mrs. Sentas was trembling, staring at me in horror.

  I stretched out my hand. "Mildred?"

  "No," she whimpered, drawing back.

  "Mildred?" I reached around for her.

  "God damn it, stop it," muttered Sentas.

  I touched her cold, shaking hand and held it. Mrs. Sentas moaned. She tried to draw it back but I wouldn't let her.

  "I'm sorry, Mildred," I said, miserably. "Oh, God, I'm so sorry, darling."

  A wild-eyed Sentas started to reach out but Anne held up a hand and blocked him. "No!" she whispered furiously.

  "Mildred," I said, "it's me, Helen."

  Mrs. Sentas suddenly bent over, sobbing helplessly.

  "Mildred, don't hate me," I said, "please don't hate me."

  "Stop this damn-!"

  Sentas broke off abruptly as, with a serpent like hiss, I jerked back my hand and sat erect in my chair. Suddenly, my eyes opened.

  I stared at him.

  "Come on, let's go," he said to his wife, apparently thinking I was now awake.

"Harry,"
I said in a terrible voice.

  He glared at me. "Look, boy," he started, then was quiet, staring at me, open-mouthed, suddenly realizing that I wasn't awake at all.

  "Harry," I said, "Harry Sentas." My teeth clenched and breath began to hiss between my teeth. "God damn you to hell, Harry, you dirty bastard, you. You filthy son-of-a-"

  Suddenly, I closed my eyes and threw a hand over my eyes.
"Oh, God what have I done?"
I sobbed. I raised my head. I held out imploring hands toward Harry

  Sentas, my cheeks covered with running tears. "Harry, why?" I asked. "Why, Harry,
why?"
With a hoarse shout, Harry Sentas flung the table over me, sending me sprawling back on the floor.

TWENTY

  I CAME TO WITH A VIOLENT RUSH. Sight and sound broke over me like club blows: Sentas starting toward me, face mottled with hate, his wife holding him back; Anne pushing up from her chair to help me; the room spinning and wavering around me. There was a terrible dryness in my throat and upper chest as if those areas had been blotted of all moisture. My head ached pulsingly.

  "Honey!" I stared at Anne's fear distended face as she knelt by me.

  "Lemme go!" I heard Sentas snarling. "Who the hell does he think he is, pullin' a stunt like this!"

  And Mrs. Sentas' voice, near hysterical, telling him, "Stop it!
Stop it!"

  I couldn't follow the transition from their struggle in the living room to their exit from the house. Time and movement ran together crazily. I thought they were there and then they weren't. I thought I was on the floor and then I was lying on the sofa with Anne bending over me, patting at my face with a cold, wet cloth.

  "Water." It was the first thing I managed to say. I sounded like a legionnaire discovered in the desert, dry-lunged and hoarse. I asked for it again and I must have looked terrible because Anne ran into the kitchen and brought back one of the big brown glasses filled with water. I drank it in one convulsive swallow.

  Then I sighed and sank back. "Gawd," I said, "I forgot about that one."

  "What?" She still looked frightened.

  I patted her hand, smiling feebly. "I'm all right," I said. "I forgot about mediums' getting violently thirsty. Not that I'd planned on conking out like that. What in God's name happened?"

  She told me.

  "No wonder they left," I said.

  "With a bang," she said. She shook her head with a pained smile. "This has been one
hell
of a summer," she said.

  I returned an equally pained smile and we held on to each other. There wasn't much humor left in us, though. I could feel that old gnawing half-terror, half-awe coming back again.

  "Anne," I said.

  "Don't say it," she said.

  I swallowed. "All right," I agreed, "but-about Sentas."

  She drew back, looking worried. "You sure made him angry."

  "I think I know why," I said.

  She didn't ask the question but I knew she was thinking it.

  "Helen Driscoll never went back east," I said.

  "She-?" Anne stared at me, waiting.

  "She died here," I said. "Sentas killed her."

"What?"

  "I'd bet on it," I said. "It all fits. If he knew she was back east why should it bother him so much? What happened tonight, I mean."

  "Well, I… sort of-"

  "What, honey?"

  "I thought maybe he'd-been having an affair with this Helen Driscoll and was afraid you knew about it and were trying to blackmail him or something. I don't think he believes what you said about the-the medium business."

  "I don't think so either," I said, "but his reaction was too strong if it's only what you think-which I think too, of course. I believe he
was
sleeping with Helen Driscoll. But I also believe that he killed her, then wrote that note to make it look as if she'd gone back east, to New York."

  "But-where is she then?"

  "Probably buried in some canyon," I said.

  Anne shuddered. "How
awful,"
she said. "But… how can we be sure? If she is dead, how can the police prove anything?" I sensed that she was talking quickly to keep to the surface details, avoiding that plunge into the significance of Helen Driscoll's being dead yet being seen and heard.

  "I don't know," I said. "I'm sure any testimony I gave would be laughed out of court."

  "If only they knew where this woman was buried," Anne said, "assuming you're right-and I'm half inclined to believe it." She shuddered again. "Oh, God," she said. "And he was here-going for you."

  "Shhh." I put my arms around her and patted her back. I tried to think of an answer. But what I'd said was perfectly true. What could I tell the police that could, possibly, convince them?
I'm a medium and the murdered woman appeared to me in a vision?
They
would
laugh me out of court. They wouldn't even let me in court in the first place; they'd laugh me out of the station house.

  And yet I knew it was true. I knew it. Everything pointed to it. The reaction Sentas had shown to Richard's speaking his name that night. The reaction he'd shown to what I'd said tonight. His obvious attempts to keep his wife away from our house lest she discover anything. The note supposedly left by Helen Driscoll. The fact that her sister had never seen her leave. The basic situation itself-an ugly, dictatorial wife, an animal like husband; and, finishing the picture, the wife's good-looking sister living in the next house- probably threatening to tell about Sentas' infidelity; the fury rushing to Sentas' brain, his wild little eyes looking for something to hurt with, to-

  "I'll be damned," I said.

  "What?"

  "The poker," I said. I went over to it and, bracing myself, picked it up.

  Anne saw the way I twitched. "This is why I left it on the floor that night," I told her. "It's-" Gingerly, I let it drop. "That's what she was killed with," I said.

  Anne looked at me, at the poker.

  "Bring it over here to the lamp, will you?" I asked.

  "Do I-have to?"

  "I can't touch it, honey," I said.

  As if it were a snake, she brought it over and held it under the bright aura of the lamp.

  "I figured as much," I said.

  "What?"

  "He scrubbed it off. I'm sure there isn't a speck of evidence on it."

  Anne grimaced, knowing exactly what I meant by evidence; I could see it in her mind. She put the poker back in its holder as I stood staring into the fireplace.

  "Wouldn't there be some other evidence?" she asked.

  "It's probably all gone by now. I wouldn't even know where to start looking."

  "If it's true," Anne said, "couldn't they-
make
him tell?"

  I shook my head. "Without the body it wouldn't mean a-"

  It hit me.
"I wonder,"
I said.

  She didn't speak but I saw fear creeping back into her face.

  "Those old stories," I said, "about-ghosts, about the haunting of houses. They very often find, buried underneath the houses-"

"Tom."
She looked sick. "For pity's sake."

  "I'm sorry," I said. "I know it's a hideous thought but-well it might be true, Anne. That look on the woman's face. Pleading."

  "Tom, please…"

  "Well, there's only one way to find out."

  "No," she murmured; then, repelled, added, "Now?"

  "Sentas may leave, Anne. If he thinks I have anything definite against him he might get out."

  "Yes, but-" She sank down heavily on the sofa. "I can't help you," she said. She shook her head. "Oh God, I hope this is all a dream," she said. "If I find out we've been living on top of a-" She closed her eyes.

  "I'll only be a few minutes," I said. I started for the kitchen.

  "Tom?"

  I turned in the doorway.

  "Where… where are you going to look?" she asked.

  I gestured weakly. "Under the house I guess," I said. "He wouldn't have-done it in the back yard. It might get dug up accidentally."

  I looked at her pained expression a moment, then turned away. "I'll be right back," I said.

  I went out into the cold night air and down the alley to the side door of the garage. Inside, I flicked on the light and found the hand shovel-it would be too confined under the house to use the long-handled one. I pulled the battery lantern off its hook and went outside again.

  It was no wonder Anne felt as she did, I thought as I moved into the back yard. The idea that we might have been living for more than two months above the grave of a bludgeoned woman was not a pretty one.

  There was no cellar; you rarely find one in a California tract house. There was only a small concrete half wall by the hose outlet pipe and an opening just big enough to squeeze through. Letting down the lantern and shovel, I pulled out the metal-framed screen and leaned it against the house. Then I switched on the lantern, grabbed the small shovel and crawled under the house.

  It was like a refrigerator under there. The sandy ground was cold and damp. I played the beam of the lantern around, feeling a loosening of relief with every added moment that revealed only flat, untouched earth.

  It didn't last. With a start, my arm froze; the white beam of light held on a tiny mound of earth. I felt my heartbeat quicken to a slow, dragging thud. My immediate instinct was to back out fast and leave, tell the police, let them see what was there.