A Wild Ghost Chase (6 page)

“You don’t think she’d really do that,” I admonished.

“I don’t doubt for a second that she would,” Alison said with a hint of a smile. “But I really don’t think she
will
.”

“You two have an interesting relationship,” I said, but my attention wandered to a native woman, this one younger than the previous one I’d seen in the library, floating into the kitchen from the driveway side of the house. She appeared in traditional dress: a skirt made of an animal’s hide, although I could not definitively identify the species, and her hair pulled back severely and held with a clasp that appeared to consist of feathers from an unidentified bird. She peered into the room like a nearsighted person who had forgotten her eyeglasses.

I quickly glanced at Alison, to check whether she could see our new visitor. I gave it a 50/50 chance she’d notice the woman who now called out to me in a language I presumed to be Unami.

“We don’t get along except when we get along,” Alison said, responding to my comment about her and Maxie, a good sign that Alison appeared not to have heard the woman call to me.

“I suppose not,” I said absently. “How long until the next spook show?” I could see the clock perfectly well, but I wanted to set up an exit.

“You have an hour and a half,” Alison answered, a little puzzlement in her voice. “Why, do you have something special planned?”

I tried to look nonchalant as I rose up. “I don’t know yet,” I said. “Maybe I’ll appear covered in chocolate syrup.” The native woman appeared to understand that she was to follow me upstairs, and rose as I rose. Alison did not turn at her movement.

“Let me know. I’ll sell special tickets.” Alison grinned, a particularly endearing look on her.

“Start printing them up,” I said, for a brief second wondering if . . . no. We were just bantering. Sometimes I forget.

“No, really,” Alison said. “Are you planning something new?”

“I’m working on something,” I lied as I reached the ceiling. “Not sure if it’ll be ready.” I ducked up through the ceiling fan and into the next level before Alison could answer. The native woman followed me.

I did not speak until we were in Melissa’s room in the attic. I’d hoped Maxie would be there, but unfortunately she wasn’t. I don’t like going into Melissa’s room when she’s not there and hasn’t invited me, but it was where I thought we’d have the most privacy. This was the best place to conduct an interview.

The woman continued to speak in Unami, so I shook my head. “I don’t understand,” I said. “Do you speak English?” I took up a position away from the loft bed and near Melissa’s pile of stuffed animals, and perched on the radiator (it was probably hot, but I had no idea—like food and sleep, hot and cold were bodily concerns no more).

The woman considered for a moment, and nodded. “Little bit,” she said. I’d hoped for someone who’d become more fluent over hundreds of years, like Antinanco, but this was certainly an improvement over our first visitor, so I smiled.

“Good,” I said. “Did you hear me call before? Is that why you’re here?”

Again, a nod. “You need help,” she said slowly. “Talking Unami.”

I encouraged her with a nod of my own. “What is your name?” I asked.

She dropped her eyes, then looked back up, as if she didn’t know whether to be subservient or defiant. “I am Butterfly,” she answered. She did not give a Unami name.

I nodded. “Thank you for coming, Butterfly. A boy is here. A boy of the Human Beings. Trying to find his mother, but I speak no Unami. Do you know a woman of the Human Beings called Jaci?”

Butterfly looked down. I couldn’t tell if it was because she was embarrassed to make eye contact—I did not know the customs of the Lenni-Lenape—or because she was dejected. But she shook her head. “No Jaci,” she said. “Not our name.”

“This would be a Tupi woman,” I assured her, following Antinanco’s lead. “Taken from another nation. The wife of Chief White Eyes.”

This time Butterfly did make eye contact, and her expression indicated that I must be quite insane. “Tupi?” she repeated. “We have no Tupi with us. White Eyes not with us. He goes West. But we hear of him. Did not take a Tupi woman for his own.”

I felt myself frown. “Did he have a son?” I asked. Maybe that would be a thread to research.

“One son,” she answered. “With white woman.”

Now, that was interesting. “Did the son die as a boy?”

Butterfly shook her head delicately. “Young man. Go to school. Now call it . . . Princeton.”

Since Antinanco was clearly too young to have attended college, no matter how bright he might be, the idea that he was White Eyes’s son was losing credibility by the second. “How can I find other Human Beings?” I asked her.

“We stay together, even now. Don’t talk much to the white people.” That could explain why she wasn’t as culturally assimilated as Antinanco.

“Are you in touch with them? Other women? A woman who lost a young boy to smallpox?”

She actually sneered at that point. “Every woman in the nation lose children to smallpox,” she said. “We did not know it was in blankets.”

Suddenly it occurred to me to tell her I was Canadian, but my half-British blood was not unsullied with the guilt of what had happened to the natives on the American continent. I nodded. “That was very bad,” I said. “Please. I want to find this boy’s mother so they can be together again. Do you know anyone who can help?”

Butterfly shrugged, which seemed incongruous. “The boy does not give you the truth,” she said. “Other Human Beings probably hear you too, and not answer because they do not know.”

“One last thing,” I said. I fished the small plastic dinosaur from my pocket and showed it to her. “Do you know what this is?”

She looked at me oddly, then considered the object. “A totem?” she asked.

I supposed it was. “After a fashion,” I said. “Can you tell what it represents?”

Butterfly looked at the dinosaur again, carefully. “Maybe a lizard,” she said. “But not like one I have ever seen.”

That made sense. I put the dinosaur back into my pocket. “You have come from very far away,” I said. “I am grateful for your effort. Thank you for answering my call. You honor me.”

“It is our way,” Butterfly answered, and then she was gone. These abrupt departures tend to freak even me out a little. But now I was starting to have an idea of what this case was about.

6

“We have to be prepared,” I told Maxie and Melissa. “When Antinanco comes back again, we have to know what we’re going to say and,”—I looked directly at Maxie with some emphasis—“
how
we’re going to say it.”

“What’d I do?” she asked.

“You have a tendency to sound like a tough guy in a gangster movie,” I pointed out. “If you scare the boy, we might lose every chance we have to reunite him with his mother. He could flee and never come back here again.”

“Oh, like I’m so scary.” Maxie has an interesting self-image, which I believe might be at odds with how the world actually sees her.

“Maybe you should let Paul do most of the talking,” Melissa suggested. “He never scares anybody.” She grinned at Maxie. “Not even when he’s trying to.”

Maxie giggled. “You’re right.” She began her rather crude impersonation of me, saying, “Ooh, I’m Paul. I’m a ghost. I’m scaaaaaaaary.” I assure you, I’ve never said such a thing, in my life or otherwise.

“Then we’re agreed, I’ll talk to Antinanco,” I reiterated, ignoring her antics.

Melissa’s phone made a buzzing noise, indicating a text, so she pulled it out of her pocket and read the message. “Grandma says . . . hang on, it’s tough to figure out since she doesn’t like to use vowels. . . . OK, she says she’s on her way and will be here in five minutes.” Melissa looked up at me, which made me realize I was close to the ceiling. Sometimes I lose my sense of perspective, and when people like me don’t pay attention, we can drift in virtually any direction.

“Excellent,” I told Melissa as I brought myself back down to approximately floor level. Alison was downstairs, seeing to her guests and probably setting up one of the “meet-and-greets,” which meant Maxie and I would have to submit ourselves to curious tourists asking the same standard questions. I like to help Alison keep her guesthouse operating, but sometimes the procedures we have to endure are just a little embarrassing. No, I actually can’t get in touch with every single one of your deceased relatives. I’m sorry, but even eternity doesn’t offer that kind of free time. “Once your grandmother makes her report, I think I’ll be able to find a way to contact the boy’s mother.”

“How, if you think he’s been lying to us?” Melissa asked.

I was about to answer when the dumbwaiter to Melissa’s room clanked. That meant someone one floor down was attempting to come up. We all tensed just a little, but then the intercom next to Melissa’s bed buzzed, and through it came Loretta Kerby’s voice.

“It’s Grandma, Liss,” she said. “Can you let me up?” Melissa released the lock mechanism on the dumbwaiter, installed at Alison’s insistence so no one (living) could enter Melissa’s room without her permission (although besides the dumbwaiter, it’s also possible to access the attic via pulldown stairs at the foot of Melissa’s bed). We heard the dumbwaiter gears start to turn and in about half a minute, Loretta was in the room with us.

“You said five minutes, Grandma,” Melissa pointed out. “That was, like, one minute.”

“The lights were with me,” Loretta said, waving a hand. “Let me sit down.” The dumbwaiter is easily operated, but does require a little physical effort. Loretta sat on the desk chair and Melissa sat on a beanbag chair next to her bed.

Maxie and I floated about halfway between the ceiling and the floor.

We gave Loretta a moment to catch her breath, and then I asked if her research had uncovered anything. She nodded.

“I called the Department of the Interior, which used to include the Department of Indian Affairs,” Loretta reported. “They didn’t have any records of individual Lenni-Lenapes, but they did have their patterns of migration, and I sent that link to Melissa.”

“I took a look, Grandma,” Melissa answered. “The group from around here was definitely not with Chief White Eyes.”

“That’s what I told you,” Maxie said, a little irritation in her voice as if someone had insulted her. “I gave you a Unami glossary, too. Did you see that?” she asked Melissa in a gentler tone.

“I looked, and it was a little helpful, but if someone starts talking like in conversation, we won’t be able to keep up,” Melissa answered.

“What about the other part of your assignment?” I asked Loretta.

“Lieutenant McElone didn’t understand why she was talking to me,” she responded. “She said it’s usually Alison who comes asking strange questions and disrupting her workday.”

“I’ll bet,” Maxie snorted. “I like how
she
complains! She should have bothered to investigate our murders.” Maxie could be captain of the Olympic Grudge-Holding team.

“Not fair, Maxie,” I said. “You know very well that the lieutenant didn’t come to work in Harbor Haven until six months after the case had been closed.”

Lieutenant Anita McElone had been to the house a few times, so I had seen her. I know she and Alison have conferred a few times since Alison got her PI license, but I don’t know the lieutenant well. I assumed she was a good cop and saw no reason not to give her the benefit of the doubt.

“What did Lieutenant McElone say?” Melissa asked. She is very good at keeping adults on topic.

Loretta had been anticipating the question. She pulled a small notepad from her backpack and referred to some notes. “There were four incidents in the past ten years that fit your conditions,” she told me. “None of them involved a woman with the right initials and none of the victims had a nickname.”

That was odd. Perhaps ten years had been too small a sample. “Do you think we need to go back farther?” I asked Loretta.

Her eyes showed some trepidation. “You want me to go back there and ask her
again
?” she breathed.

“Not necessarily.” I turned toward Maxie. “When do we think Antinanco will be back?”

She bristled. “Since when am I the appointments secretary around here? The kid shows up when he wants to show up.” Her t-shirt changed into another that read, “And your little dog, too!”

All our heads turned simultaneously as we heard a creak. The stairs were being pulled down.

“Who’s that?” Loretta hissed.

A good question. Antinanco, of course, would not have needed stairs to enter the room. Had we told him to meet us here? I tried to remember. We all watched breathlessly (two of us literally so) as the stairs descended and we heard footsteps on them.

“What have we got up here that I can hit someone with?” Maxie asked.

Melissa furrowed her brow and gave Maxie a look that indicated she’d prefer not to answer. But she didn’t speak.

“What’s going on here?” To everyone’s relief, Alison’s head appeared in the opening, and she rose into the attic. “This is about the fourth conference I’ve broken up in the past few . . .”

“When did you get back?” Melissa asked her mother. “I thought you were out.”

“I was. Now I’m in. Mom? What are you doing up here?”

Loretta, showing a capacity for lying I had not witnessed in her before, said, “I came up to talk to Melissa about getting concert tickets for a band we both like.” It wasn’t much, but it certainly was a distraction from the real topic.

“Really!” Alison’s tone suggested she was not buying into the story. “And so the four of you are starting a fan club? Which band?”

Loretta chewed her lower lip. “Which band?”

“Yeah. Which band do you and Melissa both follow?” She pivoted quickly to address Melissa and pointed a finger. “Don’t you answer. The question is for Grandma.”

This threatened to go on for a while, but it wasn’t the problem with which I was most concerned. I was more concerned that as the two women discussed the musical act, Antinanco had risen through the floor not two feet from Alison, and took up a position next to me near the window.

“Who’s that?” Antinanco asked, gesturing toward Loretta, whom he had never met. Loretta smiled at the boy, then checked to see if Alison was looking her way; she was.

Very quietly, I said to the boy, “Just wait a moment. Let them finish their talk.”

“What?” Alison asked, turning to face me. “What’d you say, Paul?”

This wasn’t going well.

“Have you found my mother?” Antinanco asked. Apparently, waiting a moment meant something different to him. Something on the order of, jump in any time.

“Nothing special,” I answered Alison. I knew she couldn’t see or hear our young guest, but if she were to stay up here and slow down the progress he was expecting, he might leave. I wanted things to resolve themselves now.

“Uh-huh,” Alison answered. “Are you aware there are four Native American ghosts in the house right now? The one who speaks English was asking for you. Have you been on the Ghosternet again?”

If Alison could see four respondents to my query, that actually meant that there might be as many as twelve or thirteen in the house. “I was doing a little communicating,” I answered. “Sorry for the inconvenience.”

“Four!” Antinanco said. “Is my mother here?”

“I don’t think so,” Maxie said.

“What does that mean?” Alison asked her. “Paul’s not sorry?” She seemed genuinely confused.

“Of course Paul is sorry,” Melissa told her. “Maxie meant something else.”

Alison’s eyes narrowed the way a mother’s do when her child is being less than honest. “Oh yeah?” she asked. “Something about that
band
you and Grandma want to buy tickets to see?”

“One Direction,” Loretta said, staring at a screen on the laptop Maxie was holding out for her to see. “That’s the band.” Melissa made a displeased face, but I don’t think Alison noticed.

“Can I have my arrowhead back?” Antinanco interjected. Eight-year-olds, no matter how many centuries they have been conscious or how many times they have heard a promise, are not known for their patience. I did not answer him, and this time neither did Maxie, but everyone looked in his direction, and Alison
did
notice that.

She stopped, pursed her lips, and breathed in. Her voice was quieter than before. “There’s someone else here, isn’t there?” she asked.

Alison is an unusually intelligent woman.

“There is,” I admitted, deciding to come clean. “We have a client named Antinanco, or Eagle of the Sun. He is a Lenni-Lenape boy, and we have been searching for his mother.”

“You said
I
could tell her!” Maxie shouted.

Alison’s eyes narrowed, and Melissa’s widened. Neither of those was a good sign. “Why didn’t you tell me?” Alison asked me.

“You said you were busy with the guests and the bathroom,” Melissa said before I could answer. “We figured you wouldn’t want to get involved.”

Alison laughed, which was very nearly the last reaction I had expected. “He’s a little boy trying to find his mother,” she said, shaking her head. “If I’d known, I would have helped. Did you think replacing some tile was more important to me?”

“You had specifically told me not to bother you with an investigation,” I reminded her.

“Yeah, but . . . well, I thought that meant you wouldn’t take one on. I mean, I know I said that . . .”

“We heard you were having money problems,” Maxie said, with her usual level of tact and compassion.

Alison looked at Maxie, then at Melissa. She put her hand on Melissa’s head and caressed her daughter’s hair a little. “We’re doing fine. You didn’t have to worry about me.”

Maxie rolled her eyes, but everyone was silent. I looked away; it occurred to me that I should have understood she’d want to know about Antinanco.

Until Antinanco repeated again, “Do you have any news of my mother?” He sounded more insistent this time.

We all must have turned our attention to him again, because Alison asked, “What’s going on?” Loretta informed her of our client’s question.

“Could one of the women downstairs be your friend’s mother?” Alison asked.

Antinanco glanced up, a hopeful expression on his face. I shook my head. “No,” I said, perhaps a bit more bluntly than I intended.

The boy looked crestfallen, and Melissa’s eyebrows rose.

Maxie looked at me and said, “That was harsh.”

Maybe so, and I’d apologize later; now we had to act before the women downstairs left the house. “Maxie,” I said, “please go downstairs . . .”

Maxie turned her back on me. “No,” she said, mimicking my earlier blunt tone.

There wasn’t time to argue the point. I turned toward Alison. “Would you go downstairs and tell the women, if there are no guests around, where we are?” I asked. “Especially the one who speaks English.”

Alison nodded, efficient operative that she is, and headed back down the pulldown stairs.

“I don’t understand,” Antinanco said. “How can you know my mother is not one of the women downstairs?”

Loretta, appearing sorry about what she knew was to come, looked at me and nodded. Yes, it was time to be honest with the boy. I still didn’t understand everything that had happened, but there was at least one thing I was certain about.

“Your mother is not a Lenni-Lenape woman,” I said as gently as I could. “And I’m sure you know that. You haven’t been telling us the truth this whole time.”

Antinanco did not look me in the eye, even as I challenged him directly. “Yes I have,” he said, but his tone had no conviction to it.

I floated down toward him, but he made a concerted effort to focus elsewhere, in this case beneath his feet, which were about a foot off the floor. “No,” I said. “You haven’t. You’re not a native boy. You’re not a Lenni-Lenape. And you certainly have not been here for more than two hundred years.”

Antinanco trembled with what appeared to be suppressed rage, not distress. He bit his lower lip and his fingers fluttered seemingly without his control. “Yes I
have
!” he shouted, and Melissa shuddered.

“Kid,” Maxie attempted, looking less angry and more sympathetic now, “you don’t actually speak Unami. You told us about a branch of the Lennis who were all the way on the other side of Pennsylvania. Chief White Eyes wasn’t on the Jersey Shore; he was in Pittsburgh, and he never had a son who died at the age of eight. All those things are facts.”

The boy looked like he might flee, so I gently put my hand on his shoulder and held his shirt. I’m not sure that could have kept him from vanishing, but I could certainly see to it that he not fly away just yet. “We want to help you, son,” I said, knowing his name was probably not Antinanco. “But we can’t, if you don’t tell us the truth.”