Emily's Ghost (12 page)

Stan shrugged and turned
back to his computer screen. "It's just that you've always made a
big deal about being footloose and fancy-free."

"A parakeet is not a farm
animal," she said in a strained voice.

"Still needs to be fed.
Watered. Paper changed."

He knows something's up.
Why do I even try?
"You're right, Stan.
There's no room in my life for a parakeet. I'll call the guy and
tell him that."

Stan gave her a sharp
look, and then backed off. But for how long? Emily wasn't sure
where Jim Whitewood really stood on the paranormal, but she knew
exactly how Stanley Cooper felt. One little complaint from her
about a haunted condo and her career was history. Her only possible
ally right now was a man she was fond of calling a
flake.

At noon Emily slipped away
from her desk and found a quiet phone. She was put directly through
to the senator.

"Is this line -- you know
-- safe?" she asked naively.

He assured her it
was.

There wasn't much point to
beating around the bush, so she said in a rush, "There's this guy,
Fergus, who showed up after the s
é
ance. Actually, he showed up
at
the
s
é
ance. You heard
him: he's the voice who said he couldn't stand it any more. What he
meant was, he couldn't stand being left between heaven and hell, if
that's what they're called, because that means he can't come back
until ... well, he's an astral being, or he would be, if he could
be vindicated of a crime he didn't really commit. Well, he did
commit the burglary, but not the murder -- he says he didn't, and I
believe him."

She paused for
breath.

"Are we on
Candid
Camera
?"

"No, we're not on
Candid Camera
. I'm not
kidding. There's a ghost in my condo. Kimberly let him out, and I
can't figure out how to get him back in ... wherever. He says if I
solve the murder, he'll be able to get on with ... whatever. That's
where he thinks I am now, in the library, working on the
case."

"In the
library?"

"Well, it happened a
hundred-odd years ago. Where else am I supposed to go?"

"Are we on
Candid Camera
?"

Her voice began to rise in
her throat. "Listen, Senator, if it weren't for you, I wouldn't be
in this mess. Ever since Kimberly, my life has been chaos. You
started it; now you do something about it." She hadn't realized
what an emotional wreck she'd become; her next words made it clear.
"Please, Senator," she begged, her voice dropping to a hoarse
whisper. "I need you here ... I ...." She broke down and began
sobbing. She hated herself for every sniffle, but she couldn't help
it.

"My God, Emily ... all
right." His voice sounded alarmed but firm. "I'll be at your place
tonight. Expect me late. Give me the address."

She did, in a halting
voice, and they rang off. Instantly she felt like a fool. She tried
not to think about it for the rest of the day and instead forced
herself to go through the motions of her next assignment for
the
Journal
: a
dull little expos
é
of a defaulting builder who'd submitted false bond securities
to the city for a playground he never built. Luckily the builder
had an ego as big as the John Hancock Tower; he was more than
willing to talk in a phone interview, so half the story wrote
itself. Nonetheless Emily worked late, not because the piece was
giving her trouble, but because she couldn't face Fergus O'Malley
alone.

And she wasn't sure why.
She was basically terrified of him, that went without saying. And
she was weirdly sorry to disappoint him by coming home
empty-handed. But mostly her pride was smarting because she'd been
forced to call in the marines. She stalled a little longer by
eating dinner out, and then at about nine o'clock she headed home
to what was bound to be a no-win night. Tired and preoccupied, she
had to park her car well up the street and then force herself to
stay alert for muggers.

She made it in one piece
and saw the senator's BMW parked squarely in front of the rambling
Victorian of which she was making payments on such a very small
part. He was here! The question was -- since there was no lobby --
where? She let herself in and found him sitting on the top stair
outside of her apartment, looking rumpled but at ease.

"Senator! I'm sorry! You
said you'd be late!"

"I meant don't hold
dinner, that's all." His smile was captivating. It bowled her over,
that ability to be almost intimately reassuring and yet not quite
pushy.

"How did you get in?" she
asked. "Wait, don't tell me; the outside door wasn't locked. Darn
college kids. They're renting the first-floor condo and they treat
the whole building like a dormitory. Just about anybody could get
in here."

The senator nodded towards
her apartment and then turned back to her. "Apparently just about
anybody did," he said, without humor.

She'd been fumbling with
her keys. Now she dropped them. "I can't begin to imagine what you
must think of me," she mumbled, stooping to pick them up. "A nut
case, right?"

But the senator was there
before her. Scooping the keys up in his hand, he stood up as she
straightened up. They were very close, very tentative. "An
intriguing case, maybe," he said. "But not a nut case."

He was near enough that
she felt the sweep of his breath across her cheek. There was
something about him so warm, so vital --so completely in contrast
with Fergus O'Malley -- that she lifted her face to him, as a daisy
orients itself to the sun. The senator touched his finger to the
tip of her nose and said, "Now. Shall we see what's behind that
locked door of yours?"

He selected a key, the
right key, from her ring and slid it into the lock. Immediately
Emily had misgivings.

"He could do something --
could hurt you," she whispered suddenly. "He has a horrible temper.
He threatened me last night."

The senator threw her a
glance of real concern and turned the key. He pushed the door open,
then paused at the threshold.

Emily grabbed his arm and
said, "No! You shouldn't have come."

"Too late now," the
senator said, and flipped on the light just inside the
door.

Emily was right behind
him. The condo looked the way she'd left it -- a mess. There were
yellow pads everywhere, and loose sheets of paper littering the
room. Clothes were left where they fell, a pizza box covered the
small dinette, and empty cracker boxes were sprouting like
mushrooms from the floor. Juice cans, Coke cans, a saucer piled
high with dried brown tea bags --the place had the look of a dorm
room after an all-night cram. And the television was on! Had she
left it on after catching some morning news? She stared at the
baseball game, trying to remember.

The senator was glancing
around the room, taking it all in.

Emily sprang into action.
"This isn't normal," she said, grabbing up litter by the armful.
"I'm much neater than this, really, but he was dictating so
fast...."

"Don't worry about it,"
the senator said, walking up to the television. His hand paused on
the off-button as the announcer intoned, "So at the end of the
fourth inning it's the Boston Red Sox 3, the Yankees 1." A
half-smile flitted briefly over his face. He turned off the
set.

Emily was watching him.
"You don't believe me," she said, stopping dead in her tracks. Her
arms were full of damp towels and empty cartons; her eyes were
burning with indignation. "You're more interested in the
game!"

"I turned it off," he
protested.

"Eventually!"

"Emily, trust me on this
one: I really can walk and chew gum at the same time. Whether the
Red Sox win or lose will not affect my ability to help
you."

"You're right; I'm sorry.
I'm just on edge, that's all." She dropped the armload, crumbs and
all, into a side-chair and said helplessly, "He might be
anywhere."

"They're said always to
appear in the same place," the senator ventured.

Emily pointed to her
darkened bedroom. "He was in there the night of the
s
é
ance." She felt
a ridiculous, intense surge of disloyalty. She flashed back to the
third grade, when someone told the teacher that she was hiding in
the cloakroom eating a stolen candy bar. Snitch! she'd cried to the
girl later. Snitch, snitch, snitch!

But this was different.
"Please be careful. He filled me with light, a great ... burning
light. It was terrifying ...."

Part of her was convinced
that the ghost wouldn't dare attack a United States Senator; and
part of her shut her eyes tightly in self-defense. She waited. When
she opened her eyes again the senator was standing in the doorway
of the bedroom, watching her thoughtfully. "Nothing?" she asked in
a small voice.

"Nothing obvious," he
answered. "I've brought a pocket tape recorder with me." He set it
up on her desk, where she was sitting. "I want you to tell me about
this light."

She did, running through
the sequence of events in great detail, trying to convey her
terror. "I've always read about knees that knocked," she said, "and
the accounts always seemed melodramatic. Now I know better." She
studied her hands, folded and locked in her lap, aware that she
sounded like a patient spilling her guts to a psychiatrist. And yet
she
was
feeling
relieved, finally talking about it with someone.

The senator had let her
run on, almost in a monologue, before he spoke. "Do you think he's
here now?" he asked from his seat on the sofa. His voice was calm,
a therapist's voice.

Too calm; it annoyed her.
"Of course I do," she answered. She'd been trying so hard not to
make Fergus sound like a hallucination. All things considered, she
preferred that Fergus be real and that she be not insane. "You're
probably sitting on him right now," she added, a little
evilly.

The senator didn't flinch;
his handsome face remained impassive. "Do you think he'll show
himself to me?"

Emily pushed her locked
hands away from her in a stretch to relieve her tension. "I dunno.
Maybe you have to be wearing the necklace. Want to try it?" she
challenged, reaching up behind her as if to undo the
clasp.

"No, not now," the senator
answered. "We can always try that later. After all, he's not
appearing to you either at the moment."

He rose to his feet and
began taking in the measure of the apartment, stopping now and then
to pick up some object or look at a framed print. It was as if he
was trying to know her through her things. He seemed to Emily much
too big for her place, larger than life somehow. He belonged in a
suit of armor and on a horse-- not easing himself between a t.v.
stand and a shelf of paperback books to get a better look at a
poster-print she'd bought from the Harvard Coop. Emily thought of
her friend Cara Miles. Cara's townhouse would be grand enough to
suit him; and
her
Picassos -- both of them --were genuine.

The senator's little tour
didn't last long. He came back to the tape recorder and turned it
off. Emily noticed, not for the first time, how big his hands were:
strong and well formed, with prominent veins. If it were a question
of manual combat, she had no doubt who'd prevail. But it wasn't.
The senator picked up some of her notes and glanced through them
while she kept one eye on the table lamp, watching for changes in
wattage, and one ear cocked for ghost sounds.

"Am I missing something?"
the senator asked lightly, looking up from the yellow pad of notes.
"This is an impressive amount of information, by the way," he
added. He turned the tape recorder back on. "Have you ever been to
Newarth?"

She shook her head. "He's
not going to show," she said, drumming her fingers nervously. "I
knew he wouldn't. I just knew it."

"You last saw the
apparition last night?"

She nodded. "It was
raining; I was very depressed. He came into the bedroom, I think
almost to comfort me. We ended up arguing about whether he was
coming with me on the investigation. I told him not to tag along
and he got mad." Emily slumped in her chair a little at the
recollection; her hair slid forward over one cheek.

The senator caught the
wayward lock in a feather's touch and slid it back behind her ear.
"Emily," he said in a voice that was at once reassuring and
infinitely sympathetic, "do you know what you're
saying?"

She felt simultaneously
patronized and electrified. It threw her off completely, so she
retreated to her usual defense, sarcasm.

"Yeah. We argued. He
walked out. The usual thing." She closed her eyes, wanting more
than anything that he touch her hair again.

"I mean, how incredible
all this sounds to someone?"

He wasn't going to touch
her hair again -- for whatever reason. Stung, she pushed her chair
back and stood up. "I've told you exactly what he said. I remember
every word."