Karen Mercury (14 page)

Fidelia wondered, “Would a ghostly guitar hurt?”

Alameda shook her head with the superiority of someone with vast knowledge. She headed for the sideboard to pour a drink, and Fidelia followed to pour more aguardiente. “No. This exact thing happened to our spirit. At first, Percy could not control matter. Eventually, he learned how to manipulate things like pencils and snowballs—he drew Derrick the diagram for those skis, for example, which have proven to be quite a good source of income for us. But at first he looked very flat, like a flapjack, and his mouth only had a few positions.”

“Yes!” cried Spenser. “That’s how he looked to me, too—like a cardboard advertisement.”

Alameda pointed at Spenser with her booze glass. “Exactly. Obviously, Ulrich has now broken out of his flat reality, with his new ability to manipulate matter and”—she looked sideways at her disheveled brother and tried to stifle a laugh—“break a ski over Chess’s head. That is some achievement!”

“So,” asked Fidelia, “this is quite common around here—this spirit guide business?”

“Oh, yes,” Alameda said with conviction. “You would not believe the strange goings-on in Laramie City. There is a very highly advanced fellow, Caleb, with long hair like a silvery rainbow, and he tells us about the vortexes around the vicinity. Caleb says it has something to do with the train arriving here in sixty-eight. He calls it the steel magnetism. The psychic vibrations are at their most intense here in Laramie and the surrounding areas.”

Chess said, “That sounds like a fellow I sat next to on the train coming from Ogallala. He kept telling me this area is the hub of paranormal activity.”

Alameda nodded firmly. “That sounds like Caleb. Was he wearing Indian skulls and a bison robe? Yes, that’s him. He’s a very powerful mystic. If you’d like, I can get a message through to him and—
Ow!
” Alameda twirled around with her hand clutching her bustle.

“Ulrich!” Fidelia cried and ran forward to hug her brother.

“He pinched my bottom!”

When Fidelia threw her arms about Ulrich, she did not feel the guitar he had strapped over his shoulder. It was as though her body went right through the guitar. But this time, his body felt more substantial than its usual watery consistency. She could actually feel the shape of his shoulders, the side of his face. Before, hugging Ulrich had been like swimming through a lake. Now she even felt him move. He squirmed a little, as though with distaste at being hugged by his sister.

Fidelia pulled back a few inches and talked to the cardboard face. “Ulrich! We need to ask you what you meant about the piece of paper. We figured out what you meant about the hat—you meant Bullet Bob, right? He’s the one who murdered you?”

Alameda added, “And ask him why he pinched my bottom!”

Chess snorted. “I think that’s a given, Alameda.”

The answer to Fidelia’s question was another twangy Western song. It sounded as though it came from a speaking trumpet placed close by the ceiling. The voice was definitely Ulrich’s, but he was still having a hard time expressing himself.

A loco blade is Bullet Bob

He drinks too much absinthe

And when it comes to Spanish fly

He does not have a conscience

“There’s that Spanish fly again!” cried Spenser. “Bullet Bob mentioned something about an ‘infamous’ incident when we were at the Oddfellows Hall this afternoon.”

Chess was quick to brush his friend off. “Oh, that was nothing. The pharmacist Chang told us that Bullet Bob purchased some from him, and it just sounded as though Bullet Bob wanted to go on a bender with me. For some reason,” he told his sister, “this frog dandy thinks I’m the best thing since denim jeans. He’s wearing my spurs and hat and keeps forcing himself on me—”

“Calling him Zeus,” Fidelia inserted.

“—when we think he’s the murderer of Fidelia’s brother here, Ulrich. Maybe Bullet Bob even killed Ulrich with Spanish fly. Why would I want to go on a fun-filled bust with a killer?”

Alameda said hotly, “Infamous incident? I’ll tell you what that is, Mr. whatever your name is. My debauched brother here gave Spanish fly to a few ladies in London who almost died as a result. That is why our father made him come home. There was an infamous article written—”

“Enough,” Chess said warningly. “I’ve only just met these wonderful people, Alameda. I don’t need to scare them off already. Ulrich, can you tell us what Bullet Bob plans on doing with the Spanish fly?”

“Yes,” Fidelia encouraged, patting the stiff and starchy Ulrich’s cheek. “Is Bullet Bob going to try and poison Chess next?”

Ulrich’s blue eyes remained in a frozen position, but Fidelia thought she saw a twinkle in them.

“His fingers are moving,” Spenser noted. “I swear, I saw them twitch on the neck of that guitar. Like he’s itching to tell us.”

“Maybe he’s formulating a new poem,” suggested Alameda.

Alameda was right, for the invisible speaking trumpet, now coming from the vicinity of the fireplace, blared forth with a new tune.

Bob thinks Chess is a mythic Zeus, solid like Plymouth Rock

He’ll be angry when he finds out Chess likes to suck the cock

“That’s just about enough, Ulrich!” Red-faced, Chess made as if to grab the guitar’s neck, but of course his fingers just went right through it. Fidelia and Spenser shared a laugh, and even Alameda knowingly elbowed her brother.

“This fine stallion here, is that it, dear brother?” she murmured. “He’s very spectacular, indeed. And your girl Fidelia is very captivating, too. You are very lucky. You must bring them to dinner at Tibbles House so my husbands can meet them.”

Chess ignored his sister’s odd mention of “husbands” in the plural. With hands on hips, he demanded of Ulrich, “Don’t give us any bull dung about Plymouth Rock, you Teutonic yodeler. Tell us about the Spanish fly. How does Bullet Bob plan on using it?”

This time, a definite smile curled the corner of Ulrich’s mouth. Fidelia could tell he was delighted he had irked Chess. He seemed to be fine with Spenser diddling her muff, but he had really taken offense when Chess had fondled her breasts—maybe because his murderer seemed to idolize Chess so. Anyone that Bullet Bob idolized must be suspect in Ulrich’s mind.

I know we seem like oiled madmen

But please don’t mistrust us

He’ll impress Chess, get corned and then

Be humping Lady Justice

“
What?
” This ditty seemed to have the most immense effect on Alameda. She jammed her hands onto her hips and her eyes blazed, but her brother was more pragmatic.

“Well, that plain doesn’t make any sense,” Chess chuckled. “We were looking at Josephine playing Eve. Didn’t Ulrich earlier say he went to the place where women pose as Eve?”

“Yes,” Fidelia said, “but not that he’d
murder
Eve. Just that he’d be a patron.”

“
No!
” shrieked Alameda, pointing a stiff arm at Ulrich, who had now broken out into a wide grin, although the rest of him still remained static. “Don’t you see what he means?
I
am Lady Justice!
I
am the justice of the peace for Laramie and all the surrounding area!”

Chess’s face was a blank. He obviously had not been in close touch with his sister for a while. “You are? Well. Bloody hell.”

Fidelia put her hand on Alameda’s shoulder. “He said ‘hump,’ not ‘kill,’ if that’s any consolation.”

It wasn’t. “
Bloody hell!
” Alameda repeated her brother’s phrase. “Who is this Bullet Bob character? I will have him arrested right now! My husband is a goddamned senator—”

“I had heard that,” said Chess.

“—and these threats will not be taken lightly! This—this—” Alameda sputtered, apparently unable to think up a word horrible enough for Ulrich.

“Yodeling spook?” Spenser suggested.

Alameda waved her forefinger at Spenser. “This fucking yodeling spook has threatened the very safety of Laramie’s justice of the peace and I will—I will—”

“You can’t arrest Ulrich,” Fidelia pointed out. “And we don’t have any concrete evidence against Bullet Bob yet either. Just that he bought some Spanish fly.”

“I will have this Bullet Bob followed, then!” Alameda proclaimed. “If someone follows him day and night, he is bound to do something wrong.”

Chess said, “Basically, we’ve been doing that. Spenser took a part in his asinine
Hamlet
production over at the Oddfellows Hall—”

This seemed to cheer up Alameda. “Oh? Are you an actor, too? I was in a production at the Oddfellows Hall once—“

“Up, up, and away!”

Fidelia whipped her head around in time to see Ulrich’s entire body shuddering. His mouth wasn’t in its usual startled smiling position—it was moving! And the words were coming from his mouth, not some remote speaking trumpet all the way across the room!

“Ulrich!” she cried. When she gripped his shoulders they were much more substantial than the usual water. Like mud, they now were. “You’re becoming more real!”

“Up, up, and away!” he said again, as if for practice. The fingers on the fret board moved to form a new chord, and his right hand strummed the strings once. It resonated fully, as though a real guitarist stood in their midst.

Turning his head to Fidelia, he said, “I love you, Sister. Get Bullet Bob!” And he looked up to the ceiling as though seeing something particularly enticing there, like a sun or a girl.

Fidelia frantically shook his shoulder, for it seemed he was fixing to leave them again. “Ulrich! What else can you tell me about Bullet Bob? Why is he coming to get Alameda?”

Then, as though invisible ropes attached from invisible rafters lifted him up, Ulrich’s body began to rise. He was fully three-dimensional now, as Fidelia could see the underside of his boots when he rose overhead. From this angle it looked as if he didn’t wear any pants, as if he had forgotten to materialize a pair, and she could see the crack of his ass.

“Help us, Ulrich!” she called. “How can we arrest Bullet Bob?”

“Look at Bullet Bob’s trees!” Ulrich called remotely, as though he were already a mile away. His body vanished bit by bit into the parlor ceiling until all Fidelia could see were the soles of his boots and his ass.

“Did you ever run into a lovely chap named Ulrich Schiller?”

Chess mostly asked Bullet Bob the question to see the reaction. He didn’t really expect Bullet Bob to come out and admit he’d murdered Ulrich.

But they were sitting in the audience at the Morning Star—Spenser posing like the athletic Hercules that he was, coldly lit up by the blue glass lamps—and Chess needed to gain Bullet Bob’s trust, to display some back-slapping friendliness without actually going and ingesting Spanish fly with the fellow. In the meantime, Chess had been able to convince Alameda not to tell her husband, Senator Derrick Spiro, about the vague threat. He didn’t want a bunch of beefy bodyguards descending upon Bullet Bob before they were prepared and giving him the chance to leave town.

She had some other fellow, a Dr. Rudy Dunraven, living in her house, along with an assistant named Montreal Jed, for whatever protection they offered. And Chess had sent Zeke to spend the night there as well. Zeke was always very promptly helpful, although he was insisting more than ever that they be called “The Savage Bunch” now that it appeared Chess was intertwined with Fidelia and Spenser.

“Four people. That constitutes a bunch, doesn’t it?” Zeke had exclaimed, walloping him on the back with camaraderie.

“I suppose it does,” Chess had sighed, resigned to the awful moniker.

Nobody had been able to figure out what was wrong with Bullet Bob’s trees. Nobody could even figure out whether or not Bullet Bob
possessed
any trees. In the meantime, Fidelia suggested maybe Bullet Bob owned something with a logo of a tree on it.

Now Chess sat in the smoky dimness of the Morning Star Gallery, pretending to drink absinthe with Bullet Bob. Fidelia was pouring Chess water from a bottle of water colored green with spinach juice.

To Chess’s surprise, Bullet Bob freely admitted, “
Oui
, that Ulrich Schiller fellow! He was always very sprightly, always playing his guitar. He was quite the
homme d’esprit
, a bon vivant like you! We used to drink absinthe until the sun rose, sharing all manner of witty slogans and catchphrases together.” Bullet Bob sighed as if the weight of the world were on his shoulders.

“And? Whatever happened to him?”

“What? What happened to who?”

Absinthe seemed to be addling Bullet Bob’s brain, if there had been much of it to begin with. “Ulrich Schiller. You were reminiscing about the nights you spent drinking absin—”

“Who is Ulrich Schiller? Is he that fine vaquero who is going to play the ghost of Hamlet’s father in my play? I am telling you,
mon ami
Chess. You must take Ulrich Schiller’s place onstage in this
poses plastiques
gallery. You would make a finer Hercules than him!”