Ninth Key (11 page)

CeeCee’s fingers flew over her keyboard. A second later, a picture of a weird-looking guy with a goatee filled the screen, along with what looked like a newspaper story. “The environmentalist who was making such a fuss over the seals disappeared four years ago, and no one has seen him since.”

I squinted at the computer screen. It was hard to see in the strong sunlight. “What do you mean, disappeared?” I asked. “Like, he died?”

“Maybe. Nobody knows. His body was never found if he was killed,” CeeCee said. “But check this out.” Her fingers did some quick rat-tat-tatting. “Another project, this strip mall here, was endangering the habitat of this rare kind of mouse, found only in this area. And this lady here —” Another photo came up on screen. “She tried to stop it to save the mouse, and poof. She disappeared, too.”

“Disappeared,” I echoed. “Just disappeared?”

“Just disappeared. Problem solved for Mount Beau — that was the name of that project’s sponsor. Mount Beau. Beaumont. Get it?”

“We get it,” Adam said. “But if all these environmentalists connected with Red Beaumont’s companies are disappearing, how come nobody has looked into it?”

“Well, for one thing,” CeeCee said, “Beaumont Industries made one of the biggest campaign donations in the state to our recently elected governor. They also made considerable contributions to the guy who was voted sheriff.”

“A cover-up?” Adam made a face. “Come
on
.”

“You’re assuming anyone even suspects anything. These people aren’t dead, remember. Just gone. Near as I can tell, the attitude seems to be, well, environmentalists are kind of flighty, anyway, so who’s to say these folks didn’t just take off for some bigger, more menacing disaster? All except this one.” CeeCee hit another button, and a third photo filled the page. “This lady didn’t belong to any kooky save-the-seals group. She owned some land Beaumont Industries had its eye on. They wanted to expand one of their cineplexes. Only she wouldn’t sell.”

“Don’t tell me,” I said. “She disappeared.”

“Sure did. And seven years later to the day — seven years being the time after which you can legally declare a missing person dead — Beaumont Industries made an offer to her kids, who jumped on it.”

“Finks,” I said, meaning the lady’s kids. I leaned forward so I could get a better look at her picture.

And had quite a little shock: I was looking at a picture of the ghost who’d been paying me those charming social calls.

Okay, well, maybe she didn’t look
exactly
the same. But she was white and skinny and had the same haircut. There was certainly enough of a resemblance to make me go, “That’s her!” and point.

Which was, of course, the worst thing I could have done. Because both CeeCee and Adam turned to look at me.

“That’s her who?” Adam wanted to know.

And CeeCee said, “Suze, you can’t possibly know her. She disappeared over seven years ago, and you just moved here last month.”

I am such a loser.

I couldn’t even think of a good excuse, either. I just repeated the one I’d stammered to Tad’s father: “Oh, um, I had this dream and she was in it.”

What was
wrong
with me?

I had not, of course, explained to CeeCee the reason why I’d wanted her to look up stuff on Red Beaumont, any more than I had told Adam how it was that I knew so much about little Timothy Mahern’s cat. I had merely mentioned that Mr. Beaumont had said something odd during my brief meeting with him the night before. And that Father Dom had sent me to look for the cat, presumably because Timothy’s dad had admitted abandoning it during his weekly confession — only Father Dom, being sworn to secrecy, couldn’t actually
tell
me that. I was only, I assured Adam,
surmising
….

“A dream?” Adam echoed. “About some lady who’s been dead for seven years? That’s weird.”

“It probably wasn’t her,” I said quickly, backpedaling for all I was worth. “In fact, I’m sure it wasn’t her. The woman I saw was much…taller.” Like I could even tell how tall this woman was by looking at her picture somebody had posted on the Internet.

Adam said, “You know, CeeCee has an aunt who dreams about dead people all the time. They visit her, she says.”

I threw CeeCee a startled glance. Could we, I wondered, be talking about
another
mediator? What, was there some kind of glut of us in the greater peninsula area? I knew Carmel was a popular retirement spot, but this was getting ridiculous.

“She doesn’t have dreams about them,” CeeCee said, and I didn’t think I was imagining the level of disgust in her voice. “Aunt Pru summons the spirits of the dead and she’ll tell you what they said. For a small fee.”

“Aunt
Pru
?” I grinned. “Wow, CeeCee. I didn’t know you had a psychic in the family.”

“She isn’t a psychic.” CeeCee’s disgust deepened. “She’s a complete flake. I’m embarrassed to be related to her. Talk to the dead. Right!”

“Don’t hold back, CeeCee,” I said. “Let us know how you really feel.”

“Well,” CeeCee said. “I’m sorry. But —”

“Hey,” Adam interrupted brightly. “Maybe Aunt Pru could help tell us why” — he bent down for a closer look at the dead woman’s photo on CeeCee’s computer screen — “Mrs. Deirdre Fiske here is popping up in Suze’s dreams.”

Horrified, I leaned forward and slammed CeeCee’s laptop closed. “No thanks,” I said.

CeeCee, opening her computer back up again, said irritably, “Nobody fondles the electronics but me, Simon.”

“Aw, come on,” Adam said. “It’ll be fun. Suze’s never met Pru. She’ll get a big kick out of her. She’s a riot.”

CeeCee muttered, “Yeah, you know how funny the mentally ill can be.”

I said, hoping to get the subject back on track, “Um, maybe some other time. Anything else, CeeCee, that you were able to dig up on Mr. Beaumont?”

“You mean other than the fact that he might possibly be killing anyone who stands in the way of his amassing a fortune by raping our forests and beaches?” CeeCee, who was wearing a khaki rainhat to protect her sensitive skin from the sun, as well as her violet-lensed sunglasses, looked up at me. “You’re not satisfied yet, Simon? Haven’t we thoroughly vetted your paramour’s closest relations?”

“Yeah,” Adam said. “It must be reassuring to know that last night you hooked up with a guy who comes from such a nice, stable family, Suze.”

“Hey,” I said with an indignation I was far from actually feeling. “There’s no
proof
Tad’s dad is the one who’s responsible for those environmentalists’ disappearances. And besides, we just had coffee, okay? We did not hook up.”

CeeCee blinked at me. “You went out with him, Suze. That’s all Adam meant by hooking up.”

“Oh.” Where I come from, hooking up means something else entirely. “Sorry. I —”

At that moment, Adam let out a shout. “Spike!”

I whirled around, following his pointing finger. There, peering out from the dry underbrush, sat the biggest, meanest-looking cat I’d ever seen. He was the same color yellow as the grass, which was probably how we’d missed him. He had orange stripes, one chewed-off ear, and an extremely nasty look on his face.

“Spike?” I asked, softly.

The cat turned his head in my direction and glared at me malevolently.

“Oh my God,” I said. “No wonder Tim’s dad didn’t take him to the animal shelter.”

It took some doing — and the ultimate sacrifice of my Kate Spade book bag, which I’d managed to purchase only at great physical risk at a sample sale back in SoHo — but we finally managed to capture Spike. Once he was zipped up inside my bag, he seemed to resign himself to captivity, although throughout the ride to Safeway, where we went to stock up on litter and food for him, I could hear him working industriously on the bag’s lining with his claws. Timothy, I decided, owed me big time.

Especially when Adam, instead of turning up the street to my house, turned in the opposite direction, heading farther up the Carmel hills until the big red dome covering the basilica of the Mission below us was the size of my thumbnail.

“No,” CeeCee immediately said as firmly as I’ve ever heard her say anything. “Absolutely not. Turn the car around. Turn the car around
now
.”

Only Adam, chuckling diabolically, just sped up.

Holding my Kate Spade bag on my lap, I said, “Uh, Adam. I don’t know where, exactly, you think you’re going, but I’d really like to at least get rid of this, um, animal first —”

“Just for a minute,” Adam said. “The cat’ll be all right. Come
on
, Cee. Stop being such a spoil-sport.”

CeeCee was madder than I’d ever seen her. “I said
no
!” she shouted.

But it was too late. Adam pulled up in front of a little stucco bungalow that had wind chimes hanging all over the place tinkling in the breeze from the bay, and giant hibiscus blossoms turned up toward the late afternoon sun. He put his VW in park and switched off the ignition.

“We’ll just pop in to say hi,” he said to CeeCee. And then he unfastened his seat belt and hopped out of the car.

CeeCee and I didn’t move. She was in the backseat. I was in the front with the cat. From my bag came an ominous rumbling.

“I hesitate to ask,” I said, after a while of sitting there listening to the wind chimes and Spike’s steady growling. “But where are we?”

That question was answered when, a second later, the door to the bungalow burst open and a woman whose hair was the same whitish yellow as CeeCee’s — only so long that she could sit on it — yoo-hooed at us.

“Come in,” CeeCee’s aunt Pru called. “Please come in! I’ve been expecting you!”

CeeCee, not even glancing in her aunt’s direction, muttered, “I just bet you have, you psychic freak.”

Remind me never to tell CeeCee about the whole mediator thing.

“Oh, goodness,” CeeCee’s aunt Pru said. “There it is again. The ninth key. This is just so strange.”

CeeCee and I exchanged glances. Strange wasn’t quite the word for it.

Not that it was unpleasant. Far from it. At least, in my opinion, anyway. Pru Webb, CeeCee’s aunt, was a little odd. That was certainly true.

But her house was very aromatic what with all the scented candles she kept lit everywhere. And she’d been quite the attentive hostess, giving us each a glass of homemade lemonade. It was too bad, of course, that she’d forgotten to put sugar in it, but that kind of forgetfulness apparently wasn’t unusual for someone so in touch with the spirit world. Aunt Pru had informed us that her mentor, the most powerful psychic on the West Coast, often couldn’t remember his own name because he was channeling so many other souls.

Still, our little visit hadn’t been particularly enlightening so far. I had learned, for instance, that according to the lines in my palm, I am going to grow up to have a challenging job in the field of medical research (Yeah! That’ll be the day). CeeCee, meanwhile, is going to be a movie star, and Adam an astronaut.

Seriously. An
astronaut.

I was, I admit, a little jealous of their future careers, which were clearly a great deal more exciting than my own, but I tried hard to control my envy.

What I’d given up trying to control — and CeeCee apparently had as well — was Adam. He had told Aunt Pru, before I could stop him, about my “dream,” and now the poor woman was trying — pro bono, mind you — to summon Deirdre Fiske’s spirit using tarot cards and a lot of humming.

Only it did not appear to be working because every time she started to turn the cards over, she kept coming up with the same one.

The ninth key.

This was, apparently, upsetting to her. Shaking her head, Aunt Pru — that’s what she’d told me to call her — scooped all the cards back into a pile, shuffled them, and then, closing her eyes, pulled one from the middle of the deck, and laid it, face up, for us to see.

Then she opened her eyes, looked down at it, and went, “Again! This doesn’t make any sense.”

She wasn’t kidding. The idea of anyone summoning a ghost with a deck of cards made no sense whatsoever…to me, at least. I couldn’t even summon them by standing there screaming their names — something I’d tried, believe me — and I’m a mediator. My
job
is to communicate with the undead.

But ghosts aren’t dogs. They don’t come if you call them. Take my dad, for instance. How many times had I wanted — even needed — him? He’d shown up, all right: three, four weeks later. Ghosts are way irresponsible for the most part.

But I couldn’t exactly explain to CeeCee’s aunt that what she was doing was a huge waste of time…and that while she was sitting there doing it, there was a cat trying to eat his way out of my book bag in Adam’s car.

Oh, and that a guy who might or might not have been a vampire — but was certainly responsible for the disappearances of quite a number of people — was running around loose. I could only just sit there with this big stupid smile on my face, pretending to be enjoying myself, while really I was itching to get home and on the phone with Father D., so we could figure out what we were going to do about Red Beaumont.

“Oh, dear,” Aunt Pru said. She was very pretty, CeeCee’s aunt Pru. An albino like her niece, her eyes were the color of violets. She wore a flowing sundress of the same shade. The contrast her long white hair made against the purple of her dress was startling — and cool. CeeCee, I knew, was probably going to look just like her aunt Pru someday, once she got rid of the braces and puppy fat, that is.

Which was probably why CeeCee couldn’t stand her.

“What can this mean?” Aunt Pru muttered to herself. “The hermit. The hermit.”

There appeared, from what I could see, to be a hermit on the card Aunt Pru kept turning over and over. Not of the crab variety, either, but the old - man - living - in - a - cave type. I didn’t know what a hermit had to do with Mrs. Fiske, either, but one thing I did know: I was bored stupid.

“One more time,” Aunt Pru said, sending a cautious glance in CeeCee’s direction. CeeCee had made it clear that we didn’t have all day. I was the one who needed to get home most, of course. I had an Ackerman dinner to contend with. Kung pao chicken night. If I was late, my mom was going to kill me.