The Loveliest Dead (11 page)

The house becomes a smear, blurs like a sidewalk chalk drawing in the rain. It transforms into something else—a face. An attractive woman with long blond hair and graceful cheekbones, mouth open wide, eyes filled with terror, screaming without making a sound. The woman ‘s face dissolves and becomes a man with a square jaw and curly brown hair, eyes wide with fear as he silently screams. Then a little boy’s face, red from crying, filled with terror, his brown hair mussed and spiky, then an old woman’s face, gaunt and pale, both of them screaming, eyes wide. The two faces merge into one blurry blob, then split again into two familiar faces—a man and a woman, both in their late sixties. The man has strong features, a broad, creased forehead, crew-cut white hair, large, prominent ears. The woman’s face is kindly, with silver, blue-tinted hair in a high bouffant, pleasant eyes sparkling through large tortoiseshell-framed glasses, too much makeup. Their faces tremble and their mouths yawn open in soundless screams, then they disappear in a ball of fire. Another face emerges from the flames, and its charred red-black skin slides off the flaming skull.

Lily is falling again, spinning as she drops through the black nothingness in blind silence.

“Is she all right?”

“Shouldn’t you call an ambulance or something?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Claudia said, but she sounded uncertain.

Lily slowly rolled onto her side.

Claudia was kneeling beside her. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” She looked up to see the two middle-aged tourist women peering over the counter at her. Each held a book to her chest. “Hi,” she said with a halfhearted smile. She turned to Claudia. “Wait on our customers, Claudia. I’ll be fine.”
 

Sighing with frustration, Claudia stood and went to the register, rang up the women’s purchases. By the time she was done, Lily was standing again, leaning heavily on the counter.
 

As soon as the women left the store, Claudia said, “Are you going to tell me what’s wrong? Have you seen a doctor?”

“I don’t need a doctor.” Lily was preoccupied. She was remembering the faces, particularly the last two before that flaming face. She had seen them before—the woman with her impossibly outdated bouffant of hair, the man with his big ears and stern eyes. Their names hovered just out of her reach. “Claudia, those two demon-busters—you know, the married couple.” She closed her eyes and put a palm to her forehead. “Dammit, what are their names? They investigated that famous haunted house, the one they made the movie about, that turned out to be a hoax.”
 

“You mean the Binghams?”

Lily snapped her fingers loudly and stomped a foot. “
That’s
it! Bingham, Arthur and Mavis Bingham, right?”
 

“Yes. But what... Lily, are you okay?”

“I’m fine, Claudia.”

“You were just lying unconscious on the floor—that’s not
fine
.”
 

“I wasn’t unconscious. I was having a vision.”

Claudia’s expression softened. “Really?”

“Really. And I’ll be having more.”

“For how long? How often?”

“Depends on how long it takes me to figure out what they mean.”

“What?”

“Do we have any books on the Binghams?”

Claudia shook her head. “No, you refused to carry them, remember? You said they were frauds.”

“Of course they are. So are the authors of at least three-quarters of our inventory. We don’t have
anything
on them?”
 

“No. But I saw a story about them in the
Inquisitor
recently.”
 

“Would you do me a favor?” Lily said.

“Wait,
hold
it. Before I do anything, would you please sit down.”
 

Lily sat on the stool, propped an elbow on the countertop.

“Now,” Claudia said, “I want you to tell me, seriously ... are you okay?”

Lily closed her eyes and rubbed them with thumb and finger. “Well, right now, I have a nasty headache. I need to take something for it. But other than that, I’m fine.”
 

“So you really had ... a vision?”

“I swear. Look, I’ll explain it all when you get back.”

“Where am I going?”

“To the grocery store to grab a copy of the
Inquisitor
for me. Then hit the other bookstores in town and get every book you can find on the Binghams.”
 

The freckles on Claudia’s pale forehead huddled in a frown. “Why?”

“I’ll tell you when you get back. Use my credit card.”

“Can I get you something for your head before I go?”

“Oh, that would be wonderful. In my bathroom medicine cabinet there’s a bottle of Vicodin. I need one of those and a glass of water.”
 

“Be right back.”

Lily looked down at her sandwich with disappointment. The headache had destroyed her appetite. She wrapped it up again and put it back in the bag, replaced the lid on the cup of soup.
 

Claudia returned with the pill and a glass of water. Lily swallowed it, put the glass on the countertop. “I’m going to need a little extra help from you for a while.”
 

“What do you mean?” Claudia said.

“These visions ... I’m going to be having more of them. I never know when they’ll hit, so I can’t drive my car or do anything that would put myself or others in danger if I should black out suddenly.”
 

“Has this happened before?”

“Yes, but it’s been a while. The last time it happened was a couple years before I met you.”

“Does it mean something ... bad is going to happen?”

“I don’t know. Whatever it means, somehow the Binghams are involved. They were screaming. There were other people, too, but I don’t know who they are yet. I strongly suspect they live in a gray two-story house by the ocean with playground equipment in the backyard. Somewhere in the house, I think there’s a teddy bear that plays music.”
 

“They were screaming?”

“Bloody murder. Except I couldn’t hear it.”

“What are you looking for, exactly?” Claudia asked.

“If I knew, I wouldn’t have to look.”

“Will you be okay here by yourself while I’m out?”

She patted Claudia’s arm. “Sure. It won’t happen again this soon. But hurry back. I’m anxious to start digging.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Sunday, 7:12 A.M.

On Sunday morning, Jenna got out of bed without disturbing David and put on some sweats. Halfway down the stairs, she smelled coffee brewing. She found Martha sitting in the breakfast nook with a cup of coffee reading an old Sidney Sheldon paperback. Her radio was on the windowsill quietly playing big-band music.
 

“Morning,” Martha said. “I made coffee.”

“How long have you been up?” Jenna asked as she took a mug from the cupboard and filled it.

Martha shrugged. “A while.”

Jenna sat opposite her. “Are you feeling all right?”

“Oh, sure, I’m fine. Just couldn’t sleep. Looks like Miles couldn’t, either. He’s in the living room.”

Frowning, Jenna got up and left the kitchen, went through the dining room to the living room. The television was on, tuned to The Cartoon Network with the volume low. Miles had pulled the afghan off the back of the couch and was curled up beneath it, his head on a throw pillow, sound asleep. Jenna wondered if he’d had another nightmare. She decided to let him sleep and returned to the kitchen.
 

“He hasn’t gotten a good night’s sleep since he watched that damned horror movie with you and David the other night,” Jenna said.
 

“You sure that’s all it is?”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. Maybe something’s bothering him.”

Jenna hoped nothing was wrong at school. She got up and started breakfast—scrambled eggs and cinnamon toast. Once the smell of the cooking eggs wafted through the house, she knew Miles and David would make their way to the kitchen.
 

Sure enough, Miles shuffled in wearing his pajamas about five minutes later.

“Why were you sleeping on the couch?” Jenna asked.

Miles’s eyes were puffy with sleep as he scratched his head. He said nothing.

“Did you have another nightmare?”

He looked up at her and seemed to consider his answer. Finally, he nodded.

“Honey, you can’t sleep on the couch with the TV on.”

“Oh, why not,” Martha said. It wasn’t a question. She got up and shuffled over to Miles and gave him a hug. “You want some juice?”
 

He nodded again.

Martha got a glass from the cupboard, a carton of orange juice from the refrigerator, and poured. She handed him the glass and said, “Come sit with Grandma.” They went to the breakfast nook together and sat at the table. Martha turned to Jenna, who stood cooking at the stove. “If he’s having nightmares, it’ll pass. Maybe he sleeps better on the couch than he would in his bedroom.”
 

“You’re not helping, Mom.”

“Oh, come on. You used to have nightmares when you were a little girl. I had to leave the lamp on in your bedroom. Sometimes you came in and slept with me, remember?”
 

A corner of Miles’s mouth curled up as he turned to Jenna. “You did, Mom?”

Jenna sighed as she turned back to the eggs. “Yes, I did.”

Miles grinned as Martha put an arm around him and said, “So don’t feel bad, honey. Everybody goes through it.”

David shuffled in wearing his robe, yawning. “Something smells good,” he said as he poured a cup of coffee. He went to the table and sat across from Miles. “You ready to go back to work on the garage today, Tiger?”
 

Miles nodded.

Jenna said, “Don’t forget, we’re going over to see the Gimbles today.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s right. A Dodge Durango, huh?”

“Yep. It’s idling fast or something.”

“Well. A job’s a job.”

It was a gray, smoky day, but the rain had stopped. After breakfast, David and Miles worked a couple hours in the garage, which was now only half filled with junk. The day before, they had made two trips to a stinking landfill, and there was more to be hauled away: a couple rusted old bicycle frames, an old car battery, a broken trampoline, a rusted-out Weber Kettle barbecue, several garbage bags filled with empty Michelob beer cans that David planned to take to a recycling station, and more. They were ready to haul off another load when Jenna came out.
 

“Why don’t you do that when we get back?” she said.

“You want to go now?” David said.

“Yeah, let’s go before you hit the dump.”

“Okay.”

Jenna turned to Miles and said, “Stay here with Grandma, okay? Keep an eye on her for us?”

“Sure,” Miles said.

David said, “First, I’ve got to clean up.”

Kimberly and Harry Gimble lived in a gated community called Seacrest Estates, in a ranch-style house with an immaculately tended front yard. Harry Gimble was raking leaves in the yard when they arrived, and he put his rake down as they got out of the car. He stood a couple inches short of David’s six feet, soft and doughy with a wreath of rust-colored hair surrounding his bald head. He wore a burgundy sweater over a yellow shirt, khaki pants, and sneakers.
 

“You must be the Kellars,” he said with a wide smile. He pumped David’s hand and said, “Harry Gimble, Sand Dollar Realty. I hear you’re new in town.”
 

David nodded, returning the smile. “We’ve been here a week.”

Kimberly came out the front door and joined them. After a few minutes of small talk, she said, “Come on inside, Jenna, while these guys lift the hood on the Dodge.”
 

She took Jenna through the living room, down the hall to the cheerful master bedroom decorated in cream and pale green. Kimberly knocked a pile of underwear and socks off a straight-back chair against the wall. “Look at this,” she said. “It’s bad enough I’ve got to clean up after three boys.” She carried the chair over to the computer, set it next to the low, wheeled chair already positioned there.
 

Jenna sat in the straight-back. “I know what you mean,” she said. “Miles cleans his room about every fourth or fifth time I tell him to. David’s a little sloppy, but I let it pass because he’s so good about taking the garbage out and helping me in the kitchen.”
 

Kimberly said, “That’s why I can only work part-time at the store. Harry does very well at real estate—we’d be okay if I didn’t work. But the extra money is nice, you know? Full-time money would be even nicer, but I don’t have
time
. This house would totally fall apart if I worked full-time. Nobody here would survive a week— they wouldn’t know how. They would all die. It would be all over the news, and Rush Limbaugh and Dr. Laura would blame me because I wasn’t home wiping their butts for them.”