The Siege (32 page)

“Well, where’s my champagne?” Beverly asked.  “Negotiations are thirsty work.”

~

“It’s too soon,” Mia moaned, gripping Ted’s hand tightly as another labor pain ripped through her body.

“My sisters and I will keep your baby safe,” Judy promised.  “Just let go, Mia, and let little Brian come into this world.”

“May the veil of life bring a blessing to your son,” the two Gray Ladies chorused.

Ted felt the room change as if it became something else.  The brick and mortar, wood and nails seemed to become a membrane of sorts, shielding them from the outside.  He kept a tight hold on Mia’s hand as she was lifted into position.

“Time to push, Mia,” Judy instructed.

Mia bore down and pushed.

Brian Stephen Cid Martin was born fifty days early and gasped his first breath with the aid of two hovering Gray Ladies.  He was of a good weight considering his lack of time in the womb.  His color was good, and aside from a very unusual birthmark on his right shoulder, he was perfect.

Judy severed the physical bond between mother and child and wrapped Brian tightly, handing him to Mia.  “Here’s your son.  He’s pretty quiet, but he is well.”

Ted gazed down at his little son in amazement.  It was too soon to know anything about eye color, but it was very evident that he was looking down at a miniature version of himself.  “That kid’s going to have to grow into that nose,” he observed.

Mia, who thought Brian was perfect, gushed, “He’s gorgeous.”

There was a light tapping on the door.  Judy, wiping her birth-stained hands on a receiving blanket, nodded to Ed who opened the door.

Cid stood there with Murphy behind him.  “The sheriff asked if he should call for an ambulance?” Cid asked Ed.

Ed looked at Judy, and she shook her head before announcing, “Mother and son are doing fine.  Brian has some growing ahead of him, but my sisters and I will stay here until he is strong enough.” She added, “Give us a little while to stabilize them.”

“Yes, of course.  Did you say Brian?” Cid asked.

“Brian Stephen Cid Martin,” Ed said before he gently shut the door.

“Did you hear that?” Cid said to Murphy.  “They named him after us.”

Murphy pushed his hat to the back of his head.  Cid thought that the ghost looked a bit nervous.  “Makes us Godfathers,” he said proudly.

“Who wins the bet?” Murphy asked as they moved down the hall.

Cid pulled a folded paper out of his back pocket.  He unfolded it when they reached the landing.  “It says you win if the kid’s name is Stephen.  I win if it’s Cid.  Mike put a hundred that Mia would call the kid Ralph. He loses bigtime.  Let’s see, there’s no Brian anywhere, unless you call Bev’s ‘Brainy Big Nose’ a near miss.  I think we split the pot,” Cid concluded.

They entered the living room.  Cid stopped and cleared his voice.  All eyes were upon him.  “Brian Stephen Cid Martin has entered the world.  Mother and son are doing fine.”

Bev raised her glass, ignoring the tears that ran down her face.  She hadn’t realized she had been holding them in.  She hadn’t realized how much she cared for the people upstairs.

Gerald walked over and asked, “May I refill your glass, Beverly?”

“What took you so long?” Bev scolded.

The sound of a snowplow moving down the road brought a bit of the real world back to the people congregated in the farmhouse.  A toot of a horn heralded the arrival of Burt’s beast.  He pulled the car to a halt next to the steps.  Dave all but tumbled outside.

“Is everything alright?  Jake sent us the strangest message,” Dave said, thrusting his cell phone into Cid’s hands.

“There, displayed on the smartphone screen was a very pregnant Mia riding in a land speeder with Ted standing beside her.  They were conversing with Boba Fett who declared, “There’s no room at the inn, damn it!”

“There are so many levels of blasphemy here,” Cid said, shaking his head.

“Well?” Burt said, walking over.  “What happened here?”

“You might as well park the car and come inside.  It’s a long story.”

Chapter Twenty-six

Mike pulled up at the farm after an exhausting drive.  He had stopped by to pick up Audrey.  She was mending, but driving herself would have been too much for her in her present condition.  The previous week’s snow that hadn’t melted, had sublimated. Out in the hollow, the pines looked like they were toothpicks stuck in marshmallow cream.  The sky was clear, and the sunshine felt good through the windows of the car.  He pulled into the farmhouse drive.

He counted all the vehicles that filled the small lot.  “There’s a familiar horse trailer, but the snowcat is new.”

“I think that’s a loaner yet to be picked up,” Audrey said. “I’m surprised to see the bounty hunters still here.”

“I guess they didn’t have any place pressing to be,” Mike theorized.  He got out of his car and walked around to open the door for Audrey.  He was practicing up on his manners.  The woman he’d been spending time with was a keeper, and he intended not to lose her due to his laziness.

Ted walked out of the office.  “Welcome to the PEEPs compound.  We have a full house.  Inside there,” he pointed at the farmhouse,” we’re housing three Gray Ladies and a god, and over there, we have bounty hunters and the ghost of a Confederate soldier.  Burt has Dave bunking with him until this Friday when we will all bid the boy farewell.  No one’s going to miss him, but that’s beside the point.”

“I’m looking forward to meeting the soldier,” Audrey admitted.  “So how’s Brian, and when will I get to see him?”

“He’s thriving.  But when you have the world’s best nurses on duty twenty-four seven, then you would.  Brian’s not a crier.  I suspect the boy’s already spoiled with that much attention.  If not, when my parents get into town, he will be.  You’re welcome to come up and see him after the meeting.”

“How is Mia doing?” Mike asked, holding the office door open for Audrey.

“Ask me yourself, Dupree?” Mia said from inside.

Mike looked in to see Mia sitting with her feet up on the conference table.  Burt and Cid were busy looking over a set of old maps.

Mike walked over and kissed her on top of her head.  “You had us all worried.”

“You didn’t even know about it until it was over,” Mia accused.

“True, but I worried the whole time Ted was telling me the story,” Mike defended.

“Me too,” Audrey interjected.  “You sure are popular with the strangest groups.”

“Evidently, it doesn’t pay to be fair to both sides,” Mia said, lifting an eyebrow.

“Are you going to change your ways?” Audrey asked.

“No.  However, I don’t think I’ll be seeing another Other anytime soon,” Mia said.

Mike looked around.  “Where are the Lone Ranger and Tonto?”

“In the barn, they’ve set up house in Murphy’s corner.”

“Are they going to join us for the meeting?” Mike asked.

“Don’t know, you’ll have to ask Burt,” Mia said.

Burt looked up at the sound of his name.  He seemed more contented since the last time they were together.  He even looked fitter, not thinner, just not as flabby.  “When’s the meeting going to start?”

“I’m waiting for Dave to bring Murphy and Breeze down from the hillside.”

“Breeze?”

“That’s Mia’s name for the Confederate,” Burt explained.  “I believe he got it from having a large breezy hole shot through his middle.”

This explanation elicited a giggle from Audrey.  “He won’t have to go by Breeze for too much longer. I have three missing gentleman-soldier candidates, I’d like to run past him,” she explained.

Mia’s face brightened.  “I’m so happy.  Perhaps we can at least start to give some solace to him.  He really came through for us.  I’d like to pass him on to his reward soon.”

“Any word on whether the Browns are going to let your father do an excavation?” Audrey asked.

“They’ve lawyered up.  PEEPs have a formal warning to stay away.  The family will prosecute if we continue to investigate on their property,” Mia answered.  “If Sheriff Ryan hadn’t labeled it a crime scene right away, then I fear the whole thing would have been covered up.”

“I have a theory as to why, but I’ll wait until Breeze is here.  Tell me, what does he look like?” Audrey asked.

“Aside from the gaping hole in his chest, you mean?” Mia teased.

Audrey rolled her eyes.  “Yes.  Tell me.  It would help to identify him.”

“Remember, Audrey, ghost’s images of themselves are sometimes altered because of clouded memories or not having looked at themselves.  Back then, photos were rare and a painted portrait was more than often influenced by the artist.  In Breeze’s case, I think his family had money.  The sword he carries isn’t Confederate issue.  It could have been passed down through the male line.  That is why I was hoping to get back in there and see if we could find it.”

“Okay, taking all this into mind, tell me, when you look at him, what do you see?” she requested.  Audrey grimaced as she dug in her bag for her notebook.

Mia noticed that her friend was still hurting.  She would suggest that Audrey let Judy check her over before she left.  “Breeze is about five ten, which is tall for the time period.  He is showing me long black hair, a Roman nose. I can’t tell whether his eyes are green or blue, but I get the impression they are light in color.  His lips are thin and his jaw pronounced.  He has a mole here,” Mia touched her left cheek.  I think he would have been considered very handsome in his day.”

“Body weight?”

“Aside from the hole in his chest, I guess he would have been 190 pounds.”

The outside door opened and Dave came in.  Breeze and Murphy floated in behind him.  Audrey looked at Dave oddly.  She shuffled her papers and put a copy of an old photo aside.

“Breeze, this is Audrey. She’s been working very hard trying to identify you,” Mia explained.  “Audrey, he is in front of you to your right.”

Audrey offered her hand to shake the ghost’s and was surprised and pleased by the tingle she felt on the top of her hand when he turned it over and kissed it.  “Nice to meet you, sir,” she gushed.

Mia looked at Dave while this was going on.  She wanted to see his interest peaked.  This ghost was more than a spirit; he was a piece of a past that was often incorrectly reported on.  Winston Churchill said, “History is written by the victors,” and Mia had to agree with the man. Dave didn’t really seem to connect with the ghosts, and he didn’t really care to dig into their pasts.  This was something her father would have to deal with when Dave went to work with him.  Mia feared that Dave would be a disappointment, but she hoped not.  Her mother saw something in the boy. Maybe Mia was just too close to the situation.

“Since we have everyone here, let’s start the meeting,” Burt said.  He waited until the people he could see had seated themselves.  He watched Mia, and when she nodded, he knew that the two ghosts had settled down.  “For this meeting we’ll suspend our normal format.  We have a more pressing haunt to take care of.  Breeze appeared to us sometime after the walls of the tunnels under the old Brown shoe factory fell in, exposing quite a few skeletons.  From Tom Braverman’s and Mia’s account, we learned that quite a few of the owners of the skulls looked like they met their end by execution.  A musket ball to the back of the head,” Burt explained.  “Since then, we’ve searched on our end to no avail.  We didn’t find any listed graveyards on the Brown property.  Audrey, did you have any luck finding mention of any cemeteries?”

“There is an old section of Big Bear Lake Cemetery that has some Civil War burials, but these were local lads.”

“I got the feeling of secrecy in the brief time I was there.  I would like to point out that, in my youth, we would traverse those tunnels quite frequently, and I never got a bad feeling there, aside from the consequences of drinking cheap beer,” Mia said.  “Aside from Breeze here, the spirits aren’t haunting the spot, to my knowledge.”

“It could be early days,” Burt suggested.  “Breeze had just enough energy to follow the Dickensian ghosts here to the farm.  Now that the site has been disturbed by the Sheriff’s Department, I expect we’ll see move activity.  I would really like to get in there now, cold as it is, and set up some cameras.”

“Legally, I would advise against it,” Mike said.  “When we were a young group, we could get away with acting first, getting permission later.  But we are the Paranormal Entity Exposure Partners with a weekly cable show.  I hate to have a lawsuit finish us off.”

“I vote we concentrate on getting Breeze his identity back, and then we can focus on getting his bones settled,” Mia put to the table.

“I agree,” Audrey said.  “I have some information that should get us farther down the road.  If I may?”  She waited until she received a nod from both Burt and Mike before continuing, “I’d like to ask Breeze a few questions.  Mia or Dave, if you could act as Breeze’s voice for me?”

“Dave, go ahead. You’ve been spending more time with him,” Mia instructed.

Dave nodded.

“Okay, Breeze, do you remember anything about your childhood, like siblings?  The reason I ask is, I have come across three viable candidates.  I’d like to narrow them down to one.”

Breeze looked at Audrey and took in her earnestness. He decided to risk it all and tell the team what he knew.  “I remember my parents and a sister.  I’m not sure if she was the only other one in my family though.”

Dave repeated his words.

Audrey nodded.  “That takes this one off the board.  How about your home?  Were you a city boy or did you live in the country?”

“I remember living in both.”

“He says that he lived in the city and out in the country,” Dave informed her.

Audrey wrinkled her brow at this answer.

“I do remember we raised horses…”

“He remembers horses.  He thinks that they raised them.”

A smile from Audrey preceded the good news.  “Does the name Frederic Marsten sound familiar?”

Dave, Mia and Murphy studied Breeze for a moment.

“How about Freddy?” Mia asked.

A twitch of his eye indicated a memory surfacing.