Whispers (35 page)

Bill was next to Jonathan, calling his friend’s name, searching for a pulse.

“
He’s dead?” Gracie asked, but she knew the answer. The light had been on him long enough for her to see the blood, the white matter, the splatter against the wall.

“
How did he get down here?” she said. And then, “Who did this to him?”

“
There’s a gun by his hand,” Bill murmured, his voice filled with shock. “He might have done it himself.”

“
But why? Why come here and ...”

“
Bill, try not to move him. We need to get back upstairs and try to reach Eddie on a cell phone. We shouldn’t be touching anything.”

Bill looked like he might argue but finally pulled away and followed them back to the kitchen. Analise was standing in the middle of the room when they came through the door.

“
Where is everyone?” she cried. “I woke up and I was all alone.”

Gracie went to put her arms around her daughter. “I’m sorry, honey, I didn’t think you’d wake up so soon.”

“
I heard the phone. Did you know the lights don’t work? And I can’t find Brendan and you were gone,” she sobbed.

“
Shhh, honey. It’s okay.”

Brendan stepped around the corner as Gracie soothed Analise. “What’s up?” he asked.

“
Where have you been?” Analise demanded.

Brendan shrugged. “Around.”

She looked mad and Gracie wondered if they’d had a fight after the “family discussion” she’d held upstairs. This wasn’t the time to worry about it though. “Analise? I need you and Brendan to go get Chloe.”

“
Why?”

“
I’ll explain later. Just find her now, please.”

Brendan followed Analise as she went upstairs. Reilly used the time to try to place a call to Eddie, but he wasn’t getting a signal and the phone lines were still down. Soon it would be full dark and they’d be in the house with a dead man in the cellar and no power. A few minutes later, Brendan and Analise returned with Chloe.

Gracie held her daughter as Bill explained to Chloe what he’d found. Brendan’s eyes widened and he paled as he listened. He moved closer to Analise and reached out, as if asking to be included in the circle. Gracie put her other arm around him and let him in.

“
I knew something had happened,” Chloe said. “I knew it.”

“
Chloe,” Gracie asked softly, “did he do this to himself? Do you know?”

“
I only saw his pain. I felt it.” Her eyes filled with tears. “I felt it.”

“
He was always casting his pain out,” Bill said, his mouth tightening. “He knew it hurt her and he did it anyway.”

There was a flinty edge to Bill’s voice that Gracie hadn’t heard before.

“
He couldn’t help it, Bill.”

“
That’s what he wanted you to believe.”

“
He didn’t seem to be in pain when I spoke with him,” Gracie said.

Reilly exhaled heavily. “I want to go back downstairs. Maybe we can make some sense out of what happened.” He switched on his flashlight and looked at Bill. “You coming?”

Bill followed Reilly back into the cellar. Chloe wrapped her arms around herself, watching them disappear. “I have to know what is happening here,” she muttered. “Don’t you see? I can’t control what I don’t know.”

Gracie frowned at her and said, “Sometimes you can’t control what you do know.” The words had no effect on Chloe though.

“
Did he ask you?” she said, her face twisted with pain.

“
Who? Ask me what?”

“
Nathan. Did he ask you about the séance?”

Frowning, Gracie shook her head.

“
What séance?” Brendan asked.

“
I need to reach the spirit world,” Chloe said.

Gracie took a deep breath. Reilly hadn’t mentioned a word about it. Was this what he’d been leading up to when Bill had interrupted them to look for Jonathan?

“
I think we have enough going on without ‘calling the spirits,’ ” Gracie said.

Chloe gave her a cold look. “You say this because you are afraid.”

“
Yes,” Gracie said. “I’m scared to death. There’s a dead man downstairs—no one knows how he got there or how he died, the water’s rising about a foot an hour. We have no power, no way to get out, and it’s going to be dark soon. So yes, Chloe. I am afraid.”

Beside her Analise made a noise that took the vengeance out of her. Gracie instantly regretted her sarcastic response as she looked at her daughter’s tight and frightened face. What was it about Chloe LaMonte that made her so angry? Was it the sense that even though Chloe claimed to want to help, Gracie feared just the opposite? That Chloe would hurt her and her family if she could?

“
Analise, look at me,” Gracie said, holding Analise’s shoulders between her hands. “Nothing’s going to happen to us, okay, sweetie? It looks like Jonathan was a troubled man who ended his own life.”

“
He was a clairvoyant,” Chloe said. “He could never reconcile himself to that. He was made an outcast by his own family for his gift and spent every day after searching for the reason he’d been so cursed. He was afraid to touch another because he could see what was in their hearts.”

Chloe wasn’t helping Analise’s fear with her explanation. Gracie moved to block her daughter’s view of the old woman. “Listen to me, Analise. Whatever the reason, he had problems and he most likely killed himself. That’s nothing for us to be afraid of, okay? We’re safe in the house until the storm stops and then we’ll get home. I just don’t think a séance is the thing to do tonight. Understand?”

“
But Momma,” Analise began.

She never called Gracie Momma anymore—it was her childhood name, not the one that went with the teenager. Just the sound of it made her seem so much younger, so much more defenseless. It fanned the need to protect that lived inside of Gracie. She slid her hands down Analise’s arms and gave her daughter’s fingers a comforting squeeze.

“
But Momma, what if she’s right?” Analise tried again. “What if there is some crazy ghost running around here, slamming doors and ... and ... What about the lights and the phone? What about that?”

“
Honey, we’re all a little freaked out here. Door slamming—that happens at home. This is an old, old place. There are more drafts in here than out in the storm. And the lights, sweetie, it’s the storm.”

“
But what about the ghosts?”

Gracie took a deep breath. She’d been talking around the real issue because it sounded ridiculous, even in her head. Obviously she needed to say it though, or Analise would keep at her. She was a stubborn child. It had made her a determined and focused young adult, but oh, did she try Gracie’s patience sometimes.

“
Analise, let’s say the impossible is true. Let’s say the Diablo has a ghost—which we know it doesn’t—but let’s say it does. For argument’s sake, let’s also say Chloe can speak to this ghost. We have no idea what kind of trouble that will bring. None at all. And I’d rather not find out.”

Analise looked like she might continue to argue, but the men chose that moment to come back from the cellar. Both of them looked pale and shaken. Bill had blood on his hands. Not just a little, as Reilly had after checking for a pulse. But a lot. As if he’d touched or held the body. Reilly stood beside him, a dark expression on his face.

“
There’s nothing we can do until we get a hold of Eddie,” Reilly said.

“
You are certain he’s dead?” Chloe asked. A dark look seemed to pass between the old woman and Bill, a look Gracie didn’t understand.

“
There can be no mistake,” he said. “Jonathan is dead.”

“
You’re just going to leave him down there?” Analise asked. Her eyes looked huge in her pale face. She crossed her arms protectively around her middle, and Gracie wondered if she thought of the baby when she did it.

Reilly gave Bill a cold glance. “He’s already been disturbed enough. I’m going to try to track Eddie down. Maybe he’s back at the municipal building dealing with Corrine. We can’t move Jonathan until Eddie’s people have been out. He shouldn’t have been touched at all.”

The last was said with another look at Bill. Surely, Bill hadn’t moved Jonathan’s body? Anyone who had a TV knew you never messed with a crime scene, even if the crime was suicide. What was he thinking?

“
He was a friend,” Bill said, standing stiffly. “Troubled, but someone I knew, someone I hoped to help one day. I only meant to touch him and let his spirit know to move on.”

“
You should have waited until Eddie gave the okay,” Reilly said.

“
A spirit trapped in this world is never a good thing,” Chloe said.

Reilly shook his head. He pulled his keys from his pocket and glanced at Gracie. “I’ll be back as soon as I find Eddie. Stay here and stay together.”

Gracie stared at him, incredulous. “Reilly, you can’t go out in this storm. Have you looked outside lately?”

Reilly shook his head and crossed to the front door. He stepped out onto the porch and, like a parade, the rest of them followed.

The front yard was gone.

The fence that had divided the Diablo from the neighboring property was just a shadow beneath the dark brown water. It looked like a lake had swallowed the street whole— no, not a lake, an enormous muddy river that churned and swirled and slammed into obstacles. White caps raced along with the rising current. Reilly’s Jeep had been shoved into a leaning mesquite tree, fifty feet down from where he’d parked. Gracie’s Honda was nowhere in sight.

“
Shit,” he said under his breath.

The water rushed the channel of the street, hauling with it the spoils of the storm like prizes raised up to the sky. Branches, a bike, something that might once have been a yard ornament, a lawn chair, a propane tank. And who knew what lurked beneath the swift, dark waters? The water had reached the bottom of the porch steps. If the rain continued to come down, the first floor would be breached by morning, the cellar flooded by noon.

There was nothing they could do but wait it out. Gracie had said as much earlier but standing there, seeing it, brought the reality of the situation into terrifying focus. It seemed to hit all of them at the same time until all they could do was stand, staring at the raging river with a sense of disbelief and rising fear.

***

THEY told one another that Jonathan Burns had killed himself because the alternative was too much to handle. It was terrible to have a dead person in the cellar; it was unacceptable that his murderer might be under the same roof. None of them spoke of the possibility. The only hint that it was on everyone’s mind came from Reilly.

“
From here on, until this is over, we should buddy up. No going off alone.”

No one questioned the quiet authority in his voice. Like scared kids they huddled together. Only Zach was missing. They’d checked on him earlier and found him asleep in his room, unaware of anything going on. Looking from one face to another, Gracie realized they’d drive themselves crazy with fear if they didn’t do something constructive.

“
Brendan? Would you take Analise and see if you can find us candles and matches?” She asked.

Brendan stared at her for a moment and then nodded.

“
We’ll need them before it gets dark.”

That did what she’d hoped. The gathering gloom gave urgency to her request and though she sensed a tension between her daughter and Brendan, neither argued as they went about their task. Tinkerbelle and Romeo followed dutifully at their heels.

Bill suggested that Chloe go upstairs to lie down. She looked frail and haggard and seemed to be aging before their eyes. Though Gracie still didn’t trust the old lady, she felt compassion. Chloe’s pain and confusion were real, as real as the torrent of emotions inside Gracie. She’d have had to be a much harder, colder woman than she was not to be sympathetic.

“
Bill and I are going to search the house, Gracie,” Reilly said after the others had left the room.

“
For what?”

He looked uneasy. “I want to be sure there’s no one hiding out here. If Jonathan stumbled on someone in the cellar and they killed him for it. ..”

Gracie hadn’t even considered that they might have a stowaway holed up somewhere in the Diablo.

“
We’re going to have to go back downstairs and make sure there’s no hiding place. We still don’t know why he was there in the first place. Do you want to come with us?”

“
No,” Gracie said, thinking of the dark shadows down there, of the clothes, the hat with
Aiken Tate
written inside, and of Jonathan in a trance, speaking that name in warning ... “Definitely, no. I’ll stay here and finish going through these boxes.”

“
You don’t have a buddy,” he said.

She smiled. “I have Juliet. She’s worth two.”

On cue, Juliet raised her head and growled at him. Reilly grinned at the dog and Juliet laid her head back down.

Reilly stepped closer to Gracie and gently touched her face. “Don’t worry,” he said.

“
Why not?” she answered.

“
Because I’m not going to let anything happen to you,” he said.

The tone of his voice was low and serious. He meant it and a need inside her responded to it. It had been so long— nearly all her life—since she’d felt that someone was watching out for her. The sensation of it washed through her, but she didn’t know how to trust such a thing. Reilly’s eyes darkened and she suspected her thoughts had shown on her face. He lowered his head until his lips hovered just over hers.