A Question of Ghosts (21 page)

“Just keep us steady.”

They were rolling down toward one of the busiest intersections connecting to downtown. Becca caught a dizzy flash of a bilious green building coming up on the left—a walk-in haven for homeless youth—seconds before she saw two ragged kids crossing the street in front of them. Becca slammed on the horn.

“Right!” Jo yelled, but Becca was already spinning the wheel hard. She saw the kids’ two white faces jerking toward them. A Prius loomed next to them in the same instant. Becca made the wheels kiss the curb, some alien logic in her mind telling her not to over-correct.

Horn blaring, the Bentley skittered between the two gawping young people and the Prius, but even with Becca’s caution, their momentum sent the car tipping wildly, lifting up on two wheels. It slammed level on the pavement again and coasted through the intersection.

Becca’s mother, the Lady of the Rock, or some god Becca still wasn’t sure existed had to be looking out for them. Fairview’s miraculous red light allowed the Bentley to swerve around the one passing car. The street was leveling and they were slowing, and Becca was able to turn them into the wide dirt lot of a factory on their right.

They rumbled to a stop inches from the chain-link fence bordering the lot.

Becca still gripped the wheel, her eyes wide and staring, not wanting to believe she had pulled it off. She turned calmly to Jo.

“Are you all right?” she barked. “Are you all right?”

“Why wouldn’t I be all right?” Jo snapped irritably, still gripping the dashboard as tightly as Becca held the wheel. “I’m sitting right here. You did it, Becca. You saved us.”

“Now we’re getting the hell out of this car.” Becca turned the key and the oddly hissing engine quieted. Jo seemed to read her mind, and they elbowed open their doors. If the brakes of this thing had so obviously been messed with, she wouldn’t be surprised if a bomb went off under the hood. She wanted them out of there.

They walked stiffly together across the lot, stood side by side, and stared at the treacherous Bentley.

Jo flipped open her cell. “Where are we?”

“Denny and Terry Avenue.”

Jo clicked keys and spoke tersely into her phone. Her tone was stoic as she talked to Pam Emerson, but Becca could feel her trembling beside her.

Jo snapped her cell shut. “What’s the matter with you?”

Becca looked up at her, puzzled. “Besides almost flattening two homeless kids, I’m fine. What do you mean?”

“You’re so calm.”

“Oh. I’m in crisis mode.” Becca clasped her hands behind her, enjoying the familiar, but temporary, cerebral tranquility that saw her through emergencies. “Trigger my phobia and I’ll freak right out, but throw me a threat that makes sense and I can usually handle it. Social work. I promise I’ll be a basket case by tonight, though.”

“Well, I’ll have my nervous breakdown now, then.” Jo was pale as chalk.

“That’s okay. Go ahead. I think there are two rules in good relationships: I get to drive, and only one of us gets to go crazy at a time.” Becca tugged Jo’s sleeve gently. “Come on. Sit down. We found a patch of shade.”

They settled together into the dirt in the shadow of the building. Becca wrapped Jo’s cold hand in hers and held it on her knee, and they were quiet for a while.

“The gift held blood,” Jo said.

Becca closed her eyes, her tranquility fading fast. “I don’t know what that means. I don’t understand what gift she’s talking about.”

“We heard her voice just before we realized the brakes were gone.”

“Was she warning us? Trying to get us out of the car?”

“Your mother spoke in the past tense. The gift
held
blood. It didn’t sound as if she was warning us of a current danger.”

“You had just mentioned John William Voakes before she spoke.”

“True.” Jo was watching her closely. “Becca, I can fly us both to the finest hotel in London. We can be there in ten hours.”

“That’s tempting.” Becca had a terrific craving for a chocolate truffle and a stiff drink. She let the prospect of escape play out behind her closed eyes, a luxury suite in an exotic city, far away from bloody dolls and severed brake lines. She knew she couldn’t do it. “Jo, please, get out of here if you can. I’ll understand. I can’t go with you. She’s my mother. But you didn’t bargain for any of this. I don’t want you hurt because of me.”

“I won’t grace that suggestion with a reply.” Jo was steadier now, color returning to the high planes of her face.

And through the post-crisis calm and questions of ghosts and murder mysteries, Becca found room to marvel all over again at their shadows on the thin grass. Jo’s tall figure outlined darkly beside her smaller one, leaning against her. She still couldn’t believe her shadow might be finding a twin; but there Jo was—breathing and real and, thank Christ, safe for now.

Becca heard the far-off whine of a siren approaching. Pam Emerson was setting a land speed record. The Bentley sat sadly in the distant corner of the sunny lot, both its front doors open.

“What gift?” Becca whispered to the air.

Chapter Seventeen

“Tell me again, who could have gotten to your car last night?”

Pam had ushered them into a coffee shop, a break from the growing heat of the day and a chocolate opportunity for Becca. Still feeling a little unsettled, Jo watched Becca delicately consume a fudge cupcake.

“Jo?” Pam nudged her.

“Sorry. Anyone could have gotten to my car last night.” Jo sipped her latte. “It was parked on the street.”

“But you had visitors at the house, right? Not me, only the good Lord knows why, but other visitors?”

“Yes. Rachel Perry and Becca’s aunt came over. But I was outside on the front steps while they were there. I saw them come and go. Neither of them went near my car.”

“Damn. Okay. What are you two going to do for wheels?” Pam flipped through the pages of her notebook.

“I’ve leased something.” Jo expected the BMW to arrive shortly. She’d given the service the address of the coffee shop. “What about my office, Pam?”

“Damn place is clean of prints. We drew a couple of boot outlines from the floor, but they’re real generic boots. We’ll have the doll tested. Guess we’ll have to overlook any prints left all over it by some slimy scientist.”

Jo sighed, penitent once again. “I’ve apologized for touching the doll three times now.”

“Well, keep at it.”

Becca snickered into her coffee, and Jo wondered again at her resilience. Becca looked centered again, fully herself. They watched the Bentley roll by, hitched to the back of a tow truck, its image wavering across the shop’s paneled windows. It was nothing. A machine, a toy.

“And we have one hit from a hooker.”

“Excuse me?” Jo frowned.

“A working girl was standing at the corner of Broadway and Roy, late Tuesday night.” Pam consulted her notebook, her tone sardonic. “She saw ‘a man’ walking away from your office shortly after midnight.”

“A man,” Jo repeated.

“Real helpful.” Pam nodded. “A white man, she thinks. Average height, average weight, nothing distinctive at all. Just that he was wearing a long coat, which no one needs in Seattle in late June in the middle of the night.”

“So he could have been hiding something in it?” Becca asked.

“A crowbar, a baseball bat. Might be.” Pam folded her arms. “Okay. I’m strongly suggesting the two of you stay the hell away from that house. He knows you’re there. This perp burned through an iron lock with acid. He wouldn’t have any problems getting to you.”

“Well, that would be true wherever we went.” Becca drew her hands through her hair. “I don’t want to live my life looking over my shoulder every day. I hate this. And that house is still the best place to hear my mother.” She looked to Jo for confirmation.

“That’s not necessarily true. We’ve heard your mother speak from the Healys’ place and from my car radio. She seems to travel with us. We haven’t heard her in that house since—”

“She talked to me in that house last night.”

“Excuse me?” Pam asked. “The what? The mother what, now?”

“My dead mother.” Becca was smiling at Jo’s abruptly arched eyebrows.

“You heard her again last night?” Jo was confounded. “She spoke to you? Becca, you might have mentioned this!”

“She wasn’t talking to
you,
” Becca told Jo politely. “It was a private conversation.”

“All right.” Jo drummed her nails against the glass tabletop. “If it’s not too private, what did your dead mother
say?
”

“Well.” Becca hesitated, and that connection beamed again between them, light and effortless. “She told me I was right to be falling in love with you.”

Jo stopped drumming on the table. She found herself smiling back, not a broad grin, just a small lift of one corner of her mouth.

“The mother
what
, now?” Pam seemed to relent and slapped Jo on the back. “I mean, congratulations. I’m real happy for y’all. But you’re talking about hearing Madelyn Healy’s voice?”

“We have a lot to tell you, Pam.” Becca patted Pam’s hand with real sympathy. “And we will fill you in, I promise. But right now, we have to make plans for the day. My hip is vibrating for the fourth time, and I think it’s Rachel, yelling at me for missing our breakfast.”

Jo shook her hair out of her eyes, the motion needed to break that tingling bond with Becca. “Right. We stay in the house, then.”

Pam sighed. “Guess we can step up patrols in the neighborhood, but that won’t cover it. You guys own a gun?”

Becca shook her head in the same moment Jo nodded, and she looked at her in surprise.

“I’m licensed to carry a Magnum six thirty-two. It’s a revolver, Becca. A hand gun.”

Pam whistled softly. “What’s the caliber on that?”

“Three twenty-seven. I’m quite accurate with it.” Jo was berating herself for not retrieving the weapon the last time she had been home, the day they found her ruined office. She had taken only the music box with her, Consuelo’s gift. She spoke to Becca softly. “I thought you’d be uneasy around a gun. Given your history.”

Becca nodded, then shook her head. Then she nodded again, and shrugged helplessly. “I am. Uneasy with guns. Thank you for thinking of this. But I also think we need some protection.”

“I never, never advise civilians to arm themselves.” Pam regarded them pensively. “But arm yourself, Jo. I’m not sure why a scientist dense enough to handle evidence is sharp enough to carry a classy weapon like that, but go get that gun. You a good shot?”

“I have many skills.” Jo winked at Becca.

“All right.” Pam thudded Jo’s back again with the flat of her hand, and if she kept punching the bruise below her shoulder, Jo was going to deck her, but she liked her catching the
Xena
reference. “I’m coming by your place tonight. Don’t know how long I can stay, but it won’t hurt to have a visible police presence there for a while.”

Jo lifted her chin at Becca. “Would you like a calling of the clan?”

A natural shorthand had developed between them. She knew Becca understood her.

Becca grinned at Pam. “Bring popcorn, please. And prepare for at least three
Xena
episodes.”

*

Becca made her way upstairs, pulling on the bannister as covertly as possible. She felt Jo’s concern following her as palpably as touch.

“Those recordings of ghost voices flat knock me out.” Pam’s dazed voice drifted up the stairs. “Wish we could call Becca’s mother to the stand, let her fry the son of a bitch who’s messing with her girl.”

Becca pictured the little yellow globe radio perched on the railing of a witness stand and had to smile through her stupor.
Xena’s
closing theme was fading in the living room, and the voices of Marty and Khadijah murmured below. Becca glanced over her shoulder and caught Jo’s gaze, and nodded reassurance.

She just needed a few minutes alone. The warm company of her friends was wonderful, but Becca was worn out. She trudged into the bedroom her parents had shared for six years and sat carefully on the side of the wide bed.

She and Jo would sleep in the living room again tonight, after their clan left. The presence of her friends was infusing that space with a protective vibe, Becca could feel it. And she and Jo both knew that room was the true center of the house, the holder of whatever strange energy opened to the other side. She would bring down the Spiricom and the globe radio and let Jo set them up again.

She picked up the little yellow ball and held it in her hands. A mild hissing issued from it, empty air.

“Maddie,” Becca whispered to the globe. “Mom?”

Nothing but static.

“I feel a little like Hamlet, talking to poor Yorick’s skull,” Becca murmured to her mother. “Are you there?”

Static.

“It took us hours to sweep up the glass in that office today. Jo could have hired a crew to do it, but I know cleaning her space herself was important to her.” Becca examined a shallow cut at the base of her thumb. “I’m glad you like Jo. That you like Jo and me.”

Becca didn’t like the small smudge of blood near her palm. She wiped her hand on her knee uneasily and stared at the radio. “What gift held blood, Mom?”

She waited, but Madelyn Healy was especially far away tonight. Becca repeated the question, slowly and clearly, and waited again. Not even a faint crackle in the soft burr of sound.

“We’re doing everything we can imagine to do to find an answer. I’m sure you realize this. I just hope I don’t let you down. It’s the only thing you’ve ever asked me to do, solving this puzzle. Short of learning to tie my shoes and whatnot. I’d like to come through for you if I can. Wish us luck.”

Khadijah’s laugh pealed below her, and Becca smiled. “I wish you could have known my friends, Mom. I think you would have handpicked these guys for me. You know what, you might have been sick, but you must have done so much that was right. I have good friends, good work. Maybe even a chance at love now. I spent my first five years with you, the most crucial years in anyone’s life, and you gave me a strong start.”

Jo, who said she didn’t do people, was right. Becca held feelings for her mother beyond the anger, the grief; more gentle feelings. She was talking to her now as if deep cups of cocoa and all the time in the world lay before them.