Ghost in the Wind (17 page)

Melissa looked thoughtful.

“I'm sorry, Vance,” I said.

He looked up from his thoughts, seemingly startled, but gave me a smile. “Water under the bridge, love. We're all gone now. But now you know why I'm especially keen on finding out what happened to my Vanessa if Morrie's around, eh?”

It was Liss who caught on first. “You think Mr. Chrichton killed Vanessa?” she asked.

“No,” Vance said. “He's crazy, but he's not that crazy. He's the one who started her on a path all those years ago. Maybe she really did end up doing herself in, and it started with Morrie.”

Paul started stroking his goatee again.

“It's perfect,” Dad told me.

I had a little trouble hearing him, but once he repeated it, I smiled broadly. Dad gestured around the movie room, which was filled close to capacity. And its capacity was not small.

Running the length of the house of the north side, the movie room was now the center of activity in the guesthouse, with our screening of
Ghost
only a few minutes away. It was a warm night, and the bodies gathered in the room were making it warmer.

Those were just the living ones, too.

Besides me, my mother and Melissa (the alliteration trio), my best friends, Jeannie and Tony, had shown up early for pizza with their son Oliver, who was now a full-fledged toddler based on his newfound ability to walk around and cause trouble. Ollie was a little overwhelmed with all the faces to look at right now.

Jeannie, who is just a tad overprotective of her son, had
considered leaving Oliver with his babysitter for the evening because she thought the movie “might be too violent for his sensibility.” I'd be amazed if he even understood that there were people on the screen, but Jeannie had finally relented when her babysitter had mentioned tickets to see a Broadway show on Sunday with her boyfriend and had politely declined.

Tony had also given the seal of approval to the movie room. He's a professional contractor, and next to Dad, my most trusted home-improvement guru, so that meant quite a bit to me.

Oliver had not commented on the room, but was probably distracted by Melissa playing with his toes for a good long while, which he found hilarious.

Josh had come by himself a couple hours before showtime, and A.J. and Liz arrived a while later. I was warming to A.J., and as for Liz . . . I was warming to A.J.

All six of my current guests were in attendance, and I'd given them the best seats in the house, right up front and center, something Liz had commented on. She'd tried to pretend she was kidding, but . . . I was warming to A.J.

Actually, only five of my guests had seats front and center. Maureen Beckman had insisted on taking a back-row chair because she had to leave her walker in the aisle and didn't want to be a bother to anyone. I'd told her I would be happy to store it for her while the movie was showing, but Maureen planted herself in the back row as soon as she entered the room and refused the help.

Among the less-living crowd, of course Paul and Maxie were in attendance, Maxie wearing her best “I'll Bet You Do” T-shirt, Paul in his traditional jeans and dark shirt, this time paired with a somewhat worn sports jacket. Everett had shown up in fatigues because Maxie had told him it was a “casual premiere.” Which it was, particularly if few of the guests could see what you were wearing anyway.

Vance was not in the room, yet, and I wasn't sure if he'd be coming. I had told him he was welcome but he wouldn't
be asked to perform or make his presence known at all if he didn't want to.

He'd been philosophical this afternoon after telling us the story of his and Morrie's falling out. The ways of two old rockers, he'd said. Yeah, it was possible his bandmate had done him some damage and possibly ruined his daughter's life decades before, but what could be done about it at this late date, with all three of them dead? He'd hit all the right notes and said all the right words.

I hadn't believed a word of it.

Paul had agreed that we needed to redouble our efforts to find Claudia Rabinowitz, and I agreed but had no immediate suggestions other than asking McElone for help. I'd sighed and said I'd do so tomorrow.

“I'm not so sure about perfect,” I told Dad now, “but I am pretty proud of the way it turned out.”

“Don't sell yourself short,” he said. “I've looked at every inch of the room and I didn't see anything wrong.”

He was right that it looked impressive. The overhead lighting was not too bright, never in your face, but warm and inviting. The re-stained paneling looked like real wood with a light grain, not at all artificial. The chairs were covered in nappy blue fabric, which didn't match but complemented the area rug. (I'd added some folding chairs for the overflow crowd tonight.) And the big-screen TV at the far end was about to make everyone's eyes pop.

Although not as much as they would if
Lawrence of Arabia
were showing. Just sayin'.

“I love you,” I said to Dad. Josh looked over, saw I was talking to no one from his perspective and smiled. Then he went back to talking to A.J. and Liz.

Jeannie walked over smiling, for once without her son, whose diaper was being changed by his father in the downstairs bathroom at the moment. “You sure know how to draw a crowd,” she said.

“Are you kidding? I practically had to bribe a couple of the guests to stay in tonight, but the free pizza helped.”

“You sell yourself short,” Jeannie said. Her happy face was hiding something.

“Are you having another baby?” I asked.

“What? Where'd that come from?” But Jeannie would not look me in the eye (this was becoming endemic), and she
had
gone on a romantic cruise with her husband recently. I know, because I took care of Oliver while they were away.

“You are,” I said accusingly.

Her voice dropped an octave. “Nobody knows yet. Our parents don't know yet.
Tony
doesn't even know yet.” My best friend and my contractor mentor have an interesting marriage. It's based on the kind of trust where you can trust one isn't telling the other something at any given moment.

“Why not?” I asked.

“There was some . . . question about whether we wanted to have another baby this soon,” Jeannie explained, looking at her fingernails and pretending she cared whether they were perfectly polished or not.

“This wasn't a planned baby?” I said.

She avoided eye contact. “Depends on who you ask. You have to keep it quiet.”

“Who am I going to tell? Phyllis Coates doesn't run guess-who's-pregnant notices in the
Chronicle
.” I had invited Phyllis too, but she'd declined on the grounds that “it's not really much of a story for the paper now, is it?” She had a point, but giving her a scoop hadn't really been why I was inviting her. Sometimes Phyllis can be a little single-minded about the paper. Like, all the time. “You've got to tell your husband, Jean,” I admonished. After eleven years of being a mother, admonishing is among my most well-honed skills. And Melissa requires less than a very large percentage of her peers.

“I will. I am,” Jeannie said, waving her hand as if to ward
off the harsh words coming her way. “I just don't know how he'll react.”

“He's Tony. He'll react first by rolling his eyes at you and then he'll get excited and tell everybody he meets that he's going to be a dad again.” I'd introduced Jeannie and Tony, so I knew both of them before they knew each other. It makes a huge difference.

“Well, I didn't think he'd divorce me or anything.” But she looked relieved, huffed for a moment, then went back to grinning like a monkey. Tony joined her and they found seats for themselves and Ollie, who was eating a cookie and taking in the room as only small children can: with genuine wonder.

Josh waved me over to where he was standing with A.J. and Liz. I gritted my teeth mentally and smiled as I walked over. Dad floated a little above and to my left and said, “Which one don't you like?” He's known me all my life.

“This is lovely,” Liz said as I approached. Of course
lovely
is a word people use when they've decided to use the word, which requires forethought. In other words, it was not an honest reaction, but a planned one. I might have been overthinking this just a tad but I doubted it. All of that had all gone through my mind in a split second. “I love the room, and the whole house, really.”

“It looks really cool,” A.J. said. His tactic seemed to be that he'd be as casual as possible to balance his girlfriend's formality and maybe reach a middle ground. He was in there trying. “Thanks for inviting us.”

“Ah,” Dad said. “The girl. I get that.” He floated off to Mom, presumably to share his insight.

“We're about to start,” I told them. “Thanks for coming. I hope we have a chance to talk later.” Smooth, right? A quick expression passing through Josh's eyes indicated maybe not smooth enough.

There was no time for that now. I walked to the front of the
room, stood just in front of the mammoth screen and held up my hands. “Okay, everybody,” I said. The clamor died down and people who had not taken seats began filling some. Melissa stood at the back because she knew I'd reserved a seat for her but she wanted to get a good look at the crowd in case something was needed at the start of the showing. Melissa is an excellent assistant. “We're just about to start. I want to thank everybody for coming tonight to our premiere.”

Vance McTiernan showed up just next to the big TV, surveyed the crowd (no doubt to size up his ability to enthrall it, despite having no performance planned—it was a reflex) and floated down to what approximated standing among the mortals.

“I don't get it,” Jesse said from the first row, just to my left. A different younger guy might have been able to sit farther back and let some of the elders get a better view, but Jesse was not that kind of guy. “What's the big deal about seeing an old movie on DVD?” Jesse was clearly a deep thinker.

“We're inaugurating the new movie room with our state-of-the-art screen and sound system,” I said, talking to the crowd and not just Jesse. “We're very proud of the work that's gone into creating this environment and we hope it'll enhance the experience of seeing this very special film”—I didn't stumble over that part at all—“here in a house with
real
ghosts.”

A few rows back, Jeannie snickered. Jeannie, despite every nutty thing she's seen happen at my house, refuses to believe in ghosts. She thinks the whole thing is a scam I'm running to give my business some novelty. So she thinks it's a riot.

On cue, Paul billowed the drapes and Maxie shook the chandelier, which in my opinion she did just a little too enthusiastically. I'd worked hard on smoothing out that ceiling. If so much as one speck of wallboard dust fell from it, I was going to hold Maxie personally responsible. Vance did not participate in the production; after all, if he wasn't
going to play music, what was the point? He was just here as a spectator.

A few of the guests looked up in wonder, despite having already seen a number of spook shows at the guesthouse. Because I can see the ghosts, sometimes I forget the effect they can have by simply manipulating objects when they are invisible to the viewer.

“But we're not here for an encounter with real spirits tonight,” I said. “We're here for a fun time with a very appropriate movie. Please enjoy
Ghost
.”

Just at that moment Morrie Chrichton leaked in through the outside wall, looked around the room, fixed his gaze on Vance and headed in his direction.

I didn't get to see what happened when Morrie reached Vance because at that moment Liss hit the light switch at the back of the room as Mom sat in a last-row seat. It was pitch-dark in the room, more so than I had anticipated. I hit the button on the remote control to start the movie, and that illuminated the room—or at least the front half of it—enough that I could find my way to an empty seat while the FBI warned us not to reproduce this film, something I had no intention of doing.

I will say this: For the first twenty minutes or so, the movie worked like a charm and I was rethinking my resistance to showing it. It wasn't that I didn't like
Ghost
, it was that it hadn't seemed “important” enough for the occasion. Maybe that was something else I'd been overthinking.

The entertainment system was working beautifully. The flat screen provided a picture so sharp and clear it seemed even better than a movie theater, and the speakers spaced out around the room provided ambient sound without drawing attention to themselves. The research and work I'd put in designing and constructing the room was paying off.

A few minutes later, I heard some movement behind me and felt a light breeze. It had been getting a bit warm in the
room, so I figured Mom or Liss had gotten up and opened a window. They were always one step ahead. It got more comfortable almost immediately.

But that didn't last long. Perhaps ten seconds later, I heard a muffled wail of pain from somewhere behind me, a man's voice grunting. There were footsteps but I couldn't tell how many people were up. I stood to try to navigate my way back, but it was still very dark, and turning away from the screen made everything seem just a little darker.

Then I heard Mom cry, “Alison!” Her voice was urgent and it was alarmed. I stopped being dainty about my steps and ran toward her voice as my pupils adjusted to the darkness. I reached for the cell phone in my pocket and used it as a flashlight.