Ghost Music (40 page)

“You scum!” he screamed. “Couldn't even beat me face-to-face, could you? Didn't have the balls! Didn't have the fucking cojones!”

Maybe he did it on purpose. You can never tell what a man like that might be thinking.
Pain. Death. I've given them to plenty of other people, maybe it's time I found out for myself what an agonizing death really feels like.

He stepped down onto the driveway while he was still holding the door handle, and he exploded, blown into tattered black shreds. Electricity jumped and spat like firecrackers all around the outline of the Explorer, and for a split second the interior was all lit up. I saw Victor Solway, his blind eyes bulging, his lips stretched back as if he were laughing at some monstrous joke.

Then, with a deafening bang, the Explorer's fuel tank blew up. The vehicle was thrown into the air and crashed onto its side, where it lay furiously blazing.

“Jesus,” I said. I felt utter shock. But the crowd of figures
stood quite still and watched the inferno in silence, as if they were doing nothing more than burning last year's leaves. One of the apparitions of Tilda Westerlund turned toward us—the one whose cheeks were bruised, and whose lips had been split apart.

“What are they going to do now?” I asked Kate.

“They're leaving now. They came here to get justice, no more than that.”

One by one, the assembled company turned away from us, into the falling snow, and as they turned away, they vanished, as if they had been images in mirrors, turned sideways. Within a few seconds, they were all gone.

I turned to Kate and said, “Will they be at peace now? I know they don't have proper resting places.”

“At peace? I don't think anybody who ever lived is ever at peace.”

“First things first, though,” I told her. “Let's go rescue Margot.”

* * *

It was dark in the house, because the power was out, but we went through to the kitchen and found half a dozen large white candles in a drawer. We lit one each and went back down to the cellar. “Margot,” I said, as I came down the steps, “your knight in shining armor has arrived.”

“What was that
terrible
noise?”

“Victor and Jack had a little car trouble. A power line came down, got itself wrapped around their wheels.”

I tugged off her blindfold and loosened the cords around her wrists.

“Oh God, Lalo,” she said. “I thought they were going to kill me.”

“You don't have to worry about them now. They were both electrocuted. They're dead. Both of them.”

“You're not serious.
Dead?
”

I knelt down to untie Margot's ankles. Kate said, “It was no more than they deserved, believe me.”

“Are you okay, Margot?” I asked her.

“Stiff. Sore. Dying to go to the bathroom. But thank you for saving me. Thank you so, so much! You're a superhero.”

I stood up, and turned to Kate. “I guess I'd better call the police. And the fire department. And the power company, too.”

Kate said, “Not yet. There's something else I want you to do first. I want you to find the proof that Victor and Jack were murderers. I want to show them for what they were. Think of all the relatives and friends who never found out what happened to the families they killed. There should be a pick in the garden shed.”

“You want
me
to do it? We're talking about your parents here.”

She nodded. “They disappeared, and everybody presumed they were dead, but nobody ever knew where they went. Now we know.”

I hunkered down again. Now that I knew what I was looking for, I could see that there was a rough rectangle of different-colored cement in the center of the floor.

I didn't have to ask Kate if she was sure that she really wanted me to do this. If the remains of
my
parents had been lying under this floor, I would have wanted to dig them up, too, and give them the kind of funeral they deserved.

* * *

I found a rusty pick in the garden shed, and carried it back into the house. I tied my handkerchief around my nose and mouth and attacked the cellar floor with it.

Lucky for me, the cement had been mixed very dry, and most of it broke up into crumbly lumps. All the same, it took me over four hours of hacking at it before I eventually struck the top of a large wooden box, and I was sweaty and gritty and exhausted.

I wearily trudged up the cellar steps and found Kate and Margot
in the living room. Margot was asleep on one of the couches, covered in an overcoat, while Kate was standing by the window, watching the sky gradually grow lighter. The gardens were still covered in snow, but it was going to be a sharp, sunny day.

I came up to her and put my arms around her. “I think I've found them,” I said. “There's a big wooden box under the floor, but I haven't opened it up yet.”

She nodded. “At least they can have a decent burial. Not like all of those other poor people.”

The sun was shining through one of the beech hedges along the driveway, so that it looked as if it were on fire.

“We made it, anyhow,” said Kate. She looked at her watch. “Look—eight o' clock. Less than an hour to spare.”

“Less than an hour to spare before
what
?”

She turned around and kissed me. “You won't be sad, will you?”

“Sad? Why should I be sad?”

“The air tickets . . . Pearl bought them for me. And the keys . . . she took them out of Victor's desk. She used to invite herself into his apartment for a drink, and borrowed them when he wasn't looking.”

“Wily old bird, that Pearl, isn't she?”

Kate smiled. “There were certain things I couldn't do. I didn't have a credit card anymore. And I couldn't take anything from Victor's apartment.”

“Well, I thought you lived there, but when I took a look around, it was pretty obvious that you didn't.”

“I haven't lived there in three years, Gideon. Three years exactly, to the day.”

“But you told me you couldn't leave.”

“It wasn't the apartment I couldn't leave. It was Victor. You can be tied to somebody by hatred, just as much as you can be tied to them by love. I was determined that he wasn't going to get away with what he'd done to Michael, or the child who was murdered
for Michael's new heart. Or what he'd done to my parents. Or to
me
.”

Kate looked at me with those rainy gray eyes, and suddenly they were shining with tears. “We all have three years to make amends. Three turnings of the seasons to make things right. Don't ask me why.”

“Amends? Amends for what?”

“Anything you like. Some people don't bother to make amends at all. Some people only do very small things, like help their loved ones to find a lost piece of jewelry or a photograph or a diary. Some people simply make their presence felt, so that they can bring comfort to those they've left behind.

“But I wanted to make sure that Victor was punished. That was the hold he had over me. I couldn't accuse him myself, as you know. I couldn't find any evidence, and I couldn't find anybody to help me. Not until I saw you looking out of your window, and realized that you could see me.”

“Of course I could see you,” I told her. “I can still see you. I can
feel
you, too, goddammit. You're real. Other people can see you, too.”

“When I'm with
you
, yes—because you have the gift. But otherwise, no. And you know it, don't you? You've known it for a long time.”

“Yes,” I admitted. “I didn't want to believe it. But, yes. But if I can see you and feel you and talk to you, what difference does it make?”

“Gideon, I'm the same as them. I'm the same as the Westerlunds and the Philipses and the Cesarettis.”

“But we're lovers, Kate. How can we be lovers, if you don't exist? How can we possibly be lovers if you're—?” I couldn't bring myself to say the word “dead” without tipping myself right over the edge of human reason.

Kate led me over to the window seat. I sat down and grasped both of her hands so that I could feel how real her fingers were,
and so that she couldn't pull away from me. If I let her walk out that door, who knows if I would ever see her again?

“Gideon—I can't stay here any longer. No matter how much I want to.”

“Who says? God?”

Outside, the whole garden sparkled. “You still have your gift, Gideon. You can help scores of other people, too. So many murders go unpunished. You can help the victims to get justice—just like you did for the Westerlunds and the Cesarettis and the Philipses—and the Kilners, too.”

“The Kilners?”

“My parents. Henry and Joyce Kilner. Victor killed them because they refused to pay for a second heart transplant for poor little Michael. And he killed
me
, too, because I persuaded them not to. I couldn't get any answer from them, on the phone, so I came up here looking for them. Jack Friendly was waiting for me, with a hammer.”

“All right,” I said. I was trembling with stress, and with exhaustion. “Supposing I accept that you're some kind of spirit? Is that what you are, some kind of spirit? You say that you were given three years to put things right, which is what you've managed to do. But what happens after that? Who's to say you can't stay around?”

“Gideon, I
died
!”

“I don't care! So long as I can see you and feel you, so long as we can go on being lovers, what difference does it make? I have a gift, and I can use it to help other people. But who says I can't use it to get what
I
want, too? And what I want, Kate, is
you
!”

She looked at me for a very long time without saying anything. Then she turned and looked out at the snow. The Explorer had burned out now, until it was nothing more than a blackened skeleton, although brown smoke was still drifting across the driveway.

“I don't know, darling,” she said. “I just don't know what
happens now. I'm no more of an expert on the world beyond than you are.”

“Then stay,” I told her.

The sunshine in the garden was dazzling now. I kissed Kate's hair and I kept my arms tightly around her waist, so that I could feel her breathing. As long as I kept her close like this, there was no way that she could leave me.

* * *

I don't know how long it took me to fall asleep. They say that the average when you're really tired is seven minutes. But I slept, and I dreamed that Kate and I were walking through the gardens of Drottningholm, in Sweden, and that the air was filled with shining snow, like thistledown.

Somebody was shaking my arm. At first I thought it was one of the palace guides, trying to tell me that we were walking the wrong way, but then I opened my eyes and it was Margot.

“Margot? What's wrong?”

“You were talking in your sleep. I just wanted to make sure that you were okay.”

I blinked, and looked around the living room. “I'm fine. Jesus, it's cold in here. Where's Kate?”

“Kate? I haven't seen Kate.”

I sat up. “What do you mean? She was here only a couple of minutes ago. She was sitting right here.”

Margot said, “If she was, she's not here now. I didn't see her.”

I stood up and went to the front door and opened it. The garden was deserted, and there were no footprints in the freshly fallen snow.

“She's gone,” I said.

“Maybe she went to get some supplies,” Margot suggested.

“Maybe.”

I went back into the house and closed the door.

* * *

It took me another forty minutes to clear the cement from the lid of the wooden box. When I managed to lever it open, there was a soft exhalation of gases, like somebody with very bad morning breath. Inside, closely packed together, there were human thigh bones and arm bones and ribs and pelvises, as well as mummified flesh the color of smoked bacon rind.

So this is what Victor and Jack had done with Kate's parents. Terrorized them, tortured them, and forced them to sign over their house. Then he had killed them, and cemented them under their own cellar floor.

There were two skulls, one at each end of the box, and both of them still had skin and hair on them, although their eyes had been reduced to the size and color of pickled walnuts. They were both grinning at me, as if they were pleased to see me.

I didn't want to disturb the remains, because the state police would want to see them exactly as I had found them. But as I lifted away the lid, one of the skulls rolled sideways, and I realized that there was a third skull underneath it. A skull with straight, ash blonde hair, still clogged at the back with black dried blood.

“Kate,” I said. My voice sounded like somebody else altogether.

* * *

We got back to the city around 5:00
PM
, in the middle of rush hour. I dropped Margot home, and then I took Henry's Malibu back. He was deeply relieved to see that it was undented, although he had been forced to take the commuter train back to New Rochelle.

“You look like shit,” he told me. “Also, I hate to tell you this, but you
smell
like shit, too. Don't you musicians use a deodorant?”

“I just exhumed three bodies,” I told him.

“Sure you did. You owe me a steak dinner at Angelo & Maxie's.”

* * *

I paid a visit to Pearl, upstairs. She was sitting in her pink bathrobe playing solitaire.

“How did it go?” she asked me. Cigarette smoke trailed across the room, and shuddered when it reached the open window, like a ghost.

“Good. I guess things worked out the way they were supposed to.”

Pearl nodded toward the painting on the easel. “I thought they had.”

I walked around and took a look. The painting was finished, but the only person in it was Pearl. Everybody else had gone, as they had in the snow. Turned around, like mirrors turned sideways, and vanished.