Remembrance (The Mediator #7) (15 page)

Father Dom used to see them. Now, apparently, he doesn’t. At least, not when I need him to.

“Um, anyway,” I said, deciding it was best to drop the subject, “I think I really established a rapport with Becca yesterday, so . . .”

“Oh, that’s evident,” Father Dominic said drily. “Especially by the look of this place when I got in this morning.”

I glared at him. “What year was it you graduated from college? And how many counseling accreditations did they require for the job back then?”

He ignored this jab at his complete lack of formal counseling training. “How do you propose we handle this situation then, Susannah? I will admit that though your methodology has sometimes differed from mine, you’ve usually been on the mark. Jesse, on the other hand, seems to have what I’d call a less-than-helpful view on things—”

“Oh, I’m sure he does,” I said, remembering the look on my boyfriend’s face when he’d dragged me from the pool. “I was thinking of pulling Becca out of her fourth-period class and bringing her back here to the office for a friendly little one-on-one. Nothing threatening, though. I don’t want to alarm Lucia.”

“That would be an excellent plan if it weren’t for the fact that Becca isn’t in school today.”

“Wait . . . what?”

He tapped the file he’d been holding tucked beneath one arm.

“Kelly Prescott—er, Walters—called early this morning to say that her stepdaughter wasn’t feeling well and wouldn’t be in school today.”

This was deflating. “Oh.”

“Sister Ernestine left this on my desk this morning.” Father Dominic removed the file from beneath his arm and waved it at me. “Becca Walters’s transcript. I’m not quite certain how the sister found it in all that mess, but she managed. I don’t suppose you had a chance to review it.”

“I must have missed it while I was busy applying much-needed first aid to Becca’s arm and also keeping her friend from trying to murder me.”

I knew there wasn’t any point in telling Father D that even if I’d had a chance to read Becca’s file, I wouldn’t have put much stock into what it said. I have a ton of respect for teachers, who are some of the hardest working (yet worst compensated) people in the world.

But one of the reasons I was attracted to the counseling field in the first place is that it would allow me to help kids like the one I’d been—kids who have gifts that can’t be measured on an aptitude test, or scored with a letter grade.

Another reason is that the more people I can help resolve their issues
now
, while they’re still alive, the less work I’ll have to do for them later, when they’re dead.

It also made sense from a financial point of view. As a therapist, I’ll get paid for the work I do—by
living
clients, who have things like insurance and credit cards. Taking money from the deceased is something I’m opposed to (though Paul’s never suffered from this moral dilemma).

“Four different schools in the area in ten years,” Father Dominic was saying as he slipped a pair of wire-rimmed glasses from his shirt pocket onto his nose, then flipped through Becca’s file. “The latest being this one. She gets good grades, and is quite bright—that’s why we accepted her, of course.”

“Her father’s sizable donation probably didn’t hurt much, either, I’d guess.”

He glanced at me over the rims of his spectacles. “I don’t appreciate the sarcasm, Susannah. We treat all of our students the same, as you know, regardless of whether they’re on scholarship or pay full tuition. But it does appear that Becca’s had emotional problems. It looks as if there might have been some bullying at her former schools. ”

“It’s not hard to guess why.”

“More sarcasm? The other children can’t see that the poor girl is haunted.”

“Of course not. But she tried to carve the word
stupid
in her own arm with a compass in the middle of class. They may not be able to see Lucia, but they can definitely tell there’s something wrong with Becca. The less enlightened among them are naturally going to tease the crap out of her for it.”

Father Dominic sighed. “If you talk like this about our students in front of Sister Ernestine, it’s going to be extremely difficult for me to convince her to hire you full time, with pay. You do realize this, don’t you, Susannah?”

I let out a sigh of my own. “Especially if I dress immodestly. Fine, Father, I get it. I’ll ratchet up the sensitive psychobabble in front of the nun, okay? But in the meantime we’ve got to find out who Lucia is, and who or what it is she thinks she’s protecting Becca from, before she protects Becca to death. Does it say anything in that file about horses?”

“Horses?” Father Dominic looked perplexed. “No. Why?”

“Lucia is dressed in riding clothes and carries a stuffed horse. You know the dead usually appear in the clothing they were wearing right before they bit the dust.” He gave me a disapproving look. “Um, in which they felt most alive. Becca wears a horse pendant. She twists it when she’s feeling nervous. Horses are the only clue I can find that links the two of them.”

“Horses,” Father Dominic murmured, flipping through the file. “Horseback riding. There’s nothing in here about—” Suddenly, he froze as if he’d seen something in the file. “Oh, dear.”

“What? What is it?”

“It’s funny you should mention horseback riding, Susannah. Because I believe I do remember now a girl who—”

His blue eyes got a far away look in them as he stared out one of the office windows at a group of middle-aged tourists who’d just pulled up on a bus outside the mission, and were now milling around the courtyard, taking photos and admiring the flowers and statues and fountains. It was strange to go to school at a place that was also a tourist destination, and even stranger to work at one, especially considering all the money those tourists were spending in the gift shop (and the school still couldn’t scrape together a salary for me).

But Father Dominic didn’t appear to really be seeing these visitors from the Midwest.

“You know, I think I do recall a riding accident involving a child. It was in the newspaper—the one your friend Miss Webb works for—some time ago. It could very well have been around the time that Becca’s troubles started.”

Father Dominic glanced through the girl’s file until he saw something. Then he stopped flipping and tapped a page, speaking in a more excited voice.

“Yes. Yes, exactly. Here it is. I remember now. It says here that Becca attended the Academy of the Sacred Trinity for first and second grades. That would have been around the same time that it happened.”

“That
what
happened?” I love him like he was my own grandfather, but like my own grandfather, he drove me nuts sometimes. I had a feeling I knew what he’d say if I brought up Paul:
Well, what have you been doing, Susannah, to lead that boy on?

“The accident,” he said. “There’s no mention of it in Becca’s file, oddly enough. But I do think Becca
must
have known the girl. They would have been in the same grade . . . possibly even in the same riding class. Otherwise there’s nothing else to explain their intense connection—”

“Wait,” I said. “You think
Lucia
was the girl in the riding accident?”

“It would explain quite a lot. Becca would have been traumatized by such a tragedy.”

“What tragedy?” I asked. “Not to say a riding accident doesn’t sound terrible, and it’s always awful when a child dies, but—”

“Not an accident like this,” Father Dominic said. “This one was ghastly, which is why I remember it, even after all these years. The girl in question—who was quite young—was out riding with her instructor when her horse was spooked by something. It took off, but the little girl managed to stay atop it.”

“Astride. I think they say astride, not atop . . . she wasn’t thrown off?”

“Not right away. I remember the article saying she was quite a skilled rider, for her age. That’s how she managed to stay astride for so long, and why it took so long for them to find her. And then when they did . . .”

“Yes?”

“It was too late.”

doce

“
I think I remember that the coroner ruled that her death was caused by asphyxiation,” Father Dominic said.

“Asphyxiation?” I was confused. “Who strangled her, the horse?”

“Susannah, you watch entirely too much television.”

This is untrue. I don’t watch enough television. I don’t have time, due to my studies, budding career, romantic life, and, of course, busy NCDP-busting schedule.

“When she fell from the horse,” Father Dominic went on, before I could argue, “I believe her spinal cord was severed, cutting off her breathing. I suppose she might have been saved if her body had been found soon enough, but she wasn’t . . . in any case, she died from lack of oxygen, which is what medical examiners call asphyxiation.”

“Ew.” I gave an involuntary shudder, thinking of Lucia’s face, which, though usually twisted in anger when I’d seen it, had still been cherubically round. She had a mouth that, unlike my stepnieces, was shaped exactly like the rosebuds in the bouquet Paul had sent me, only smaller and pink, not white.

“That’s a horrible way to die,” I said.

“I agree. But I doubt the girl suffered long, if at all. An injury like that would have instantly paralyzed her.” He heaved a little shudder himself. “And the girl’s soul never revealed herself to me, asking for help . . . or for justice. Apparently she’s chosen to reveal herself to you, now, though, hasn’t she, Susannah?”

“She tried to kill me. That’s the opposite of asking for help, Father D.”

“Spirits aren’t always aware that we have the ability to help them,” Father Dominic said. “And even then, they’re often sometimes too frightened—or stubborn—to accept our guidance. Jesse, you’ll recall, wouldn’t have dreamt of accepting your aid while he was in spirit form. He was the one rushing to
your
defense. And yet, in the end, it was you who—”

“Jesse wouldn’t accept help if he were bleeding on the side of the road. It kills him that he had to accept scholarship money and student loans to pay for him to go school.” Which was another reason I couldn’t tell him anything about what was going on with Paul. He’d want to handle the whole situation himself, which would, of course, end in disaster.

“And if the girl you’re talking about and the one I met yesterday are one in the same,” I went on, “she’d rather choke me to death than let me help her.”

“Still,” Father Dominic said, after a beat. “You know we have a duty to—”

“Help Kelly’s stepdaughter,” I said. “I know. And help Lucia, too.” I’d already switched on my computer and typed the words
Lucia
,
asphyxiation
, and
horse
into the search engine of my computer. “Oh, great,” I said when I saw the results. “Porn. Why is it always porn? Thank you, World Wide Web.”

The priest winced. “Susannah, please.”

“No, look, Father, if your dead girl and mine are the same, I don’t blame her for being pissed.” I began to fish my phone from my bag, intending to compose a text to CeeCee. Her investigative skills were superior to mine. “Can you tell me anything more about her death? Anything else at all?”

“It was a long time ago, Susannah. Before you moved to Carmel. I suppose I could ask Father Francisco . . . he’s still the headmaster at Sacred Trinity. I believe the funeral was held at the chapel there. I wish I could remember her last name. I believe I heard from Father Francisco that the family moved away afterward. Well, that would be understandable. Who would want to stay in the area after a thing like that?”

“Oh, no, who would?” I wasn’t even trying to mask my sarcasm. “Did they shoot the horse, too? Because I’m sure everyone blamed the horse. They always do.”

“Was Becca there when it happened?” I asked Father Dom.

“It says right here in her file that she attended the Academy of the Sacred Trinity all-girls Catholic school in Pebble Beach for first and second grade. As I said, that would have been around the time of the tragedy. She then switched to Stevenson School the following year. One has to assume there’s a good reason for her to have made such an abrupt transfer—”

“Becca did mention an accident,” I said, thinking back to our conversation the day before. “She said her mom left ‘after the accident.’ ”

The poor child.” Father Dominic shook his head. “So much sadness in her life, and in such a short time.”

“I think Lucia’s the one who got the real short end of the stick there, Father.”

“True. A year after, Becca transferred from Stevenson to a charter school, but that appears to have been a failure as well, because now, of course, she’s here.”

My mind was whirling. This was a lot of information. A lot of information about which there was nothing on the Internet.

Well, that made sense. Sacred Trinity wouldn’t want to be associated with something so sad, and they had the money to make sure any reference to it stayed off Google.

“Do you remember where the riding accident occurred?” I asked. “Was it on Sacred Trinity grounds?”

“I honestly can’t recall,” Father Dominic said. “I suppose it would make sense that it was Sacred Trinity. They have facilities there for students to stable their own horses.”

“They should have facilities there for their students to stable their own space shuttles with what they charge for tuition.”

Sacred Trinity was one of the many private schools in the Carmel area with which the Mission Academy was in competition. But with Trinity’s chic location on Pebble Beach’s exclusive 17-Mile Drive, their Olympic-sized pool, tennis courts, lacrosse and soccer fields, and, of course, horse stables and riding trails, the Mission Academy was barely in the same league. All we had to offer these days as far as extracurriculars was basketball, Mathletics, and the spring musical. It wasn’t any wonder Sister Ernestine didn’t want to piss off Lance Arthur Walters. The daughters of royalty and celebrities attended Sacred Trinity.