Sister Angel

ISBN-13: 978-1-62205-006-2

SISTER ANGEL

Kate Wilhelm

Copyright © 2012 InfinityBox Press

First published in the collection
A Flush Of Shadows
, 1995

All rights reserved. Except for the use of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews, no part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means in any manner without the written permission of the publisher.

All characters, groups, places, and events portrayed in this novel are fictitious.

Cover: Richard Wilhelm

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SISTER ANGEL

Kate Wil
helm

DINNER HAD BEEN EXTRAORDINARILY good, Charlie thought with contentment, even if he had cooked it himself. From
the kitchen there now came the soft chugging of the dish
washer at work; closer, the clink of cup on saucer, a pop from the fireplace or a hiss; even closer, the nearly inaudible purr of Ashcan, who had settled on his lap instantly when he sat down. Outside, silently, the snow was piling up. He sighed again and opened his eyes.

Candy was sneaking up on the cream pitcher on the coffee table. Her forequarters were low to the floor, her rear up high, and the white tip of her tail twitched like a semaphore flag.

“Ridiculous cat,” Constance said. “That’s how she hunts, signaling, Here I am!” The cat reached the table. “Candy!” Constance said, not raising her voice. Candy now discovered that her right hind leg was filthy and started to wash it.

Gretchen laughed. “It was so strange to think of you and
Charlie stuck way out in the country, but it’s kind of nice. I like it.” She glanced at her husband and added quickly, “Not for myself, of course.”

“We’re two hours out of New York,” Constance said.

“And the village is lovely. The people, now that the tourists
have gone, are very nice to us. They still don’t trust us, or
include us when
they
say ‘us,’ but it will come.”

“Maybe,” Gretchen said. She lifted her cognac and swirled it. “Is Charlie going to sleep now?”

“Probably. Are you, Charlie?”

He opened his eyes again and winked at Constance. “Tough day down at the south forty,” he drawled.

How good it was, Constance thought then, to see him so relaxed, so content. During the year since his retirement, he had become younger-looking; the lines were melting away, the mask dissolving. The real difference was in his eyes, she thought, considering him; they had been turning hard, impenetrable, and now the deep brown was softening again, reverting to how his eyes had been when they first met at college over twenty-five years ago, before he had
become a New York City cop. He was watching her watch him, she realized. She tried not to smile, shook her head al
most imperceptibly, and turned to Gretchen, but not before Charlie raised an eyebrow and practically leered at her.

She heard the hint of laughter in her own voice now. “Okay, we’ve wined you and dined you and later we’ll
even bed you down. Can’t go out into the storm, my dears.
Your turn. You said there was an urgent problem you had to discuss. Give.”

“Do you believe in ghosts?” Dutch asked suddenly before Gretchen had a chance to speak. He ignored her stiff
glance of reproof. Dutch was in his late forties, a very tall,
heavy man who had been an athlete in school and had kept
in shape since. He was an engineering consultant, with cli
ents throughout the world. He was leaving again the following day, Gretchen had mentioned when she called.

Gretchen was trying to contain her anger by studiously pouring herself more coffee, looking at her cup, the coffee
carafe, anything but her husband. It bemused Constance to
find that she had slid from her country hostess role into her professional psychologist role effortlessly, against her will
even. Here she was observing, taking mental notes.

Dutch scowled at the cat in the middle of the room, still grooming itself. “It started back last summer,” he said. “At her cousin Wanda’s house in Connecticut. Vernon and Wanda Garrity. Only Vernon is dead now, and Wanda
thinks he’s haunting her. And
she
”—he poked his thumb in
the direction of his wife—“thinks I’m to blame.”

“I never said that.”

“You all but said it a hundred times.”

“Wasn’t Vernon Garrity the inventor?” Charlie asked la
zily. “I didn’t know he was dead.”

“That’s the one,” Dutch said. “He showed us some cats he was working on last summer.” He chuckled and shook his head. “Here’s a guy who invents million-dollar gadgets for the government, for industry, and in his spare time he plays with mechanical cats.”

“What happened last summer?” Charlie wished he could close his eyes again and take just a small nap. He had spent
the morning splitting firewood and now it felt good to be tired, full, and warm before the fire, too good to ruin by talking about ghosts. Still, trying to connect a man like Vernon Garrity with ghosts had turned on a switch in his head and sleep switches had been shut down.

“You know how many times someone asks if you believe in ghosts and everyone says no and then they all spend the evening telling one improbable story after another without ever giving you anything you can hold on to.
Noises, feelings, precognitions, fears. Bullshit!” He glanced
apologetically at Constance. “Sorry. But that night, it got to
me. I’d only met Vernon a couple of times, and there were things I really wanted to talk to him about. Anyway, at din
ner he says, ‘Do you believe in ghosts?’ And I said something or other that squelched the topic.”

“What you said,” Gretchen remarked, almost casually, as she studied the design on her coffee cup, “was that only
idiots take seriously the superstitious fears of women, chil
dren, savages, and lunatics.”

He flushed. “I don’t know exactly what I said, but what
ever it was, the topic was dropped and wasn’t brought up again. And now his widow is haunted, and
she
thinks it’s my fault.”

“Wanda didn’t get a chance to talk to Vernon again about
what was on his mind,” Gretchen went on when Dutch stopped. “The next day, she drove back to New York with us, and the day after that, before she returned, he was killed. And now, six months later, she is getting messages from him, she says.”

“How was he killed?” Charlie asked.

“He was walking on the beach and someone hit him in the head with a rock and robbed him. No one was ever arrested.”

“Didn’t I meet Wanda years ago? She was a little girl,” Constance said then.

“She’s thirty-five now. Maybe at a slumber party at my
place? She was at our house a lot.”

Constance and Gretchen had been in college together,
had been friends, had parted and lost track of each other for
many years. Gretchen’s call had been a surprise to Con
stance and, she admitted to herself ruefully, she had looked
forward to gossip about mutual friends and enemies from
the past. What she was hearing now was not at all what she
had had in mind.

“Don’t forget Brother Amos,” Dutch said. “And Sister Angel.”

“Please. I’m getting to that. Brother Amos calls himself an evangelist. He claims that Vernon is in touch with him, and he tells Wanda what Vernon says. Angel is his daughter, a teenager. He calls her Sister Angel.”

“Nasty can of worms,” Charlie commented, shaking his
head. “People who want to hear from the dead always find a way. Not much you can do about it.”

“I said she should see a shrink.”

“Well, she won’t,” Gretchen snapped. “She claims that
Brother Amos has told her things that no one on God’s
earth but she and Vernon could have known. She isn’t hys
terical or crazy or disturbed in any other way.”

“So you want Constance to go talk to her.” Charlie glanced at Constance with what was almost an evil grin. She understood the message: Now it was her turn to explain that she was retired, not taking private cases, busy writing a book and being a country housewife.

“Aunt Louise,” Gretchen said carefully, “asked me to get in touch with both of you. She wants someone to investigate Amos. And she wants Constance to talk sense into Wanda.”

“For the first time in her life, Aunt Louise has money in
the family,” Dutch added dryly. “And she wants to keep it
there.”

Gretchen nodded. “That’s part of it, of course. The way
things are going, Brother Amos is likely to be the main
beneficiary of Vernon’s death. And, of course, Brother Amos is a fraud.” She took a deep breath. “I have a letter from Wanda agreeing to cooperate with both of you, agreeing to pay your fees. She isn’t any happier about this than
the rest of us. But neither can she deny that what Amos is
telling her is authentic.”

Later, propped up on pillows in their king-sized water bed,
Constance said thoughtfully, “It’s so weird that no one even
thought of investigating Amos MacHugh until Gretchen
mentioned it.” Charlie was undressing slowly, methodically,
as he always did. She laughed. “What a pair they are, Gretchen and Dutch.”

He shook his head. That was not the way to live, forever snapping at each other’s heels. Looking at Constance now, he saw the woman in her forties, but he also saw the girl he had fallen in love with, had married twenty-five years
ago, and he could not decide which woman he was more attracted to, and, unable to decide, he thanked his good luck
in having both in one package.

“You know we won’t be able to convince Wanda that
Amos is out to get her money, don’t you?” He got into bed,
making waves that bounced her up and down.

“Probably not. But you may turn up something to shake her faith in what he’s telling her. Maybe that’s all we can hope for.”

Charlie groped for her under the covers, grinning his most wicked grin. “That’s not all that I’m hoping for, cutie. Make eyes at me in front of company, will you, shameless blond hussy?”

The Garrity house was immense. The entrance was out-thrust like the prow of a ship, with a wing angled off on
each side. There was a wide, covered portico outside a spa
cious foyer that extended upward the two flights of the house. On the upper level, a balcony was bathed in light from windows on the north and south, with the bedroom wings on either side. From the foyer, the living room was
down several steps; its southern exposure was glass, over
looking a red-tiled terrace, the lawn, and, beyond it all, a lake. Family room, TV room, dining room, library, studies,
all were large, brightly lighted with wide, tall windows, all furnished in warm colors, decorated with American Indian
artwork, wall hangings, rugs.

Wanda was an interior decorator; her own house was proof that she was a very good one. She had not given up
her work after marrying Vernon, Gretchen had said, rolling
her eyes in exasperation.

“This is all very lovely.” Constance waved her hand at the house generally.

“Thank you,” Wanda said. “When Vernon’s first wife lived here, it was white and a deep blue—ice-cold. We met at my shop, actually. He wasn’t sure what he wanted, just some color. We ended up with this.” She laughed, stopped abruptly, and looked past Constance at the fireplace wall where a Navajo rug glowed in the light of the low afternoon sun.

Slender, dark-haired, she looked as if she had been ill, had not recovered fully; there were circles under her eyes and she had the absent expression of someone still paying more attention to her body than most people did. She was chain-smoking.

“Please call me Wanda,” she had said almost instantly. “I’m sorry Gretchen is out. She’s told me so much about you and Charlie, your careers, I feel as if I almost remember meeting you at her mother’s house, not once, but sev
eral times. And it will make it easier to explain to Brother
Amos. You know, friends from our childhood come to visit.”

“You have to explain us to him?”

“Not really, but… One does, you know.” A flush colored her cheeks and left again.

“Wanda,” Charlie said then, “I’ll want his fingerprints—a glass he handles, a picture, almost anything will do. That’s where we’ll start.”

She nodded, then with a swift motion she stubbed out the
cigarette and took a deep breath. “I don’t know what to say,
how to treat you, how to expect you to treat me. Do you want to ask questions?”

“Not yet,” Constance said. “Let us be house guests for the time being, get acquainted. Let questions come up naturally. How does anyone manage to gather all these artifacts? Are they all for sale somewhere, like a sublime supermarket?”

Wanda laughed, this time a genuine laugh, and stood up.
“I’ll show you the rest of the house. It took me nearly a year to gather the stuff. I made a dozen trips out to Arizona, New Mexico, Montana… .” She looked inquiringly at Charlie; he shook his head.

When they were out of sight, he started his own tour of the house and yard. He met Mrs. Riley, the housekeeper, and Jefferson Smith, the yardman, and ended up at the lake-front, on the narrow strip of beach. The lake was about three miles long, two miles across at the widest point. Straight across it, there was a bluff, and on that a trailer court where Brother Amos and his daughter lived. With a
good telescope, anyone over there could look right into the
Garrity living room, he realized. He turned to look back at the house, even more imposing here than from the front, because from here he could see the mammoth living room, the terrace, sun glinting off the upper-floor windows, turning them all gold. From across the lake, the whole house must look like a gold mine, he thought.