Richfield & Rivers Mystery Series 2 - Stellium in Scorpio (31 page)

I
don't know what awakened me. I think it was the sobbing sound Elmo made. I
glanced at him, and the hair on his back was standing up. I looked across the
room to see what he was upset about and there at the foot of the bed was a man,
the silver-haired man from the bar. I gasped so loudly that I almost choked,
and I grabbed Callie's hand, but she was already sitting straight up in bed,
having apparently seen him first. How long he was there, I don't know, but it
felt like minutes.
Is he going to rob us or kill us? I've got to get my gun.
I reached for it on the bedside table, but Callie's grip on my arm steadied
me; it seemed to be telling me not to move and we would be fine. She never took
her eyes off him. His eyes bored into hers as if some form of silent
communication was passing between them, and then he slowly faded away before
our eyes.

"Jessuzzzchrist!"
I shouted, once he was gone. "Did you see that? Did you fucking see that?
What was that? Omigod, what was that?"

"Just
energy from the other side. He came to deliver a message," she said.

Elmo
let out a long, sustained, violin-like shriek, and the ridge of hair that ran
all the way up his long back stood up even taller in a terrified salute.

"Well,
I don't like messages brought to my room like that!" I sank back in mental
and physical exhaustion, my heart pounding. "What the hell was it?"

"Mo
Black," Callie said.

"This
is freaking me out! He's dead!"

"He's
trying to tell me something but I haven't gotten it yet."

"So
does that mean he'll keep coming back?"

"I
don't know. I'm always so pleased when good spirits try to help," she
said.

"Oh,
me too," I said with shaky sarcasm. "So, this was the man in the
bar...the energy you were trying to feel?"

"Yes,"
she replied. "This is what I couldn't explain, because you wouldn't
believe me."

"You've
got that right. I'm not even sure I believe it now! The only thing I like is
knowing he's not someone you're coming on to," I said. "So from that
perspective, I'm wild about him."

"Randall
Ross was as terrified as you—probably more so when Mo Black appeared to
him."

"Why
didn't you tell me the whole story up front?" I complained.

"That
I was hired by a man who saw Mo Black's ghost and wanted me to follow up on the
ghost's message about someone trying to murder his daughter and—"

"Okay,
you make a good point," I said. "I can't stay in this room right
now!" I flipped on all the lights and threw on some sweatpants. Callie
followed suit. I grabbed my wallet and my room keys, then took a look at Elmo,
who had shoved his head under the pillow and was sobbing.

"Come
on, buddy, I won't leave you here alone. You're coming with us." Elmo
leapt off the bed, obviously anxious to get the hell out of Dodge. Callie
stopped me at the door long enough to give me a comforting kiss and to remind
me that she loved me. I was still in shock.

"So
do you see these.. .apparitions all the time?"

"No,
only when I really need information badly. You're surprised that I see ghosts,
but you saw him too."

"Holy
shit, you're right! I don't want to see ghosts!"

"Then
you won't. You'll subconsciously block their energy. If you're not open to
them, they won't appear."

"I'm
closed. Totally closed," I said. "When did you figure out that you
could talk to them?"

"Everyone
can talk to them, but most everyone gets freaked like you, and when you're
freaked, you can't talk to the people you know here on earth, much less to
them. I learned not to be afraid of them when I was young. There was a
spiritualists' church in this little town where I grew up. It was a bakery
really, but behind the bakery, there was a big room, and that's where the
owner, a wild-haired lady with a wonderful face, held her meetings. People
would speak in tongues, and sing, and levitate—or at least try. Most of the
time they couldn't." Callie laughed. "Mom would go and she'd sit for
hours and listen. I'd get bored and slip into the bakery to see if there were
any buns left. One night, while I was in there, I saw a lot of flour had been
left on one of the big cutting boards. I heard this kind of shuffling sound
like a hand brushing off a countertop, or maybe shoes brushing across the
floor, and then the flour on the cutting board parted, as if a finger were
drawing in it, and it wrote, 'Hello.' I couldn't believe my eyes. I was so
young. I gasped in delight, and then giggled. So it wrote 'Hello,
Callie!'"

"Are
you kidding?"

"I
swear. I was hooked. I couldn't wait to go to the meetings and slip back into
the bakery and wait to hear from this spirit. Sometimes it didn't write, and
then I would think it wasn't there, but it was teaching me to be attuned to the
cold rush of air, the sounds, even the smells sometimes. It was teaching me to
know when someone from the other side was present."

"You're
creeping me out," I admitted.

Callie
laughed. "Sometimes it just did tricks, like knocking a pan off the
counter to make a big noise and get me into trouble. Someone would pop in from
the chapel and tell me to be quiet because I was disturbing the spirits. I
wanted to say the spirits are disturbing me! Anyway, one day, this spirit
materialized, and it was very faint, but I recognized her as my grandmother. Of
course, I didn't ever know my grandmother, so how did I know her.. .but I did.
Then she wrote 'Bye' in the flour, and I didn't feel she was there anymore. I
guess my lessons were over or she was needed elsewhere."

I
had no doubt Callie was telling me the truth. It was simply that her truth was
so far afield from what I had been taught growing up and what I had experienced
in my life, that I could not have felt more off balance emotionally. One day I
was going about my business writing screenplays, and the next I'd met this
amazingly gorgeous, psychic woman, about whom I was crazy, and while I was
trying to sort out our relationship, I learned that she saw ghosts— routinely,
since childhood—and thought nothing of it! The good news, however, was that she
wasn't kissing silver-haired guys in hotel bars. As if she knew what I was
thinking, Callie whispered, "I'll never lie to you, Teague."

"Thank
you," I said and then thought about the ghost again. "What does he
want?"

"He
wants us to go to the chapel."

"In
the middle of the night?" I fretted, and Elmo moaned, but Callie was
already headed out the door.

The
doorman watched us leave, and I suspected him of calling someone and having us
followed. Frankly, I suspected everyone in this hotel of something. It was a
full moon, and Sheik Skippy brought the car around in just minutes. I gave it
the once-over to make sure whoever had bugged Elmo's collar hadn't done a
similar job on our car. Then I hopped in on the driver's side, tipped Skip,
dodging his hat with the four-foot plume, and drove us out of the circular
drive toward the mountains. I watched the doorman in my rearview mirror opening
another car door, waggling his large purple feather aside, and offering his
hand to assist the passenger from the car.
Why is it that we decide exactly
in which location it's okay to wear a four-foot feather on your hat?
I
thought to myself.
It’s okay at the circus, it’s okay at the royal palace,
it’s okay at the entrance to the Desert Star Casino, but it’s not okay at the
Pentagon, the symphony, or church.

"You
think about social customs a lot, don't you?" Callie said out of the blue,
as if wired into my head.

"Yeah,
I guess so. Everything seems so arbitrary."

"Like?"

"It's
like that tribe, let's say they're in New Guinea, where their culture demands
that a young boy lose his virginity to his uncle as a matter of custom. If the
uncle doesn't sleep with his nephew, well then, he hasn't done his duty. So you
don't sleep with your nephew in New Guinea and you get ostracized, and then you
do sleep with your nephew in New Mexico and you get jailed. I'm not taking a
moral stance here, I'm just saying..."

"What
are you saying?"

"I'm
saying it all makes no sense. I'm wondering if, in a thousand years, a man and
woman sleeping together will be an absolutely shocking event because the world
will be run by lesbians who've obtained their children through cloning that
dates back to some DNA-Sourdough-Starter-Kit. Then with my luck, I'll come back
as one of the guys, and I'll still be on the wrong side of the fence."

"Do
you wish you were straight?"

I
took her small hand in mine. "Not unless you like straight men."

"We've
been all through that," she said.

We
pulled slowly into the empty chapel parking area. The night was still, the wind
still; the cacophony of distant automobile horns drifted past us in that hollow
way the night air carries sound. I shut the lights off and rolled to a stop,
leaving the car very near the chapel doors in case we needed to make a quick
exit. I told Elmo to stay inside, keep the doors locked, and not to make a
sound, we'd be right back. I took my gun out of the console and tucked it into
the waistband of my jeans.

"Take
it out of your pants!" Callie ordered. "Just carry it. I don't want
you to blow your ass off," she added, her stress starting to show.

"Saving
it for you." I grinned.

We
got out of the car and pushed the chapel door open, letting our eyes grow
accustomed to the dark. I made no move to turn the lights on. After a few
moments, hand in hand, we made our way down the dark aisle to the vestry door.
It too was open as if this church were the most trusting place on earth. We
looked around; no one seemed to be within earshot of us. The wall was ajar. I
gave Callie a look that said "someone must be here." I peeked inside
into total darkness. If someone was here, they were taking the same dead-end
path we had taken before.

We
moved slowly and quietly down the long dirt corridor, feeling our way again and
instinctively knowing not to make a sound. As I felt we were about to see the
wall before us, something fluttered in the distance ahead of us, the edge of
something, maybe the wing of a large bat. I put my hand up as a signal to stop
and stay back against the wall. There it was: a man. A man in a brown cape and
a skullcap, blending into the earthen walls.
A priest, of course,
I
thought.
But doing what?
The priest reached to his right at a spot on
the wall about shoulder height and pressed his palm against it. The wall slid
back slightly, revealing another wall with a box in it. The priest slid the
ring off his little finger and placed the flat bas-relief side of it onto a
reverse engraving that was apparently created to interlock with the ring. He
slid his forefinger into the ring, using it like a ratchet, and turned the ring
ninety degrees to the left. A small door swung open, the size of a safe deposit
drawer. The priest reached in and removed a stack of cash, put it in his robe,
shut the door, and reset the combination on the lock with his ring, then put
the ring back on his pinkie finger. It dawned on me that the tunnel was in the
direction of the hotel and that the hotel probably connected uphill and
underground with the church.

"Didn't
know it was the church's money, Father," I said, startling the priest and
upsetting Callie, who'd been pulling on my arm, trying desperately to get me to
exit this place, but there was something about a priest slipping around in the
dead of night taking money from some unknown source that made me lose common
sense.

"Who
dares enter here?" he whispered, fearful, I was certain, that he had been
discovered. "How dare you desecrate the house of God? Be gone!"

Without
waiting for an answer, he swung back his cape and pulled a knife from his
cassock, lunging at us. I couldn't see well enough to shoot. Plus I was fearful
the dirt walls might be covering rock, and a bullet could ricochet, hitting us.

I
pushed Callie back and swung my arms wildly, trying to make myself an erratic
target. He used his cape like a matador, gracefully swinging it and twirling
the edge in front of me, concealing momentarily the knife's blade and then
allowing it suddenly to slice out at me. The priest was deadly graceful,
ducking and turning and swirling, but I managed to snag the end of his cape as
it whipped by my eyes, and I circled it over his arm as it came at me again,
binding him up in his own cloth. I bit into his wrist, holding his other arm at
bay. The knife clattered to the floor, and Callie scrambled for it as the
priest threw me to the dirt and put his hands around my neck. My mind flashed
to Joanie Burr and the marks on her neck. Had the priest killed her too?
Not
the priest,
I prayed.

"Come
near me, and I will choke the life from her!" he shouted at Callie, who
now had the knife firmly in hand. I was gasping and weakening, knowing I had
only seconds to do something. Overcoming the instinct to push him away from me,
I tucked my chin to my chest as tightly as I could, trying not to panic as it
made my breathing even harder. I reached behind my head with my right hand,
grasped the fingers of his left hand, pulled them backward as far as I could,
pinning his left forearm with mine while I broke his fingers. The sound of the
bones snapping was a relief. He howled and let go. Callie ran forward and drove
the knife into his side, not hesitating, as I might have, to attack the Cloth.
As he lay on the floor, I knocked him unconscious with a kick to the head and
pulled the ring from the little finger of his right hand, and we both ran back
to the end of the corridor. He roused himself, recovering quickly. The small
space ahead of us was already beginning to close. I pushed Callie through and
nearly crawled over her in my attempt to avoid the slamming wall that caught
the heel of my shoe.