From Herring to Eternity (6 page)

“I have gone around the city with one or more of my sisters, searching for the source of this disruption. We felt it coming strongly from the east when we did a tracking ritual at Radnor Lake. By circling the area in decreasing spirals, we believe we found the origin.”

“My house,” I said. “The campsite of the dead Civil War workers.”

“Not just a campsite,” Sally said. “Human remains must be in danger for the earth to send them forth.”

“Oh, great. My house was built on an ancient burial ground?”

“Cemeteries are consecrated,” she said. “The souls cannot escape.”

“Even better,” I said. “My house was built on a mass grave.”

“Again, no,” she said. “The spiritual activity suggests that no prayers were ever uttered, that murders were committed and bodies disposed of without ceremony. Something has caused those souls to stir.”

“Why now? Why not when the house was built?”

“That did not intrude,” she said. “Something has communicated evil purpose to the earth.”

“Like digging there?” I said.

“That is what we believe,” Sally said. “Madge heard your conversation with the attorney. She believes that irreparable harm will come from disinterring any artifacts.”

“Good luck with stopping it,” I said. “Tell me, Sally. You said this has been going on for a week or so. How did the earth know before I did?”

“Scientists say that all living things have racial memory, but it is not purely genetic,” Sally said. “Objects that were once alive, like the leather binding of a book or journal, retain the spiritual imprint of any life that has come into contact with it. It is like—I guess you could call it an alarm clock. Something like that has been much in use.”

“There was a diary discovered in 2003,” I said.

“That could very well be the conduit,” Sally told me.

Remarkably, it never occurred to me that this was a put-on. It wasn’t just because the woman sounded sincere. Crazy people could do that. It was what Thom had told me earlier:
“That stuff has some potent qualities.”
It didn’t mean I believed that my house was hosting a for-real Halloween. But when two very different people say the same thing, attention should be paid. It was like Murray once said about having a colonoscopy before he was fifty: “
What could it hurt?
” Besides, I had an idea.

“Sally, are you saying you want access to my property?”

“I think it is essential that we hold a Sabbat on the site.”

“Is that like a Sabbath service in temple? Not that you would necessarily know—”

“Though the prayers I would imagine are different, our word comes from your Hebrew
shabb
th
,” she said.

“Oh,” I said proudly. My people had contributed something important to another reviled minority. “Would it be necessary for you to sanctify the ground in some way to perform this service?”

“Very necessary,” Sally said.

“In that case, we are in business,” I told her, thinking back to what Robert Barron had said about witchcraft being a religion. “What do I have to do?”

“Will you be home tomorrow night?”

“What time?”

“Midnight,” she said.

“I don’t expect I’ll have a conflict.”

“It is the first night of the new moon,” she said. “That is the best time to communicate with the spirits.”

“Is there anything I need to do before then?”

“No,” she said. “Just don’t let anyone further desecrate the grounds before then.”

“You can be sure of that,” I promised. “One more question, Sally—why did Ginnifer want me to call from my office?”

“The spirits may have interfered with your cell phone reception,” she said. “They are energy. They do that without meaning to.”

“Oh,” I said. “Is that the worst they can do?”

“Yes,” Sally said, adding ominously, “as long as their remains are not disturbed.”

Chapter 6

Despite my chat with Sally and some trepidation before I got into bed, I slept soundly.

My cats, however, did not.

Southpaw and Mr. Wiggles had moved with me from New York. My steadfast companions after the divorce, they were named, nostalgically, for two of the happier times I remembered in my life: making it onto a formerly all-boys Little League team as a pitcher when I was eight; and getting an A+ on a sixth-grade science project that was a triumph of will over disgust—getting worms to reproduce.

The cats had been a little skittish for weeks after the move. That was not exactly a surprise; the sounds of Bonerwood Drive in Nashville were very different from the sounds of New York City. Which is not a knock against my hometown; Nashville has fewer sirens, car alarms, and low-flying helicopters, but my borderline-rustic neighborhood has chainsaws, cars being repaired to the sound of vintage boom boxes, and the occasional what-the-hell discharge of a firearm. The cats also didn’t seem to like southern litter so much at first, preferring the Japanese rock garden that was a going away present from one of my coworkers.

So while the ghosts, if there were any, didn’t make their way into my dreams, I woke to find my cats not on the “man side” of my bed, where they usually flopped, but under it with my slippers and a colony of dust bunnies.

I’m not one of those people who talks to her pets. I didn’t ask them anything like, “What are you doing down there?” or “You joining me in the steamy bathroom for my shower?” I would open the cat food and put it in their bowls, and they’d either come out or not.

Still, it
was
curious. And I did notice something else unusual; the warbler symphony that usually welcomed a sunny day was missing.

Either there are ghosts, we’ve got an earthquake coming, or a relatively exotic creature like a red fox or armadillo went rooting through the trash
, I thought. I was betting on the pests.

I was out of the house by six, as I am most days. I parked in my reserved spot at the public garage—Randy, the parking attendant, kept it blocked with an orange traffic cone—then rounded the corner and walked past the Arcade, an alley lined with cafés, shops, and salons.

When I arrived at the deli, Newt was already at work, turning on the burners and reassembling the slicer, which gets broken down and thoroughly cleaned every night. I ate a banana and put on the coffee. Thom arrived two minutes after I did.

“You’re here early,” she said.

“Yeah—the ghosts let me sleep.”

She shot me a look. “Girl? Ghosts?”

I told her not to worry and I explained about the night before. She shook her head, kissed the cross she wore, said she had every right and reason to worry, and went to work while muttering to Jesus.

A woman I did not know rapped on the door five minutes after that, while Thom was setting up the cash register. I was behind the counter wiping food from the menus.

“We’re not open,” Thom shouted.

I heard a muffled, “Is the owner in? I must see her.”

“About what?” Thom asked.

“My brother,” she said. “Lippy Montgomery.”

Thom looked back at me. I was already on my way to the front of the diner. I turned the lock and opened the door for her.

Except for the obvious grief in her bloodshot eyes and the downturn of her mouth, the woman bore a more-than-passing resemblance to her late brother. She stood about five-six, had the same round face and big blue eyes, but her skin still bore the healthy color of the Hawaiian sun; Lippy’s flesh had been burned to leather from years of playing outside. Her dyed, platinum blond hair was pulled in a pigtail and bright red lipstick drew attention to her pouty, bee-stung lips. She seemed to be older than Lippy, perhaps in her early thirties, and reminded me of one of those girls I’d seen in the Bunny Ranch show on cable. Not that I spent a lot of time watching shows about hookers, but after the divorce, I sometimes found it distracting to live vicariously.

“I’m Gwen Katz,” I said, offering my hand. “My condolences. We’re going to miss your brother around here.”

“We’re gonna miss his music, too,” she said. “That boy could play the horn.”

“This is Thomasina Jackson, my manager,” I said.

“Hi,” the young woman said to us both. “I’m Tippi Montgomery.”

I knew, just from the way she said her name with an ever so faint accent on the last syllable, that it was spelled Tippi-with-an-i.

“Come on in, sit down,” I said. “Would you like coffee?”

“I would love a cup,” she said.

She came in and sat at the counter. She was dressed in a black jacket and skirt, matching shoes and shoulder bag. She did not have any luggage.

“Where did you come from, Tippi?” I asked as I poured us each a cup.

“Atlanta,” she said. “I left around one o’clock this morning. Drove straight through.”

“Do you have a place to stay?” I asked.

“No—and if that was an offer, thank you. But I have to be back in Atlanta by tonight. Work.”

“What do you do?” I asked.

She said frankly, “I’m an escort.”

I saw Thom scowl. I thought back quickly to make sure I hadn’t had any bad thoughts about the Bunny Ranch hookers. I hadn’t. Having grown up with a hypercritical father and having endured a hypercritical husband, I was sensitive not to judge others. Even in my own head.

“So, Tippi, do you have—appointments tonight?” I asked smoothly.

She nodded. “I came to make arrangements for Lippy to come home as soon as”—she stopped, choked—“as soon as the coroner will allow. They’re investigating to see whether he . . . whether it was the knock on his head that . . .”

“I understand,” I said consolingly.

“I had to be here to sign papers, gather his belongings.”

I put my hand on hers. She grasped my fingers. I felt a little uncomfortable, hoping she’d washed after ending her workday.

“Well, what can I do for you?” I asked.

“The police told me that my brother’s trumpet case was stolen,” she said. “The detective mentioned that this was the last place anyone could remember for sure having seen it. I was wondering, hoping, that maybe he left it in the bathroom or under a chair.”

“I saw him with it when I gave him his check—Thom?” I asked, looking past the young woman.

“He had it when he left here,” she said. “He put it next to the register when he paid, took it with him when he left.”

“Apart from the sentimental value, is there a reason you want it?” I asked.

“I think there must be,” she said.

“I don’t understand.”

“What I mean is, Lippy and I e-mailed every day, whenever he took a break and went to the library, and he said he had something exciting to tell me about, something that was in the case.”

“You have any idea what it was?” I asked.

“He said, ‘It’s a real treasure, sis. You won’t believe it.’”

“Did he mean that literally?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Sorry, I shouldn’t be pressing you. Just curious.”

“It’s all right,” Tippi said. “If I’d thought it was important, I would have pressed him. Lippy liked his surprises.”

“I assume you told the detective about it?” I asked.

She nodded. “When I returned his call, he asked if I could think of any reason someone might want to steal it. That was the only thing I could think of. It’s not like the horn itself was valuable.”

“How long did your brother own that trumpet?”

“Since he left home. He bought it at a pawn shop in Oahu, one that sold mostly sailing mementoes—things retiring or needy old sailors no longer needed, like telescopes, charts, anchors.”

“People hock anchors?”

“Not their own, of course, but from salvage operations,” she said. “As you might imagine, many, many artifacts from World War Two have been retrieved in the Pacific Ocean.”

“Of course,” I said. I was trying to imagine how people got rusty anchors to shore—though I suppose if you could raise them from many fathoms deep, where they weren’t especially buoyant, the rest of the trip was more of the same. The mention of salvage operations made me think of something, which I kept to myself. “So—you were saying about Lippy?”

“Yes, Lippy learned to play the horn in elementary school,” she said. “He continued through the eleventh grade. That was all he lived for, he loved it so. During the week, he would wake us to reveille. My dad, an old navy man, was very proud. When he decided to go to New Orleans, Lippy tried to take the one that belonged to the school, but they saw him trying to sneak it out in his gym bag.”

“Yeah, the shape would be a little distinctive,” I said. “Wait—New Orleans?”

“He wanted more than anything to play Dixieland Jazz, but he stopped here first. He said he just planned to check out the music scene for a week or two—then fell in love with Nashville and so he stayed.”

And that was the short, sad, sweetish story of Lippy—née Clifford, I learned from his sister—Montgomery. Her name really was Tippi, though, named after the star of her mother’s favorite movie,
The Birds
. She had left Oahu after her mother’s death. Her father had predeceased her and the mother’s long illness left them with no money. Tippi spent some time with her brother in Nashville before answering a newspaper ad to appear in films in Los Angeles; after attending an adult film awards ceremony in Atlanta, she had decided that being an escort there was preferable to making porn in the San Fernando Valley. She said her brother came west to help her move. The drive back to Atlanta was one of their fondest times together.