Haunted (13 page)

"That's very impressive. Perhaps I've read one," he said.

"Oh, no, I don't think so. Calla is a lit'ry novelist. She's my daughter, too," she added proudly.

He smiled thinly. "I read all sorts of books, Minnie, not just horror novels."

"Oh, no, I didn't mean to imply you weren't well read. You couldn't have read one because Calla hasn't sold any yet, though Lord knows she's tried. She's tried for fifteen years. I know she'd be honored if you'd read them for her, they're very good, so very lit'ry, you know. Maybe you could put in a good word with your publisher." She paused, eyes sparkling. "Or with your agent. She hasn't found the right agent yet. The book she's working on now is wonderful. It's called A Woman’s Purple Onion."

Amber watched her father try to control the muscle that had begun twitching in his left cheek. She felt sorry for him as he worked to stay composed while Minnie blithely pushed almost every one of his hidden buttons.

"I'm sorry," he said uncomfortably, "but my, ah, agent has advised me not to read unsold manuscripts."

"What?" She obviously didn't believe him.

"It's a legal thing. If an unsold manuscript happens to have something in it similar to something I've written that isn't published yet, an unscrupulous would-be writer might claim I stole his or her idea."

"Calla would never do such a thing! Not my Calla!"

He raised his hands. "Of course she wouldn't, but I can't break the rules. Sorry."

"Well, that's terrible, having your reading censored like that."

"Yes," he said with false helplessness, "but it's a price I have to pay."

"Calla gets published all the time, though, in the Guardian. She's their star reporter. She did a story on your moving here that came out yesterday morning. She's going to review your books and she wants to interview you, won't that be nice? Well, I have work to do. Just leave the dishes when you're done. I'll clear them out."

As soon as Minnie exited, Amber patted her father's hand. He still looked rattled. "How come you didn't ask Minnie Mouth if she'd had any haunting experiences here?"

He laughed. "I never got the chance."

"Yeah."

"Hey, kiddo, do you think we really need a housekeeper? We used to get along just fine without one."

"We lived in a two-bedroom house, Daddy, and it was a sty, except for when Melanie was there."

"Yeah." He grimaced humorously. "Melanie and her list of Saturday morning chores that we all had to do."

"No fun. Anyway, this place is huge and I can't cook any better than you can."

"It would be nice to get some home cooking, wouldn't it?" He leaned back and stretched.

"You said it, Dad."

"Okay." He lowered his voice to a soft whisper. "We'll just have to work together to keep our problems at a minimum."

"I'll tell her what a monster you are if someone bugs you while you're working," she whispered back.

"Thanks. Lay it on thick, will you, sweetheart? I'm going to buy new latches for upstairs and locks for your room, my room, and my office today. I'll give you an office key, but you have to keep it hidden." He leaned over and whispered in her ear, "I think Minnie's a snoop."

"Sure, Daddy, but she's probably not that bad," Amber said, even though she was picturing Minnie on the other side of the door straining to hear their conversation. "You're always a little paranoid about your books."

"I can't take a chance on her getting into my manuscripts--"

"She won't," Amber replied, though she wasn't so sure. "I mean, she's nosey and all, but she's nice."

"You like her?"

"I didn't at first."

He smiled slightly. "I saw you when she badmouthed Theo. That's when your attitude changed."

"And you say you're not psychic." She grinned, then asked in a normal tone, "When are you going into town?"

"Now, I guess. I want to get back to interview our potential gardener and to oversee the movers while they break all our stuff." He stretched. "Why? Want to come along?"

Amber smiled sweetly. "I think I'll stay here and look around--"

"Not the third floor--"

"If you say that enough times, I'll get so curious that I'll have to go up there, just like the people in your books."

"Point taken."

"Daddy?"

"What?"

"When you get back, can I take the Bronco and go exploring?"

"As long as you stay in the general vicinity and get back by four or five in case I need to go out again."

"It's a deal." She paused. "Did you hear anything last night? After we went to bed?"

He cleared his throat and asked in a funny voice, "Noises?"

"Um hum. I thought I heard music."

"Singing?" he inquired cautiously.

"No. Piano music." She shook her head. "I'm not even sure I heard it. I might have dreamed it. Is something wrong, Daddy?"

He visibly relaxed. "Nothing's wrong, kiddo. What kind of music did you hear?"

"Old. Kind of like the music from The Sting."

"Ragtime?"

"Kind of." She hummed a few notes. "I can't think of the title."

"Hello, my baby, hello my honey, hello my ragtime doll," he sang.

"That's it. Maybe that old piano's got a ghost, huh Dad?"

He grinned. "We can hope."

Byron’s Finger: 12:24 P.M.

When David returned to the house, his Bronco laden with groceries, doorknobs, and shower fittings, the first thing he noticed was his daughter sitting on the tailgate of a beat-up blue pick-up truck with the handsomest man he'd ever laid eyes on.

Anxious to get back, he'd resisted the urge to stop in at the library, or to try to drag Ferd Cox or the young clerk at the hardware store into conversations and, seeing his daughter swinging her jeans-clad legs and laughing with this stranger, he was suddenly very glad he'd returned so soon.

Amber saw him and pointed. The man looked at him briefly, then waved. An instant later, the two of them trotted over, the young man only getting better looking as he neared. "Daddy, this is Eric Swenson. He's helping Mr. Willard with the house.

No he’s not, he’s helping himself to my daughter. David tried to smile. "I've been looking forward to meeting you," he said, giving the boy's hand a strong shake. Eric met his grip firmly, thereby passing the handshake test.

"Yes, sir. You too, sir." He smiled shyly. Eric Swenson's face possessed the bone structure of a Nordic god and he had the body to go with it. As tall as David, his hair was a wavy thatch of blondness, his smile winning, and his cornflower blue eyes as open and trusting as a child's.

"Is that your truck?" David asked him, nodding at the pickup.

"Oh, no sir. That's Mr. Willard's. I came with him. I just ride a bike."

"Where's Mr. Willard?"

"Inside." Eric looked apprehensively toward the house.

"He's working on the downstairs plumbing. The tub was clogged."

David nodded, deciding he wanted to ask the boy a few questions as soon as possible. "How about you two helping me carry the groceries inside, then you can take off, Amber."

"Yes, sir." Grinning, Eric immediately scooped up three heavy bags and started for the front door. Amber started to pick up a bag, but David stopped her.

"Kiddo, I need to tell you something about Eric."

"He's supposed to be slow. Minnie already told me."

"I don't think you should be alone with him until we know him a little better, okay?"

"Yeah, I knew you'd say that. You're such a worrier. He's very nice, though." She shook her head, watching the boy mount the porch steps. "What a waste of a great bod."

"Amber, please. You make me nervous when you talk like that."

She stood on her toes and kissed his cheek, then grabbed a sack labeled Willard Hardware. "You're so silly, Daddy. Eric reminds me of the golden retriever Aunt Barbara had, you know, big and gorgeous, but kind of goofy." She peered into the bag. "What's this stuff?"

"It's the stuff to fix the doors. And," he added triumphantly, "a shower massage with twelve settings. You can take that bag upstairs and leave it in your room for now."

"You're a good father," she said with fake somberness, before heading for the house.

With Eric's help the groceries were in Minnie's care before Amber even drove away. The housekeeper put the perishables in the cooler she'd brought the breakfast food in, fretting that someone would have to go for ice if the movers didn't show up soon. But as soon as the words were out of her mouth, the van pulled up and, to David's relief, the supervisor promised to have his men unload the fridge, pronto.

After giving him written directions for placement of the furniture and cartons, he left Minnie in charge, and led Eric back outdoors where they would be out of earshot.

"Let's walk down to the lighthouse and back," David suggested.

"I haven't seen it yet."

Eric halted. "I don't want to go in there."

"We won't go in," David promised. "We'll just go out to Widow's Peak and look at the town." The youth's reticence intrigued him.

Eric brightened. "You can see the pole beacon if you lean over the railing a little. It's on all the time. It's fun to watch."

Grinning, David said, "That sounds good. Let's go." Eric began to move again.

They walked in silence a moment, David wondering how to get Swenson to talk about his experiences in the house. He was sure he'd had one by the way he'd looked at the place when he'd informed him that the still-unseen Mr. Willard was in there. David also guessed that Eric was the one who had spilled the paint and that he was worried about the wrath of Mickey Willard when the damage was discovered. If that were true, David would take care of things.

"There're ghosts out here, you know."

Eric's words stopped David in his tracks. Ghost stories were the last thing he expected to hear out of a young man like Eric. But then again, he realized, the boy couldn't be too frightened or he wouldn't have been willing to work here at all.

"Ghosts?" he asked vaguely.

"There's one in the lighthouse, he's real scary, but he doesn't mean to be. And there're a couple that hang around outside a lot. They're nice, but kind of sad. You know who they are?"

David realized that his mouth was hanging open and promptly shut it. "Who?" What the hell is going on here.

"They're Mr. and Mrs. Byron Baudey, Byron and Margaret Cross Baudey, that's who they are." He stopped walking and stared at the sky before continuing to speak in a tone that suggested he'd committed someone else's words to memory. "In 1887, Byron Baudey built the house, that's why it was called Baudey House, and when his sister, Miss Lizzie, inherited it, she called it that too because that was her name and also because she thought it was a good joke to have a bawdy house named Baudey House. Then all the bad things happened and now the joke is Baudey House is Body House."

"That's fascinating, Eric," David said enthusiastically. "Tell me more!" Through long experience, he had learned to never let on he knew anything about a subject because it caused the informer to censor himself, and some priceless bit of information might be lost.

The grin that spread across Eric's face was one of pure pleasure. If he was considered slow, then being taken seriously was probably a rare treat. "Well, Byron Baudey, he got rich in the spice trade. He had his own boat and everything, and he decided to retire young because he was in love with Margaret Cross, who said anyone who married a sailor was a widow whether the sailor was dead or not and she wouldn't be a sailor's widow.

"Well, he already owned this land and he'd built the lighthouse with his own money because so many boats had sunk here. The town really liked him for that." He paused to watch as a flock of pelicans flew overhead.

"So then Byron Baudey hired a bunch of men to help him build the house. It was hard to build because the land is mostly rocks and he wanted to have a big cellar for potatoes and stuff and for his wine collection--"

"Cellar?" David asked quickly. "Do you know more about it?" The cellar was the focal point of various theories about the house and he hadn't been able to find out much about it in his research so far. According to legend, Lizzie used it as a sort of soft-core bondage and discipline playground, though her daughter, Christabel, later converted it into a torture chamber worthy of the Spanish Inquisition. After the night of the massacre in 1915, a dozen bodies, Lizzie's and Christabel's included, were never found and, because of the stench that emanated for sometime thereafter, which was said to still manifest occasionally, it was theorized that if anyone could find the secret entrance, they'd find the bodies, too. It was a mystery that David hoped to solve.

"Well, I think it's there. Byron Baudey took a bunch of dynamite and blasted the cellar out of the rock. Then he evened it out with a pickax, or that's what Uncle Craig guesses."