Murder by Candlelight (20 page)

She sat back in her chair. Took her
hands off the tabletop.

The seance over, the other women
lifted their hands from the table, too, looking around as if trying
to locate a ghost.

Jamie nodded to Susan, Susan getting
up to switch on the living room lights.

"That was some ... experience," June
said as Susan came back to the table and sat down.

"Right," Rachel said,
sleepily.

"But ... what ...?"

"I can't explain it,"
Jamie said, cutting off Susan's question. "For some reason,
poltergeists get a kick out of lifting tables. Their idea of a
joke, maybe, whatever
they
are."

"So, you're saying, I've got a
problem," Susan said, quietly, the "rising table" phenomenon
hammering everyone into submission.

"Yes. But it's not
serious."

"It seems serious to me. I don't want
to live in an apartment with a ... spirit. Making noises. Moving
things around."

"And you don't have to. With this kind
of presence, you don't need an expert. Though what I'm going to
recommend may sound bizarre, if you'll all do as I say, the
poltergeist will be gone in an hour's time. And what's better,
never be back."

"I like the sound
of
that
," Susan
admitted.

The other two nodded their
agreement.

If anything, the evening's
entertainment had served to sober Rachel. She looked more "with it"
-- if not as happy.

"Here's what we've got to
do," Jamie explained, lacing her fingers together, elbows on the
table. "As I think I said, the poltergeist, while having the power
to move around the apartment, is 'living' in one room only. I know
that to say 'living,' when referring to a poltergeist, is
meaningless. A better word might be
existing
." Again, the encouraging
look. "For what it's worth, none of this makes sense to me,
either.

"What we've discovered, is that the
spirit is here," Jamie waving her hands to include the apartment.
"Somewhere."

The women nodded, Z
stopping himself when he realized Jamie was getting
him
to nod.

Stupid.

This whole evening was stupid.
Pointless.

Z didn't need this aggravation,
particularly now, when all he had to look forward to -- tomorrow
and forever -- was "good" Captain Scherer dropping the proverbial
brick load on Z's head.

Z had to admit that Jamie looked good
in her black outfit, though. In addition, what she'd done to him
under the table had reminded him of the clever tricks that little
girl could play. And with Susan right there in the room,
too.

Jamie was as bold as they came, brazen
and, though Z didn't want to admit it ... exciting.

" ... next phase," Jamie was saying,
leaning back, her "lady-like" hands folded in her lap, "is find its
room. In preparation for this evening, Susan told me there were
five rooms in this apartment, and that is why I asked her to get
three friends of hers to sit through the seance. Three friends,
plus Susan, plus me -- makes five." Z wondered if Jamie thought the
"sailor suit" was still so bombed she'd have trouble counting that
high.

"The next part is easy. Each of us
goes into a room of the apartment. What we do then, is be
quiet."

Jamie shrugged. "There's no way to be
rational about what I'm going to tell you. So, let me just say it
and have done with it. What we're trying to do is to "bore" the
poltergeist. So that the poltergeist goes 'home.' That is, returns
to the room in the house where it 'lives.'

"This process can take an hour or
more, each of us in separate rooms, pretending to be pet rocks."
Jamie put on her most engaging smile.

"If you can go to sleep,
so much the better. What will happen is that, by the end of the
hour, one of us will sense that the poltergeist is in the room he
and she is occupying. This will tell us
that's
the room the poltergeist has
chosen for its 'home.'

"As for the rest of us, nothing at all
will happen. We'll just be getting an hour's worth of
relaxation."

About people being able to "relax," Z
had his doubts. On the plus side, what Jamie was asking -- bizarre
as it was -- wouldn't put a mental strain on Susan's
friends.

The only uneasiness "haunting" the
back of Z's mind, was the remembrance of a certain type of horror
movie, the plot always about a number of people trapped in an
isolated old house, one of them a lunatic who, one-by-one, is
picking off the rest. The others, figuring out there's a murdering
maniac on the loose, immediately go off to separate rooms to make
it as easy as possible for the killer to do his dastardly
work.

Not that the current
situation was
identical
to horror movies, but ....

"And when one of us
discovers the 'spirit's' home," Jamie was continuing, "I'll know
what to do. There are rituals that drive off poltergeists.
The
trick
is to
find the room where it's holed up."

"But couldn't you have just done the
ritual in each room?" Susan might have fallen for Jamie's gift of
gab, but she was still as shrewd as ever. "Doing that, we wouldn't
have had to undergo the seance."

"A good idea," said Jamie
quickly. "And that
would
have worked if we'd gotten lucky and picked the
right room the first time out. It's just that, if we started in the
wrong room, there'd be the danger of the poltergeist getting wise
to what was going on. Once the spirit is on guard, it's hell to pay
to get rid of the little beastie."

Jamie stopped. Smiled. "I know none of
this adds up. But then, poltergeist phenomena itself, is
irrational. All I can tell you is that, from the experience of
desperate people trying this and trying that, over hundreds --
thousands -- of years, the way I'm doing it ... works. Even if
you're still skeptical, what have you got to lose?" Jamie was
addressing everyone now. "Nothing but an hour sitting around -- or
lying down if you want."

"Let's do it!" Susan was decisive. One
of the things Z liked about her.

"All that remains, then, is to choose
up rooms.

"I think," Jamie paused to play-act
thinking, hand to her mouth, "that you, Susan, should take the
bathroom. Can you spend an hour there without getting too tired?"
Susan nodded. "The reason I'm suggesting the bathroom is that the
odds say that's the room least likely to be the 'home' of the
poltergeist. You've suffered enough already. No reason for you to
be disturbed, even a little, if I can help it. What I would
suggest, Susan, is that you take a long hot bath. While you'll be
doing 'something,' taking a soak will relax you like nothing else.
In that sense, it's as good as doing nothing. And let me say again,
I really don't expect the poltergeist to be 'haunting' the
bathroom."

That settled, Jamie turned to the rest
of them. "The bedroom goes to Mr. Zapolska." Followed by polite
snickering from Rachel and June, the girls figuring that the
bedroom was a familiar place for Z to be. "For some reason," Mr.
Zaposka, "you seem to me to be stressed out," Jamie continued,
arching an eyebrow, knowingly. "I know all this is more disturbing
for some people than for others. The bed in there will give you a
chance to stretch out.

"I think maybe I'll take the kitchen.
No reason, really, except that it's one of the room's that left.
And how about June for the dining room. That leaves Rachel in here,
in the living room.

"And this is important." Jamie, being
stern. "Lights out -- everywhere."

That order delivered, she
relaxed. Grinned. "But before we do anything, we'd better make sure
we won't be disturbing
Susan
for the next hour."

A comment that broke the tension,
bathroom jokes always good for a shy laugh.

Smiling pleasantly, Jamie looked at
the group. "Is that OK with everyone?" everybody nodding -- like a
line of cud-chewing cows. Contented. Dumb.

"Anyone have to go to the bathroom
before we start?"

Rachel raised her hand. No surprise
there.

* * * * *

By the time they were
reassembled in the living room, even
Z
had dipped into the sandwiches,
the strange experiences of the evening making everyone hungry at
last.

The food "disappeared," Jamie was
ready to give them their final instructions. "Remember, no one
leaves his assigned room for the next hour. Room lights out. Close
your door if you have one, but no need to lock it. I'll be the one
who keeps time. I can do that because the stove has a lighted
clock. Stay put. I can't stress how important that is. Just relax.
Even if you're in the poltergeist's room, nothing bad will happen.
OK?"

It was OK.

"Then let's split!"

Feeling like he was taking
his marching orders from a laughing loon, Z tramped down the hall,
when through what passed for a kitchen, turned into the bedroom,
and closed the door. (Some, might have thought he shut the door
more forcefully than necessary, though it would be going too far to
say he
slammed
it. He
never
slammed doors, no matter how irritated he'd
become!)

Z snapped on the bedroom
table-lamp to reveal Susan's bedroom, a room he
had
visited on numerous (and always
delightful) occasions -- as everybody in the whole damned apartment
seemed to know!

On the other hand, he could have done
worse. Actually, the bedroom would have been his first choice, if
Jamie had given anyone a choice.

For half a minute, there was shuffling
in the hall outside the bedroom door -- Susan headed for the
bathroom, Jamie for the kitchen. Then, as everybody settled down
... quiet.

Like a good boy, Z
switched off the table-lamp, finding that the others had already
done the same, no light showing under the bedroom door. At least Z
wasn't the
only
one playing this stupid game.

Now that he was alone, Z
realized he was ... exhausted, first, from fearing that
"frolicsome" Jamie might expose his affair with her at any moment.
Then having to consider what would happen when nasty Captain
Scherer came down on him because of the radio interview. Talk about
men close to death having their entire
lives
pass before their eyes! Z's
wicked ways were rotating around his eyeballs!

He was ... beat!

The darkness of the room making it
impossible for Z to see, he felt his way to the bed.

Normally, Z didn't like
Susan's bed -- in no way, a reflection on Susan
in
bed. His complaint was that Susan
had a waterbed, that kind of "sleeping system" providing all the
comforts of a lifeboat on the North Atlantic.

No matter. Though the shifty pallet
was inherently unstable, tonight, he'd welcome a coroner's steel
slab!

As Z sat on the edge of the rolling
mattress to take off his shoes, then stretch out, lying as quietly
as he could to get the damned bedding to settle down, he reflected
on the evening. Clearly, Jamie had no intention of telling Susan
that Jamie and Z had been lovers. Jamie had done what she'd set out
to do, however: make Z sweat! The ghost hunter taking her petty
revenge, the evening was about over. From Z's point of view, the
important thing was that he'd gotten through without damage to his
relationship with Susan.

The bed quieting at last, Z was
feeling ... comfortable.

He'd beaten the Jamie-rap
and, with luck, would get out of the radio interview mess --
whenever. What could Scherer do to him, after all? Z hadn't broken
any laws. At least, that the captain
knew
about.

A plus was that it wasn't difficult to
do what Jamie had asked them to do to finish out the evening.
Relax.

Even ... on the waterbed
.............

Z was alert! Awakened by ... what? ...
A noise? Not so much a sound, as ... movement in the
air.

There should be no breeze in the
bedroom. Not with the door closed. Unless ....

In the dark, Z strained to hear
.....

Yes, he'd been right. The blower of
the complex's central air was off. Not a breath should be stirring
in the bedroom.

Except ....

Z refused to believe that ghosts were
possible! Rejected giving way to his fears! And yet ....

Though he hadn't felt motion in the
room since the slight breeze had aroused him, Z thought he now
heard ... whispering sounds. Faint, but definitely there. The
rustling of cloth, dragged along the floor.

The sound of a ... shroud?
.............

The floor creaked!

Not his imagination
this
time. It was a
noise Z knew from making it himself; from Susan making that
squeaking sound in the dead of night on her way to and from the
bathroom. Not only did he know that sound but also where the loose
floorboard that made it was located: five feet on this side of the
bedroom door.