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Authors: Susan Carroll

BOOK: Parker And The Gypsy
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“My uncle Louie once spent a night in jail for shooting a pellet gun at the neighbor's cat. But he was always quarreling with somebody. Sometimes he could be a—a very unpleasant man and—and...” Sara trailed off, fearing she was sounding hopelessly naive again.
“Yeah, well, my life has been full of people who weren't
pleasant.”
Something bleak and bitter surfaced in Mike's eyes.
Sara's fingers still tingled from her brief contact with the letter. She stared at the envelope with growing uneasiness. Even though she feared Mike would resent the intrusion, she couldn't help asking, “This—this person in prison. He's not writing to threaten you, is he?”
“You mean something like ‘I'll get you, when I get out, Lefty.' Good thing my name's not Lefty, isn't it?” A ghost of a smile touched Mike's lips.
When Sara was unable to return the expression, he chucked her lightly under the chin. “Thanks for the concern, angel, but this is nothing for you to get all puckered up about unless you want to find yourself kissed again.”
Which, Sara sensed, was Mike's playful way of telling her to mind her own business. He tossed the envelope onto the floor of the car. Then he said briskly, “C'mon, we'd better not keep Miss Mamie waiting. After all, you're paying me by the day. Don't want this spook of yours to end up costing you a fortune.”
Giving her no chance to reply, he seized her hand and tugged her along after him around the side of the inn. Sara stumbled in her efforts to keep up with his longer stride, her head still full of the letter he seemed to have dismissed.
But the disturbing vibes she'd picked up from the envelope continued to ripple through her like a handful of pebbles tossed into the serene lake waters of her mind. For a few brief seconds there, she felt as though she'd drawn once more too close to the edge of Mike Parker's world. It was a world where a man could get a knife thrust through his shoulder and be grateful it wasn't his heart. A place where Mike clearly didn't want her probing around and she didn't want to go, fearing what she might find.
It was almost a relief to give herself up to the inn's chilling, but far more familiar aura instead.
As she trailed Mike up the veranda steps, Sara sensed a slight drop in temperature that was a sure sign of a supernatural presence. She marveled that Mike didn't feel it, too, but he tramped heedlessly along the porch, peering in windows. “So which one of these do we have to force open to get inside?” he called out to her.
“None of them. We can go through the front door. It's not locked.”
“You people are trusting little souls around here, aren't you?” he drawled.
“No. The Jorgensens have tried to install locks on the doors, but Mamie keeps removing them. She has her own way of dealing with unwanted intruders.”
“No kidding? Well, if she ever gets tired of this gig, I could get her a job at Boom Boom's. They're looking for a good bouncer.”
Although Sara wasn't proof against his teasing grin, it irritated her that he could be cheerfully oblivious to the inn's brooding presence that was already beginning to weigh so heavy upon her own spirit
Well, just wait until she got him inside.
Ducking past Mike, she approached the front door, the once-elegant tracery of the oval glass insert now begrimed and cracked. Turning the ornate handle, she thrust the door open. It pushed inward with a loud and eerie creak.
“Great special effects,” Mike said.
“You haven't seen anything yet,” Sara muttered.
“After you.” He waved her inside with a mock gallant bow.
“Nervous, Mr. Parker?” she asked.
“Shaking in my shoes, Miss Holyfield,” he replied.
Sara thought she would have dressed up in a bed sheet and yelled “Boo” herself if it would have driven that confident smirk off Mike's face. But she was going to have to leave it up to Mamie to do that.
Preceding Mike across the threshold, Sara stepped into the chamber that in its heyday had been the inn's bustling front lobby. The room stood still and silent, from the great chandelier with its dusty glass globes to the front desk with its pigeonholes filled with rusting keys.
Sara picked her way carefully past a drop cloth, overturned ladder and some paint cans abruptly abandoned by the last work crew Mamie had sent fleeing in terror. The temperature seemed to have dropped several more degrees and Sara could feel the full force of the inn's aura beating down upon her.
The oak-paneled walls seemed steeped with voices long since silenced. Given the inn's troubled history, Sara marveled that Mamie was the only ghost to walk these halls. From the first time she'd set eyes on the place, Sara had sensed that the Pine Top Inn had always been a refuge for lost and tormented souls.
Glancing back at Mike, she saw that he had closed the door and was picking his way carefully past the painters' debris, peering curiously about him. Was it her imagination or was his cocksure manner already a bit subdued?
“Can you feel it?” she asked in hushed tones.
“Feel what?”
“The inn's atmosphere. The air is thick with the aura of broken hearts and broken dreams.”
“That's dust, honey,” Mike said, and promptly sneezed as if to prove his point. “And stale paint fumes.”
He bent down to inspect an overturned paint can that had left a dried crust on the inn's battered wood flooring. “What the hell is this? Eggshell cream,” he said, reading the paint label. “Yecch! Looks more the color of baby puke.”
“Mamie didn't like it, either. When the painters tried to paint over that lovely old oak wainscoting, she started slapping them with their own paintbrushes. The realty company hasn't been able to get another work crew near the place ever since.”
“Sounds like your Mamie has a lot better decorating taste than the Jorgensens.” Mike straightened, dusting off his hands and giving her a challenging smile. “So when do I get to meet the old gal?”
Sara frowned at him. “I usually can sense Mamie's whereabouts right away when everything is quiet and still.”
“Well, go ahead.”
Sara folded her hands, took a deep breath and tried to concentrate. But to her annoyance, she could sense nothing but Mike's overwhelmingly masculine presence.
The word
still
didn't seem to be in the man's vocabulary. He prowled about like a hunting panther, poking into everything. Ducking down behind the front desk, he snooped through all the drawers, then proceeded to rattle his way through the pigeonholes.
“Michael,” Sara said at last with an exasperated sigh.
“What?” he asked, glancing back at her.
“I can't sense anything with you being so—so twitchy.”
“Sorry.” But he didn't even pause as he continued his inspection, yanking open a door, brushing cobwebs aside as he peeked into a broom closet. “Why don't you just call the old girl and see if she answers you?”
He was being facetious of course, but that was what Sara usually did when she visited the inn alone. Feeling a little embarrassed to do so in Mike's cynical presence, nonetheless, she turned her back on him and called out, “Mamie? Mamie, it's Sara. I've come back and I've brought Mr. Parker with me. You know. The detective I told you might be able to find your son.”
“Sure, Mamie,” Mike added in a loud voice. “Come on out and we'll chew the old ectoplasm.”
Sara whipped around and glared at him.
“Hey,” Mike protested with a twinkle in his eye, “I was only trying to help.”
“You're going to make her mad. She doesn't like ghost jokes.”
“A sensitive spook, huh?”
“And when Mamie's temper is really aroused, she has a tendency to throw furniture at people's heads.”
“So did my ex-wife.”
He'd been married? Sara was momentarily distracted, wondering if the ex Mrs. Parker was the one responsible for putting that jaded look in his eyes? No, she sensed that Mike's cynical shell had begun forming years ago when—
“Stop it, Sara,” she chided herself fiercely. “It's none of your business.”
She should be worrying more about what the reckless Mr. Parker was doing right now. Sauntering over to the stairs that angled upward to the shadowy landing above, he called out playfully, “Hey, Mamie, if you want to meet me, you better get down here or I'm going to start painting the wainscoting again.”
“Oh, Mike,” Sara groaned. “I really wouldn't do that if I were you.”
With a wicked grin at her, Mike continued to coax. “C'mon, Mamie. Not all of us have eternity to wait around. I could die of old age and turn into a spook myself while you keep me standing here.”
Sara sucked in her breath. The man was asking for it. And he got it. An icy wind swept through the room and the chandelier began to shake violently.
“What th—” Mike exclaimed. The next instant he went stumbling forward toward the stairs. He was thrown to his knees and would have sprawled flat on his face if he hadn't grabbed the newel post to break his fall.
Sara winced, prepared to duck behind the front desk if paint cans and other stray objects started to fly. But the chandelier gave one more ominous rattle, then all was silent
Clutching the stair post, Mike slowly regained his footing. Swearing fluently under his breath, he bent down, rubbing his right leg. Sara rushed toward him.
“Michael, are you all right?”
“Yeah, sure.” He grimaced. “I just banged my knee up against that blasted post and aw—hell, look at this.” He gestured with disgust to where a loose nail had torn a perfect vee in his pant's leg. “Those were my best jeans, dammit!”
“I'm sorry,” Sara murmured. “I tried to warn you. You're lucky it wasn't worse.”
“What wasn't worse?” he said testily. “I tripped over a loose board or something. That's all.”
Sara stared at him incredulous. “You didn't notice that chilling blast of air or the chandelier rattling?”
Mike paused to cast an uneasy scowl up at the light fixture and then shrugged. “It's an old house. There's bound to be plenty of creaks and rattles. That chandelier looks loose. No wonder it shakes when there's a cold draft.”
“It's almost ninety degrees outside,” Sara pointed out.
“So what? You're trying to tell me a ghost just waltzed through here?”
“I'm not trying, I am saying it! Didn't you feel her push you?”
“Oh, for the love of—” Mike broke off his muttered exclamation, then continued in a tone of strained patience. “Sara, I had my eyes open the whole time. If anyone or anything had pushed me, I'd have seen them.”
“You can't see Mamie.”
“Invisible, is she? No bed sheets or chains?”
“Well, not all the time.”
“Ohh. You mean sometimes she does wear chains?”
“No!” Sara snapped, feeling her own temper start to fray. “I mean that sometimes you can catch just a glimpse of Mamie in the window or a mirror.”
“And that's how you communicate with her? Mirror, mirror, on the wall, show me the biggest spook of all?”
“No!”
“Then how'd you ever find out about the existence of John Patrick? About him being missing and Mamie wanting to find him.”
“It's—it's hard to explain,” Sara said. Especially to a skeptic like Mike. “I've never been exactly sure how Mamie speaks to me. But I actually hear her voice in my ear.”
“Ah. You hear voices.” Mike nodded as if to say he wasn't at all surprised. He was giving her that hateful patronizing look she'd been seeing on people's faces ever since she was three years old.
“Never mind,” she choked out. “I should have known better than to ever bring you out here.”
“Maybe you should have.” Mike stopped rubbing his knee long enough to eye her with sudden suspicion. “What was the big idea, Sara? You didn't lure me to this inn because you were hoping to get me believing all this supernatural junk, did you? Because if that's what this is all about—”
“No, of course it isn't,” she denied hotly, but his charge had just enough truth in it to mortify her. She realized that she
had
been hoping to prove to Mike that Mamie did exist. That Sara wasn't just imagining things or worse still, ready for a padded cell.
But why should she care about proving anything to the arrogant Mike Parker? Almost everyone else thought she was crazy. What did it matter if he did, too?
That was just the trouble. On some level, it did matter. It mattered a lot.

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