Superstition (9 page)

“Nothing’s happening!” they were probably screaming into Karen’s earpiece at this very moment. “Do something! Fix it! We need
action
!”

The thought made Nicky’s stomach knot.
One ghost. Please, God, just send us one ghost. Casper, where are you when you’re needed?

Nicky had never known her mother to fail to find a ghost when she went looking for one. Usually, ghosts practically pushed one another aside in their eagerness to come through for her. But not tonight.
Oh, God, not tonight.
Wasn’t that the way life worked, that the one time Leonora’s link to the Other Side went on the blink would be on live TV, with her daughter’s professional life on the line?

“Leonora is now entering the kitchen,” Nicky said to the folks at home, just loudly enough so that the microphone would pick it up. She hoped it didn’t also pick up the despair that she was starting to feel. They were looking for ghosts in the
kitchen
? That was, in a word, pathetic. She had never in her wildest imaginings expected to get this far; she’d been sure that way before now they would have encountered enough otherworldly presences to fill up the hour, and more. Lucky thing she’d had the whole house prepped, just in case Leonora’s sometimes-unpredictable wanderings brought them this way.

Leonora walked across the kitchen, her flat, gold slippers making shuffling sounds on the tile floor. It felt cooler in here, Nicky realized as she stepped into the room in her mother’s wake, probably because it was mostly white: white floor, white cabinets and appliances, long expanses of smooth, white counters. The only thing that wasn’t completely white was the wallpaper in the breakfast nook. It featured a tangled green vine covered with huge red cabbage roses that for some reason looked to Nicky at first glance like splashes of blood.

She shivered, realized what she was doing, and glanced hopefully at the temperature sensor. It showed an unpromising 72 degrees.

Damn.

Leonora was almost to the back door when she stopped and clasped her hands in front of her waist. For a moment—one of the longest moments in Nicky’s life—Leonora stood perfectly still, an arrested expression on her face.

Nicky held her breath.

“I am getting a great sense of unease,” Leonora said at last. “Fear . . . pain . . . something terrible happened in this room.”

Leonora went silent, staring unseeingly in front of her.

Cue the ghosts. Please.

“The emotions are still here,” Leonora said, her eyes glassy as they fixed on a point directly in front of her. “Surprise . . . disbelief . . .
terror.
Absolute terror. Waves of terror, swirling up all around me. Someone was afraid for their life.”

Leonora shook her head slightly, as if to clear it. Then she moved. The camera followed her on soundless wheels as she walked seemingly at random around the kitchen. It was a large room, about fourteen by twenty-five feet, rectangular, with an island in the center and the octagon-shaped breakfast nook angling off it. Another set of the French doors that were a feature of the house opened onto a patio at the far end, opposite the swinging door through which they had entered. Once jaunty white curtains, now faintly yellowed with time, still hung from the windows, blocking out the night; Nicky wondered, fleetingly, if they were holdovers from the Schultzes’ time.

Were they, like the house itself, silent witnesses to the tragedy that occurred here?

Okay, so she was a veteran of encounters of the paranormal kind. The thought still gave Nicky the creeps.

“Someone . . . someone else was here, too. Hiding,” Leonora said, her voice echoing hollowly off the walls as she walked toward the French doors. Her caftan swished around her legs as she moved. Her slippers whispered over the floor. Other than that, the room was absolutely silent, as everyone, including Nicky, focused on Leonora. Staying just enough behind her to be out of the shot, Marisa followed with the machine on which Leonora always recorded her sessions so that anything she said could later be checked and, hopefully, verified. Not that she didn’t trust other people’s recordings, as she had explained to Nicky countless times, but editing happened. She wanted her own, independent record of events.

“I can feel that person waiting. Feel the heart pounding—fast,
thump-thump, thump-thump
. . .” Leonora pressed a hand to her heart, tapping out the rhythm with her fingers. “The person is nervous, excited almost, breathing hard. Listening.”

One look at her mother’s rapt face told Nicky that Leonora had found her groove at last. She let out a silent breath of relief.

“Who’s hiding?” Nicky asked softly. “Is it a man or a woman?”

Leonora hesitated. Then she shook her head.

“I can’t tell,” she murmured in a distracted tone. “I can’t see. What I’m getting is what I
feel
.”

Nicky nodded her understanding. Leonora closed her eyes. The lights threw Leonora’s shadow against the wall and blanched her pale complexion until it appeared almost corpse-like. Had it not been for her flaming hair and vivid makeup, she would have looked like a ghost herself. The deep purple of her caftan and the glinting gold of her jewelry added additional touches of the exotic to what Nicky knew from experience would be an arresting TV image.

On TV, as in life, Leonora James was nothing if not compelling.

“Happy, lighthearted—the emotions of the one entering the room are buoyant. Then . . . fear.” Leonora’s eyes popped open. “Just overwhelming shock and fear.”

Frowning slightly, Leonora started walking, stopped in front of a wall of cabinets, and pulled one door open. It was about six feet tall, narrow, no shelves—a broom closet, Nicky guessed.

“Here,” Leonora said. Her voice was softer, almost sounding as if it was coming from far away. “The person was in here. Hiding. Waiting. I’m getting waves of anger. Hatred. This person came to do harm. The feeling I’m getting is of evil . . .
evil
. . .”

Leonora glanced over her shoulder, then turned away from the broom closet, leaving the door standing open. She took one hesitant step toward the center of the kitchen, then another, and a third.

“So afraid . . . so afraid . . .” Leonora murmured mournfully, clasping her hands together in front of her waist again and staring into space. She took another faltering step forward. “The emotions are so strong, I—” Stopping, she sucked in her breath sharply. “It was here—a girl, I think . . . she was surprised . . . she turned around and saw someone . . . a man, I’m getting that it was a dark-haired man . . . jumping toward her and she screamed and then . . . the knife went in . . . oh, oh—” Leonora clutched her arm just below her shoulder. “Somebody help me! He’s killing me! No . . . no . . .”

Those last horrified cries, uttered in a voice totally unlike her own, stopped abruptly. Leonora’s eyes closed. Her chin dropped to her chest. A long shudder racked her body from head to toe. Watching, Nicky felt a prickle run down her own spine. No matter how many times she had witnessed her mother at work, it still occasionally had the power to make her blood run cold. Like now, when she knew her mother was reaching into the past, reliving the horror of that long-ago night as if it were happening to her at that very moment. She only hoped the TV audience was having the same visceral reaction that she was.

“Tara. That’s the name I’m getting: Tara.” Leonora looked up suddenly, blinking. Her lips parted, and she drew in a long breath. “Tara was first attacked in the kitchen. Someone hiding in that cabinet jumped out at her. She fought, and was stabbed . . .” Leonora squatted, her purple gown scrunching up around her knees, to touch the floor near her feet. The tile was white, pristine. Watching, Nicky could almost feel the hard, cold smoothness of it beneath her own fingers. “There was a puddle of blood here, right here. She bled and bled—so much blood. I can feel it . . . it’s warm, sticky . . .”

Leonora’s voice started to go soft and distant again, and Nicky knew she was once again being drawn into the past.

“Can you talk to Tara? Can she tell you who attacked her?” Nicky prompted softly. This was good. Vintage Leonora James at last. The eyes of the audience at home should be glued to their screens.

“No.” Leonora rose, glancing around the room with the slightly bewildered air of one who had just become aware of her surroundings. “Tara’s not here. No one’s here. We need to go upstairs.”

Nicky heard the slightest of whirring sounds and glanced around. The camera was being pulled back out of the way fast, and repositioned so as not to impede Leonora while at the same time capturing everything she did. The cameraman was Gordon Davies. He was around forty, short and thick-bodied, with strong, coarse features and thick, dark hair that he wore in a ponytail at his nape. They’d been working together since August, and Nicky considered him a friend as well as the ultimate professional. His expression was intent, absorbed. It was clear that he was focused, not just on his job but on Leonora herself and the story she was telling. Beyond him, crowding around the open doorway, a strange group of observers had gathered. Nicky glimpsed Livvy, Uncle Ham, and Uncle John; the Schultzes, who’d asked permission to be present; Mario, Tina, and Cassandra, the hair and makeup crew; Karen—even the mayor, pug-dog cop, and Barney Fife were watching. Every single one now looked engrossed to their back teeth.

Yes.
Even as she gestured at them to get out of the way, Nicky mentally gave a pumped-fist salute. Al Capone’s vault was empty no longer. Welcome to Ghosts-R-Us.

Appearing oblivious to her surroundings—which was a good thing, as the impromptu audience fell back in front of her with the approximate grace of a herd of cows on ice—Leonora turned and walked out of the kitchen, heading for the beautiful curving staircase at the end of the wide entry hall. She was moving swiftly, purposefully, paying no attention whatsoever to the entourage now following on her heels. Knowing her mother, Nicky doubted that Leonora was even aware that they were there.

“We’re heading for the second floor,” Nicky said quietly to the TV audience as she trailed Leonora up the stairs. When Leonora was in the zone, long stretches of silence broken by rapid verbal bursts of information were the norm. And as silence was anathema to gripping TV, it was up to Nicky to fill in the gaps, which was tricky but doable, as long as she kept her eyes on the ball—or, in this case, her mother. “The house has three stories in all, with the family living areas downstairs, the family sleeping quarters on the second floor, and what were once servants’ rooms on the top floor.”

Another camera in the second-floor hall rolled into view as Bob Gaines, the second cameraman on the shoot, got into position. He was in his mid-thirties, average height and build, with close-cropped brown hair and an open, friendly face that matched his personality. Nicky waited for the light on his camera to come on to indicate that the filming was now over to him. There it was: He was zooming in for a close-up just as Leonora reached the top of the stairs.

Nicky continued, “Leonora is now in the upstairs hallway. There are five bedrooms and two bathrooms on this level. Leonora is walking toward the front of the house. If you remember from our exterior shots, the front of the house overlooks a lawn that pictures show was abloom with colorful dogwoods and crepe myrtle and oleanders at the time of the crime. At the bottom of the yard is a private street, and just on the other side of that is Salt Marsh Creek. By day, the creek is busy, providing local boaters with a channel to the Atlantic Ocean. By night, its waters are dark and mysterious, teeming with wildlife. . . .” Nicky paused and took a breath as she reached the top of the stairs. The camera panned to capture its surroundings. Like the downstairs hall, this was a once-grand space that had been allowed to deteriorate through neglect. The ivory damask wallpaper was peeling away from the wall in spots, and there were several stains on the ceiling that spoke of possible leaks in the roof.

“Leonora’s at the end of the hall now.” Having followed her mother, Nicky was almost at the end of the hall, too. “On her left is the master bedroom, which at that time would have been shared by Andrea and Mike Schultz, Lauren’s parents. To her right is what would have been Lauren’s bedroom. If you remember from our earlier broadcast, Elizabeth and Susan Cook talked about the ghostly encounters they experienced in this room. . . . Clearly, Leonora is being drawn to it. She is entering Lauren’s bedroom now.”

Nicky stopped talking as she followed Leonora—and Marisa and the camera—inside. It was a corner room—large, as bedrooms went—with three large casement windows, two overlooking the front of the house and the other overlooking the side yard. The floor was uncarpeted hardwood, and a paneled closet door bisected one wall. Other than the windows, there were no distinguishing features. The walls were painted pale lavender, the trim white. Floor-length white sheers hung at the windows. Their hems fluttered slightly.

Fluttered?
The windows were closed. There shouldn’t have been any moving air in the room at all. But, Nicky realized, she was definitely feeling a draft around her feet. A
cold
draft.

A hopeful glance at the sensor confirmed it: the temperature, a constant 72 degrees in every other room they’d visited in the house, was 68 degrees.

As Nicky pointed out this hopeful sign in a quiet voice to the audience at home, Leonora stopped in the center of the room and closed her eyes.

“There was a bed—here, against this wall.” Leonora’s eyes opened. She moved forward, waving a hand to indicate the outside wall. “Between the windows. It’s a double bed, with a pink-striped bedspread that reaches to the floor. There’s a chair in the corner—an armchair, pink floral upholstery, with a”—she hesitated for a moment—“a stuffed dog on it. The dog is long and white—a dachshund—with writing on it: signatures. Lots of signatures, in ink. Of course, it’s an autograph hound. There’s a dresser over there.” She turned to point at the wall beside the closet. “It’s white, kind of . . . kind of French provincial. Two lamps, white bases, pink shades with fringe, on either end. There’s a mirror over the dresser. An oval mirror with a gold frame.”