The Dead Room (17 page)

She went back and quickly noted that some of the earliest recorded deaths in the book were from May 1849. She wondered if any of the deceased had met their fates during the riots.

Next she went carefully, page by page, looking for a child named Mary.

She found ten of them. With a sigh, she knew she was going to have to find out Mary's surname before she could go any further.

Bit by bit she grew aware of a slight noise, like a muted shuffle. She had been so intent on the records, she realized, that she had forgotten her strange feeling of a few minutes earlier.

There really did seem to be something—some
one?
—hidden in the shadows behind her.

She straightened, determined that she wasn't about to start being afraid of the dark.

No good.

Closing the book, she turned, certain she had heard a noise. But no matter how intently she peered into the room's dark corners, there didn't seem to be anyone else there. Shifting earth, she thought. Or a breeze coming in through the hole in the wall where she had originally fallen through. They needed to shore up the place before they did much more work in it or allowed more people in, she decided.

She turned back to the niche where the book had lain, hoping more treasures might be stored there.

As she turned, she knew.
Knew.

Someone was behind her.

Someone was there with her, unseen, hidden, but how? Where?

She started to turn.

Too late.

She felt a sudden, fierce pain knife through the back of her head. She staggered against the wall and fell.

 

Back at his car, Joe stared across the street to Hastings House and saw the door open. The woman in charge of ticketing came out, Melissa…something, he recalled. He'd talked to her in the course of investigating the explosion.

She looked up at the house, stretched and smiled. He felt as if he were interrupting a personal moment, her pleasure in just being there was so evident.

He walked over to her anyway. “Melissa, good morning.”

For a moment she stared at him as if she were seeing a ghost.

“Oh, hi. Sorry. We've met…right? You're Joe Connolly, the P.I.? You look so much like your cousin. I talked to you after the explosion, right?”

“Right. And I'm friends with Leslie.” He didn't see any reason to tell her that they'd just met a few days ago.

“Would you like some coffee?”

“Sure.”

He followed her inside, wondering why he felt that just being in the house would somehow help him.

“Leslie is phenomenal,” Melissa said as they reached the kitchen.

“Yes, she is.”

“Doughnut?” she asked.

“I'd love one.”

“Doughnuts get such a bad rap these days,” she told him.

“Once in a while, they're good for the soul,” he said.

Melissa looked around the kitchen. “I do love this house so much. Oh!” She blushed, realizing how she sounded. “I'm sorry. I know that your cousin…well, I'm sorry.”

“It's not the fault of the house, Melissa,” he said.

She leaned toward him, a slightly faraway look in her eyes. “Maybe it is.”

“Pardon?”

“Maybe…I don't know. This house makes me feel…weird. Can a house be jinxed…or…evil?” she asked.

He arched a brow. “No,” he said firmly.

“Sorry,” she said quickly. “And it's not bad vibes I get here. In fact, I should get bad vibes, after what happened, but…I get good ones. If the place
is
haunted, though…it could be Revolutionary War ghosts, or Civil War ghosts, or Irish gang ghosts….” She got a faraway look in her eyes, as if she'd traveled back in time herself.

Joe stared at her, feeling a strange creeping sensation along his nape. Hell. He was six foot three and two hundred and twenty pounds of muscle. He'd faced cold-blooded killers in his time, and he sure as hell wasn't afraid of the dark. So how the hell had this tiny woman given him the shivers? But it wasn't her, he realized.

It was the house.

Oh, like hell.

“You weren't at the party that night, were you?” he asked Melissa.

“Me? No. I'm just the hired help.”

“You're far more than hired help,” he told her, and watched her flush. She seemed to thrive on the least compliment. Earnest and sincere, and not homely but also not a raving beauty, she had probably worked hard for every achievement in her life. She deserved a few compliments, he decided.

“You weren't here, either, were you?”

“No, I wasn't.” A strange sense of cold suddenly washed over him as he spoke. He looked around, thinking there had to be an air-conditioning vent somewhere near, but he didn't see one.

Then, inexplicably, while he was just standing there, he lost his balance and stumbled.

Disturbed, he frowned and strode past Melissa into the back servants' pantry, where the explosion had happened. Everything was perfectly restored now, but even so, he walked over and stood by the hearth, wondering exactly where Matt had been standing.

An odd sense of pressure filled his head.

Leslie…

He must be going crazy. He could have sworn he heard her name, but there was no one else in the room.

He felt torn between the urge to stay and discover what was going on here to spook him and the irrational urge to run back to the dig site to see Leslie, as if she were in danger.

He felt almost as if he were pushed to join her, as if a strange whisper in his head was urgently telling him to go to her.

Ridiculous. She was working and perfectly safe.

“What is it?” Melissa asked, looking at him from the doorway.

“Nothing. Nothing at all. Thanks for the doughnut. I'll be seeing you.”

He was out of the house in a flash and found himself running down the street toward the dig.

 

She blinked. There was a blinding light shining in her eyes, and for a moment she thought she was staring at a monster, then realized it was a man.

Professor Laymon was staring down at her, the light from his electric lantern reflected in the lenses of his glasses, his gaunt face made eerie by the play of light and shadow.

“She's fine,” he announced to someone outside her field of vision. “She's fine.”

A monster? Or a man?
Someone
had hit her.

She kept silent, suddenly suspicious.

“We need to call 911,” she heard Brad announce worriedly.

“No, no,” she said, waving a hand in the air, sitting up. The dark room swayed for a minute, but then her vision cleared almost instantly. She looked around and frowned. She definitely wasn't alone anymore. And she wasn't by the wall anymore, either. She was sitting in a pile of rubble, halfway across the room.

“I don't see—” she began.

“You got a good clunk on the head,” Brad said.

“A clunk on the head?” she repeated.

“From the ceiling,” Laymon explained. “A chunk of plaster fell on you. We need to install proper safety precautions in here.”

There was a commotion just outside, and suddenly Joe Connolly was pushing through the entrance. He rushed over to her, looking like a fullback ready to face the opponent's starting line, and stared reproachfully at Brad and Laymon. She followed the direction of his accusing gaze to see Robert Adair standing nearby, looking acutely uncomfortable. And when she squinted toward the entrance, she saw a host of workers and more policemen, including Ken Dryer, looking in at her. Hank Smith was there, too, she noticed.

“What the hell happened?” Joe demanded gruffly.

“Time—and a weak chunk of ceiling,” Brad explained. He stared at Joe and apparently decided that he had some influence over her. “She should see a doctor. She took a real bump to her head.”

“I'll see to it,” Joe agreed.

“No,” she protested, gritting her teeth as she got to her feet.
Had she really been hit by a piece of the ceiling? Had she imagined the cold, and the sense of someone else being there?
Whatever had really happened, she wasn't about to protest their explanation. Not unless and until she had something to offer instead that wouldn't make her sound crazy. Even so…“No,” she repeated. “I mean it.” She could hear anxious voices from outside, and she forced herself to take a step on her own. “I'm fine,” she insisted.

“You're not fine,” Brad said.

“I
am
fine,” she assured him.

“It's better to be safe than sorry,” Joe warned. He looked seriously worried. What was he doing there? she wondered. He'd stayed in his car all night to keep an eye on her, not to mention he undoubtedly wanted a shower and a change of clothing. Plus, he had a missing woman to find.

“He's right, you know,” Robert Adair said.

“It couldn't have been all that bad,” Laymon put in. “She seems fine to me.”

She looked at the professor. She knew that he cared about her. She also knew that he cared more about his work than about any human being. If she'd been hurt badly enough to require a doctor, the city might insist on shutting down the dig until their safety inspectors okayed it. Laymon would be fit to be tied. The ceiling undoubtedly had to be shored up, but he would want to supervise, to be in charge. He wouldn't want his precious find contaminated in any way.

“The professor's right. I really am absolutely fine,” she repeated firmly.

Robert shook his head. Laymon sighed. Brad stared at her.

Joe took her by the arm, turning her to face him. “Fine, huh? So
you
say. Let's take a little trip back to Hastings House, get some ice, keep you moving…and maybe stop by a doctor's, quietly, just so he can take a quick look at you, check you out.”

Brad spoke up in support of Joe.

“Leslie, you were flat on your back, out cold, when we found you.”

The light was blocked for a minute, and then she saw Ken Dryer—clearly not at all happy about what the dirt was doing to his clothing—slide carefully down to join them. “Leslie, what happened? Are you okay?”

She knew she should be grateful, but everyone's concern was starting to get on her nerves. And in the back of her mind was a question.
What had really happened?
Had she turned to look around, been hit on the head by a falling piece of plaster, and fallen this far away from where she'd been standing?

For a moment, she once again felt that strange sense of fear that had prickled at her nape when she'd been alone in the room. She wasn't accustomed to being afraid. The dark didn't usually hold any terrors for her.

After all, she didn't just see ghosts. She carried on conversations with them.

“I'll walk you home,” Joe said gruffly. “And see you to the doctor.”

“She needs her head examined,” Brad said. Leslie looked at him, frowning. The way he'd said it, it sounded as if he thought more was wrong with her than a possible concussion.

“Guys…” she murmured uncomfortably.

“Leslie, the site isn't going anywhere,” Laymon told her, his voice unusually gentle. Apparently there
was
a soul somewhere beneath that academic facade.

“You'll have to go out the back or else face the music out front,” Brad said. He shrugged. “I don't know how, but the minute anything happens, we get a flock of reporters.”

“Dryer can handle them, I'm sure,” Robert Adair said.

Brad grinned at her. “I'll join him,” he said with a rueful smile.

“Go to it,” Leslie told him, smiling in return. “I'll see you all later.”

“No, you won't. You'll take the day off,” Laymon said firmly Brad halted at the exit.

“Let's go,” Joe said, equally firm.

Maybe they were right. But she didn't feel at death's door. She had one hell of a headache, but she could handle that with aspirin. Mostly, she realized, she was angry at being unable to figure out what the hell had happened.

“Leslie, I'll bring in my own engineers, and I'll sit on top of them like a fly on roadkill,” Laymon said.

“Leslie, let's go,” Joe repeated quietly.

For a minute she was tempted to remind him that she wasn't a child, and that even though he looked like Matt, he
wasn't
Matt. They didn't have a relationship that stretched back forever. But she knew they were probably right. An exam or an X-ray wouldn't hurt. It would be the mature and sensible thing to do.

As she headed for the exit, Robert set a hand on her shoulder. “I'll be in touch.”