The Diva Haunts the House (5 page)

“That’s why you’re throwing the party?” Natasha and I had a history of competition, but we were adults now, way beyond the nonsense of high school. “You could have volunteered to assist with the haunted house, you know.”

She shifted uneasily. “You would have gotten all the credit.”

As far as I was concerned, it wasn’t about credit. It was about fun for the kids.

“So you see how vital it is that
my
party be
the
party of the year. I need it to be the party against which all other parties are measured. The most incredible Halloween party ever thrown in Old Town.” She raised her gaze to meet mine. “You know my mother. I can’t have her showing up in some strange outfit, talking about spirits. Please, please ask her to help with the haunted house so she’ll be busy?”

I found Natasha’s mother, Wanda Smith, fascinating, but then, she wasn’t
my
mother. Prone to dressing like a teenager, Wanda was the antithesis of her conservative daughter, who considered her public image in everything she did. Wanda was likely to turn up at Natasha’s party as a sexy witch or a call girl. She was also inclined to spout superstitious sayings and read palms or tarot cards. The more I thought about her, the more I thought she would be perfect to spook kids at the haunted house. We could place a chair in the foyer for her, and she could entertain waiting groups by telling fortunes.

“I would love to have your mother help us. As long as she doesn’t dress in something too revealing, she would be fantastic. Can’t you just see her being mystical with the kids who come through?”

Natasha’s perfect eyebrows shifted together in a frown. “I hadn’t thought about it that way. This is the ideal time to introduce her to important people. No matter what she says or wears, it will all be embraced in the spirit of Halloween. They won’t know she’s always like that.”

I pretended to be disappointed, so she wouldn’t change her mind. “Oh, but she would be so great at the haunted house! Maybe she could help out tomorrow instead? I’m sure she’d rather be at your party tonight.” Truth be known, I was very happy that Natasha
had
changed her mind and wouldn’t hurt her mother’s feelings by trying to get rid of her.

She eyed each container of Chinese food as I opened it. “Would you care to join us?” I asked.

“I’m so starved I would even eat takeout, but I don’t dare eat anything today. My costume is skintight. Oh, but it smells good. I’m turning Daisy-the-fur-factory over to you, okay? I don’t have time for her right now.”

“Why do you insist on talking about her that way when she saved your life last Christmas?” Like me, my ex-husband Mars was crazy about Daisy so we shared custody. If only Natasha would be kinder to her.

“Nonsense. That was nothing but a fluke, dumb luck at best. Must run, darling, so much to do!”

I rubbed Daisy’s ears. “It was very generous of you to chase the person who attacked Natasha. Especially given the way she treats you.
I
know it wasn’t accidental.”

Her tail wagged so hard that her hind end wriggled, and she panted a doggy smile at me.

After lunch, we decorated like fiends for hours. By seven o’clock, we had accomplished more than I expected, and it was time to feed the troops again. I had anticipated being dog tired and had prepared pizzas in advance—the cheese, pepperoni, and slices of peppers arranged in jack-o’-lantern-style grimacing faces. All I had to do was pop them into the oven.

Humphrey and Bernie headed to work. I felt guilty that they’d spent their free time laboring, but Bernie assured me that he enjoyed working at the restaurant during the evening hours, and Humphrey reminded me that morticians have to be available around the clock.

The kids went home with me. Blake had already called his father and asked him to pick him and Jesse up at my place. I dreaded another encounter with Patrick. We walked the few blocks to my house, the boys constantly trying to spook the girls.

We approached my block, and Jen held out her arm to stop us from walking. “Do you have company?”

I didn’t. Yet candles flickered in my kitchen windows, the little orange lights around my front door glowed, and the three pumpkins that scowled at the base of the door had come alive in the dark.

The kids clustered behind me, whispering.

“We’ll protect you, Sophie,” said Jesse.

“Maybe Nina wanted to surprise us?” But honestly, I doubted Nina Reid Norwood, my neighbor across the street and my best friend, would have gone to the trouble of turning on the holiday lights. My pulse raced as we crossed the street and walked toward my front door.

FOUR

As I grasped the door handle and pushed, my throat got tight. The front door opened with a creak, and the skeleton that hung from my foyer chandelier rattled, every bit as creepy as I’d imagined it would be. I let Daisy lead the way, but she didn’t appear to be perturbed.

“Hello?” I called.

I tiptoed inside, aware of the rich scent of wood burning in the fireplace. With Jen on my heels, I peeked into my kitchen. An elderly woman wearing cat ears and a costume of ocelot-spotted fur snoozed in one of the comfy chairs by a crackling fire, her feet up on an ottoman with Mochie, my Ocicat, nestled on her lap.

“June?” I said it gently, hoping I wouldn’t scare my former mother-in-law.

“Faye? Is that you?” she murmured.

Oy
. Faye was June’s deceased sister, and the previous owner of my house. Maybe June had been dreaming about her. “June! It’s Sophie.”

She woke fully, flopped her feet off the ottoman, and set Mochie on it before rising to give me a big hug. “I hope you don’t mind, dear. You said I could drop by anytime.”

I had said exactly that and had given her a key, too. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

“That’s why I turned on the lights around the front door. A burglar wouldn’t do that.” She twirled around to show off her costume. “Do you know who I am?”

She’d used makeup to skillfully draw an
M
on her forehead, along with cat whiskers and exotic eyes. “Mochie?”

“For Halloween I have his jumping ability. I can leap to the tops of cabinets and sneak into rooms on silent cat feet. I’m agile and limber again.” She peered past me. “This couldn’t be Jen?”

Jen had met June years ago when I was married to June’s son, Mars, which led to the inevitable my-how-you’ve-grown comments. If the light in the room had been stronger, I felt sure I would have seen Jen act embarrassed. Vegas clearly knew June, since she was living with Mars. I introduced the boys, but within minutes, the kids were engaged in their own conversation, excluding June and me.

Although I was tempted to turn on more lights, the crackling fire and the candles offered a spooky ambiance that I enjoyed. I preheated the ovens and pulled spiderweb guacamole out of the refrigerator for munching on as an hors d’oeuvre.

I shook tortilla chips into a basket lined with a black Halloween napkin and noticed that June was listening to the kids.

“I have a scary story for you,” she offered. “A true story.”

Even in the dim light, I could see their lack of enthusiasm. As though the spirits knew what she had in mind, the wind howled outside. June settled into her chair by the fire, which caused shadows to dance across her feline face. She didn’t wait for the kids to indicate an interest.

“My sister, Faye, threw loads of fabulous parties here.” She pointed to the portrait hanging on the stone wall of the fireplace. “That’s Faye.” Candlelight flickered below the picture, casting an unearthly glow.

Mars and I had inherited the house from Faye. When we divorced, I bought him out, so I was now sole owner. But it seemed right to honor Faye’s memory by keeping her portrait above the fireplace. Slightly risqué and incredibly romantic, the painting depicted her holding a pine-colored drape around herself with one shoulder bared.

In years past, June had insisted she could hear Faye’s ghost in my kitchen. I wasn’t so sure about that, but my house qualified as a historic landmark and was over one hundred years old. If ghosts lived anywhere, it would be in the historic houses of Old Town.

June continued. “It was the sixties and everyone was open to new things. Much more than today. We liked to say, ‘Anything goes.’ ” She flashed a glance my way. “I was never as adventurous as my sister, but I loved to come to her parties.”

Jen and Vegas settled cross-legged on the floor, with Mochie and Daisy between them, enjoying the attention. The boys clustered by the food, munching.

I put a pot of cider on the stove to warm, with a cinnamon stick for a hint of zing.

“One of Faye’s regular guests was the very dashing Viktor Luca. He absolutely enchanted all the women. He spoke several languages, could discourse on any subject with astounding knowledge, and, oh my, was he handsome! Wavy dark hair brushed his shoulders. His skin was gossamer, as though he had never seen the sun, and his blue eyes bored into your soul.”

“Like a vampire,” breathed Vegas.

“You’re so smart, Vegas. He talked with an accent and spoke intimately of Paris, but we were fairly certain he wasn’t French. Viktor was on the guest lists of all the chic hostesses in Old Town. He was the life of every party. The only one who wasn’t completely taken with him was my husband, the judge. Viktor seemed to have an abundant source of money but he never worked, and he lived over at the Widow Nagle’s boardinghouse.”

I chuckled. “Abundant money but he took a room at a boardinghouse?”

“She called it a pension, like they do in Europe, to class it up. But my husband said the same thing. He never trusted Viktor—unlike the ladies in this town who enabled Viktor to live the high life. Plenty of widows asked him to travel with them as a companion. He went on cruises and tours around the world.”

Viktor sounded like a gigolo to me. I poured hot cider into black mugs dotted with images of candy corn so bright they seemed to glow.

“One night, Faye’s party broke up quite late, and Viktor offered to walk one of the guests, Peggy Zane, home. My husband and I stayed here with Faye, and we were all awakened in the morning when Peggy’s husband called to ask where she was. He’d been at a business meeting and had skipped the party. She never came home that night!”

I handed mugs to everyone while June told her tale quietly but with dramatic emphasis. She’d definitely gotten the kids’ attention. The boys were so mesmerized that they’d stopped eating.

“We went straight to the boardinghouse, and when the Widow Nagle unlocked Viktor’s room—he was gone. It was as though he had never been there. His clothes and all his possessions had simply disappeared. The bed was stripped, the mattress bare, the dresser and closets empty. There was no sign that the room had ever been rented. Even the trash can was clean.”

Jen and Vegas sat up straight. “What happened to Peggy?” asked Jen.

“They found her down by the Potomac River, completely hungover with no recollection of what had happened the night before. But she had two puncture wounds on the side of her neck . . . and she died three days later.”

The girls squealed in fright and exchanged wide-eyed looks.

I’d always enjoyed June’s company but had no idea she was so talented at spinning tales.

“But that’s not the end of the story. You see, my husband prided himself on his ability to assess a man’s character. He was always suspicious of Viktor, and his sudden disappearance bothered my husband, so he did a little investigation of his own. The peculiar thing was that except for a few pictures of him, and an address in Paris that he’d given the Widow Nagle, we couldn’t find anything to prove Viktor had ever been here. No bank accounts, no post office box or mail, nothing that a regular person would have. Well, when my husband suggested we take a vacation to Paris, I wasn’t about to say no. He packed all sorts of papers to prove he was a judge and off we went. He thought Viktor was probably a scam artist, so we started at the police station. The young man there dismissed us as silly Americans and denied having any knowledge of Viktor. So we went in search of the address.”

I leaned toward June. “Let me guess—it didn’t exist.”