A Wild Ghost Chase (5 page)

There were questions that normally would be Alison’s assignment in a case like this, but I did not reconsider keeping her out of the loop. There had to be another way to attack the problem.

I turned toward Melissa. “I think we need reinforcements,” I said. She looked at me without comprehension; there are times I forget she’s not yet eleven years old. “We need to bring in the big guns,” I clarified.

Melissa grinned. She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and pushed a speed dial button.

“Hello, Grandma?” she said.

5

Loretta Kerby is an interesting blend. On the one hand, she seems like a very standard older lady, interested in her family, some television, a little local charity work in her active adult community, and her friends. On the other hand, most of her friends are ghosts. She told me once that she’s been aware of spirits for as long as she can remember, and she is indeed the best person at interacting with the deceased who I have ever seen.

Loretta arrived the next day when Alison was out having a brief lunch with her friend Jeannie at a local café, The Stud Muffin, and Melissa was at school.

“So this Eagle of the Sun boy is playing a little fast and loose with the truth?” Loretta asked after I filled her in on the situation more completely than Melissa had been able to do in their brief telephone conversation. “Why would he do that?” she asked as she loaded up Alison’s refrigerator with home-cooked food she’d brought over in the backpack she carries (Alison teases her that it makes her look like a student, but Loretta’s contention is that the backpack is extremely useful and keeps her hands free).

“I have no idea,” I told her. “I think our best bet is to contact the spirit of the woman I found in the library yesterday, but I need to be able to speak Unami in order to communicate. At least I assume so—for all I know, she was speaking Navajo.”

“So naturally you called me in,” Loretta said, closing the refrigerator with a satisfied smile on her face.

Maxie, who was hovering by the ceiling fan and letting the blades rotate through her midsection (“It sort of tickles”), grinned. She adores Loretta. “The first thing a man always thinks of is to get a woman to help,” she suggested.

Disregarding the feminist issue she was trying to raise, I turned my attention to Loretta. “I do think you can help, if you’d like,” I told her. “Normally, I would ask Alison to be my legs on this one, but I don’t think that would be a good idea at the moment.”

Loretta shook her head violently, but smiled. “No. She’s got a lot on her plate right now,” she agreed. “Let’s not complicate matters. What would you like me to do, Paul?”

I outlined my plan for her benefit, beginning with a visit to the local police station, and admitted it was not terribly detailed. “While you’re out there doing what you can do, and if you can make some phone calls”—we ghosts are not audible on telephones—“I will do my best to locate someone who can speak the necessary language, and I’ll also try to find the woman who was here before, since without her, it doesn’t matter if I have a translator. Do you think you can help?”

Loretta looked determined, as she always does. “I can try,” she said.

“Try what?” Alison appeared in the kitchen door. “What are you doing here, Mom?”

“I came by to stock you up on real food,” Loretta informed her. That part was technically true. “You can’t order in
every
night.” Normally, Loretta would never criticize Alison on virtually any subject, but she does seem somehow insulted that her daughter never cooks; perhaps Loretta considers it the sign of a failure on her part to teach Alison properly.

“I really can, but I agree I shouldn’t,” Alison admitted. “But I’m going to be hip-deep in grout for the rest of the afternoon. Thanks for bringing food.” She went to the refrigerator and opened the door. “Oh boy, brisket.”

“Among other things,” Loretta pointed out. “You need to feed my granddaughter something other than pizza and Chinese takeout.”

“I get it, I get it,” Alison said. “I surrender. So, what were you talking about when I came in?”

“Paul was asking me to ask a friend of mine—someone like him—a question the next time I see him, and I said I would.” That
wasn’t
technically true, but it was plausible, and Alison nodded.

“What friend?”

“His name is Larry,” Loretta answered. “You don’t know him.”

Alison looked at me. “What do you need to know from Larry?” she asked.

Before I could stammer and give away the deception, Maxie insinuated herself between Alison and myself. “Aren’t you going to give in on this sleepover for Melissa?” she interjected. “The poor girl never gets to have any friends over.”

“What are you, her agent?” Alison asked. I gave Maxie a grateful look for distracting Alison from her previous train of thought. “She’ll have a sleepover when I can handle it. And keep in mind, most of the reason I’m not crazy about the idea is because of you.”

“
Me?
” Maxie fired back. “What did
I
do?’

“Half the time I’m not even sure,” Alison told her. “That’s one of the things that keeps me up at night.”

Maxie was preparing to perpetuate the argument, less to give me cover than because she was enjoying herself, as I sank through the floorboards into the basement. It was time to try once again to raise someone who could help us with finding Antinanco’s mother.

The process was turning out to be unusually difficult (as I had feared); a case that Harrison Investigations should not have taken on to begin with. But Melissa had made a rash offer, I had been forced to honor it, and now I was stuck in the position of trying to do something I was fairly sure could not be done.

I had not gotten all the way into the basement—I believe my hairline was still between floors—when I noticed our client sitting in a corner opposite the furnace, looking at a box of toys Alison had stored from when Melissa was some years younger.

He was sifting through the admittedly disorganized carton, discarding dolls and toy jewelry in favor of some of Melissa’s more aggressive playthings, chiefly small superhero action toys that were sometimes included in fast food children’s meals. He did not seem to notice me as I descended, so I ducked quickly behind the furnace to avoid his attention, and watched him.

Normally, I would never spy on a client, or anyone else who was not a target of surveillance for an investigation. But in this case, Antinanco had been as mysterious as the puzzle he was asking us to solve, so observing him while he was unaware he was being watched had some utility. When people are alone, they exhibit their true character traits; no one is there (or at least, no one of whom they are aware) to see them, so they have no need to project a positive image and can do what they please.

Antinanco was choosing to play with Batman toys.

That in itself was not terribly noteworthy; the boy, no matter how many centuries he had been dead, had not aged. He was still an eight-year-old child, and they will play with figures, project personalities onto them and pretend to have great adventures. Any eight-year-old boy would be happy to play Batman.

Any eight-year-old boy from the twentieth or twenty-first centuries, anyway.

It was possibly true that Antinanco had been existing in the house at 123 Seafront or somewhere near it for some time, and he had himself said he was cognizant of current trends in popular culture. So the fact that he was aware of Batman was only slightly odd; surely he would have had the chance to observe books or television programs featuring the character. So his accurate depiction of Batman (in Antinanco’s version, he was battling with the Joker—represented here by his left hand, whose fingers opened and closed while the character “spoke”—over some enormous jewel being played by a plastic ring Melissa had owned) did not indicate anything strange on its own.

What caught my attention were the toys Antinanco was choosing
not
to play with. Like many children, Melissa had apparently gone through a “cowboys and Indians” phase; the collection of toys scattered when Antinanco had been searching for a worthy plaything indicated she’d had a fairly healthy fascination. There were native headdresses, headbands, and small plastic figures that the boy would certainly recognize as his own people.

Antinanco appeared not to be the least bit interested in them.

Again, on the surface, that was not especially odd. But he had evinced such pride in his heritage that his decision to eschew the plastic figures that looked like himself or people he had once known was telling. The problem was I couldn’t understand what it was telling me.

Perhaps now I needed two translators.

Antinanco’s game went on for quite a while. At one point Batman appeared to be menaced by a Tyrannosaurus Rex, whose name appeared to be Mr. Rex, summoned by the Joker, but he managed to subdue it with the help of . . . I couldn’t make out all of what Antinanco was saying. I did not make any noise, but nevertheless he eventually glanced up in the direction of the boiler, and saw me. His eyes rounded and widened and he appeared to panic; he drew in a sharp breath (or the airless equivalent).

“Don’t worry, Antinanco,” I said. “It’s just me.”

Apparently that information wasn’t soothing enough, however, because Antinanco vanished. Literally. He was no longer there. When people like me vanish, that’s exactly what we do.

I called his name a few times, but he did not reappear, and to be honest, I did not expect that he would. But it was difficult to think of anything else to do.

It is times like these that I most envy Maxie for her ability to break free of this property. If I could get out into the world, I might not feel so limited in my abilities. I might not be trying to conduct an investigation with the feeling that I had my eyes blindfolded and my hands tied behind my back.

In fact, I might not be so bored and frustrated that conducting investigations for ghosts would ever seem like a good idea.

This case had a client who didn’t seem to want us to succeed. I was inches from just admitting that failure to our eight-year-old client, and telling him he’d best simply move on with the rest of his existence and leave me to mine.

Truth be told, the only thing holding me back was the idea that before I told Antinanco, I would have to say the same thing to Melissa. She is something of an idealist, and disappointing her is the last thing any of us wants to do.

Maybe Loretta’s promised work would yield some information. Maybe the native woman who had appeared in the library would come back with someone who spoke English. Maybe I could still make some sense of this case, even as it seemed to make less sense to me with each passing minute.

I had come down here to exit the conversation between Maxie and Alison, but with a larger purpose in mind: I was going to try to communicate with a broader population of spirits than I had ever attempted to contact before, and hope that in that enormous group—if I could reach them—there would be someone who could help me.

As each time I had done this before, I focused on clearing my mind. At other times I could simply use a meditation technique like thinking of one word or one feeling, but now I was more agitated than usual, so I relaxed by trying to remember every word and note of “Missing” by the duo Everything But the Girl, which was a hit in Canada when I was growing up. That helped take my mind off my anxiety, and then I could begin to send the message I had rehearsed.

This was a direct request, a plea to any spirits of the Lenni-Lenape nation. If there were some out there—and even I wasn’t sure where “out there” might be—who could provide information about Jaci, or who could translate for me with the woman from the library, I made it clear that their appearance in the house would be extremely helpful. This was not expressed in words, exactly, but I made sure that
I
knew what I wanted, and then wanted it as fervently as I could muster. If I were successful, those of us who can communicate this way might pass the plea along to others. The population of all of us who have died but remain earthbound is enormous.

When I was cognizant of my surroundings again, I took some time to await any responses that might be coming immediately; there were none. So I made my way to the carton of toys and began to replace the ones Antinanco had been using. I didn’t want Melissa—or worse, mice—to get the blame for strewing them about the room if Alison came downstairs. Focusing on the objects in order to manipulate them helped me to concentrate again on the here and now, and not the mental netherworld I had recently been inhabiting.

In replacing the items, I considered each toy as an insight into Melissa’s psyche; it is an investigator’s exercise to strip away all emotion and determine what every object a person displays or owns can reveal about that person. The Batman and Superman figures were more or less generic; they were from fast food meals, but the fact that Melissa had chosen to keep them, particularly when moving from one home to another, clearly meant that they had some significance. They had obviously also attracted Antinanco’s eye.

The Indian figures, which were smaller and less detailed, like green Army soldiers with a solid base so the figures could stand independently, had also clearly been coveted by their original owner. They were in excellent condition though worn around their sharper edges, showing they’d been played with often. There was no trick in understanding why Eagle of the Sun might find these comforting or significant. Yet he had taken them out of the carton, then decided
against
playing with them.

It wasn’t until I considered the small molded plastic dinosaur that something really began to bother me, but I couldn’t really put my finger on what it might be. I put the dinosaur into the pocket of my pants, and rose up through the unfinished ceiling back into Alison’s kitchen. After all this time, I can pretty much pinpoint my entrances and exits, and take pride in my precision. No one else seems to notice, but the reward is in the doing. That’s what I tell myself, anyway.

The kitchen was empty but for Alison when I got there. She was sitting at the center island drinking a cup of tea and looking off into space. I felt like I was intruding, and would have gone elsewhere if my movement hadn’t caught her eye. She regarded me quizzically.

“Where’ve you been?” she asked. “It’s not like you to run from a good fight.” She must have meant the argument between herself and Maxie that I had used as a cover to escape to the basement.

“I didn’t feel like I had anything to contribute,” I told her. That was true, if irrelevant.

“Well, you missed a corker,” Alison said. “I’m pretty sure that at one point, Maxie threatened to take off her clothes and appear to the guests by covering herself in chocolate syrup.”