Ghost Of A Chance Part 11

I pulled my attention from Pixie to the man lying before us. "I've had some first aid training. Let me just have a quick look at him so we can inform the paramedics of his injuries."

Meredith's eyes opened at that point.

"What the h.e.l.l is going on?" he asked, his face twisted in pain, as he raised a hand to his head. "Dammit, what hit me?"

I lifted a volume of the encyclopedia. "Belize to Byzantine, I think. Do you hurt anywhere other than your head?"

"No. Stop fussing over me, woman," he said, pushing Savannah back as he sat up. She ignored him and continued to wipe off his face as he snarled at the rest of us, "What the h.e.l.l happened? The last thing I remember is trying to open that d.a.m.ned door, then someone walloped me on the head."

My father hurried into the room. "Which paramedics do I call? Mortal, or Otherworld? Will they be able to get in with the house sealed?"

I sat on my heels, my fingers on Meredith's wrist as I eyed his head. There was a cut above his eyebrow that no doubt was the cause of all the blood, but his pulse was strong and steady. "Are you seeing double? Do you feel nauseous at all?"

"I'm fine, or I would be if everyone would stop hovering around me. I have a h.e.l.l of a headache is all."

"Karma," Adam said from where he squatted next to the downed bookcase.

"Just a sec. I'm just making sure Meredith is OK. Squeeze my hand," I said, shoving my hand into his. He squeezed it hard enough to cause me to wince. "I don't think you have a concussion, but you should probably see your doctor, anyway. You may need a st.i.tch or two in that cut on your forehead."

"So I'm not calling the paramedics?" Dad asked, looking from me to Meredith, who was getting to his feet with the a.s.sistance of Savannah.

"Karma, come over here," Adam said.

"Luckily, I don't think there's a need for one," I told my father, standing up and dusting my knees. The bas.e.m.e.nt wasn't filthy, but the books were dusty enough to have my nose wrinkling. I looked around that corner of the bas.e.m.e.nt. The door that Adam had mentioned was visible behind an old-fashioned icebox, but it didn't appear to have been opened in several decades.

"Where did Spider go?"

"I swear to G.o.d, I'm going to get a bullhorn to make people listen to me,"

Adam groused from the other side of the room.

"Oh. Sorry," I said, carefully stepping over stacks of fallen encyclopedias to go to him. "What did you want?"

"Does this look familiar?" he asked, gesturing toward a mound of books.

A hand could be glimpsed amongst them, a hand wearing a familiar gold watch. A chill swept down my spine as I realized what it was I was looking at.

"That's...that's Spider's watch."

"Yes." Adam's icy blue eyes were unreadable. He gently touched Spider's wrist. "There's no pulse. Your husband is dead."

Pixie's gaze shifted from Spider's hand to me, her eyebrows upraised.

"The h.e.l.l he is!" Meredith said, sitting down abruptly in an old cane rocker.

Savannah gasped and wrung her hands.

"Thank G.o.d," my father said softly.

I said nothing, just stared at the hand and wondered how the world could change with just a few words.

9.

A peculiar, distant sort of numbness set in as I looked down at Spider.

Pixie stood next to me, the picture of silent unhappiness, her arms wrapped around herself. I wanted to get her out of there, to shield her from the ugliness of Spider's death, but I seemed to be unable to stir myself.

My father and Adam had no problem in hoisting the huge bookcase off Spider's remains.

"That thing must weigh five hundred pounds," Meredith commented from his chair. Savannah, once she had ascertained there was nothing to be done for Spider, had run upstairs for some water to wash the blood from her husband's face. She knelt next to him now, dabbing at the cut on his forehead.

"They're poltergeists," I said absently.

"So?"

"Hmm? Oh, sorry." I gave him a quick wry smile. "Polters can summon brief spurts of great strength if needed. It's sort of a racial trait."

"The question is," my father said in Poltern as he lifted one end of the bookcase, "did it fall over itself, or did he pull it down?"

I didn't answer. The three of us who could understand my father all glanced with speculation at Meredith, however.

A handful of small pebbles fell from the ceiling as Adam grunted with effort when he and my father shoved the now upright bookcase against the wall.

"Apports?" Savannah asked as I gathered up the tiny rocks. Half were white; half were grayish granite-colored, flecked with silver. I looked around the room, depositing them in an ugly urn that sat on a shelf next to antiquated kitchen appliances. "I'm sorry; this probably isn't the time to ask, but can I-?"

"Sure." I gave her the urn, hesitating at the sight of the mound of books.

Now that the heavy bookcase was off it, parts of Spider were visible beneath the volumes.

"Oooh, these are pretty. I a.s.sume the different colors come from different poltergeists?" Savannah asked, having poured the apports into her hand.

I frowned. I really didn't want to talk with Savannah as if nothing momentous had just happened, but I knew that people reacted differently to stress. Clearly she was in the "distract yourself" camp when faced with a dead man. "Yes. My father's are the silver ones. Adam's are white. Each are unique to their owner."

"Fascinating. I like the jade green ones. Do you mind if I keep them for research purposes?"

"Go right ahead." I steeled myself to approach Spider's body. I didn't have the luxury of avoiding the reality of the situation.

"Is he going to be all b.l.o.o.d.y and guts spilling out and brains bashed in when you take the books off him?" Pixie asked in a hushed voice.

Guilt spiked through the odd numbness that held me in its grip. "Pixie, I'm sorry. This really isn't something you should see." I gave her a little hug, gently escorting her to the turning in the room. "Why don't you go upstairs?"

"Are you kidding?" She pulled away from me, giving me a look that questioned my sanity. "This is great! I've never seen a dead body in person before! I've always wanted to, and now you're trying to ruin my life! You can't make me leave! I'll tell Mrs. Beckett that you're abusing me if you do!"

"Now, that is one strange kid," Meredith said from the depths of a battered, paint-splattered leather chair.

I just gawked at the teenager for a few moments, then shook my head. "I can't imagine how seeing my dead husband is going to fulfill a life's ambition, but if you're truly not horrified about what's happened, I guess you can stay."

"Why would I be horrified? It's just like the TV shows. Besides, your husband was mean. It's like justice that he got killed after he killed Sergei.

It's...karma."

Five pairs of eyes turned to look at me.

"So to speak," she said with a tepid smile.

I took a deep breath and knelt to pull books off Spider's body.

"Honey?" My father gently touched my hair.

"I'm all right. Let's just get these off him. I know Adam checked for a pulse, but he may be barely alive or something..."

No one spoke as Adam, Dad, and I uncovered the body of my husband.

"He's so still," I said, half to myself, as I pulled a book from his chest. In fact, the stillness of the body gave credence to Adam's statement: Spider was dead. I averted my eyes from Spider's face as Adam uncovered it, bracing myself for what could well be a grisly sight, but to my surprise, there were no blood, no marks whatsoever.

Adam leaned down to listen at Spider's chest. He looked up and shook his head. "I'm sorry."

I didn't know what to say to that. As a rule I didn't lie, but it seemed incredibly cra.s.s to brush off Spider's demise with a curt "I'm not." So I said nothing, just looked at the empty sh.e.l.l that had been my husband, and wondered at what point during the past twelve years Spider had changed from a man I loved to someone whose pa.s.sing left me feeling nothing inside.

"Was he crushed to death, do you think?" I asked, hesitant to check Spider's arms, legs, and rib cage for apparent broken bones. "Shouldn't he have some sort of marks on him? That bookcase looks heavy."

"It is, and he should." Adam evidently didn't share my qualms. He gave Spider's remains a quick examination. "There are markings on his throat and face."

I wasn't the only one who watched with a morbid curiosity as he went over Spider's arms and legs before returning his attention to Spider's head. "His head isn't bashed in, is it?" Pixie asked.

He frowned, glancing over his shoulder to where she hovered with bright, interested eyes. "Stay back."

I leaned forward to look at what had caught his attention. Nothing caught my eye.

"Heart attack, do you think?" my father asked.

"No. There's no way this scene could be created by him simply falling down. We won't know what killed him until the autopsy, although the marks on his neck could indicate he was strangled." Adam's eyes were filled with glacial fury. "I do know this: whoever killed him used my bas.e.m.e.nt to do the job!"

"Whoever ..." Unbidden, my gaze slid over to where Meredith was having his head bandaged by Savannah.

Adam's jaw tightened as he stood up. "I'm going to have to call the office."

"Can I see? Is it gory?" Pixie asked, standing on tiptoe, as if that would enable her to see Spider. "It will be traumatic for me if you don't let me see."

"It will be more traumatic if I bend you over my knee and paddle your b.u.t.t for not doing as I say," Adam answered.

Her mouth dropped open. "That's child abuse!"

"Which office are you calling?" I asked, trying to rid myself of the image of Spider's body.

Adam thought for a moment, then shrugged. "I suppose both. The watch won't be so bad, but I hate to have to explain to my mortal boss why a U.S.

marshal has a murdered man in his bas.e.m.e.nt."

"Then don't."

We both turned in surprise to look at my father. "You can't be serious, Dad."

"Sure, I'm serious. No one is going to miss Spider. Why do you have to report his death? We can just bury him somewhere isolated, and Karma can report him missing. After a while, the cops will stop looking for him."

"Ignore him," I told Adam. "He was raised by hyenas. How on earth are you going to explain to the marshal people about the sealing?"

He ran his hand through his hair. Despite the bizarre situation, I couldn't help feeling sorry for him. Spider had been nothing but trouble to him while he was alive, and now he was even more so dead.

"I don't know. I'll have to think on it. We have more than ten hours before the seal is up. Right now, there are more important things to take care of." He pulled a tattered green blanket out of a small wooden chest and laid it over Spider. "It's cooler down here than anywhere else in the house. Unless you have strong objections, I'd like to leave him where he is."

I allowed him to pull me to my feet. "No, that's fine. I imagine the police won't be happy if we disturb the scene any more than it has been."

"No, they won't."

"I think you're making a mistake," my father said. "Leave sleeping dogs lie; that's my policy. Or in this case, let dead insects lay."

"Not funny, and not helping," I told him.

He gave me a feeble smile.

"You guys are all mean," Pixie said, her lower lip mutinous as I pushed her toward Savannah and Meredith. Adam moved to a corner and pulled out a cell phone.

"Yes, we are. Deal with it." I a.s.sumed Adam was calling the captain of the watch. I stopped in front of Meredith, looking at him with dispa.s.sionate eyes.

"What exactly happened down here?"

"I didn't kill Spider, if that's what you're about to accuse me of doing," he snapped, pushing his wife away, the better to glare at me. "That's not to say I wouldn't have earlier, but I didn't kill him."

"So you admit you wanted to kill him?" Dad asked.

"No!" Meredith said quickly, confusion tingeing his belligerence. "You're twisting my words! I just meant that he could be obstinate about some things.

Sure, I wanted to punch him in the face sometimes, but I want to punch a lot of people, and you don't see me doing it, do you?"

"You were down here alone with him," I pointed out. "He was killed. It seems entirely possible to me that he struggled with you, and the bookcase was pulled over, knocking you out cold and finishing the job on Spider."

"I don't care what seems possible to you! I didn't kill anyone, let alone my partner!"

"You don't have to yell; we're right in front of you," Dad said.

I shushed him.