Kristin Ashe: Disorderly Attachments Part 25

"She did?" I said, somewhat vaguely.

"You're the new housekeeper, aren't you? Working late? You forgot your key, didn't you?"

I nodded.

"She moved the spare. It's under that bush," he said, helpfully designating a lilac next to the front stoop. "In a Tupperware."

How thoughtful of Carolyn, I thought as I retrieved the key.

I focused my attention more keenly on the old man's chatter when I caught the end of a phrase, "... good to see her spending more time in the house. It's an awful waste, only using the place for c.o.c.ktail parties. It's about time she moved in. I told my wife it'll be good to have her around, someone to chat with on these warm summer evenings."

"Have you met Carolyn O'Keefe?" I wanted to shout, unable to fathom her granting this meddler five seconds, much less an evening. Instead, I disguised my voice by raising it a few octaves and adding a warble. "She's living here now?"

"Sure seems to be. She spent the last eight nights in a row, but you'll know better when you see inside. I couldn't say what you'll find, fixing as how the curtains are always drawn."

"I'd better get to it."

The neighbor dismissed me with a wave. "Good talking to you."

After fumbling for an agonizing few seconds with the key and tumbler, I scampered inside. I locked and chained the door behind me and flipped on the nearest light switch, which activated a bank of track lights. In the glare, I surveyed the living room, taking in the possessions Carolyn O'Keefe had chosen to reflect her lifestyle and taste.

A blackberry leather sofa and two matching chairs. A gla.s.s and ebony coffee table. Dried flower and gra.s.s arrangements, one reaching almost to the ceiling. A wide-screen plasma television resting in a built-in niche above the black marble fireplace. Contemporary papier-mache lamps, molded into bird-like shapes. Matted and framed black-and-white photographs on every white wall, all desert scenes. Gla.s.s display cases, filled with snapshots of Carolyn preening with prominent Democrats- local, state and national elected officials.

My gaze wandered to the dining room, which had been transformed into a music room complete with a raised platform, theater-style floor lighting and a baby grand piano.

As I slid across gleaming hardwood floors, I pa.s.sed a wet bar on the way to the kitchen, one well-stocked with hard liquor. In the kitchen, I paused on slate tile and located a switch that activated recessed lighting overhead. The calculator in my head couldn't add high enough to include all of the finishes, fixtures, appliances and gadgets. Extra-deep sinks, resting in rose marble countertops. Cherry cabinets with forged black k.n.o.bs. Stainless steel oversized, sub-zero refrigerator. Built-in microwave, double-wide dishwasher and Viking six-burner gas range. Blown-gla.s.s light fixtures dangling over the island, almost touching the restaurant-grade espresso machine.

I backtracked to the hall that led to an empty guest room and a spa.r.s.ely furnished master suite. Before I could thoroughly search the bedroom, however, I had to use the bathroom.

Again.

Nerves were taxing my bladder.

Secretly hoping to clog Carolyn's pipes, I pulled down sixty squares of toilet paper as I checked out the room. Concrete counters. A red sink resting above a copper cabinet. A steam shower. A stand-alone whirlpool tub. Taupe stone tiles.

I hastily finished my business and headed back to Carolyn's bedroom.

Here, I gaped at the wall of mirrors, the king-size forged iron bed and the silk kimono framed and hanging on a wall.

I sat at the foot of the bed and let out a spiteful laugh at the thought of Destiny and Carolyn together.

In this house. In this room. In this bed.

Twenty-four hours with Destiny, and the honeymoon would be over.

Messiness was my lover's worst trait, and she knew it but couldn't seem to correct it. In our first year of living together, we'd had countless "discussions"-read fights-before arranging a truce. She would try to confine her spillage to one room, her office, and I had permission to "transfer"-read throw, everything into that pit.

And I did.

Constantly.

Fran had mediated on more than one occasion, offering the use of her housekeeper as her best solution. But that wouldn't have worked. Before the poor woman arrived, we would have had to rearrange all the contents of the house.

In my mind's eye, I saw Destiny's discards as I sat in Carolyn O'Keefe's spotless oasis.

The magazines in every room-Curve, Advocate, Time, People and Us. The empty boxes in the entryway, the mugs in the bedroom, the discarded work outfits in the living room. The bas.e.m.e.nt piled high with who knows what, the garage filled with mementos Destiny had forgotten but couldn't bear to discard. ATM receipts in the bathroom, annual reports in the kitchen, bike parts spread across the yard.

One time, a colleague of Destiny's, riding with her to a meeting, had asked if she'd had to stop suddenly. Kindly, the woman had expected that only braking could have explained the disarray. But, no, that was how Destiny organized the files, clothes and trash in her Maxima. Randomly or not at all.

It had taken me a long time to admit she couldn't help herself, and neither could I.

At my urging, she straightened up every few weeks or months, but our house was never free of clutter. Surprisingly, she never lost anything and rarely wasted time searching. Somehow, her acute memory enabled her to pinpoint the location of all her treasures, which is why she had no incentive to change, according to Fran.

I scratched an itch on my chin and was thrust back to the present when I caught a whiff of Carolyn's perfume on my hand. The same cloying smell she'd left behind in my office and in Destiny's hair.

The shock of it, and the realization that I was sitting in another woman's bedroom contemplating my lover's housekeeping habits, hit me all at once.

I gagged and almost retched, but I wouldn't permit myself to throw up in Carolyn O'Keefe's house.

That's all that made me leave, or I probably would have lain in wait for her that night.

Particularly after I looked in her nightstand and found two items.

A vibrator and a photo of Destiny.

A voice sliced into my obsessive thoughts about Destiny and Carolyn. "Hey, are you sleeping?"

"No. I'm resting my eyes."

"You were breathing deep."

I yawned and stretched. "I'm fine."

"You can take a nap if you want. I'll do the scanner and the EMF by myself, just like I did when you were gone," Flax said, gulping from his plastic bucket of soda. "I won't tell Ca.s.s about that either."

As he loudly chewed his Skittles, a smacking sound accompanying each bite, I tried to sleep for a few minutes, but guilt overrode fatigue.

I had to snap out of it and stop a.s.suming a twelve-year-old would do my job.

After I downed a can of ginger ale and a bag of Chex Mix, I took over the EMF detector duties and thermal scanner while Flax lay on the bed and fiddled with the digital camera.

Approximately five minutes into this arrangement, I said calmly, "I think I've got something."

"No way," Flax said crazily, rushing to sit up.

"The numbers on the EMF are rising."

"What about the alarm. Why didn't it-" he began, when a buzz sounded.

"Take pictures of the rocking chair," I said, my voice steady.

"Which camera?"

"The Polaroid first, then the digital," I said, as he fumbled to grab one. "Don't be scared."

His voice broke. "I'm not."

I recorded the time, temperature readings and EMF numbers on the clipboard, careful not to make any sudden movements, as Flax clicked off dozens of shots. The entire episode couldn't have lasted more than ninety seconds, yet it left both of us visibly shaken.

I paged Ca.s.s on the two-way, and she hurried down to verify our potential sighting.

She spent thirty minutes with us but couldn't capture any additional anomalies with her equipment. Nonetheless, she helped us recall and doc.u.ment our sensations.

I had felt a cold tingling, nothing more, whereas Flax had seen a white flash out of the corner of his eye.

Ca.s.s couldn't spot anything in the viewing window of the digital camera but a.s.sured us that was typical. Most unusual images surfaced only after enlargement and high-resolution printing. She did, however, let out a low moan when Flax produced the first Polaroid he'd taken.

There was no doubt he'd caught something on film.

A faint, white blur covered the top right corner of the photograph.

By recreating the angle and depth of his shot, we all agreed that it was unlikely the flash had inadvertently bounced off something.

Which could only mean one thing.

We'd just seen a ghost!

Chapter 22.

I couldn't stop tingling.

Lying on top of my sleeping bag, on my back, I half-listened to Fran, Flax and Ca.s.s as they arranged their accommodations for the night. I hadn't had an ounce of caffeine all week, yet felt as if I'd downed a gallon of espresso. It was bound to be a long night.

Ca.s.s had decided we'd sleep in the reception hall, on the main floor. I suspected she'd chosen the location for its relatively clean, level floor, rather than the potential to attract visitors.

"Are you psychic?" Flax asked Ca.s.s as he munched on one of Fran's triple-chocolate brownies.

"In one sense, yes."

"There's more than one?"

"There are four major categories," Ca.s.s replied, "telepathy being one."

"Reading people's minds," Fran interjected. "Handy tool for romance."

Ca.s.s smiled. "Also, remote viewing. You can see something taking place at a different location."

"I wish I could do that," Flax said. "Then I could live in North Carolina and see my dad in Denver."

"Precognition," Ca.s.s continued. "Knowing something will happen before it actually happens."

"Useful in Vegas," Fran offered.

"Finally, micropsychokinesis, the ability of the mind to affect matter. That's the skill I have. When I was sixteen, my father entered me into a university study that measured subjects' ability to move dots on a computer screen. I tested higher than the norm."

Flax's mouth opened wide. "You can move stuff?"

"Only dots on a computer screen. I practiced every day in high school, but never managed to move anything else." Ca.s.s paused for effect. "Except..." She winked at me, and I s.n.a.t.c.hed at the side of Flax's bag while she shouted, "A sleeping bag."

Flax jumped and yelped, "Cut it out, Kris."

I tousled his hair until his peevish frown turned into a sheepish smile.

He asked Ca.s.s, "Is every house haunted?"

"Not necessarily."

"What's the most haunted one you've been in?"

"You don't have to tell us now," I clambered into my sleeping bag and pulled the edges close to my chin.

Fran agreed. "We don't want to scare Flax. Might be a distraction, storytelling, in case we have to check the equipment, make minor adjustments."

"You're the one who's scared," Flax accused, his attention directed, thankfully, at Fran, not me.

"Am not," she retorted.

"Yes, you are. We're stuck here all night. Why can't she tell me something cool?" he persisted.

Fran and I looked at each other with resignation, and Ca.s.s said, "You two could go into another room, if it makes you uncomfortable."

Simultaneously and too loudly, we said, "No."

"Let's scoot closer together," Ca.s.s said, "I don't want to disturb any spirits who might choose to make their presence known."

We all pulled in tighter until our heads were less than a foot apart, our bodies extending out to form a cross, with Fran and Flax on one p.r.o.ng, and Ca.s.s and I on the other. In the middle, Fran turned up the k.n.o.b on her battery-operated lantern, but Flax reached over and dimmed it.

Ca.s.s began to speak in a whisper. "The Dover Lunatic Hospital. It was built in eighteen seventy-eight to accommodate four hundred and fifty patients, six hundred if they filled the attics. It closed in nineteen ninety-two."

Fran countered Ca.s.s's quiet tone with a bellow. "Never heard of it."