“You’re a big guy, Mr. Malcolm,” Jon pointed out. He added quickly, “As in strong, sir, that’s what I mean. No one is going to mess with you.”
“If only that was the case!” Alistair said sagely. “Size can help—but when someone has a gun or a knife...”
“Or a drug,” Lacey said, and shivered.
“Or a drug,” Alistair agreed. He looked over at Griffin and Vickie. “You’re going to be here, right? You’re going to be here through the whole thing. You won’t disappear or anything if all the candles suddenly blow out.”
“We’re here, Alistair,” Griffin assured him. “We’re right here. If one of my team members has promised you something, it will happen.”
Alistair nodded. “Then let’s get this sucker over with. You wait for me to get here to stop the fun stuff like the charades, huh? Then we have to have a séance all over again!”
“Everyone around the table!” Liza ordered.
Griffin looked around. Maybe it was the candlelight, but everyone looked a little pale.
A little ghastly, really!
Jon sat by Liza, and Alice sat by him. On the other side, Gary took the chair by Liza, Vickie sat next to him and Griffin sat next to her. Lacey sat between him and Alice.
Hallie and Sven were there as well, standing awkwardly for a moment.
“Take seats, take those extra dining room chairs by the door,” Liza commanded.
The two did so.
“Settle in,” Liza said softly. “Feel the night. Watch the flicker of the candles. Let your minds and your souls be open to those who have lived...and gone to the great hereafter. My friends!” she said suddenly. “Dear, dear friends! Brent Whaley, Franklin Verne—I know that you are there. I know that you are near. I just need something from you. Some sweet sign. We won’t give up. We are your friends. We will try for as long as it takes to reach you. We will find the truth about the night you died. Just give us a sign, please!”
There was silence.
It stretched out.
“Please!” Liza whispered. “Please, let us know you are with us. We will help you. We can find a way to communicate. Let the candles flicker... Let us hear a tap on the wood.”
Again, silence.
And then a breeze seemed to pick up in the room.
The candles flickered.
“What the hell?” Hallie gasped from the corner of the room.
“Even a broken clock is right now and then!” Gary muttered. “There’s a draft. Guys, come on, it’s been raining all afternoon.”
“They’re here!” Liza insisted. “I feel them. I feel them both!”
Griffin squeezed Vickie’s hand and looked at her. She shook her head slightly.
No, I’m not feeling as if the dead are in the room, she silently let him know. What about you?
He shook his head, no—he wasn’t getting anything, either.
But then Griffin did see something—someone. It was the wrong dead man.
It was the ghost of Edgar Allan Poe.
He walked in, smiling a mischievous smile. He brushed Hallie’s cheek with his fingers. She appeared to shiver and gulp in a breath of air.
“Something...” she whispered aloud.
“Are you here, are you here?” Liza called out. “I summon you, please, in the name of all goodness, in the name of justice?” she pleaded.
“Really!” Poe said. “How can you let that poor woman go on that way?”
“Stop it,” Vickie said.
“No, no, I can’t stop, we’re going to reach them—I know it!” Liza cried.
“I’m sorry,” Vickie murmured, “I didn’t mean...”
She let her voice trail. Griffin saw that she was glaring at the ghost of Poe.
Poe was having a good time; he wasn’t about to stop.
“A sign,” Poe said. “She needs a sign. I’ll give her a tap...no, a bunch of taps. I’ll tap on the wall.”
He didn’t get a chance to do so.
Someone else—someone alive or dead—did it before he could.
Everyone in the room jumped—in one way or another.
“God help us, not another corpse!” Gary screamed.
Griffin stared hard at Poe. “You, sir, were looking straight at me! I didn’t do a thing,” Poe protested.
“Then what the hell was it?” Vickie demanded.
“She’s good. She’s actually really good!” Jon Skye said, admiring Liza.
“Stop, shush! They’re trying to communicate. Come on, please, hush, get it all back together again, and we can ask them what’s going on,” Liza said. “Please, please! Let’s go back now.”
“I think that someone in this room did it!” Alice said.
“It? Alice, darling—we don’t even know what it is,” Jon said.
Gary made something like a choking or growling sound. Griffin wasn’t sure if the man was upset by Jon calling Alice darling—or if he was disturbed by what was happening with the séance.
“A tap!” Alice said. “Everybody knows that fakers tap. They make tables wiggle and they make tapping sounds. Easiest sound in the world. People don’t come back. Brent Whaley isn’t going to walk in here and tell us what happened and neither is Franklin Verne!”
“Please, Alice...” Hallie murmured.
“Stop it, stop it, stop it!” Liza commanded.
“I’m shaking!” Alistair told them. “I’m shaking. There is something going on, I know it!”
“Yes, you nitwit,” Poe said. “I’m standing right behind you.”
“Don’t be so rude,” Vickie whispered.
“What? Was I being rude?” Alistair asked.
“We really need to just break this up,” Lacey said. “Everyone is getting uncomfortable.”
“Because men were murdered!” Liza snapped. “Come now.” Her voice rose high. “Franklin, Brent, we feel you. We know that you are among us. We can hear you—you gave us a sign! Thank you, thank you. Yes, we’re nervous. We’re afraid. But we want to help you! We need another sign.”
Everyone waited; they could have heard a pin drop in the room.
Poe let out a snort of derision.
“Did someone kill you? Someone that we know? Let us help you!” Liza cried.
There was silence again.
“Give us a sign! A sign! Tap if you know who killed you—tap twice if it was someone that you knew, someone we all know...”
At first, once again, there was silence.
Then there were two thunderous claps.
The sound was so strange that even Griffin sat silent as Lacey and Alice let out screams, as Alistair seemed to choke, as...
“Dear Lord!” Griffin said, rising. “Please, people, get a grip!”
“You heard it, you heard it—I know you heard it!” Liza cried.
“Yes! And we’re all about to hear it again,” Griffin said. “Think, people...!”
The thunderous sound came again.
“It’s the door, people. Someone is at the door!” Griffin said. And shaking his head, he hurried out of the dining room and toward the front door.
“She asked for a sign...she asked for a sign,” he heard Alistair saying.
“Yes, and now someone is here and...”
As Griffin reached the entrance, he heard the others racing out behind him.
Candles in the hallway flickered wildly as he opened the door.
Monica Verne was standing there. Adam Harrison was right behind her.
“Monica!” Liza exclaimed.
“Mrs. Verne?” Gary said, evidently very surprised.
“Yes, Mr. Frampton. I believe we’ve actually met—casually, at an autographing here and there.”
“I’m so sorry f
or your loss. Come in, please, and you...” He paused, looking at Adam Harrison, a little lost. “Please, come inside!”
“Oh, my God!” Alistair said. “Liza asked for a sign...and here she is!”
He backed away slightly, as if suddenly seeing a terrible truth.
Never to be outdone in any way, Liza Harcourt stepped forward. “Oh, my God. A sign indeed. Monica! It was you. You—you murdered them both!” she declared.
12
Monica Verne stepped deeper into the hall, staring at Liza and shaking her head with disbelief and disgust as she wriggled out of the raincoat she’d been wearing.
“Liza Harcourt!” she declared. “You self-absorbed, self-important, self-aggrandizing bitch! What on earth is the matter with you? I loved my husband dearly, and Brent Whaley was an exceptionally good friend. I can understand that people are willing to indulge you, to see what you might come up with in your insane games, but I don’t believe you could summon the remnant of some dead spy who might have said something evil regarding me or my feelings for my husband and a friend. Trust me. My husband thought you were an arrogant ass!”
Liza gasped. “Oh! Just because you were married to a great man, there is no reason in hell for you to think highly of yourself! Oh, my God! He was the brilliant one. You’re just a shrew, Monica, just a horrible shrew—”
“Please, ladies,” Adam said.
“But there was an unknown tapping sound!” Alice Frampton said, speaking up, wide-eyed.
“Most things that are unknown,” Griffin said, “are simply unexplained.” He paused to smile at Monica and then Liza. “But please! Ladies, obviously, you know one another. Everyone else, this is Adam Harrison, the brains behind my special unit at the Bureau. Adam, Gary Frampton, owner of the Black Bird, and his lovely daughter, Alice. Lacey Shaw, who runs the gift shop there, and Jon Skye, restaurant staff and rising young chef. Alistair Malcolm, vice president of the Blackbirds, and Liza Harcourt, president of the society. I’d also have you meet this lovely, young, tall and golden couple,” he added, smiling over at Hallie and Sven and turning Adam in their direction. “Hallie and Sven. They take care of the property when Gary is busy in town, which, until lately, as we all know, was where he was most frequently busy. And,” he added, looking at Vickie, “you both know Vickie.”
Vickie stepped forward. “Let me take your coats!”
Monica handed over her coat; Adam held his coat a moment longer, getting a hug from Vickie as he handed it to her.
“What’s the matter with us!” Hallie said, shaking her head. “The lights go out, a few candles, some hocus-pocus and we forget our manners. Vickie, please, let me hang those up. And we’ll get you something to drink...hot, cold, coffee, tea or something stiff!”
“Thank you,” Adam said.
“Let’s move back in the parlor,” Vickie suggested. “We’d been playing charades at one point tonight. It wasn’t a bad thing.”
“I’m not sure they want to play charades. Is there a reason you came out here now?” Griffin asked Adam.
His director’s arrival had been quite a surprise—even for him. And they were usually in frequent communication.
“I knew everyone was here,” Monica said. “I made Adam bring me out. I’m going insane,” she explained. She looked at Gary. “I knew my husband—and Brent. You know the Black Bird and the people who know the restaurant inside and out. I need the truth about my husband. I’m desperate.”
“But we don’t have any answers. I wish so badly that we did!” Gary said.
“Let’s go sit comfortably, shall we?” Vickie said.
She urged them all into the room where the fire was still blazing and where candles burned, getting lower now. Some of the heavy-duty flashlights were set up to shine light around as well. The room was fairly well illuminated, and more important, it was warm and felt good. Hallie and Sven went to the kitchen.
“What can I get you?” Vickie asked, getting Monica seated in a chair.
Griffin noted that Alistair Malcolm hadn’t taken his eyes off Monica. He chose to sit in a wing-back chair that was opposite the spot she had taken on the love seat.
Lacey had followed immediately as well, and took a seat in a chair by Alistair. Liza had turned in a furious whirl and gone back into the dining room.
Apparently, while the others might have been somewhat on edge, they weren’t ready to take up with Liza against Monica Verne—she was on her own.
There had been a strange sound; it hadn’t been Poe.
Griffin looked around suddenly; he wondered how the ghost had come to be among them, exactly when and where he had been.
He had forgotten him in all that was going on.
But Poe was there. He was standing by the fireplace. He seemed to be watching what was happening with both keen interest and dry amusement.
Hallie came in, pushing a kitchen cart. “I feel like a flight attendant!” she said. “But this is great. Sven’s idea. We have coffee, tea, a bottle of red, a bottle of white, some sparkling water and a few sodas. Hopefully something for everyone,” she said cheerfully.
“Very nice, Hallie. Thank you,” Gary Frampton said.
They were all settled in again, except for Liza Harcourt, who, it seemed, had chosen not to join them.
“Should we play another game?” Gary asked.
“I have a better idea,” Monica said.
“What would that be?” Alistair asked her.
“Well,” Monica said, “You, Alistair, are vice president of the Blackbird Society. Gary Frampton owns a Poe-themed restaurant. Alice may or may not love Poe, but she does work at the restaurant, as does Jon Skye. And Lacey—I know Lacey, because she ordered all my husband’s books—is truly something of a Poe gourmet. I will use that word since we are talking about a restaurant.”
“Okay,” Alice said. “I’m not as much into dead poets as some of the others here, but...what are you suggesting, Mrs. Verne?”
“Well, a meeting on Poe, of course,” Monica said. “It feels appropriate to the situation.”
At the fireplace, the ghost of Poe straightened and smiled pleasantly.
“A Poe meeting,” Vickie murmured. She glanced over at Griffin. She looked uncomfortable.
Vickie, of course, had noticed Poe leaning against the mantelpiece.
“Yes. So, my husband was only nominally a member of your society, giving lip service more than anything else—affording the Blackbirds the privilege to be seen as a respectable society,” Monica said.
“Now, Brent Whaley was a published author, too!” Lacey reminded her.
“Yes, of course. Brent. Good man, talented writer. But he had nowhere near the respect or following that my dear Franklin had. So, the society was dedicated to all things Poe. Let’s start with you, Lacey. Poe’s unaccounted absence before he died. He left Richmond a mature man in love and ready to marry a mature woman, who also happened to be his first love. Quite charming, really. But Poe disappeared in Baltimore. No one knows what happened for five days. Then he is found at the polling place, the tavern. He is delirious and—most curiously—wearing someone else’s clothing. What do you say happened to him?”
Vickie rose, walking behind the chair where Adam Harrison was sitting, toward the end of the room—kitty-corner from Monica Verne. Poe was now staring at all of them, tension causing his ghostly form to quiver.
“My real opinion?” Lacey said. “Bear in mind I love his work. I’m impressed by everything I’ve ever read about the man. I think he was a good man. Artistic—and therefore temperamental, but a good man.”
“Lacey, you’re talking in circles. How do you think he died? What do you think happened to him? There are all kinds of theories,” Monica said.
Griffin glanced at Adam. His director was watching everyone in the room, keenly and subtly.
Obviously, he had known what Monica had planned.
He had brought Monica here. So, whatever it was, Adam wanted to go with it.
“I’m just telling you, I have the utmost respect for the man,” Lacey said.
“So, what do you think happened to him?” Monica persisted.
“All right. Yes, he swore to temperance, but he was an addict. He saw a friend in Baltimore. He couldn’t resist. He wound up drinking with his friend. But his body couldn’t take it anymore. Like any addict, he drank too much, and yet not enough. He sold his good clothing and bought the rags he was found in so that he could buy himself some more liquor. And then, at the end, he went to the polling place because the men there would buy him more drinks—they would be buying his vote!”
By the fireplace, Poe had a single word to say. “No!”
He looked ill.
If it was possible for the dead to look ill.
Monica smiled icily. “And that’s what you think happened with my Franklin, right? He just couldn’t resist? He knew how to slip into the delivery entrance to the Black Bird, and so he let himself in, and he drank until his body gave out?”
“No!” Lacey protested. “I didn’t really know Franklin Verne. Just through conversation. He seemed like a very nice man. But you can be a good man, a nice man, and fall prey to addiction. But no, I don’t believe that I really have an opinion. I don’t know, it’s just so strange.”
“Let’s be honest. At first,” Gary murmured, “we all did think that maybe Franklin thought it a fitting thing to come into a wine cellar and...let life end dramatically.”
“You can’t fault my father,” Alice said protectively. “Or any of us. We didn’t know. We just didn’t know. But then there was Brent...” she added, swallowing.
“And he didn’t nail himself into the floor,” Lacey said.
“Okay,” Monica said. “So, now—because of Brent Whaley not nailing himself into the floor, we can be pretty sure that Franklin didn’t just drink himself to death.”
No one responded to her. She shrugged and turned to Gary Frampton.
“What do you think happened?”