Chapter 29
Dodie
The car came up the driveway just after eleven the next morning.
Violet had gone to the grocery store. Vail and I were bickering as we emptied the ancient museum that was the kitchen cupboards, deciding what to keep and what to trash.
So far, every argument had ended in trash.
Vail had filled two garbage bags and dumped them in the backyard.
“This kitchen needs new wallpaper,” I said, fixing my ponytail and glaring at the awful paper we’d had to look at growing up, a pattern of twined flowers and fussy stripes that some housewife thought was pretty back in the forties.
“Yeah,” Vail said. His back was to me as he stared at the top shelf over the sink, where we’d found decades-old rags and a bar of soap furry with dust. He was wearing an old gray T-shirt and hadn’t shaved again this morning. He put his hands on his hips and tilted back, peering.
“It’s ugly,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said again. I thought he wasn’t listening, but then he said, “Do you want to go now?”
“Where? The wallpaper store?”
Vail looked at me, and we had the same thought, which passed between us. We were the grown-ups now. If we didn’t like the wallpaper, we could just change it. This was our house. We had money, a car. There was no one to stop us. The freedom was heady.
“Let’s go,” I said.
He was reaching for his keys when we heard a car in the drive. “That isn’t Violet,” I said. It didn’t sound right, and she hadn’t been gone long enough.
The car that had parked in front of our house was an unfamiliar Cutlass.
As I stood on the porch, watching, the driver’s door opened and a woman got out.
She was fortyish, with glasses and dark blond hair tied in a bun.
She wore a neat skirt and blouse. She opened the trunk to retrieve something, but she paused when she saw me.
“Good afternoon,” she said, surprising me with her crisp English accent. “You’re one of the sisters, I suppose.”
I felt myself scowling at her. What sisters?
“I’m going to guess that you’re Dodie,” the woman said, as if I’d spoken. She bent into the trunk and took out a heavy briefcase. “Based on your clothes.”
I glanced down at myself. I was wearing bell-bottom jeans—very old and thrifted—and a T-shirt I’d tied in a knot at the waist. The shirt, also thrifted, was red and had the name and logo of a tire shop in Rochester, New York, on the front.
I had bought it because it was comfortable and cost twenty-five cents.
Was she insulting me or paying me a compliment?
I was going to tell her to go away—I was in no mood for strangers—when Vail came onto the front porch behind me. “You said you weren’t coming,” he said to the woman.
The Englishwoman slammed her trunk. She turned to us, the briefcase in her hand, her feet in their practical flats braced on the driveway. “No. I said it would take some time, Vail,” she replied calmly. “Not that I wasn’t coming. I was busy.”
“Not that busy, obviously,” he argued.
“My plans changed. Are you going to introduce me?”
“Vail,” I said, “what is going on?”
He glanced at me, as if he’d forgotten I was there. “This is Charlotte Ryder,” he said, as if I should know that name. “I’ve met her in my line of work.”
I glared at him. “You mean the aliens?”
“Aliens are Vail’s specialty, not mine.” The Englishwoman—Charlotte—stepped onto the porch. “Vail,” she chided, “you didn’t tell your sisters?”
“Well, now they know,” he said, his tone annoyed. Without another word, he turned and went back into the house.
I narrowed my gaze at Charlotte. She looked back with calm regard.
“I see his social skills haven’t improved since I saw him last,” she commented in her crisp accent.
“What do you want?” I asked her.
“He called me,” she explained. “He asked me to come. He said there’s a manifestation in this house that he can’t identify. I’m a parapsychologist.”
“What’s that?”
“I study psychic phenomena.” She sounded like an English nanny explaining to a dense child. “For a living. I have degrees in science and psychology. I also teach parapsychology. If you would like a copy of my résumé, I’m sure I can produce one.”
I crossed my arms. “So you’re a ghost hunter?”
She looked at me with curiosity. “Do you believe there’s a ghost in this house?”
I bit back a laugh at that. “If you want to catalog everything that’s wrong with this house, you’ll be here for a decade.”
“I don’t have quite that long to spare,” she replied with cool politeness. “But as I’ve checked in at the local motel—horrid as it is—and I’ve already paid for the night, I may as well make use of my time and look around as Vail asked me to do, don’t you think?”
I hesitated. There was nothing wrong with her that I could put my finger on, but I had the instinct to turn her away. In all of my memories, I couldn’t recall a stranger ever coming into our house.
Our parents never entertained. We never had friends over. There had been no dinner parties, birthday parties, or friendly drop-ins. No relatives. The only time strangers had come into our home was the day the police had come to search for Ben.
This house was our misery, but it was our inner sanctum. No one else was allowed in.
Yet Vail had invited her. I stood there arguing silently with myself, my arms crossed, as Charlotte waited, finally becoming restless. Before I could decide, Violet’s car pulled into the drive behind Charlotte’s.
Violet got out and hefted a paper grocery bag onto her hip. “Who’s that?” she asked me, as if Charlotte wasn’t a sentient being.
“Vail invited a ghost hunter here to investigate,” I replied.
Violet went very still. Her face blanched and her knuckles went white on the grocery bag. Charlotte could get all the degrees she wanted, she could drive around with her briefcase, asking questions in her accent, but she would never know as much about ghosts as my sister did.
Violet and I exchanged silent thoughts. No, we weren’t going to tell her. We didn’t tell people about Violet. Not now, not ever.
“Really,” Charlotte said. “I understand the distrust, I do. But if you’re truly not going to let me in, please hurry the decision along.”
Violet stepped onto the porch. She had regained her composure, and her expression was her most familiar one—dark brows lowered, eyes blank, corners of her mouth turned down.
It was an expression that said Don’t fuck with me, and it worked on most people.
She usually wore it in public, which was why people called her a bitch.
“Sorry,” she said to Charlotte. “I’m Violet, and this is Dodie. Our brother didn’t tell us about you.”
“So I’ve gathered,” Charlotte said.
“Come in.” Violet opened the front door and held it for her. “How much has Vail told you?”
Charlotte set her briefcase down and looked around the front hall.
“He said that this is your family home, that your parents died, and that you’re here to clean out the house.
He said that there’s a manifestation that he can’t explain.
” She turned to us. “He described it to me, but I’d like to hear from both of you, as well. ”
Violet made a sound in her throat that was vaguely derisive. She walked down the hall toward the kitchen. Charlotte followed Violet, and I trailed behind.
Vail was in the kitchen, cleaning out cupboards again.
“How do you know Vail?” Violet asked Charlotte, as if Vail wasn’t in the room. She put the grocery bag on the table and began to empty it, setting the items together like a display.
“We’ve crossed paths over the years,” Charlotte replied. “We know the same people. We’ve referred cases to each other.”
“Rarely.” Vail didn’t look away from the dented cans he was pulling from the cupboard.
“Of course,” Charlotte said. “I’m aware that you only contact me when under duress, Vail. And yet I must reiterate that you called me here.”
Vail glared at her.
“Well, well,” I said, breaking the silence. “Charlotte, don’t tell me you’re one of Vail’s heartbroken conquests.”
“I am not,” she said in a tone that allowed no argument. She turned back to Vail. “Colorado wasn’t my fault,” she said to him, her voice gentler.
Vail’s throat worked. He seemed to be wrestling with what to say. “I know,” he said finally.
“It wasn’t yours, either,” Charlotte said. “Not every case goes the way we want it to.”
“I know,” he said again.
“Good. Then tell me what’s going on here. Show me what you can.” They seemed to have forgotten Violet and I were in the room.
I looked at Violet. She looked back at me, her eyes wide.
Vail closed his eyes and scrubbed a hand over his forehead.
“I told you on the phone. I thought it was a visitation, but it didn’t follow the usual pattern.
It was in a different room, there was no window for the light source, and it grabbed me.
A physical touch, and I know I didn’t imagine it because I broke a vase on it.
It spoke in my ear. It wrote on the wall. ”
Charlotte nodded. “I’ll want to see that. Go on.”
“There were footprints.” Vail dropped his hand. I could see how tense he had been, how it was wearing on him. “I took pictures, but they’re still being developed. Things have been moved in the attic. Last night, there were knocks in the attic.”
I had heard those, too. As I lay in bed, hoping for sleep. They had been soft, almost friendly, like a good night from Ben. I’d waited, but they hadn’t come again.
“All right,” Charlotte said, her voice calm, as soothing as the cold aloe I used to put on my sunburned shoulders. I understood, then, why Vail had called this woman. Why he’d called someone, anyone.
We thought we were handling this, but we weren’t. We were too close to it, and all three of us were crazy. We needed someone dispassionate. A professional. Preferably one who talked like the queen. We needed Charlotte.
“I’ll just take a look around and get started,” Charlotte said.
“I’ll be as unobtrusive as possible.” She gestured to the ransacked cupboards.
“Is there a possibility of tea in any of this? A kettle?” When we gave her blank looks in reply, she said, “Never mind, I’ll do without.
Could someone direct me to the writing on the wall? ”
“I’ll do it,” I said.
“No.” Vail shook his head. “I’ll do it. Charlotte, get your briefcase. Come with me.”