Chapter Twenty
Twenty
Harper felt herself doing a twisty thing with her mouth as she averted her gaze, studying the beautiful array of plants.
“I take it that’s a ‘yes,’ ” Sigrid said.
“Last night I thought I saw something. Someone.”
“A woman in a long white gown and a rebozo?” When Harper did not respond, Sigrid continued. “You looked into the Perles mirrors, didn’t you? You saw her.”
Harper nodded.
“You were visited.”
“I find that hard to believe,” Harper said. Especially now, in the light of day, with the bright October sun shining down and warming her shoulders.
“I envy you. Not many have that kind of sight or connection with the beyond.”
“I think it must have been my landlady, sleepwalking.”
“Why are you so resistant to the idea of the unknown?” Sigrid said, sounding annoyed. “The intangible? The concept that there is more to this world than what our Western science can understand? Why are you so reluctant to believe?”
“I study the history of witchcraft and the belief in the supernatural, Sigrid. Yes, ghost stories fulfill an important role in human culture, as an attempt to explain the unexplainable. But now that we understand the world through logic and science—”
“Do we, though?”
“Yes, I believe we do. These are cultural constructions, and not to put too fine a point on it, such stories have been used through the centuries as excuses to treat outcasts as ‘others,’ to persecute and oppress people, especially women.”
“Please. You’re speaking to a Black woman about persecution and oppression? Not to mention the fact that I’m a witch.”
Harper nodded. “The history is fraught, I realize that.”
“You’re missing the point, Harper. If Isabel Perles is visiting you, she has a message for you.”
“And what might that be?”
“How should I know? You’re the one she’s reaching out to. It’s up to you to figure it out,” Sigrid said with a sigh. “All right, you will come to acceptance when you’re ready, Professor. When you do, give me a call. I may be able to help. And now, are you headed back to Monterey?”
“I thought I might stop in at the Steinbeck Center, check out Salinas’s star author.”
“You should, it’s a great place. And Steinbeck’s childhood home is just over on Central Avenue.
His family lived in a lovely Queen Anne–style Victorian that’s now a restaurant.
They give tours in the summertime, but if the restaurant’s open, they may let you take a look.
Fair warning, though: Steinbeck himself believed there was a ghost living there.
You might get more than you bargained for. ”
“There’s a lot of that going around.”
“Speaking of old homes, do you have any idea what will be done with the Perles Mansion?”
“No word yet. The police haven’t even released it. When they do, I imagine it’ll be up to Delilah’s brother.”
“That place must be worth a fortune. Especially now.”
“I can’t imagine anyone wanting to live there, given its history.” It made Harper shiver, to think of how Delilah died, plus the blood-spattered mirrored room, and the strangeness she felt every time she set foot inside the house. There was something deeply disturbing about that place.
“Some people love that sort of thing. Why do you think Delilah wanted it so badly? She was excited to live with spirits.”
“She and Isabel Perles were best buds, then?”
Sigrid gave her a disappointed look. “Try to open your mind, Harper. You might be surprised at what you’ll discover.”
Harper pondered Sigrid’s words as she poked her head into the house where John Steinbeck had been born, then wandered through the center created to highlight his literary legacy.
She could not stop thinking about Sigrid’s words.
Was Isabel Perles really trying to make a connection with Harper, after “seeing” her in the mirror?
Could Harper even wrap her mind around the idea that a spirit could reach out through time, and “beyond the veil”?
And if so…what did Isabel want from her?
On a more everyday human level: Could the Perles Mansion be worth enough money to inspire murder?
If so, then Detective Serrano’s job was straightforward: find out who inherits and nab the culprit.
Presumably that would be her brother, Asher Mason, though if Delilah had executed a will, then the list of suspects could be much longer.
But if the homicide was motivated by simple greed, then why stage the gruesome tableau in the garden?
That took an awful lot of extra effort, not to mention the heightened risk of being discovered in the act.
Had it been an attempt to throw the authorities off the scent?
Muddy the waters by suggesting the murderer had some other motive?
On the drive back to Monterey, Harper listened to another of Jenny and Blanca’s podcasts, this one outlining the crimes of the Golden State Killer.
This episode, too, was solidly researched and produced.
As far as she knew, Jenny and Blanca were both marine biology majors, but they were no slouches when it came to crime reporting.
Once home, Harper texted Tariq to decline dinner, but to ask him to pick her up for karaoke night.
Not that she was dying to hear drunk people singing off-key, but she knew these social events were good for her.
They reminded her how to make friends and influence people.
Or, at the very least, got her away from her desk for a while.
Still, she had three hours, and decided to use her finely honed research skills to dig up everything she could on Delilah Mason: who she was, what she wanted, and how she might have inspired the rage that resulted in her murder. She opened her laptop and started to dig.
Harper discovered plenty of artistic accolades—it was no small accomplishment to “make it” in the art world, as Alastair Highbaugh would attest—but very little about Delilah Mason as a person.
Harper checked social media, but could not find any personal accounts for her, or her work.
Detective Serrano had mentioned Delilah did not even like to use a cell phone.
Maybe she was one of those anachronistic people, resisting the technological revolution, marching to her own drummer.
Or maybe it was just impossible to sum up a life in a few lines.
Harper remembered trying to write the obituary for her mother: Phrases like “loving and supportive, always there” were not nearly enough.
But how did one evoke a multifaceted, complex soul from a laundry list of characteristics?
Allergic to shellfish. Loved old rom-coms. Able to entertain her children with an improvised game of Popsicle sticks.
Preternaturally patient wife of an alcoholic.
What Harper really needed right now was a divining mirror. She supposed, if she were brave enough, she could try one of the mirrors in the Reflection room.
Harper had devoted her career to arguing that the supernatural was a cultural framework for making sense of the nonsensical.
But Sigrid’s remarks—and last night’s events—made her wonder.
Could she reasonably continue to deny that there was something different about the Perles Mansion, something otherworldly?
Thinking back on those never-ending reflections in the Reflection room, Harper feared she might well fall through the looking glass, much like Alice in Wonderland.
Modern sensibilities had never been her strong suit.
Harper was better at finding and piecing together data from an archive.
Time for this brand-new member of the Monterey Antiquarian she needed to take a shower before Tariq picked her up for tonight’s get-together.
She logged off the website but decided to look up one more thing online and googled “ ‘hooman’ body parts.” In an instant, she found listings for “Real hooman bones. Skull, phalanges, ulnae. In excellent condition.” One seller, in California, went by the handle TheGhostGuy.
She hesitated for a moment, then ordered a finger bone. It cost her fifty-nine dollars.
Harper had no desire to possess any human phalanx other than the ones in her own hands. What she wanted was the return address, and identity, of TheGhostGuy.
Here, amidst the remnants of bone and blood,
Isabel yearned for love, while
Soren Perles searched for truth.
Even evil has secrets to share.