“One call, and she didn’t identify herself,” Shirley said. She wiggled her brows at Matt. “Great voice, though. Think it was Ms. Tremayne.”
He shrugged. “If it was her and she wants something, I’m sure she’ll call back. I have to be in court. Niles Walker was running around naked again last month, and I want to see that his family takes care of him humanely. Call me on the cell if you need me.”
“Sure thing.”
Matt started out, then stopped, swearing silently to himself.
“Shirley?”
“Yep?”
“If Darcy Tremayne calls through and needs me in any way, make sure that she gets the number, okay?”
“Certainly, Matt.” Shirley watched him, somewhat covering a smile of amusement. Then she frowned. “Do you think she’s in some kind of danger?”
“Why should she be?” he asked.
And realized that he was thinking, Yes! Definitely, yes. And why…
Damned if he knew. Gut feeling. Except that he was determined he just wasn’t going to have any more gut feelings.
He suddenly wished that he didn’t have to be in court. No gut feeling—he was just worried. Darcy had acted so strangely on the stairway last night.
She had stared at him, as if he frightened her.
Worse than that, she had looked at him with something else in her eyes.
Suspicion?
Damn the whole thing.
“Later, kid,” he said to Shirley.
“Later, Matt,” Shirley agreed, and went back to her paperwork.
Adam sat back, puzzled. Darcy was right—it certainly sounded as if Arabella was the prime candidate for such a haunting. A woman who had considered herself a rightful heir to the property, thrown over so that her lover could marry a proper spouse. Yes, she sounded just right.
He sat back.
And yet…
He tossed his reading glasses on the desk and rubbed his eyes. Darcy had told him that there was something else, something she just couldn’t touch.
Yet.
She would.
He rose and walked to the window, worried himself.
Was he putting Darcy in danger? Shouldn’t he, at the least, explain why he had been so determined that they get into Melody House?
He couldn’t, he thought with a sigh. Not yet. He couldn’t color her opinions in any way, make suggestions, or even give hints that could throw her into the wrong direction. He just had to wait. This afternoon, under hypnosis, she might reveal a great deal.
He glanced at his watch. An anxious tick pulsed in his throat.
He should have gone with her.
Darcy was glad that she had driven out. When she knocked on the door of the old Victorian house near the small, lazy downtown section of Stoneyville, the door was instantly answered.
The woman might have been young. She was medium height, with dark hair, blue eyes, and a nice figure. But her face had a haggard appearance, the type that came from a difficult life. For some, it was bearing the burden of a house, husband, job, and children while struggling under a mound of debt. For others, it was the abuse of alcohol, drugs, and tobacco. Once, this woman had been very pretty. Now, she just looked exhausted.
But she was very pleasant, smiling at Darcy. “Yes, can I help you?”
“I hope so,” Darcy said. “I’m sorry to disturb you.” She hesitated, then explained. “I’m a psychic investigator.”
The smile on Marcia Cuomo’s face disappeared. She started to close the door on Darcy.
“Please! Wait, hear me out. I—I got your name from Mrs. O’Hara at the library, and I need your help. You definitely weren’t crazy or anything of the like.” She bit her lip. “Please, I’m not here to mock you or malign you, others have had experiences at Melody House and I really need your help!”
Marcia hesitated, then opened the door. “Come in, please.”
Darcy stepped into the house. It bore a look of genteel poverty.
“Coffee? Or iced tea? This is summer, huh? I don’t keep anything stronger in the house.” She stared at Darcy, still stiff. But then, she sighed, as if believing in whatever empathy she saw in Darcy’s eyes. She made a complete turnabout, admitting, “I joined AA—I never wanted to give anyone a reason to doubt my credibility again. Then, of course…there was just life to deal with.” Marcia offered Darcy an ironic shrug. “One good thing about Melody House. I left there and went straight to a meeting. How’s that?”
“If you’re an alcoholic, a very good thing,” Darcy said earnestly.
Marcia smiled, all her defenses seeming to melt away. “Iced tea, then?”
“I’d love some.”
A few minutes later, they were seated in the Victorian parlor with tall glasses of iced tea. Marcia pointed out a few of the antiques, and told Darcy the house dated from the 1870s. “Not very old, not in these parts, anyway. But a great-grandfather of mine built it, so…well, I try to hang on to it. I’ve been learning a lot about carpentry myself, and my son comes down from New York to help me now and then.”
“You have a grown son?”
Marcia smiled again. “He’s twenty-two. I’m afraid I was one of those young ladies who had a high-school affair, and finally ended up with a four-year-old by the age of twenty. I screwed up a lot, I’m afraid. Danny’s father helped out somewhat, but we never married, and he was killed in an industrial accident a few years after Danny was born. So…anyway, life is good now. Danny is great. Went to school on scholarships, and he’s got a great job with NBC now. So…he helps out. I won’t accept any of his money, not yet. It’s too hard to live in the big city. But he brings a few buddies down now and then and we all paint and do odd jobs.”
“How wonderful,” Darcy said.
“You’re sweet. But you’re here for a reason.”
“Yes.” Darcy stared steadily at her. “I believe with my whole heart that there is a ghost in the Lee Room, and I’d like to hear about your experience there.”
Marcia stared back at her, and then shrugged. “You see, the thing of it was, I was drinking that day. I went to work with a little flask all the time. I loved the place, too. I’d worked for Matt’s granddad now and then, knew all the guys around the place, even pretended I didn’t know about a lot of the fooling around going on there, you know what I mean? Lots of women thought it was hot to let guys like Carter, Clint, and even Matt pick them up, you know, then screw around in a supposedly haunted room as truly historic as the Lee Room. The old man was tolerant of Clint, of course. And even Carter. Matt was gone a lot—he was working in D.C. before his granddad got sick, but when he was home, well, you meet a pretty girl, you get to tell her that you live in an incredible mansion like Melody House…Well, that’s all beside the point. I was cleaning up there one day and suddenly it feels as if my hair is being pulled. Not tugged by a breeze, or anything. Pulled! Hard. I whipped around, thinking I was losing my mind. Then I hear this voice. And it’s soft and moaning and going, ‘Help. Help me! Please, for the love of God, help me!’ I thought at first that one of the fellows was just kidding around. So I yelled at them to stop. Then…I thought I saw something. Like a little glimmer of light, heading out of the room and down toward the landing of the stairway. So I followed…peeked down the stairs, and the next damn thing I knew, I was lying at the foot of the stairway! By the mercy of God, I didn’t break my neck. Penny found me there, and I suppose I reeked of alcohol. Still, I started raving, told her what had happened, that I’d been shoved down the stairs by a ghost. Penny is just dying to have ghosts there—I would have thought she would have believed me. But then again, I don’t think she’d ever realized before that I did drink on the job. She didn’t fire me. Only Matt could fire me then—his granddad had passed away. But with the way Penny looked at me, all disgusted over the way that I smelled, I knew that no one would believe me. Not even Penny. And Matt…if he knew, he’d say it was the alcohol for sure.” She let out a long sigh and shrugged. “I told Penny that I was leaving, to please tell Matt. And she told me to get help, and she’d never tell him the real reason that I left. So…some people know now. Cathy O’Hara, over at the library, is a saint. She had a run-in with vodka in her twenties, and was my mentor at the meetings. So…she knows all about me. And my experiences. The thing of it is, though, I don’t talk about it, even when I hear about new episodes at Melody House, because I wouldn’t be credible in any way to most people. Hell, I’m not sure I would have been credible to myself at the time.”
“Well, alcohol or not, I think you did meet up with a ghost. A dangerous ghost, so it seems. But at least, it did do something good for you,” Darcy said.
Marcia smiled. “Yes, the occasion did change my life. But I can tell you one thing—I’ll never step foot inside Melody House again. Ever.” She studied Darcy. “Psychic investigator…so? Have you seen the ghost?”
“I know that there is a ghost in the room, and that she’s trying very hard to make us understand something. I think she may be a woman who lived there hundreds of years ago by the name of Arabella,” Darcy told Marcia.
“Yeah, maybe,” Marcia said.
“You have another idea?” Darcy asked her.
“No…no.” Marcia shrugged. “I don’t know—I had worked there before, that’s all. Been in and out of that room dozens of times. And I’d never felt anything before.”
“Really?”
Marcia nodded. “It was about…I don’t know, five years ago, I think. You could check the records. But I’d done parties in that house, worked part-time, forever.” She grimaced. “Arabella sure has taken her time getting around to whining, huh?”
“I guess she has,” Darcy said, then asked, “Is there anything else you can remember that might help me?”
“I wish. Like I said, I was drinking back then. I wish that I could help you more.”