Only the Good Die Young

22

The lights in the mansion went dark, dimming the outside as Wendy and I just stared at each other.

Was this true? Did she have a connection with me like Amanda Lee?

I said the first thing that came to mind. “How long have you been able to see me?”

Talk about throwing someone off their rocker. Wendy answered like she couldn’t believe I’d responded to her.

“I could see you a little more every time you visited. But you never came here with anyone before tonight. You brought that Happy Days kid and Hair Girl. Plus that other ghost.”

Whoa. She wasn’t like Amanda Lee, who could relate to limited ghosts. She was a true seer, like McGlinn. How had this happened?

“You saw the dark spirit?” I asked.

She took a few seconds, probably getting used to the fact that she was having a conversation like she’d never had before.

“Yeah,” she finally said. “It was a… him?”

I knew what she was getting at. “It wasn’t your mom, if that’s what you’re afraid of.”

Wendy closed her eyes, sighing. Relief just about poured off her. Disappointment, too.

But the fact that she had to ask if that spirit with male energy had been her mother told me that she hadn’t recognized anything about him—facial features, a body, a scent. Nothing.

Shivering, she crossed her arms over her chest. It looked like a belly-deep shivering that I remembered so well, when you had experienced something shocking and it was just starting to get to you.

She was watching Gavin, whose back was hunched as he planted his hands on his thighs, still kneeling and shaking his head, like he was attempting to get Elizabeth out of it.

I floated closer to Wendy. Time for another interview, but this one wouldn’t have to be a mind invasion. I mean, it wasn’t like I thought she had anything to do with Elizabeth’s death, but what if she could help me out with Gavin?

“Wendy—” I started.

She interrupted. “Why’re you doing this to us?”

What could I say? I’m a ghost and this is what I do?

“This is about Elizabeth Dalton,” I said.

She glanced at me, puzzled. “Elizabeth? What does she have to do with—”

“She was murdered.”

“Right.” Wendy hugged her stomach.

I gentled my voice. “How well did you know her?”

“Well enough. She was nice to me. Gavin loved her. Why?”

This was going to be the tough part. “Ghosts haunt for a reason. A lot of times, we’re concerned with righting wrongs, and as far as Elizabeth is concerned—”

“I still don’t understand why you’re scaring us.”

“Wendy, I need to find out if Gavin had anything to do with her death.”

She flinched. I’d gut-punched her.

“Who are you?” she asked. “Elizabeth’s friend in the otherworld or something?”

“Close enough.”

“Then if you know her in your ghost city, or whatever, she would’ve told you that Gavin never would’ve hurt her.” She looked around, obviously aware that my friends were here, too. “I don’t see her. Why isn’t she the one asking questions?”

“Because she’s moved on, but there are still some people left on earth who care what happened to her.”

“And they summoned you.”

Pretty much, but I only shrugged, unwilling to continue this discussion when there was so much more to get to the bottom of.

She went back to watching Gavin pull himself back together, and I waited for a second, then said softly, “I don’t think he killed Elizabeth.” But that didn’t rule out the other male corpse I’d seen in his mind.

She added, “So you’ll leave him alone now?”

I couldn’t. Not until I knew who that dead man was. Not until I figured out those dreams I’d seen in Gavin and what they meant. And not until I got a lead on who’d killed Elizabeth if Gavin hadn’t.

I realized at that point that Wendy and Gavin weren’t emitting fear or anger. Just sadness and numbness. I had nothing to feed off from them, and I began to feel the effects of all the work I’d done tonight—especially materializing. I felt grayer by the minute.

I glanced at Scott, who’d wandered over to the diving board during all this.

“Sweetie, smart ghosts don’t get involved with human problems,” Twyla had told me. And it sure looked like Scott was smart enough to get out of the game while the getting was good. Same with Twyla, because she was leaning against the outside wall, her hand on an electrical breaker box. She was charging up, smiling dizzily in the afterglow of her spree.

This was my mess to clean up.

Now Wendy was getting used to me. “Did you hear me ask if you’re going to leave my brother alone now?”

“I heard you, but I can’t do that.”

“Why? Did he commit another murder or something?” A cutting joke.

But not to me. “Why don’t you ask him?”

Another flinch, and after she gave me an ultraconfused glance, she purposefully walked to Gavin. He was still so lost in the Elizabeth hallucinations that he obviously hadn’t even started to wonder why Wendy was talking to herself out here.

She kneeled down beside him. “Are you okay?”

“Liz… ,” he whispered.

“I know.”

She looked up at me—see, he’s a good guy and you shouldn’t have put him through this—and put her hand on his shoulder. That seemed to soothe him. But her voice had quavered. No matter how tough she acted, she was still jarred.

“Gavin, did you do what she says you did?” she asked.

When he glanced up, he seemed more tired than ever. Bruised inside. Totally ethered out.

“Who’re you talking about, Wen?”

She bent her head, her pink hair streak hanging over her face. She’d been talking to him like he could see ghosts, too, and I bet she just realized it.

“I just need to know if you’ve ever killed anyone,” she said, skipping over his question.

He reared back onto his heels, and from the naked expression of horror on him, I knew that Wendy had stripped off the layer he’d always worn on the outside.

“What makes you say that?” he asked.

“Just tell me no, and this will all be over.”

“Wendy, you’ve got to answer me.”

She stood, backing away from him. “Why can’t you just say no?”

“Why would you ask me that?” His voice went bone-deep.

Once again, the steely man was back, and Gavin’s face lost all expression except for the shadows in his eyes.

Wendy glanced at me, like I could explain everything to her. She seemed afraid now, like she’d realized that she didn’t want to know anything terrible about her fantastic, loving big brother.

But then the door to the pool house opened wide, the hinges groaning, and every gaze went there.

Farah stumbled out, clutching her phone in her hand. She was, as they say, as white as a sheet.

I gritted my nonexistent teeth at the sight of her. Why couldn’t Noah, who’d had such promising empathetic thoughts, have been the first one up and about so I could continue the interviews with him?

Gavin and Wendy had gone still while watching their sister. She couldn’t even walk straight. Actually, she looked drunk, even though I knew she wasn’t.

“He needs help,” she said, pointing back to the pool house. “Noah. Passed out.”

Even though the Edgetts seemed to hate one another most times, both Gavin and Wendy got up. He went to catch Farah before she fell while Wendy ran into the pool house.

On the way, she glared at me, and I offered an okay-it-was-my-fault shrug. She was obviously liking me less and less. I wouldn’t have liked me, either, if I’d accused my favorite brother of murder.

Gavin was trying to get the phone out of Farah’s hand as they walked, but she wasn’t having it. She stopped, pushing away from him, cradling the device.

“I need to call that woman,” she said, slurring. “The amateur ghost chaser. She failed. It’s here again.”

“The spirit?”

Farah nodded emphatically, and a seriously weird laugh came out of her. A frightened trill. But it wasn’t until she followed up with a fully nerve-racked bigger laugh that the willies crept over me. And when there was a rustle in the bushes next to the building and Rum Tum Tugger appeared in all his black-and-white glory, she laughed even louder.

“There’s the cat! Here, Tugger! Are you working with the ghost? Are you two in on this together?”

“Farah… ,” Gavin said.

“It’s still here,” she said again as the cat ducked back into the bushes. “I know who’s been following me through the house. I know who it is. She never left the mansion tonight like we thought, because she’s here for revenge. I saw her.”

“Who?” Gavin asked. He’d collected his emotions fast. Then again, I was pretty sure that’s what he’d done for his family for a while now while raising them, keeping them together.

Farah threw herself against him, burying her face in his neck, her lips against his skin as she grasped his arms… .

My God—why did this remind me of something?

As she clung to him, rubbing against his neck, I knew what was bugging me: Gavin’s last subconscious-revealing dream, when the first little pilot had been caged by the spider and Gavin had rescued her. The girl had kissed her rescuer, clinging to him just like this.

But it was no dream at all when Gavin firmly took hold of Farah’s arms and pulled her off him. “Don’t.”

I was getting real strange vibes off them. Then again, that was nothing new. Wendy even made comments about her odd family. She must’ve meant Farah mostly. Why hadn’t I gone into her head earlier?

Farah was wobbling on her feet as she started to back away from Gavin. Then she started to run.

“Get back here!” he shouted. “Farah!”

When she rounded the corner of the mansion, Gavin cursed.

V. C. Andrews, anyone?

Based purely on instinct, I turned to Scott, who’d taken a premium seat on the diving board.

“I’ve got to go,” I said. “Stay here and look after Wendy?”

He must’ve known I was thinking that the dark spirit might come back. “You bet, Jen.”

Twyla had gotten my drift, too. “I hope that dark noob does come back. I’m in a mood for some fightin’.”

“Have at it,” I said, then took off after Farah around the corner.

As I flew, I caught a glimpse of the guesthouse at the edge of the property across from the large garage. Constanza was peering around the lace curtain and out the window; she must’ve been hiding in there, unwilling to come out. Maybe she’d even already been on the phone to Eileen the cleaner.

The sound of squealing rubber was only a prelude to the red sports car that exploded out of the garage and onto the driveway. Before Farah could get far, I surged forward and hooked on to the sill of the passenger-side’s open window, then flipped my essence inside, hoping the wind wouldn’t fling me out as we picked up speed.

Where was Farah off to in the middle of the night, and in such a hurry that she hadn’t put on shoes or changed out of her nightgown?

I soon found out when she used one hand to fiddle with a button on her steering wheel and a ringing sound filled the car.

When a voice answered, she didn’t hesitate. “James, please tell me you’re at home.”

Huh? Had seeing Elizabeth and then passing out made Farah horny or something?

“What’s wrong now?” he asked over the car’s speakers.

“She came back for me. Elizabeth. She’s trying to kill me.”

Her fear was so strong that it had me juiced up. It almost overcame the substance of what had just come out of her mouth. Was she saying what I think she was saying?

I’d already judged Gavin wrong—at least when it came to Elizabeth—so I made myself listen to more of what Farah had to spill before I pounced on her for an empathy reading.

“I saw her tonight.” The car screeched around a corner, down a palm-clawed hill. The ocean looked like black ooze next to us. “I told you earlier about that dark ghost that left the house. I thought it was Elizabeth then, and I’m positive it was her now.”

Do tell.

“Farah,” James said. “It’s been years since she died.”

“And you’re still almost the only one I can count on.”

“Almost.” James sounded fully in control here. I tried to put a face to the smooth voice, but I could only come up with a black visage, like one of those interviews where Deep Throat or whatever didn’t want to reveal his identity.

“You have to help me,” Farah said.

“And how would I do that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe Elizabeth’s haunting the mansion and she can’t get to me anyplace else but there. That’s why I’m driving to your house.”

“O… kay.”

Farah was white-knuckling the steering wheel as she turned onto a street that hugged the beach, toward a stretch of upscale homes.

“I tried to tell Gavin that it was a bad idea to let that first psychic come in and do a séance,” she said. “You don’t play with spirits like that, but he insisted on it.”

“You believe in ghosts?”

“That’s not the point! Why’re you being such an asshole?”

“Because I’m not the one talking like a psycho.”

He didn’t sound like a loving boyfriend at all. More like… menacing.

Farah swallowed. “Just tell me you’re on my side. You owe me that much.”

“Do I?”

“I’ve kept you happy, damn it. You got me, you bought out your boss’s business, and you own a new house. I’ve given you everything you’ve ever asked for within reason.”

“Sometimes a guy also gets more ambitious than he’s ever been, Farah. We’ve talked about this before, and there’s a hell of a lot more you could part with if you cared that much.”

There was something far beyond the normal here. And I hoped Farah would arrive at James’s place soon so I could take a look around in his noggin. Her fear was giving me enough nourishment to sustain me for another round of investigation.

“I’m almost there,” she said, taking another corner at breakneck speed, just like she was afraid James would hang up on her if she didn’t get to him within the next couple of seconds.

As she skidded to a stop at a curb that edged a modern glass-and-wood house with huge windows, then disconnected the phone, I did first things first before I went to James.

To start, I summoned Elizabeth’s orange blossom perfume as Farah killed the engine.

It took over the car, and she froze in the front seat, her hand on the keys she hadn’t taken out of the ignition yet. She made a tiny whining sound in her throat, and I shifted to the center of the backseat, in direct line of the rearview mirror.

“Look at me,” I said, throwing my voice, disguising it as Elizabeth’s.

Farah gave a tiny sob, then shook her head, but I knew she wouldn’t be able to help herself. I would get her to look sometime.

“You’re going to see me whether you want to or not, Farah, because I’m not gone yet. You were right. I really am still here.” And I’m going to look into your innermost thoughts to see how you killed me and how you got away with it for years.

Slowly, she glanced up, into the rearview mirror, and when she saw Elizabeth, aka me in materialized disguise, she jolted toward the door, fumbling with the handle and finally getting it open.

She ran to the house’s driveway but, damn, she was slow, and I popped in front of her, materializing as Elizabeth again in that classy white dress I’d seen in Noah’s empathetic thoughts.

Then I shimmered to bloody dust as she screamed.

Her breath was coming in spurts, and she was faintly able to say, “I’ll kill you again if I have to!”

I think it was safe to say that now was a good time for some empathy, even if I was weaker after materializing. But her fear made up for the drain on me.

I made a dive toward her, and it took all I had to only lightly touch her face, so I could read her thoughts and see—

Gavin, silent while looking out a window toward the ocean, facing away.

“Just what did Elizabeth do to you?” asked Farah’s voice.

Brokenhearted words, barely existing, as he kept peering out the window.

“She loves someone else. Not me. That’s what she did.”

Anger, burning low and hot, because Gavin had always been there for her, and she’d never had the chance to do the same for him. She owed him everything. Her life. Her soul.

Reaching out to touch his back, hesitating, knowing he didn’t like to be touched like that by her, even though…

Even though she didn’t know how else to say thank you for all he’d done in the past with Dad.

He’d always suspected she’d felt that way after he’d stood up for her in a manner no man had ever done before.

A year ago, when she’d seen their father stealthily looking at eleven-year-old Wendy like he’d looked at Farah when she was the same age whenever he got home from a business trip…

Then…

A flash…

Another memory—

A birthday dinner for Noah, the four of them gathered around the table, thirteen candles flickering on a cake.

Gazing at Gavin, wanting to cling to him and never let him leave on one of his own business trips, which he seemed to be taking more and more these days, ever since Dad had gone.

Wendy and Noah, frowning as they watched her. Noah, wrinkling his brow, then blowing out the candles so the table went dark…

A tumble of memories:

Wendy, casting odd, assessing glances at Farah every once in a while, especially when they were with Gavin. Noah, trying to figure out Gavin, then reaching out to Farah and offering brotherly comfort whenever Gavin wasn’t there.

Noah, who would do anything for her, too… .

Back to the first memory—

Gavin with his back turned to her, looking out that window, his words floating in the air—“She loves someone else. Not me. That’s what she did.”—as he walked away, his pride smashed.

Intolerable. Unthinkable.

Getting into the car, driving to Elizabeth’s condo, waiting outside, seething because she was a heartless bitch. Watching as her Corvette rolled out of the garage. A gift that Gavin had given her two months ago for her birthday.

Following her up a shore-lined freeway as night pulled itself over the sky like a blanket over a corpse.

Elizabeth, taking an off-ramp, driving into a deserted beach-access parking lot, as if she’d seen this car following her.

Parking there, too, getting out of the car, yelling, “Who do you think you are, you cunt?”

Elizabeth, holding up her hands in entreaty. She looked so fresh in her white dress and a scarf draped over her shoulders, her light hair like an old-time movie star’s, flirted with by the wind. Why should she look so good when she was bad to the core?

“Calm down, Farah. Let’s talk about this.”

Calming down. Nodding. Pretending, when all the while, hate was hissing inside like a building scream.

No one treated Gavin like this.

Had to fight for him just as much as he’d fought for her.

Elizabeth, smiling sheepishly as she began walking toward a dirt path under the emerging moon.

“Come with me. We used to take walks together,” she said. “I would hate for that to stop.”

No answer. Couldn’t answer. Too much hate to answer.

Elizabeth, offering excuses for betraying Gavin and betraying the whole family.

Hatred, swelling.

“I hope we can still be friends after all this.”

A laugh, stabbing the quiet air.

Noticing that no one else was around out here. Just the night and the tall grass and a pond close by.

“Maybe in time.” Elizabeth, smiling again.

That self-satisfied smile, full of knowing that she could get away with any damned thing she wanted to and would never suffer the consequences. Why were some people that lucky?

How many consequences have I had to suffer? Why me and not her?

A blast of anger. Hands reaching out to grab Elizabeth’s scarf, whipping it around her neck, pulling on both ends.

Felt good. So good.

The bitch, gagging, clutching at the scarf. The bitch’s eyes bulging, the bitch choking, a sound sweeter than the bitch’s fucking magical laugh that seemed to enrapture everyone who heard it.

Especially Gavin.

Then the bitch, on the ground, eyes as blank as the moon that loomed overhead.

Happy that she was out of their lives and she would never hurt anyone again.

Ecstatic.

Then… reality.

Waves rushing in from the nearby beach. Head, muddled. Murder. Dead.

Panic.

No one around. Adrenaline racing while dialing the phone.

“Noah, help. I did something. I have no idea what got over me.”

Noah, arriving, in spite of not having a license yet. Didn’t matter for people like them. People with money.

Noah, crashing through the tall grass, dropping to his knees by the bitch. “What the fuck did you do?”

Not sure. “Help me? God, how am I going to get out of this?”

Noah, looking like he didn’t know the stranger who was standing in front of him.

But… an idea. A morbid one, yet one that no one would ever pin on a socialite.

“Noah, I could go to jail forever. I didn’t mean to do this. Please, if you love me, help me?”

“You know I do.”

“You don’t want me to suffer in jail. I’d never make it there. All for one and one for all, like I’ve been telling you since the day you came into our house. Right, Noah?”

“Okay.” In tears. So young, so impressionable. So useful tonight.

Noah, taking off to go home and return with a long knife from their father’s hunting collection and a saw.

Dragging Elizabeth far off the path and into the tall grass, where no one would see her.

Knife… stabs. Many stabs, like a psychopath who’d found her walking alone in the night. Then the saw.

A cover story.

“A random, deranged killer. That’s who did it, Noah. No one will ever know it was me, especially after we dump the knife and saw as far as we can in that pond.”

Noah’s face, slack. Skin pale as he retched but didn’t throw up.

Good. Can’t leave any obvious DNA behind.

Washing off blood from skin, scrubbing blood and fingerprints off weapons in the nearby pond off the trail. Cleaning up everything as best as possible. Drag marks, evidence that might’ve fallen off their own bodies.

One last look at the bitch with the bloody white dress covering a now-anonymous torso, then the detached head. Food for the animals.

Throwing the bloody scarf in the pond, far enough from the shore yet near enough to still see it floating on the water under the moonlight.

A flash:

A sunny day, by the pool all alone, peaceful, lying out on a lounge chair, the trees winter-bare, the sun unseasonably warm. Phone ringing.

Noah, on the other end. “You know what day this is?”

“You always have to mention her anniversary, don’t you?”

“I never forget. I mention it every year.”

“That’s three years too many.” A sigh. “Elizabeth is out of our lives, and no one knows how it happened. I got away with it, so act like you don’t care, just like we talked about, and don’t blow it because you’re sorry. Do you want to see me in jail?”

“You always say that.”

“Well, do you?”

“No, of course not.”

“Then get back to class. I love you, Noah. I’m the one who loves you most here. Just remember that.”

“I know.”

Hanging up, going back to the sun, reaching for a pair of Ray-Bans with a steady hand on the nearby table.

Seeing the blond pool guy smiling as he stood by the bushes, hands planted on his hips…

I simply backed out of Farah’s thoughts, and the ease of my exit should’ve worried me. She hadn’t even fainted this time, and I had a good guess why that was.

Because she’d known that when she arrived, her boyfriend would be coming out of the house she’d given him.

A few lights had gone on in the neighbor’s Colonial home, and as James stood in half-darkness on the concrete stairway leading to the window-paneled second floor, one hand in the pocket of his khaki pants and the other resting on the railing, I recognized him from Farah’s empathy reading…

… and from the Edgetts’ house.

“Hello, Pool Guy,” I whispered, already looking forward to this.