Poltergeist

CHAPTER 23

It turned out that Amanda had been staying with her parents in Shoreline. Once I had the address from Phoebe—and had been fed enough food to fatten up most of Ethiopia—I drove to the Leamans'. Although Mark and Amanda hadn't dated in months, his death had thrown a veil of misery over her that tinted her eyelids a perpetual pink and her skin ashen. She had the house to herself at the moment, but preferred to sit on the porch swing nestled under the wide overhang of the front porch and watch the intermittent drizzle.

"The house gets too stuffy," she said, pulling her feet up onto the seat and huddling over them with her arms wrapped tight around herself and a depressed olive green cloud clinging to her in the Grey. I sat on the other end of the swing, listening to it creak in time with the slight swaying we made.

"Manda," I started, keeping my voice low, "do you remember the day Mark got hurt in the shop?”

She kept her eyes on the mist. "Yeah. The detective asked me. I remember, but I'm not sure I told him everything right. I was still pretty freaked." Her voice was too bland. "Do you mind telling me, too?”

She shrugged, setting the swing rocking aslant. "It was kind of late. Monday. A couple weeks ago, now. Mark was stacking some books in Biography and there was this guy talking to him. Arguing, I think. I couldn't hear what they were saying, but they sounded mad. You know—kind of snapping at each other and their voices going up and down. And then the guy kind of. . threw out his fists. Like this. You know—like a cross." She spread her arms out straight from the shoulder and almost caught my cheek with the back of one closed hand. She didn't notice and dropped her hands back around her knees again. "And I saw something black flying through the air in the mirror. And it smacked into the bookshelf by Mark's head.

"Then Mark started to turn his head and look at the guy—he'd been looking at the books—and this big book fell down off the shelf over his head and hit him. He sort of. . um. . shied away from it like maybe he saw it falling. And I heard him shout. I don't know what he said, just some noise like he was surprised or angry. And then the book hit him and he fell off the stool. And the guy ran away." She slapped her hands against her shins. "That was it.”

"Did you know what the object was that flew through the air?”

"Oh, yeah. It was one of the gargoyles from the fireplace.”

"How do you know that?”

"I went back to help Mark pick up the books. He dropped the whole pile he was stacking. So I saw him pick it up and put it away.”

"What about the book that hit him? Do you know what it was?”

"Umm… a biography of Schopenhauer, I think. Not sure. Mark didn't make a big deal about it.”

"Can you describe the person he was talking to?”

"Not too well. The mirror makes people look kind of short and funny—you're always looking at the tops of their heads. Anyhow, I don't know how tall he was, but not very short or very tall, I think. Dark hair, wearing a dark jacket and jeans—I think it was jeans.”

"Did you get a better look at him when he ran out?”

"No. I was going back to help Mark. I shouldn't have left the cash desk, but I didn't think of that, then.”

It wasn't much of a description, and the only people it let out of the suspect list were the Stahlqvists and Wayne Hopke. Even distracted, Manda would have noticed their pale hair.

"Are you certain the person was male? Could it have been female?”

"A woman?" She thought about it, rocking in the seat. "I guess. She couldn't have been very. . curvy, though.”

"What about the hair? Was it long, short, black, brown?”

She thought, then shook her head with her brows drawn down in an unhappy scowl. "I don't know. I can't remember. It was just. . hair. Dark hair. I wasn't paying much attention.”

"Could you see a part in it?”

She kept shaking her head. "I just can't remember.”

I tried to bring back any other details, but the longer we went on, the less Amanda knew. She wouldn't agree to anything she wasn't certain of or try to describe something she had to guess at. Finally I gave up, thanked her, and started to go.

"Oh," she said. "Are you coming tomorrow?”

"Coming? To what?”

"The funeral. Its at Lake View Cemetery at two. I'm sure it would be OK if you want to come.”

"Oh. Thank you, Amanda. I may come. I liked Mark very much.”

"Yeah. He was a great guy." She bit her lower lip and stood up. "I think I'd better go inside." She let the door swing closed on its own and I heard the first quavering breath of a sob before the lock clicked shut between us.

I went back to my truck and started south, toward Seattle.

Unlike Solis, I didn't care about motive. I only needed to know who controlled Celia. If the incident in the bookshop had been the precipitating event, then the person Amanda had seen in the mirror was Mark's killer. That person couldn't have been either of the Stahlqvists or "Wayne, and Patricia wouldn't have passed for a man even in a badly foreshortened mirror. I was back to Ian, Ana, and Ken, again. Or not. Carlos had left room for error in his guess. The business at the bookstore might not have been the precipitating event or had anything to do with Mark's death. And Amanda might not remember as well as she thought.

If I assumed that I was right so far, then I might need to figure out a motive. All three of my suspects had demonstrated some control of Celia—the last séance had convinced me of that, though the evidence wasn't clear enough to determine who had done what. I could imagine some sort of motive for Ken or Ian—anger over the fakery, jealousy over the women—but not for Ana. Although she had said that it would be up to Celia to take revenge. .

I pulled into a parking lot and looked for her phone number.

Ana wasn't enthusiastic about meeting me again and this time she insisted it not be at her parents' place. She was working downtown and reluctantly agreed to meet me in the building lobby after work, but she had an appointment and could only spare a few minutes.

The west lobby of the City Centre building poured light down from the two-story windows and focused track fixtures onto collections of glass objects housed in display cases on both levels. The light ran over the glass escalator and the brass trim, turning golden and breaking into sudden bright sparks that pierced the greenery pressing against the cluster of food kiosks at the street level.

I ascended the escalator to the mezzanine. Ana came around the corner from the elevators. I walked to meet her in front of the massive installation of Chihuly disks, floating like striped and spined jellyfish and Jackson Pollock splatters that flowered in the rich colors of Persia.

"Hi," I said.

She raised her hand. The back was scored with cuts that matched a set of marks around the edge of her face and neck. Her hair had been cut to chin length, but still looked a little ragged where it had been clipped to remove glass shards from her scalp. "Hi," she replied. She sounded tired and nervous.

Glass rattled. We both turned our heads to look at the display. The swirling colors of the «Persians» quivered, jittering and chiming as the glass shapes strained toward us.

With one mind, we moved away from the display, heading for the exit and casting quick glances up to the streaming, icy shapes of the chandelier that hung from the ceiling sixty feet above the escalator.

"I'm so jumpy," Ana started. "Things like that keep happening. Some much worse.”

"What would be worse than having a million dollars worth of art glass fall on you?”

She shivered. "Don't ask. I don't have a lot of time to talk to you— I'm meeting someone for drinks. Can we walk?"

“Sure.”

She scrabbled around in her purse as we headed out the revolving doors. Just under the portico, she paused to light a cigarette. She stood for a moment, smoking and staring around as if she expected something to swoop down the streets and attack her. She hunched her shoulders and hugged her coat tighter. She looked at the cigarette and threw it on the ground with disgust, making a face and sticking out her tongue. "Ugh. I don't know why I do that. I stop smoking long time ago." She cocked an inquiring look at me. "You have any gum? I want that taste out of my mouth.”

I shook my head. "No. Sorry." Her English, as well as her healthy habits, was breaking down a little from stress.

She shrugged. "Oh, well. Come on." She walked up to the corner and waited for the light to change in our favor. "So, what did you want?”

"I wanted to ask you if you'd ever had any kind of relationship with Mark.”

Ana's face pulled down into a questioning frown. "No. I met him in January. I don't know him before then. You mean, like, did we ever go out? No.”

The signal changed and she stepped out into the street. I stayed beside her. "Not at all?”

"Not alone. I go out with Mark, sure, but with the others along, too. Ian and Ken and Wayne and Patricia. Sometimes just me and Ian and Ken. But not alone. I like Mark, but that's all." Her expression grew stormy as we paused on the next corner. "You think because I go out with one man, but I'm attracted to another, I'm a slut? I have a lot of boyfriends in the past, but most of them are not nice men. I just want to find a nice man. Someone fun, someone good for me. I don't sleep around. OK?”

We crossed the next street together, heading south down Union.

"I'm sorry Mark died," she continued. "I am. He was nice. He was good, but he's not for me. I already said this to the detective from the police. Why anyone thinks I had anything to do with this?" she demanded, her English syntax shattering. Something rattled nearby.

"There's a woman involved in this. There was a woman at Mark's before he died.”

"Not me!”

We walked past a hat shop, our faces reflected for chopped instants under the fedoras and sun hats. A haze of yellow floated behind us like an impression of toxic fog.

"Do you think Celia would be capable of killing Mark?”

"What?" She stopped under the awning of a shoe repair shop and turned to stare at me. "Our ghost?”

I nodded.

"No." Then she paused. "No. . maybe. But it's just us doing it. Why would any of us want to hurt Mark?”

"Why would any of you throw a table through a window or crack Ian's ribs? Why would anyone do any of the things that happened on Wednesday? Why would they hurt any of you?" She'd been one of the least hurt and that raised my suspicions as much as anything. That we were being trailed by Celia only heightened them.

Her eyes got hard. "Because he faked Celia! He lied to us!" she spat.

"And Celia took revenge like you said she would?”

"Yeah! Maybe she did!”

"How do you know Mark faked the phenomena?”

She caught her angry breath and held it, huddling herself in her coat and gnawing lipstick from her bottom lip. Then she let her breath out slowly. She turned and started to walk toward the corner. "Ken told me.”

That brought my eyebrows up. I caught up to her. "How did Ken know?”

She shrugged, looking down the steeper incline on the other side of the street, toward First Avenue and Puget Sound beyond. "He used to do acting when he was a kid. He and Mark used to talk about it. I think he always knew Mark faked it.”

"When did he tell you?”

The light changed. "Wednesday. Wednesday night. I saw him at the hospital when I was waiting for Ian. Everyone was upset. We talked a lot.”

I stopped her again on the other side of Third in the clouds of fragrant steam that escaped from Wild Ginger's kitchen vents. The light from the huge readerboard on the side of Benaroya Symphony Hall sent shadows scurrying around the intersection with the smell of garlic and ginger. "Did you ever go to Old Possum's?" I asked.

Ana looked blank. "Huh? What's that?”

"It's in Fremont.”

She was about to shake her head when she got it. "Oh! Right, right! Mark's bookstore. No, I never go there. Fremont's hard to get to without taking two or three buses. We have the Kinokuniya and Elliott Bay near my house.”

She didn't seem to know Old Possum's was a used bookstore.

She cast a look over her shoulder. "I need to go," she pled. Paranormal ribbons of yellow and blue wove around her and a slow flush pinked her cheeks. "I don't have anything else to tell you. I have to go-”

I put my hands in my pockets. She gave me a strained smile and turned away. I stepped back into the shadow at the corner of the building and watched her scamper down the steep sidewalk to the Triple Door—the jazz club underneath Wild Ginger. The hazy smear of Celia's sliced energy followed her, benign as a pet. Another thread twined and writhed toward the shape of Celia like an inquisitive snake. The thread was the same color, but was disconnected from Celia and moved like a blind thing seeking something.

I wanted a better look at that wandering thread. In the dark and the bustle of rush hour I took a risk and sank back into the shadow, into the Grey, feeling the slight jolt and nauseating slip of the worlds in transit.

The mist-world of the Grey was bright silver and knotted with tangled embroideries of energy moving and darting through the cloudscape. I looked for the seeking thread and found it broken by the heavy bulk of a building and the cold blackness of a rail that guarded the edge of a pit. I sidled around, but couldn't find a door through it to pick up the other side of the thread. Frustrated, I stepped back into the normal.

I got a stare from a panhandler and a squeak from a woman who had nearly trodden on my foot. I was still next to the Wild Ginger, but I'd moved out a bit onto the edge of the sidewalk that led down to the Triple Door. I put my hand on the wrought iron rail that rimmed the air shaft around the club's frontage. Glancing down the street, I saw Ana, distinctive in her fluffy white coat, standing in front of the club and looking down the road when she wasn't checking her watch.

I spotted the curious yellow snake of energy I'd seen before uncoiling around the Second Avenue corner. Ana didn't see it, but I did, and watched it coming. Limping a little, his jaw tight with each step, Ken George came around the corner at the other end of the questing yellow thread. Ana spotted him and bounded down the hill to meet him and put her arm around his waist. His blank planes of Grey fell away, the energy threads braided up together, mingling around the couple and the gleam-shot mass of Celia that hung close beside them. Sparks of pink, white, and blue fizzed like firecrackers around the couple, and red bolts shot across the reflective blades that thrust through the entity following Ken and Ana into the club and out of my sight.

The diminished size and the passivity of Celia left me scowling. The fake ghost had rattled the glass at us in City Centre, but took no other actions as Ana and I had walked down the street. And now it had floated behind them brilliant-colored, but passive. I wished I knew what the display meant, but I was still learning—I had avoided deeper knowledge of the Grey at times and now wished I hadn't. Every time I thought I had eliminated something, or gained information, I came up against contradiction as dense as the sudden wall in the Grey.

I toyed with the idea of following the couple into the club and hanging out in the lounge to see what happened next, but I knew they would spot me. Sight lines in the Musiquarium lounge were short and broken, and if the two had gone into the main showroom, I'd have to take potluck on a seat—if the show wasn't sold out already. I'd have to let it go and turn my energy to something more productive.

I called Mara Danziger.