Poltergeist

In my office, the answering machine light was blinking. I poked its button.

"Harper," Phoebe's voice shouted, "you are so in trouble, girl! Is that why you're not answering my calls? I been calling you since yesterday. You don't call me back, I'm go

Scowling, I pulled my pager off my belt and stared at it. The display was dark.

Rey Solis's voice curled out of the speaker. "I would like to discuss your interview list with you. Call me before three. Oh, yes—Phoebe Mason threatened to skin you. I assume she's not serious, but do I need to change my mind?”

Terrific. Phoebe was mad enough to threaten violence in front of a police officer. Hell hath no fury like a pissed-off Phoebe. I scrounged in the desk drawers and found spare batteries for the pager and swapped them in. The pager remained blank. Even the little green power indicator wouldn't light.

"Damn it." I knocked it on the tabletop. The case popped open and spilled bits onto the desk. I spat dirty words. How long had it been nonfunctional? It should have vibrated when I opened the office door, but I couldn't remember the last time I'd felt it buzz and I hadn't noticed when it had stopped.

I called the pager service, picked up messages, and told them to forward all calls to the office until further notice. Phoebe had called three times, among other business calls I hadn't gotten. While Phoebe might skin me, I needed to pay my bills long enough to survive to be ski

Phoebe didn't answer the phone at the shop. I got the answering machine that told me Old Possum's was closed due to a death in the family. As far as I knew, the shop had never been closed before—not even when Dyslexia, the ancient and addlepated queen of the cats, had died and Phoebe had cried for three days. I tried her apartment and her parents' restaurant with no result. Then I called the store's office number.

"Old Possum's," Phoebe snapped. "We're closed. Go away.”

"It's Harper.”

Phoebe growled. "Oh, you! You!" she sputtered.

I sighed. "I'm coming up there. I'll explain everything and you can yell at me all you want.”

She was still trying to get a good harangue started when I hung up.

One more quick call to Solis to say I'd drop by at three, then I was back out the door with the Tuckman files under my arm and on my way to Fremont.

CHAPTER 10

Phoebe had reacquired articulate fury by the time I arrived at the back door to Old Possum's. I knocked and was greeted with a storm of words as the door opened. "Harper! You are mean and sneaky! You askin' me all those questions and already knowin' Mark was dead! You better have some good damn reason why you didn't tell me. You bring your sneaky-ass self in here and start talkin'." Phoebe waved into the dim interior of the back office with an emphatic gesture.

I held position on the stoop. Bright sparks of red and white fury leapt from her, stabbing the air and leaving a sour tang of grief. She glared at me until the sparks died down and her lower lip began to tremble.

"Aren't you comin' in?”

I leaned left and right, making a big show of looking around her. The big overhead fluorescent light was off and only a pair of green-shaded clerks lamps threw pools of light onto the big messy desk in the room.

"OK," I said.

"What are you looking for?”

"I'm looking for Phoebe Mason.”

"What d'you—”

"She said she was going to have an obeah-woman curse me and you don't seem to be doing a very good job, so I thought I'd have to tell her to get her money back.”

She reached up and clouted me on the shoulder—Phoebe's not very tall and though her temper is just as short, so are her grudges. "Girl! Listen to the mouth on you. You get in here, now. But I'm not making you coffee this time. I'm still mad at you.”

I blew out a sigh of relief. "OK. I can take my punishment without caffeine." Which was technically true, since I'd managed to miss both sleep and my morning coffee and it looked like I wouldn't get any lunch, but I'd have to carry on without my favorite crutch. At least until Phoebe relented.

I entered the dim office and went to tuck myself into a chair too ratty to be allowed on the shop floor. "I'm sorry, Phoebe," I started. "When did you find out about Mark?”

Phoebe sat behind the desk and squirmed the chair back so her face was hidden in shadow. I could still see the wavering colors of her distress casting her into Grey silhouette. "Yesterday afternoon. Some detective from the police came round.”

"Hispanic?”

"Uh-huh." The chair creaked as she nodded and I could hear her sniffle in the dark. I couldn't see her expression, but I could imagine it well enough. "Why didn't you say anything Wednesday? Why'd you just let me find out from some stone-faced stranger?”

"Detective Solis asked me not to. And I didn't want you to feel you shouldn't say anything bad about Mark because he was dead. We both need to know what he was really like and what he was doing. And if anyone already knew what had happened.”

"Well, we didn't.”

"Who was here when Solis came in?”

"Jules and Amanda—poor thing—and me. I had to send Manda home in a taxi. She started crying so hard her eyes all swelled up and I couldn't let her go home on a bus like that.”

"What sort of questions did Solis ask you?”

"Pretty much the same as you—how long had he worked here, what was he like, was he upset or in trouble recently, who were his friends, and like that. I even told him about the poltergeist, but he didn't seem very interested, so I didn't tell him about the accident.”

"What accident? You didn't tell me about any accident, either.”

"I did! I told you things fell on people." She shrugged. "It wasn't such a big thing. Couple of days ago Mark was shelving books in the back near the espresso machine and there's a customer talking to him. Then one of the gargoyles come right up off the mantel and smacks into the shelf by Mark's head and the big book he's putting up falls and hits Mark in the chest. Mark fell down and the book fell down and hit the gargoyle and broke the base and the customer goes yelling out the front door.”

"Who was the customer?”

"I don't know. I wasn't in on Monday—yeah, it was Monday. Manda saw it all in the mirror.”

I bit my lip. "Amanda saw it. Was the customer male or female?”

Phoebe flipped her hands upward in impatient a

"Did anyone else see the accident?”

"Mark.”

"Besides Mark and Amanda and the customer?”

"I don't think so. Monday's pretty slow. Why is this so important? That stupid gargoyle didn't kill Mark and the customer didn't throw it at him, anyhow. Manda said it just come after him all of its own.”

I looked through the dimness toward Phoebe. A sad kind of gray green funk wrapped around her. The minions were as much family to Phoebe as her own huge clan of actual relatives, and angry as she was at me for not telling her about Mark, the sadness was worse. It would be awful of me to tell her Amanda was now the prime suspect— ex-girlfriend and the only witness to some kind of attack that couldn't be proved would move her to the top of Solis's list. The chances of finding the mysterious customer weren't good—if there had been one at all—and Solis would think the same thing. It looked as if I was stuck between deceiving Phoebe some more or hurting her worse.

I sighed.