Poltergeist

Terry glared at me. In the furious pause we heard the conversation behind us.

"We shouldn't have been thinking about Mark," Patricia cried. "We must have attracted his ghost and now he's upset with us.”

I glanced over my shoulder to see Tuckman's lips tighten in suppressed anger. "Don't jump to conclusions, Patricia. I assure you it was no such thing. Monitor readings were as they always are," he lied. "It was all your own doing. All of you. Not the spirit of our dead friend. It's just your own creation.”

Cara was walking back to the group with a moist paper towel pressed to her bloodied cheek. She stopped and listened, glowering at everyone.

"Maybe we shouldn't have been talking about Mark," Ana suggested. "Maybe we were too upset.”

"It must be Mark's ghost—it didn't act like Celia," Patricia insisted.

Cara barked a derisive laugh. "Bull! It acted just like Celia has been lately—mean. There's no damned ghost of Mark! There's no such thing!" She glared at them.

Tuckman shook his head. "I think you're a little upset. . ”

Dale turned and tried to put his arms around Cara. "Cara. . you're bleeding. Let me take you to the hospital.”

She shoved him back. "Leave me alone, Dale. I can take myself." She turned and stalked down the stairs. Her husband stared after her, a moment's bleak hurt on his face.

"She won't go very far," Ian said. "She left her purse.”

"Oh, God," Dale muttered, shivering back to himself. "I'd better take it to her." He darted into the séance room.

I turned to Terry. "I'll be back for the recordings in fifteen minutes. I am not above siccing your boss on you, but I'd rather you chose to do this yourself. Don't force me to knock that chip off your shoulder—you'll look pretty stupid if you get your butt handed to you by a ski

I brushed past the milling group of project members, past Tuckman—who glanced at me with curiosity—and down the stairs to find Cara.

She was standing in the building lobby, staring at something in her hand, when I caught up to her. I peered over her shoulder and caught a glimpse of a creamy stone streaked with amber and brown set in some kind of dark yellow metal. I'm no jewelry expert, so I couldn't tell if it was a real Edwardian brooch or a fake.

"What's that?”

She caught her breath and snapped a cold stare at me. "It's none of your business.”

"Maybe not. Unless it's a brooch you lost that might have been stolen by someone here.”

Her eyebrows knitted together. "All right. It's my brooch.”

"It doesn't seem like something to make much fuss over.”

"It was my great-aunt's! Bertha Knight—oh, damn it, have a little respect. I thought I'd—I thought I'd left it at Mark's.”

Her usual cool reserve had cracked for a moment, but it wouldn't last long. I'd have to pry into her before it froze back over. We locked eyes and I cocked my head a little, inquisitive. "How did you happen to leave it at Mark's?" She wavered.

I didn't. "I'll keep on asking until you tell me, but since your husband is on his way down here, you might want to talk fast.”

"Oh, God. . All right. I left the brooch at Mark's place on Wednesday. We were having an affair and I didn't want anyone to know, so I said I'd lost it. Happy now?" "No. Why didn't you go back for it?”

"I was going to go back for it, but I didn't have the chance and Mark didn't return my calls. One of them must have gotten it from Mark… or stolen it from him," she spat. "Why do you think it's one of them?”

"It has to be one of them. Celia threw it, but it was one of them that made her do it. She's not like she used to be. She's not like the Philip poltergeist Tuck told us about. She's become cruel and spiteful. We used to have such fun…”

"Why couldn't it be Mark's ghost? Maybe you pissed him off." "There's no such thing as ghosts," she spat. "We made Celia up. We control her. Or one of us does. You saw how the session went, didn't you? One of them threw it.”

We heard quick footsteps on the stairs behind us. Cara broke off and turned to look at her husband, trotting down to the lobby holding her purse and jacket over his right arm. He beamed at her, then looked crushed and angry when he saw the oozing red wound on her cheek.

"Come along, dear," Dale said, draping her jacket over her shoulders. "Don't want your lovely face to scar, Cara." He kissed her on the forehead and helped her out the door. Cara. It means "beloved." I stood and watched them until the door swung shut. I almost felt sorry for Dale Stahlqvist. He'd married a trophy—a goddess of quicksilver and steel—and now he had fallen in love with it. He’d forgotten that both quicksilver and goddesses can kill you.

Someone here was just as lethal. Someone had picked up the brooch from Mark's or caused Celia to pick it up, and it had to be one of those who'd been in the séance room. Now they had shown off their cleverness by throwing it back in Cara's face in front of everyone. It wasn't much of a stretch to imagine that someone who thought himself that clever also thought he could get away with murder, bringing the poltergeist along for the ride. It could have been any of them, including Dale or even Cara herself, lying through her perfect teeth about the brooch, though I doubted that. Her distress seemed too genuine to be an act—a much better act than her impersonation of Bertha Knight Landes's great-niece.

I trudged back up the stairs to get the recordings, bracing for battle with Terry and Tuckman.

CHAPTER 16

Tuckman was still snake-oiling the rest of the séance sitters at the top of the stairs. Terry had disappeared. I walked back and spotted him in the observation room. The Nebraska-sized chip on his shoulder left me wondering what he had to be defensive about, since it now seemed unlikely that Tuck-man had a saboteur.

I whispered to Tuckman's back, "Keep the remaining sitters here while I review the video with Terry. I want to get a better look at what happened. Cara thinks one of the others threw that thing at her and if so, we need to find out who, right away.”

He made a twitch of one shoulder and I hoped that was agreement, not dismissal.

I ducked into the observation room.

Terry was poking buttons on the video recording equipment. He didn't look up.

"Now what do you want?" he demanded.

I closed the door and pulled a chair around to sit in. Terry was a little in front of me and to the side, so I could see most of his profile as well as the tense set of his shoulders and back. "I want to know what your problem is.”

"You.”

"Don't think so," I said. "You don't even know me and I haven't done anything or said more than a dozen words to you since this ridiculous investigation began.”

"Ridiculous is right." He kept his head forward, but he pulled his hands away from the controls, balling them into fists and resting his wrists on the console.

"Ah. Now we're getting somewhere. This investigation bugs you?”

"Damn straight it does.”

"Why? It makes you angry. Do you think it's critical of you? Or are you afraid of it? You have something to hide?" I didn't think so; he didn't have any Grey co

He spun his chair to glare at me, thumping his fists onto his thighs. "No! If Tuck thinks I'm padding his results, he should come out and say so! I'm not a cheat! I earned everything I ever got—I worked my ass off for it! I got no reason to undermine this project. If this goes down in flames, I go, too. And there's Tuck saying the results are too good. Too good! He says he's going to bring in an independent investigator to check the group. And here comes you—you snooping, sneaky nobody, poking into our stuff, into our records and methods like you know any damn thing. Which you don't. You had to bring someone with you just to understand the machines.”