Poltergeist

I had to pause my maundering while I negotiated the last of the drive home. I continued my train of thought after I'd closed and locked the condo door behind myself.

I didn't like the fact that I was ru

Except that I'd seen the brooch apport and that meant Celia had taken it into the Grey. Had she taken it from Mark's apartment or from somewhere else? The uncomfortable thought stirred in my mind that a ghost so mean-tempered it would cut someone and strong enough to make a table run around a room and menace people might be able to do much worse. I had to know what the ghost's involvement with Mark's death was.

I didn't think I could get the answers from Celia and I didn't like the alternative route. I hated to ask vampires for favors, even when I was owed a few. I had no desire to mix with that bunch if I could avoid it, but I might be forced to ask Carlos for help if I was to discover how Celia was involved in Mark's death.

I didn't feel up to negotiating with anything tougher than a tub of yogurt that evening. My headache was not improving and all I wanted was to lie down for a while. I fed the ferret and watched her destroy my bookshelf while I lay on the couch gulping down aspirin with pints of water until we were both ready to sleep.

CHAPTER 17

Monday morning my headache had abated but I woke up feeling tired nonetheless and wished I had been drinking to justify feeling so hung-over—at least then I'd have felt I deserved it. My morning run seemed to be uphill all the way and the air was thick and unpleasant. The ferret demonstrated a degree of ire at being returned to her cage that is more commonly seen in goofy Japanese cartoons, so at least I went on my way chuckling at her expense.

I hung out in the PNU Psychology Department office until Denise Francisco showed up for work. She took a look at me as she ducked into her desk and dropped a large, black canvas purse on the floor with a thump.

She avoided eye contact. "Tuck isn't in yet," she said. She snatched a lumpy blue coffee mug the size of a walrus off the desktop and headed back out the door. I followed her.

"I've seen all of Dr. Tuckman that I care to for a while," I said. "I came to talk to you.”

Still thirty going on nineteen, she was wearing a short, flippy skirt over her pudgy hips with several layers of too-tight tank tops under a black denim jacket. If she hadn't been wearing cherry red Dr. Martens she would have scurried, but no one scurries in midcalf mosh boots. She whisked into another doorway that turned out to be a break room. She snatched the coffeepot off its warming plate and cursed loudly and creatively as the merest gloop of black, overboiled coffee oozed into her mug.

"Thirteen paralytic virgins and a partridge in a rutting pear tree! Who drank all the coffee already! You people suck, do you hear me? You S-U-Q-Q, suck! You couldn't give a blow job in a wind tu

A voice floated out from somewhere deeper in the warren of offices: "Keep goin', Frankie. My abs need the workout.”

She bent over—almost exposing more than the stiff black net of her trendy petticoat—and scrabbled through a cabinet beneath the coffeemaker. "Goddamn it," she muttered. "They got the hazelnut." She straightened and glared at me. "Do you drink coffee?”

I blinked at her. "Yes.”

Her eyes narrowed. "Starbucks?”

"Only when desperate.”

"What did you want to talk to me about?”

"The project. Terry said you worked on it for a while. I need to know more.”

She shoved her massive mug at me. "Get this filled with hazelnut coffee that doesn't taste like crude oil and I'll tell you anything.”

I looked at the cup, then looked back up at Frankie. "No.”

She pouted. "No? Why should I tell you anything if you won't do something for me first?”

"Because I can just sit and watch you have a coffee jones until you give in and it costs me nothing, whereas filling that portable black hole of a mug will cost me twenty dollars and a half hour of time I won't enjoy in the least.”

She stared at me and poked the tip of her tongue out to flicker over her top lip like a snake tasting the air. Then she huffed and turned away, saying, "I'll be right back.”

She marched off into the warren and I heard the laughing voice yell briefly before she returned with the mug half full.

"OK," she a

Frankie slurped some coffee and headed to the Psych office with me in tow.

"You don't seem too. . pleased with this job," I hazarded.

"Oh, God, no," she replied, sliding back behind her desk. "I only came because of Tuckman. I used to be one of his grad students at the University of Washington—I thought he glided across water like eiderdown. Tells you what a big dope I was, huh?" She slurped coffee at every conversational turn.

"Anyhow, so, when Tuck got the chop at the U, I was still trying to finish up my thesis, so I transferred here to follow him and the project. I helped him set up the room and the protocols, and I'm still typing up his project reports, but. .”

"I heard that coming. But what?" I asked, leaning on the counter.

"I have learned to my sorrow that Dr. Gartner Tuckman is a particular variety of dickweed that grows in the slimiest of swamps composed of rotten, overinflated ego. He is—to be delicate about it—a manipulative, unethical jerk who slants his protocol to get the result he wants. Fie only got the offer here because PNU was too starry-eyed about him to see he thinks this school is a second—no— a third-rate babysitting service for spoiled brats too stupid to get into a 'real' college. And he's got too big an ego to realize how lucky he is that no one spilled the beans about why he left U-Dub in the first place.”

"And why did he?" I prompted, not because I had to, but because it was obvious she wanted me to and I didn't mind playing along a little, so long as she was talking.

"Technically it was a cutback, but really they were looking for a reason to get rid of him without looking like big idiots. His last couple of projects were major money pits. He's got a magic touch for making money go places it shouldn't and getting away with it, but his last projects at U-Dub didn't clean up so well and they both got buried because Tuckman's favorite thing is manipulating his subjects—and his assistants—into going way too far for safety or good sense. He likes to push people and he sets up experiments that push them to push others. People got hurt, but Tuck was able to blame some of the assistants and the participants and get away with it—mostly. Everybody on the review board must have known he'd been playing fast and loose with the cash and messing up his subjects, but they didn't have enough proof to do anything but unload him at the first opportunity. Which they did.”