Poltergeist

"Fine. I'm goin' back to the shop tonight. How's it lookin'?”

"Fine. Your cousin told me I could get Amanda's home address from you. I need to talk to her.”

"Oh, that Germaine! When Hugh told me he sent that good-for-nothing to my store I thought I'd have to strangle him!”

"Which one? Hugh or Germaine?”

"Both of them! How could he do that to me?”

"He's just trying to help.”

Poppy laughed, breaking into the conversation. "He's trying t'make you stop feeling sorry for your own self, girl! You come in here all long-faced a week ago and crying f'your friend. That's OK. That's right. But now you jus' being stubborn-sorry f'yourself. You're like your ma, Phoebe—ya got t'be busy.”

"I am busy, Poppy.”

"You is busy with everything but you. I love you, girl, but it's time you go home." He fixed his sparkling eyes on me. "You goin' t'make her go back t'her own place, ain't you, Harper?”

"I don't know, Poppy. . She's pretty muleheaded.”

"That d'truth!”

"You two! Worse than Hugh and Mamma.”

Poppy cackled.

"Phoebe, you know you should.”

She made a face. "Yes. 'Specially since everyone be bossin' me about it!”

Hugh came by with a tray full of glasses for the bar and bent down to kiss Phoebe on the head as he passed. "You get back what you dish out, big sister.”

One of the glasses did a backflip out of the stack and darted toward me, trailing a familiar yellow strand. I snatched it. Phoebe put it back onto Hugh's tray with care, keeping one eye on me.

"You got you a duppy now, too?" Phoebe asked.

"Just the garden-variety poltergeist," I replied. "Nothing so nasty as a duppy—they are nasty, right?”

"They be the nastiest things ever," Poppy answered for his daughter.

"What makes them so bad?" I asked him, picking at my plate of food—it was delicious, but I couldn't concentrate on eating, my brain going in so many directions: the poltergeist, my dad, psychic walls. .

Poppy leaned back in his seat, gesturing with his water glass. "Dup-pies, they're the spirits what don' make it to heaven. They got lost somehow on the nine nights and they settle back to earth. But they got no heart t'feel with, no brain t'think with—their soul, it be broke in two. Half here, half the other place. They don' feel the Tightness or wrongness o' somethin'. They don' think what happen. They just do what they want. They come slap you or pinch you or make f'break things.”

"How do you know it's a duppy?”

"You see them. Like skeletons wearing fog. The—what they call it here? Willow wisp? — That's the thing they look like. Ancestor spirits, you can't see them—they as pure as air. But the duppy be tainted and evil. And they just get eviler and eviler the longer they hang round. Dogs be howlin' when they about and you feel the spiderweb on your face. That's the duppy sign.”

I didn't know if I would call the yellow thread spiderweb, but I recalled the sensation on my face the first time I fell into it, when I investigated the room; I had thought of the feel of it as cobwebs then, myself. The idea of a ghost that grew more and more evil from a lack of conscience seemed to match the behavior of Celia—and its psychopathic master—to a T.

"Why you keep askin' 'bout duppies?" Phoebe demanded. "Maybe that's why they're botherin' you now.”

I tried to calculate the response to any possible answer, but I'd never been very good at the elusive math of relationships. I stuck to the easier side of truth.

"Mark's project was about ghosts and I think there's a co

"They made a ghost? That's crazy.”

I shrugged. "Maybe it is. But I thought I'd better talk to Amanda about the night Mark got hurt.”

Phoebe stared at me. "You think some ghost-thing hurt Mark. For real?”

"I don't know. But you don't get answers unless you ask questions. I need Amanda's address.”

Phoebe pushed her lips together and frowned. "OK, but you be nice t'her!”

"I will.”

Poppy wouldn't let Phoebe go to get Amanda's address until she finished eating and he wouldn't let me go with her to get it once she was done, either. As soon as Phoebe had disappeared through the kitchen door, he turned a searching gaze on me.

"What you really think, Harper? You think some duppy killed Mark?”

I turned my eyes toward the tabletop. "I don't know.”

"You can' go lyin' t'me, girl. You know somethin' that you wish you don' never know.”

"You don't need to know it, too, Poppy," I said, shaking my head.

He put his free hand over mine. He waited a minute, but I didn't confide in him or look up. He patted my hand and sighed, sounding very old and tired. "Dem sure give you a basket f'carry water," he said, shaking his head.

I made excuses to leave as soon as Phoebe returned with Amanda's information. Phoebe and her father both watched me go through narrowed, thoughtful eyes.

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?”