abundant confusions of loyalty. What was their relationship? How did she feel?
The phone rang and jolted her out of her uselessly spiraling thoughts.
'Hey, darlin', it's little ol' me.' Male voice, an unfamiliar Southern accent. 'And have Ah got some news fuh ya'll!'
'I'm sorry, who -?'
'Y'all don't rec'nize mah voice?'
Suddenly it clicked: 'Edgar! Jesus. What a god-awful lousy accent! Nobody really talks that way here.'
'Shoot. All that practice for nothing!' Edgar laughed. 'How're you doing, Cree?'
'I was – I was just going to call you, actually.' Cree felt some relief: Ed's calling had solved her dilemma for her. Fate intervening, saving her from making a fool of herself.
'That's nice. How come?' There was a suppressed smile in his voice, as if he had something important to say but was saving it: Edgar with a bouquet held behind his back.
'We need to get on this case. Full research and remediation. How soon can you get down here?'
'Uh, Cree, listen – the reason I called, I have just had the most amazing day and night of my life!' Once he let himself go, Edgar sounded almost breathless with excitement.
'Tell me.'
'Guess what happened to me!' he practically sang.
'No shit, Ed! Really?'
'Yeah, me! Mr. Empiricism himself! I heard footsteps, Cree! I did! Clear footsteps coming through the whole house, somebody with a bit of a limp. Broad daylight, right, I turn around, expecting to see one of my witnesses, and – nobody! The hair rose on my arms, man, I got the chills.'
Cree felt good for him. She could feel his pleasure in at last being able to share at least some small part of her experiences. 'So what was it like? Did you experience a particular mood, a feeling – '
'Yeah, I felt I wanted to call you up and tell you! But Cree, that's not all! I'm onto something really major here. Listen, the cycles of manifestation, right? Why do people only see or hear this thing when they do? I come out here with my geomagnetic theory, which suggests sightings should occur at the same time of day or night, but the times of sightings just don't match the solar day. This one's been seen many times, by several people, so today I talk to all my witnesses and chart the times of the last dozen sightings, including my own? At first glance they look like they're scattered around the clock. But then I saw the pattern. Tides, Cree! Tides aren't on a twenty-four-hour cycle, it's about twelve and a half hours between high tides, which means they progress through the solar day! Tides mean a lot to the commercial fishermen here, so all the times are published in the papers? So I happened to spot the tidal tables and got thinking and then went and found almanacs for the last two years, and bingo, man – hundred percent correlation between tidal cycles and sighting times! I mean, this is seriously large.'
Ed used 'man,' 'big,' and 'large' like that only when he was really, really into something, as if in his excitement he regressed to his teenage years in Santa Barbara.
'I guess I don't know much about tides,' Cree admitted. 'Would it
… does it affect places inland, too?'
'Absolutely! Tides are a harmonic, a metavibration of the planet's matter, liquid and solid alike. The pull of lunar gravity meets the rotational dynamics of Earth, which has a fluid core, mostly nickel. The core bulges, so you get measurable fluctuations in gravity and geomagnetics.' Edgar paused to take a breath and then went on intensely: 'Cree, you get this, right? This could be the big one. This could verify the whole geomagnetic connection!'
It was impossible not to share his enthusiasm. His excitement came palpably through the phone, irradiating Cree, kicking her pulse up a notch. 'Wow, Ed. This is fabulous!'
'Yeah. So I'm going over there again tonight, only now I know just when I should be there! I've got this guy Dickerson, from Harvard's geophysics department, coming tomorrow to take some readings. Give us five or six nights in a row, we should be able to verify the pattern.' He paused and seemed to put on the brakes, as if just now remembering what she'd said earlier. 'But you said you wanted me down there. What's going on? You didn't seem to be in such a hurry yesterday.'
Cree gave him a summary of events. Ed grudgingly supposed he could call off Dickerson and drop the Massachusetts case for the time being. But she heard his reluctance: He had grabbed his own tiger by the tail and wanted very much to hang on for the ride.
'Can it wait until Saturday?' he asked finally. 'Or maybe Sunday – I might be able to get there by Sunday night.'
Cree hesitated. When he'd wanted to come, she'd stalled him; now that she had asked him to come, he was stalling.
At last she answered, 'Sure, Ed. I'll see if Joyce can come down. But you stay there and keep after that. I'm good here.' And for the second time in ten minutes, she thought, Fate intervening.
By the time Cree hung up, she was becoming very aware that it was nearly lunchtime and she hadn't eaten breakfast yet. Still, she dialed the PPJV office in Seattle.
Joyce picked up on the first ring. 'Psi Research Associates.'
'Got time for a trip to the birthplace of jazz?'
'I am out of here,' Joyce returned. 'Bye-byeee!'
19
Cree stepped quickly into the dim cool of Beauforte House, closed the door behind her, and shut down the security system. This time she went immediately into the front parlor and tugged apart the heavy drapes. Dust sifted down in the window light as she hooked the fabric back. She repeated the process at the four windows, and when she was done turned to look it over.
Oh my, she thought.
It was a lovely room. In natural light, the colors of the wallpapers and fabrics turned rich and vivid, the old woods took on a warm luster. The gloomy canopy of the ceiling became an airy height, the room's stately proportions were more evident, even the faces in the various Beauforte portraits seemed to take on more pleasant expressions. The window views of blossoming greenery and other houses nicely complemented the interior vistas.
So this is what Lila remembers, Cree thought. What she wants.
She went into the back parlor and did the same, opening the room to daylight that shifted and mottled as a breeze rocked the magnolias outside. From the back of the second parlor, she gazed through the length of the two rooms, a grand sixty feet or more, and had a second realization. She had wondered why Lila, or anyone, would want to live in a house that was virtually a museum. But though you might see this elegance in museums, separated from it by velvet ropes, it was another thing entirely to stand fully within it, have it all to yourself. Seen in old lithographs, stiff portraits, darkening landscapes, or fading grainy photos, the past seemed rigid and colorless. But that was due only to the failings of the media. The reality was rich, fully dimensional, and beautiful.
And very much alive.
She went through the rest of the downstairs and pulled aside every drape and curtain, then threw open every interior door so that light moved between the rooms and the house was full of long vistas. When she was done she dusted her hands together, savoring the look of the place.
Where to begin? It had to be just the right place.
Somewhere inside, a familiar shift had begun with the decision to bring Joyce and Edgar in. You are something of a medium, after all, Paul had observed, and it was true. Once Joyce got here, tomorrow, and Edgar presumably this weekend, Cree's best contribution to this case would be the internal process she undertook. All the other elements hinged upon that highly subjective, delicate progression toward the ghost and its mental world.
But the upstairs of the main house scared her. She couldn't banish the memory of yesterday's events: the sight of Lila careening madly away, the bruising impact of their fight in the hall, the sudden appearance of the malevolent ghost with his knotted, turbulent affect. Just thinking about it sent jolts of electricity down her nerves.
