“No one acts like Jordy was never here. We just don’t use it as an excuse to be mean to other people.”
Fuso rolled his eyes and blew a noisy breath into his hair. “You say so.”
Mindy gave him one more hard look, then turned her attention back to me. “What did you want to know?”
“Well, I have a mailing address for him, but I really need to talk to his caregivers or family in person. I need an actual address where I can find him.”
“Why?” Nightingale asked.
“He may have something in common with a client of mine who’s also in a coma,” I said. “I’m trying to find out what happened to him and other patients with the same symptoms and see if there’s a connection that might help us understand and possibly correct their conditions. So far all the patients’ injuries seem to have some association with the tunnel construction zone, but that’s very vague and the longer it takes to find Jordan and possibly a common cause, the worse each patient’s chances become. I need more information and I think I can get it if I can see Delamar and talk to the people who are taking care of him. Do any of you know his address or anything about his condition or his accident?”
They exchanged glances before Mindy looked at me as if they had elected her their representative. “I have Jordy’s address. He’s been unconscious ever since the awning fell on him. Whim and Nightingale and I went to see him while he was in the hospital, but when Levi couldn’t afford it anymore, they moved him to a different facility and it’s been hard to go see him. We all work long hours in the summer. I have another job as well as this one. So do Whim and Night.” She cast an exasperated look at Fuso. “Ansel is just a bum who sponges off his mother.”
“Hey! I do my bit. Don’t go dissing me.”
Beside him, Nightingale gave his shoulder a token smack. “Don’t be such a whiner, Fuso. Learn to take a joke.”
Fuso grunted and snatched a handful of French fries off Nightingale’s plate and shoved them into his mouth in a wad. Nightingale shook her head and Whim made an exaggerated face of disgust. “You’re such a delicate flower, Fuso. I’m going to make a puppet just like you: Its mouth will reach all the way around to the back of its head.”
They poked fun at Fuso for a few minutes, diffusing the tension that had risen between them earlier. I waited for them to wind down. Then I said, “Tell me about Delamar. What’s he like? What did he do?”
“You mean his act?” Mindy asked. “He plays banjo.”
“He also makes them,” Whim said. “It’s part of the shtick. He has a real nice Gibson resonator, but he’s always got a couple of specialties around. Like . . . he has one made out of a dried gourd and a yardstick and another he made out of a cooking pot.”
“I remember that one!” Nightingale said. “He sold it to some guy from a restaurant supply company. Remember the cigar box?”
Whim laughed. “I do. That was a classic.”
“He made them all himself?” I asked. “So his act is some sort of gag?”
The Sonders looked appalled. “Oh no!” Nightingale said. “He was just so talented he could make a playable instrument out of almost anything. He made a three-hole chicken-bone whistle once, but he wasn’t a very good wind player, so he gave it away. He made things all the time—mostly out of junk he found around the market. He’d play them for a while, but if someone liked the instrument, he’d sell it to them. He was probably better at making instruments than playing them, but he only really liked banjos. I think selling the instruments brought in more money, but he liked to play. He thought of himself as a musician, not an instrument maker.”
“You speak of him in the past tense,” I noted.
Nightingale drew in her breath as if to rebut me, but stopped. “I—guess it’s just been so long . . .”
Whim put a hand on her shoulder. “It’s been a long time since we saw him and every show’s yesterday’s news. Once you go home for the day, it’s over and past.”
Fuso rolled his eyes. “What he really means is no one thinks he’s coming back.”
Mindy jabbed a finger into Fuso’s arm. “Fuso!”
He turned to her. “It’s true! You can pretend all you want, but we all know it. He was a good guy, but there ain’t no Prince Charming going to come along and wake him up.” He glared at the Sonders. “You know that better than anyone.”
Nightingale turned in her seat and slapped him. “Shut up, Fuso. Shut up.”
Fuso stood up with more self-possession than I’d have expected, and walked quietly away. Nightingale pushed her tray aside and got up from the table. She looked down at Whim, her face white and the energy around her flaring red, then yellow, then green. “I need to leave.” She looked at me. “I’m sorry I can’t help you. Jordan is a very nice man. He deserves better friends than Fuso. And us.”
She turned and walked off, Whim hopping up to follow her without looking back.
Mindy closed her eyes and shook her head. “I should have known better than to let Fuso open his mouth.”
“I get the impression he’d open it anyhow and you couldn’t have stopped him.”
“He’s such a brat.”
I thought that was too mild a sentiment, but Fuso wasn’t my problem. “I’m sorry to have raised such a stink.”
“It happens. Especially if Fuso is involved. He liked Jordan. I think he’s a little jealous, really, because he wants to be liked just as much, but he doesn’t know how. He’s immature and even younger than he looks, so he hasn’t learned to keep his temper in check. He’s not very good at making friends.”
I wasn’t either and I felt a niggle of shame since I was older than I looked and should have learned better by now. “I do know how that goes.”
Mindy gave a tight smile. Then she picked up a napkin and asked me for a pen. “I’ll give you the address where you can find Jordy. He won’t be able to talk to you, but someone there may.”
As she wrote the information down I watched her. “I have one other question,” I said.
She nodded without glancing up.
“Have things been . . . strange around the market lately?”
“Strange? This place runs on strange.” She raised her head. “What sort of thing are you really after?”
“I mean has it seemed haunted or like there have been more accidents or that things are unsettled lately?”
“Oh,” she said, her eyes lighting with recognition. “There has been more . . . disturbance than usual. It feels like . . . something’s broken. People are snappish, strange events have become more common—it’s always odd here and some people won’t work in the main arcade when that sort of thing starts happening. I won’t, for one.”
“Why?”
Mindy studied my face in silence before she answered. “Spirits. You can feel them, sometimes, watching you. All the people who lived on the bluff before the market was here, all the people who’ve been here since. Usually they’re just there, and it’s no problem. But sometimes—lately—they seem . . . agitated. Ever since Jordan was hurt. Do you think the ghosts are mad about that?”
“I don’t know. But there was a monkey in the office this morning and I was told things have been going badly a lot. I just wondered if that was a widespread impression.”
She peered at me, her half smile holding steady. “It’s not an impression. It’s true. What made you think of it?”
“I met a woman named Mae. . . .”
“Purple skirt, beer can hat?”
I nodded, watching her closely. She returned my intense gaze.
“That was Lois Brown. They called her Mae West because of her bosom and her salty language. She used to be a regular in the market and she lived in one of the low-income apartments here until she died in 1995. Her ashes were buried under the white plum tree in the secret cemetery. The tree put out purple blossoms after that until they pulled it up in 2007. There were a lot of other people buried there—Indians, other market people. Since they started working on the tunnel, the tree they planted there hasn’t bloomed. If you saw Mae, maybe she’s not the only one of those buried in the market who can’t rest.”
