looking for me, it’s because they want something,” I told him though I shouldn’t have had to. If he knew I had the Gift, he knew that much about me already. “Most of them want me to solve their murders, but I know that’s not what you’re looking for. Marjorie, she says—”
“Mr. President.” Ignoring me completely, a middle-sized man carrying an armload of papers walked up to the president. He was younger than the other men in the room, but he was dressed as formally as the rest of them including the president himself, in a black suit coat and vest, gray pants, a white shirt with a stiff collar, and a narrow bow tie. The man had a long, angular nose. There was a pair of glasses with no side arms pinched onto the bridge of it. His sandy-colored hair was parted down the middle and he had a mustache. It was fat and bushy, like a caterpillar.
“We’re nearly ready to begin, Mr. President,” he said. His voice was polished smooth, like an actor in a cheesy Shakespeare production. He tapped the pile of papers he carried. “However, there are some small matters we should take care of before you begin your meeting. There are some papers which need to be signed, and —”
“Excuse me! Talking here.” I mean, really, did he expect me to just disappear into the woodwork because he wanted face time with the president? I gave the young, pushy guy a sharp look.
He kept right on going as if I wasn’t even there. “. . . and I really would like to get these taken care of today, Mr. President, if you wouldn’t mind. There are a great many details and—”
“Hello!” He might be acting like I was invisible, but that didn’t mean I had to put up with it. I stepped forward.
It’s hard to miss a five-foot-eleven redhead in an emerald green dress. He did a pretty good job of it, and just kept talking. “. . . and there are certainly a great many things for you to discuss at your meeting today. There’s no need for you to fret about these few small matters, so I will gladly take care of them for you. If you could simply sign these papers, Mr. President—”
“All right, now you’re just being rude.” I waved a hand in front of the man’s face.
And he never once shut his mouth. “. . . I will see to it that everything is taken care of and leave you to your morning’s work.”
I gave the president a
“That is Jeremiah Stone,” the president said when the young man walked away. “He’s an excellent aide, an eager fellow, anxious to keep the business of state moving apace. He is impatient, of course, as all young people are.”
“And pretty rude, to boot.” If he wasn’t going to mention it, I figured the least I could do was point it out.
“No, no. It is nothing like that.” President Garfield turned to face me. “Do not think unkindly of Mr. Stone. He is neither ill-mannered nor cruel. If he had even an inkling that he had slighted a young lady, he would certainly be most perplexed. He and the others . . .” He looked toward the men seated around the table. “They have all crossed over, you see. They are all firmly on the Other Side. They are not being rude in the least, they are simply oblivious to your presence.”
“But they can see you?”
“That’s correct.” He inclined his head.
“And you can see me.”
Again, he nodded.
“So I can communicate with you, but not with them. And they can communicate with you, but not with me.”
“There, you have laid out the whole thing quite compendiously.” I had no idea what that meant, but since the president smiled, I guess it was a good thing. “Since they are on the Other Side, they can have no communion whatsoever with the living. Now, miss . . .” Like I’d seen the characters do in boring costume dramas, he gave me a quick bow. “As you heard Mr. Stone say, there is much work to be done, and I cannot be kept from it longer than I should be. After all, I am—”
“The president. Right. But hey, I’m not the one keeping you from anything. You’re the one who showed up to see me. Which means they might have crossed over . . .” I looked at the men around the table, then shifted my attention back to the president. “But you haven’t. Which explains why you’re hanging around looking for me. But you can’t want your murder solved. Marjorie, she says they found the guy who killed you. They hung him.”
“Hanged.” He said this in the way a teacher would to a student who didn’t get something, even though the teacher thought it was pretty simple. “There never was any question who shot me. It was Charles Guiteau, of course. I imagine the history books report the facts most competently. The villain waylaid me at a train station in Baltimore. He admitted his crime immediately after shooting me. He never denied it at all. In fact, I would say he was rather proud of having delivered the shots which ultimately resulted in my passing.”
“Then if you know for sure it was this Guiteau guy, you don’t need me to solve your murder.”
“Of course not.”
Jeremiah Stone was back. He shifted from foot to foot, expressing his impatience without having to say a word.
“One moment,” the president told him before he turned back to me. “I do not actually need anything from you,” he said. “And yet . . .” He pulled in a breath and let it out with a sigh. If he had been alive, it would have rippled the mist around us, but since this was one dead president who couldn’t get any deader, those stray wisps just hung in the air between us. “There may be something you can do for me, Miss Martin. I am reluctant to ask, seeing as how you are a woman and it is hardly respectable as it is not within a woman’s responsibilities to handle such matters.”
No way I was going to let that pass, not even from a president. “Things are a little different now than they were back in your day,” I told him. “Since you’ve heard of me and you know I have the Gift, you must also know I’ve handled a whole bunch of stuff that was—”
“Yes, yes. Such unpleasant matters. We will not speak of them.” Apparently that was that, because he got rid of the subject with a shake of his broad shoulders and looked me up and down. “I fear that I am trying to do two things: dare to be a radical and not a fool, which is a matter of no small difficulty. It is therefore no easy thing for me to remember that, in your world, women are more free to do things for which they might not be deemed qualified for or prepared for by way of upbringing, intellect, or temperament.”
Had I just been dissed? By a president?
I wasn’t sure, but I wasn’t taking the chance. If I’d been in my stocking feet, the president and I would have stood just about eye to eye. In my Jimmy Choos, I had the advantage and I took it. I looked down at him. “I’ve heard that back in your day, some women had jobs,” I said, as innocent as can be. “I heard about one who was a reporter for the
“Really, Miss Martin!” The president’s beard twitched.
“Though I am trying to be progressive and learn to live with the reality of women working out in the world, I have yet to reconcile myself to women—or anyone else—discussing inappropriate subjects. In order for our relationship to progress in a manner that is both appropriate and mutually beneficial, you must certainly remember that.”
“In order for our relationship to progress in a manner that is . . .” No way I could remember the rest of it, and I screeched my irritation, not to mention my frustration, and cut to the chase. “How about if you just tell me what you want.”
“Well, there is one small problem.” He seemed almost embarrassed to mention it. “It does not, of course, make me waver in my resolve to execute the duties of my office, but it does make it devilish hard to—” He caught himself and cleared his throat. “You must excuse me, Miss Martin. I have not had the singular pleasure of communicating with a member of the fairer sex for some time, and I am afraid I have forgotten my manners. What I meant to say, of course, is that taking into consideration your more tender sensibilities as a weaker vessel—”
“No wonder history always put me to sleep!” I couldn’t help myself, I had to interrupt. If he kept yammering on, I was going to jump out of my skin. Maybe the old guy and Marjorie were related after all. That would explain why they were both so boring. “It takes you so long to answer a simple question, how did you ever get anything accomplished?”
“Oh, I got a great deal accomplished during my administration. Which is quite remarkable, you will agree,
