Phantom Evil

Page 13

She lay very still on the bed, never sure if she was imagining, or if there was a place somewhere deep in the human soul where one could “see” what had gone on in the past.
“Annabelle!” the little boy said. He sighed and leaned over to catch the bouncing ball. “You have to drop it right where you are, or it will roll away. Look, watch me.”
The little boy dropped the ball, collected a number of jacks and caught the ball again. “See?” he said.
Annabelle nodded and took the ball from him. But her lower lip trembled. “I’m so scared, Percy. I’m so scared. I don’t like it here.”
“You don’t need to be scared. Mommy and Daddy are here; that nice man, that Mr. Newton, he’s helping us.”
“I want to go home.”
“We don’t have a home anymore, Annabelle. We don’t have a home.”
“Daddy said we were going away.”
“We will go away, unless Mr. Newton can give Daddy some kind of work. Then Daddy can work, and we can buy a house again, and we won’t have to leave our friends.”
“Our friends are all gone,” Annabelle said. “They’ve been gone since the war.”
“The war is over, Annabelle.” The little boy’s voice hardened. “We lost. So now we all have to start over again.”
Annabelle started to cry.
Percy took her into his arms, soothing her.
“There, there, Annabelle. It’s going to be all right….”
“What the hell are you doing?”
Jackson Crow’s deep voice interrupted her; the children vanished.
Angela bolted to a sitting position.
“Were you napping?” Jackson asked her, incredulous.
“No, thinking,” she told him. She rose. “What’s going on?”
“We’re going to lunch.” He might have realized that she was about to say that she would just stay in the house while they went, because he thwarted her attempt before she could make it. “It’s important. I want everyone to have a chance to connect away from here, to get to know one another as much as possible.”
She nodded. But when he turned away, she paused.
This room. She had “seen” the children here, and Regina Holloway had been here before walking out on the balcony.
And then dying.
“Angela!”
Jackson Crow was waiting for her.
“I’m going to move into this room,” she told him.
“Oh, no,” he said.
“Oh, yes. It’s going to be important that I do.”
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” he said. “I respect your abilities, but it’s just not a good idea for anyone to sleep in here. Especially not you.”
She set her hands on her hips. “I’m not depressed or crazy, and I’m not going over the balcony. I’d like to be in here. I think I may find something.”
“This is the room we’re investigating,” he said curtly.
“That would be the point,” she said.
He stared at her, irritated. “If you move in here, I’ll have to come over to this wing,” he said.
“No, you don’t have to. Adam Harrison brought me in on this for a reason,” she said with a shrug. “I think that I need to make this room my own. I think it’s important.”
“Dammit, I’m not leaving you in this part of the house alone.”
“I was a cop,” she reminded him.
“Good for you. I am the head of this team.”
“And, as such, you should use whatever talents Adam Harrison has given you. Jackson, really, I’m not mentally deficient. We are taking serious care with the alarms and the locks, and if you move over to this wing, you’ll be there to rescue me—if I need rescue. I’m not a piece of blond fluff,” she reminded him.
He looked at her for a minute. “We’re all vulnerable. Weapons don’t really change that. The most accurate shot in the world is vulnerable—”
“You’re vulnerable. Yes, I know,” Angela said.
He was quiet for a minute, studying her with his deep, intense blue eyes. She thought he was going to deny her again, insist that he was the head of the team again, and it was his way or the highway.
But he didn’t.
He let out a deep, aggravated sigh.
“All right, fine. When we get back, we’ll settle the rooming situation.”
She smiled. “That’s great. I’ll be glad to have you near,” she said.
He arched a brow. “What a smile you have when you get your way,” he noted.
“Honestly, I think it’s important,” she said.
“We have a lot that’s important on the agenda now,” he said. “Come on, let’s head out and get lunch, because the senator is due himself this afternoon. And before he gets here, I want to find out what our ghost-hunting ‘children’ intend to do with all the photographic equipment.”
Still smiling, she preceded him out the doorway.
The ballroom was empty when they reached it; she looked at Jackson.
“The kids have gone on,” he said.
Angela laughed. “They’re not all that young!” she said.
“Mid-twenties,” he said.
“Right, and how old are you—Methuselah?”
“Thirty-four.” A small smile curved into his features. “It’s not the years, kid, it’s the mileage.”
“Amen,” she murmured, waiting as he set the alarm and then locked the house. “Where are we going?”
“Maspero’s—you know it?”
“I do,” she told him.
As they walked, she said, “You think that Mama Matisse gave us a lot of good information this morning, right?”
“I think she gave us a great deal. I think Whitney might have mentioned that she was coming.”
“I think that Whitney would have done so—had she actually had a chance,” Angela said.
“Perhaps,” he acknowledged.
“The police must have interviewed the maids after Regina was found. Do you think the cops are trying to hold out on us—that they just want it to be a suicide?”
“No. I think the police believe that they came to an end on possibilities. They did interview the maids. You heard Mama Matisse. What could the maids have told them—since they weren’t going to talk about seeing a ghost? So, as far as it appeared, the house was locked up. Tight. The alarms were on. There was no sign of a struggle on Regina Holloway’s body.”
“But do you believe that one of these cults or groups or whatever that hate the senator might be involved?”
“It’s possible. But Regina Holloway didn’t open her door to anyone, I’m certain.”
“What do you think about the ‘ghost’ Rene saw in the hallway?” Angela asked.
“Might have been a ghost in her mind. Or there might have been someone in the house,” Jackson said.
“But she said that the ‘ghost’ vanished,” Angela said.
“It’s really the ‘locked room’ mystery. What do you believe about the power of suggestion?” he asked.
“I think that it can definitely have power,” she told him.
“A tremendous power,” he said. “Take a fortune-teller. The fortune-teller says something—and the prophecy can be self-fulfilling.”
“In other words, say that a house is haunted, and you’ll find a ghost?” Angela asked.
“Something like that.”
“So you don’t believe in a haunting at all?” Angela asked.
“I never said that—I believe that we’re all haunted in one way or another,” he said. “To the left, to the left, Miss Hawkins. You’re wandering off on me. The restaurant is right over there.”
Maspero’s was open and easy, right off the square and popular with tourists. The food was reasonable and good, and the kids had already gotten them a table. The two were seated together on one side, leaving Angela and Jackson the two chairs on the other.
They’d already ordered appetizers and passed around plates of shrimp and onion rings and boiled crawfish. Angela realized she was starving and helped herself to the offerings. The group ordered the rest of their meals, and when food arrived and they’d started eating, their conversation turned back to the task at hand.
“What’s next?” Jake asked.
“This afternoon, we’re expecting a visit from the senator,” Jackson told him. “And, sometime tonight, Jenna and Will are going to arrive, and our team will be complete.”
“What do Will and Jenna do?” Angela asked him.
“Jenna is a nurse—Irish,” Jackson said, shrugging. “And Will is an actor and a musician—an illusionist.”
“How interesting,” Angela said. “You were a profiler, working in the field. I was a cop. Jake is a musician—”
“And a computer wizard and sound engineer,” Jackson interrupted.
“Ah,” Angela murmured.
“And now we’ll be getting an illusionist—and a nurse,” Whitney said. “And, then, of course, you have me. An expert with cameras, film and what’s fake on them and not.”
“The nurse must be coming in case we injure ourselves—tangled up in film or sound equipment,” Jake said, grinning.
Jackson kept quiet. Angela thought that there had to be another reason they were getting a woman who was a nurse. She looked at Jackson, but he just said, “Will has gained a tremendous reputation for his illusions. He was asked to do a show for one of the paranormal TV networks. He turned it down.”
“That’s interesting,” Whitney said. She looked around at them all, and then sighed. “Jackson must know this—I was working for a cable program—and I was accused of doctoring the film to create an effect. And I didn’t, and I was furious that anyone would think that I had. Anyway, I probably should have just said that I did it, let everyone have a laugh and gone on to get back to work. But I didn’t doctor the film, and the film wound up disappearing, and I quit before I could be fired.”