Many Bloody Returns Part 20

He glanced back at the burning mall. "Well," my brother said. "I suppose it's the thought that counts."

Grave-Robbed P. N. Elrod P. N. Elrod has sold more than twenty novels and as many short stories and is best known for The Vampire Files series, featuring undead detective Jack Fleming. She's cowritten three novels with actor/director Nigel Bennett, has edited and coedited several genre collections, and is an incurable chocoholic. More news on her toothy t.i.tles may be found at www.vampwriter.com.

CHICAGO, FEBRUARY 1937.

When the girl draped in black stepped in to ask if I could help her with a seance, Hal Kemp's version of "Gloomy Sunday" began to murmur sadly from the office radio.

Coincidences annoy me. A mournful song for a dead sweetheart put together with a ceremony that's supposed to help the dead speak with the living made me uneasy-and I was annoyed it made me uneasy.

I should know better, being dead myself.

"You sure you're in the right place?" I asked, taking in her outfit. Black overcoat, pocketbook, gloves, heels, and stockings-she was a walking funeral. Along with the mourning weeds she wore a brimmed hat with a chin-brus.h.i.+ng veil even I couldn't see past.

"The Escott Agency-that's what's on the door," she said, sitting on the client chair in front of the desk without an invitation. "You're Mr. Escott?"

"I'm Mr. Fleming. I fill in for Mr. Escott when he's elsewhere." He was visiting his girlfriend tonight. I'd come over to his office to work on his books since I was better at accounting.

"It was Mr. Escott who was recommended to me."

"By who?"

"A friend."

I waited, but she left it at that. Much of Escott's business as a private agent came by word of mouth. Call him a private eye and you'd get a pained look and perhaps an acerbic declaration that he did not undertake divorce cases. His specialty as an agent was carrying out unpleasant errands for the unable or unwilling, not peeking through keyholes, but did a seance qualify? He was interested in that kind of thing, but mostly from a skeptic's point of view. I had to say mostly since he couldn't be a complete skeptic what with his partner-me-being a vampire.

And nice to meet you, too.

Hal Kemp played on in the little office until the girl stood, went to the radio, and shut it off.

"I hate that song," she stated, turning around, the veil swirling lightly. Faceless women annoy me as well, but she had good legs.

"Me, too. You got any particular reason?"

"My sister plays it all the time. It gets on my nerves."

"Does it have to do with this seance?"

"Can't you call Mr. Escott?"

"I could, but you didn't make an appointment for this late or he'd be here."

"My appointment is for tomorrow, but something's happened since I made it, and I need to speak with him tonight. I came by just

in case he worked late. The light was on and a car was out front...."

I checked his appointment book. In his precise hand he'd written 10 am, Abigail Saeger. "Spell that name again?"

She did so, correct for both.

"What's the big emergency?" I asked. "If this is something I can't handle, I'll let him know, but otherwise you'll find I'm ready,

able, and willing."

"I don't mean to offend, but you look rather young for such work. Over the phone I thought Mr. Escott to be...more mature."

Escott and I were the same age but I did look younger by over a decade. On the other hand if she thought a man in his midthirties

was old, then she'd be something of a kid herself. Her light voice told me as much, though you couldn't tell by her mannerisms and

speech, which bore a finis.h.i.+ng school's not so subtle polish.

"Miss Saeger, would you mind raising your blinds? I like to see who's hiring before I take a job."

She went still a moment, then lifted her veil. As I thought, a fresh-faced kid who should be home studying, but her eyes were red- rimmed, her expression serious.

"That's better. What can I do for you?"

"My older sister, Flora, is holding a seance tonight. She's crazy to talk with her dead husband, and there's a medium taking

advantage of her. He wants her money, and more."

"A fake medium?"

"Is there any other kind?"

I smiled, liking her. "Give me the whole story, same as you'd have told to Mr. Escott."

"You'll help me?"

"I need to know more first." I said it in a tone to indicate I was interested.

She plunged in, talking fast, but I had good shorthand and scribbled notes.

Miss Saeger and her older sister, Flora, were alone; their parents long dead. But Flora had money in trust and married into more

money by getting hitched to James Weisinger Jr., who inherited a tidy fortune some years ago. The Depression had little effect on them. Flora became a widow last August when her still-young husband died in a sailing accident on Lake Michigan.

I'd been killed on that lake. "Sure it was an accident?"

"A wind s.h.i.+ft caused the boom to swing around. It caught him on the side of the head and over he went. I still have nightmares about the awful thud when it hit him and the splash, but it's worse for Flora-she was at the wheel at the time. She blames herself.

No one else does. There were half a dozen people aboard who knew sailing. That kind of thing can happen out of the blue."

I vaguely remembered reading about it in the paper. Nothing like some rich guy getting killed while doing rich-guy stuff to generate

copy.

"Poor James never knew what hit him; it was just that fast. Flora was in hysterics and had to be drugged for a week. Then she kept to her bed nearly a month, then she read some stupid article in a magazine about using a Ouija board to talk to spirits and got it into her head that she had to contact James, to apologize to him."

"That opened the door?"

"James is dead, and if he did things right, he's in heaven and should stay there-in peace." Miss Saeger growled in disgust. "I've

gotten Flora's pastor to talk to her, but she won't listen to him. I've talked to her until we both end up screaming and crying, and she won't see sense. I'm just her little sister and don't know anything, you see."

"What's so objectionable?"

"Her obsession. It's not healthy. I thought after all this time she'd lose interest, but she's gotten worse. Every week she has a

gaggle of those creeps from the Society over, they set up the board, light candles, and ask questions while looking at James's picture. It's pointless and sad and unnatural and-and...just plain disrespectful."

I was really liking her now. "Society?"

"The Psychical Society of Chicago."

Though briefly tempted to ask her to say it three times fast, I kept my yap shut. The group investigated haunted houses and held sittings-their word for seances-writing their experiences up for their archives. Escott was a member. For a buck a year to cover mailing costs, he'd get a pamphlet every month and read the more oddball pieces out to me.

"The odious thing is," said Miss Saeger, "they're absolutely sincere. When one has that kind of belief going, then of course it's going to produce results."

"What kind of results?" "They've spelled out the names of all the people who ever died in the house, which is stupid because the house isn't that old. The man who supervises these sittings says that's because the house was built over the site of another, so the dead people are connected to it, you see. There's no way to prove or disprove any of it. He's got an answer for everything and always sounds perfectly reasonable."

"Is he the medium?"

"No, but he brought him in. Alistair Bradford." She put plenty of venom in that name. "He looks like something out of a movie."

"What? Wears a turban like Chandu the Magician?"

Her big dark eyes flashed, then she choked, stifling a sudden laugh. She got things under control after a moment. "Thank you. It's

so good to talk with someone who sees things the way I do."

"Tell me about him."

"No turban, but he has piercing eyes, and when he walks into a room, everyone turns around. He's handsome...for an old guy."

"How old?"

"At least forty."

"That's ancient."

"Please don't make fun of me. I get that all the time from him, from all of them."

"I'm sorry, Miss Saeger. Are you the only one left in the house with any common sense?"

"Yes." She breathed that out, and it almost turned into a sob, but she headed it off. The poor kid looked to be only barely