The Haunted Air Part 50

"Will do." He wriggled it out of his pocket and pressed a b.u.t.ton. She heard a beep as it activated. He glanced at the clock. "Got to go. Pick a place for dinner-anyplace but Zen Palate-and I'll tell you all about Konstantin Kristadoulou's history of the Menelaus cellar and the findings of our archeological dig down there."

Gia sighed. All secondhand, but she supposed it would have to do.

"And the key ring," she said. That was what she wanted to know most of all. "You've got to tell me what happens when you cross the threshold with that."

"Yeah," Jack said softly. "That could be very interesting. But how do you top an earthquake?"

9.

"What?" Lyle said. He couldn't believe what he'd just heard. "You're joking, right? You're pulling my chain, is that it?"

Charlie shook his head as he pulled clothes from his dresser and dumped them on his bed. He concentrated on what he was doing, not making eye contact.

"Nope. This is on the fo' real, bro. I'm geese."

First the craziness this morning with the first three sitters, seeing into their lives, their pasts, their futures-what little there was for each of them. Now this. He felt as if his world was coming apart.

"But you can't can't leave. We're a team. The Kenton brothers have always been a team. Who brung ya, Charlie?" leave. We're a team. The Kenton brothers have always been a team. Who brung ya, Charlie?"

Finally Charlie looked at him. His eyes glistened with tears. "You think I want to? I don't. We still a team, Lyle, but not in this game, yo. And not in this house."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean we bust outta here together and start all over, givin' value for value, like Jack said."

Jack... for a moment Lyle wished he'd never heard of him.

"You mean dump the game?"

"Word. And yo, the way you playin' the game lately, y'know, cancelin' sitters up and down, ain't gonna be a game left, know'm sayin'?"

Lyle winced. Charlie had a point. Lyle had canceled the morning's fourth sitting along with the whole afternoon. He couldn't handle any more. He hadn't told Charlie why.

Should he tell him now? No. It would only reinforce his determination to leave.

"But we don't know know anything else, Charlie. We'll starve!" anything else, Charlie. We'll starve!"

"No way. We two smart guys. We get by."

"Get by? Since when is getting by enough? I want to make make it, Charlie. So do you." it, Charlie. So do you."

"Not no more. 'What profit it a man if he gains the whole world but loses his immortal soul?' I wanna save my soul, Lyle. And yours too. That's why I want you to come with me."

"And if I don't?"

"Then I got to roll on my own."

"Roll on your own?" Lyle gave in to a blistering surge of anger. "Why don't you think think on your own?" on your own?"

"Say what?"

"This isn't you talking. This is that preacher down that brimstone-breathing, tongue-speaking, snake-handling wacko church you found, right?"

"We don't do no snake handlin'."

"You're such a sucker for these guys. It was the same back in Dearborn when that Reverend What-his-name-"

"Rawlins."

"Right. Reverend Rawlins. He's the guy who told you to boycott the Harry Potter movie."

"That's because it promotes witchcraft."

"How would you know? You never saw it. You never read a line of one of the books. And neither did Rawlins. He got the word from someone else who hadn't read or seen them either. But you all fell in line, marching lockstep against Harry Potter with not a sc.r.a.p of firsthand knowledge."

Charlie lifted his chin. "Don't gotta do a drive-by to know it's wrong."

"Reading a book to make an informed decision is hardly the same as shooting someone. But you're doing the same thing here. It's this preacher at this new church, right? What's his name?"

"Reverend Sparks."

"It's him, right? He's the one who's put you up to this."

"Didn't put me up to nothin'! He told me this ain't no ghost, it's a demon and it's after our souls!"

A demon? Good thing Lyle hadn't mentioned the morning's strangeness. Charlie would probably think he was possessed and try to drag him off to an exorcism.

"Has he been here, Charlie? Has he seen and heard and experienced what we have? No. Has he sifted all the evidence that points to this being the ghost of a girl murdered back in the eighties? No. He hasn't moved his a.s.s from his church down there in Brooklyn but somehow he's got a lock on what's happening in our house, knows it's not Tara Portman but Beelzebub instead. And you fall right in line and go along." Lyle shook his head, dismayed. "You're a bright guy, bro, but you put your brain on standby whenever one of these ministers opens his mouth."

"Don't have to listen to this." Charlie turned away and returned to emptying his dresser.

Lyle sighed. "No, you don't. But what about that pin on your s.h.i.+rt? WWJD. What Would Jesus Do, right? So why don't you ask yourself that? Would Jesus run out on his brother?"

"Jesus didn't have no brother."

Lyle almost said that some experts thought the apostle James was Jesus' brother, but he wasn't going to get into that now.

"You know what I mean. Would he?"

"Who you to talk 'bout Jesus?"

"Come on, Charlie. Answer me. You know he wouldn't. So how about you putting up with me for two more days?"

"Why?" Charlie didn't look up. "Why should I risk even one more minute?"

"Because I'm your brother. Because we're blood and we're the only family we have. How long've we been a team now?"

He shrugged. "Who knows."

"You know. Tell me."

"A'ight." He looked up, his face a mask of resentment. "Fifteen years."

"Right And how long've we been in this house?"

"'Bout a year. So what?"

"So, with all that behind us, why can't you give me two more days?"

"What for? Where's it go? We on a dead-end street, Lyle."

"Maybe not. Think for yourself a moment instead of letting the Reverend Sparks do it for you. Help me dig around that cellar."

"No. Uh-uh. That's the demon's crib."

"Says who? Some guy who's never been here?"

"Reverend Sparks knows about these things."

"But he's not infallible. Only G.o.d is infallible, right? So Sparky could be wrong. Go with that a moment. What if he's wrong and what we've experienced here isn't a demon but really the ghost of a murdered child? What if we find her remains and give them back to her folks for a proper burial. Won't that be doing G.o.d's work?"

Charlie snorted and looked away. "Yeah, right. You doing G.o.d's work."

"Take it a step further: What if those remains lead the cops to her killer and bring him to justice? Won't that be a good thing? Won't that be doing G.o.d's work too?"

Lyle wanted to ask Charlie why the h.e.l.l G.o.d would let a child be murdered in the first place, but sensed his brother wavering and didn't want to blow it.

"Two days, Charlie. I bet if Jesus had a wayward brother he'd give him a couple of days if he asked for them."

Charlie shook his head as his lips twisted into a reluctant smile. "Dawg, I hear talk 'bout a silver-tongued devil, and now I see I'm related to him. A'ight. Two days and not a minute more. But this gotta be a two-way deal: Nothin' crackin' by Friday night, I'm geese and you with me. Deal?"

Lyle hesitated. Me too? He hadn't figured on that being part of the deal, but then, he couldn't go on as Ifasen without his brother. And if what had happened this morning was the start of a pattern, he wasn't sure if Ifasen had any future at all, at least in this house. So he could see no downside in agreeing to Charlie's terms.

But they were were going to find Tara Portman, or what was left of her. He could feel it. going to find Tara Portman, or what was left of her. He could feel it.

He stuck out his hand.

"Deal."

10.

"Mr. Bellitto!" Gertrude cried in her booming voice as Eli stepped through the door. "You should be upstairs resting!"

She was so right. Barbed wire raked across his groin as he shuffled toward the Carrera marble sales counter. He should have stayed put, but he'd been feeling better after lunch and a nap, and so he'd given in to the urge to see his store, examine his stock, peruse the sales book. By the time he'd reached the sidewalk he realized his mistake but by then he was beyond the point of no return: Unable to face, even with Adrian's help, the prospect of turning and challenging the narrow Everest between him and his bed, he'd pushed on.

"Nonsense, Gert." He leaned heavily on his cane as he neared the counter. "I'm fine. But do you think you could bring that stool around front?"

"Of course!" Her tightly pinned-back hair gleamed like polished onyx in the light of the overhead fluorescents. She lifted the stool as if it weighed an ounce or two and bustled her hefty frame out from behind the counter and set it before him. "There."

She gripped one arm and Adrian the other as he eased himself back onto the seat-not sitting, merely leaning. He wiped the cold sweat from his face with his s.h.i.+rtsleeve. The new clerk-what was his name? Kevin? Yes, Kevin-came over, feather duster in hand, and gawked at him.

"I'm so sorry about what happened," he said, and sounded as if he meant it.

But did he really?

Eli hires Kevin and a few days later Eli is stabbed. A connection?

Somehow he doubted it, but it never hurt to examine all possibilities.

Eli suffered through a barrage of questions from his two hirelings about the attack; Adrian gave his spiel about loss of memory, leaving Eli with the task of supplying answers. He tossed off curt, oblique responses until he'd had enough.

"I realize this is our slow season," he said, "but surely you two must have something better to do."

Both immediately buzzed off-Kevin to continue dusting the stock, Gert to continue entering new inventory into the computer. Adrian wandered away, browsing the aisles.

"How are receipts, Gert?" Eli said.

"About what you'd expect." She picked up the black ledger and extended it toward him. "As you said, it's the slow season."

August was always sluggish, and sputtered to a dead stop by Labor Day weekend when the city became a ghost town.

Eli opened the old-fas.h.i.+oned ledger-he preferred seeing handwritten words and numbers on paper rather than a computer screen-and scanned through the day's scant sales. His eyes lit on one item.

"The sturgeon? We sold it?"

He'd had that stuffed monstrosity sitting in the window since he'd opened the shop. He'd started to believe it would be there when he closed the place.

"I not only sold it, I got the tag price for it." Gert beamed proudly. "Can you believe it? After all these years I do believe I'm going to miss that ugly old fish."

Eli flipped back to Tuesday, the day the green clerk had been here alone, literally and figuratively minding the store.

He was almost afraid to look. To his surprise he saw a fairly long list of sales. It seemed Kevin had risen to the occasion. Maybe the boy- Eli froze as his gaze came to rest on a line that read: Key chain-$10-Jack Key chain-$10-Jack.