Part 36 (1/2)

”Man with an ax. Ballroom music. Weird piling on weird.”

”You need some sleep.”

The corners of his mouth twisted up into a fair approximation of a smile. ”Not arguing. There's people who say that Caulfield House is haunted.”

”There's people who say the moon landings never happened.” She shoved her chair out and stood. ”There's people who swear to all kinds of strange s.h.i.+t. Some of them are even straight at the time. Come on, let's get out of here.”

”I . . .” Jack stared at his monitor a moment then he shrugged and shut down. ”Yeah, you're right.”

”I often am.” Waving good night to the team processing a very stoned hooker, Geetha herded her partner out of the squad room. ”Mind you, I'm not arguing that it's weird, all those deaths in the one house.”

”That wasn't all of them. In the twenties, Creighton Caulfield's aunt, who inherited the house, died, along with a visitor, after drinking cyanide-laced tea.” A pause to sign out with the desk sergeant, then Jack continued as they headed out the door and across Deer Lake Avenue to the lot for personal vehicles. ”In 1906, one of Caulfield's maids, a Lucy Lewis, shoved a male servant down the stairs and then hung herself.”

”Hanged.”

”What?”

”I think that when people do it to each other or themselves, it's hanged.”

”Okay, hanged herself.”

She grinned, hearing his eyes roll in the tone of his voice. ”That's a lot of dead people. Why isn't this better known?”

Standing by his truck, Jack rubbed a thumb and forefinger together. ”Money talks. Money also tells you to shut the f.u.c.k up.”

”Yeah, I guess.” Geetha unlocked her driver's door-probably the only car on the lot without an electronic key-and paused, one foot up on the running board. ”What happened in the teens?”

Jack leaned out and stared at her over the top of the driver's side door, hair and skin the same pale gold under the security light. ”When?”

”The nineteen-teens. Death every decade up to the seventies except for in the teens.”

”Right. Well, according to Constable Luitan's notes, in 1917, a year after his only son died-of natural causes,” he added quickly before Geetha could ask, ”Creighton Caulfield disappeared.”

”Disappeared?”

Jack nodded.

She snorted. ”Well, that's cliched.” When he clearly had no idea of why, she rolled her eyes. ”For a haunted house.”

”Who said the house was haunted?”

”You . . .” Her brows dipped as she ran over the conversation. ”Okay. Fine. Get some sleep, Jack.”

”And you.”

But she sat in her car for a moment, watched him drive away, and remembered the expression on Tony Foster's face when Jack had jokingly asked if he thought the house was haunted.

Knew that Jack remembered that expression too.

Tony hadn't liked the library when he'd gone into it earlier and he liked it less now. There were shadows lingering in corners and on empty shelves that had nothing to do with the light thrown by his open laptop sitting on the hearth. After last spring's adventure, lingering shadows were not on his list of favorite things. These weren't the same kind of shadows. And that didn't help. h.e.l.l, if even Mouse could sense bad s.h.i.+t in the library, where did that leave him?

Sweat ran down his sides and the pattern burned into his chest itched under the onslaught of damp salt.

”I am Oz, the great and powerful!”

The library seemed unimpressed.

”Right. And don't look at the man behind the curtain.” He had no idea of just what exactly he was doing, but at least, this time, he was only risking himself.

”Look, Peter, the replays are happening so close together now that anyone who goes with me-Amy or . . . you know . . .”

To give Peter credit, he didn't pretend not to know.

”. . . is going to be on their own. I mean, I'll be there, but I won't. . .”

A raised hand had cut him off. ”I get it.”

”If the thing in the bas.e.m.e.nt figures out I'm looking for Caulfield's journal, it could try to stop me.”

”How?”

”No idea, but if it's got half a brain, it'll go after the . . ? the um . . .”

”The nonwizard.” Peter nodded. ”Very likely.”

”So I think I should do this by myself.”

”I agree.”

”Come on, Peter, you can't. . .” Tony went back over the conversation. ”Wait; no argument?”

”No. And Tina wants you to check on Everett while you're out there.”

The lights came up-midafternoon by the lines of sunlight not pouring through the matte-black window gla.s.s-and Tony could hear convulsing and china shattering next door in the drawing room. There were books on the shelves, but the room looked dusty, unused. Felt unwelcoming. Not to the Amityville ”Get out!” level, but it wasn't a room he'd linger in by choice.

With A True and Faithful Relation of What Pa.s.sed for Many Years between John Dee and Some Spirits snuggled up next to The Confessions of St. Augustine, he suspected the shelving would give an actual librarian heart failure. He wouldn't have minded taking a look at a scuffed copy of Letters on Natural Magic, but his fingers pa.s.sed through the spine as though it wasn't there. Or more specifically, he wasn't there.

During the previous replay, while dance music had filled the house and he'd had to force himself to stop moving to the beat-”Night and Day” was back at the top of the play list- the shelves had been filled with leather-bound books on law and business. Anything that might have belonged to Creighton Caulfield was long gone. Anything except the huge mahogany desk that continued to dominate the far end of the room.

People had clearly died in the drawing room years earlier than they'd died dancing since these books were obviously Caulfield's. There were as many in French and German as in English and a depressing number of them looked like journals. Who'd notice one more? The perfect hiding place. Tony was up on the ladder peering at the badly worn t.i.tles on a set of three dark-red volumes when the lights went out.

Fade out the past. Fade in the present.

”Ready camera one,” he sighed as he climbed carefully to the floor. ”Take two.”

It seemed a safe a.s.sumption that the darkness lingered where the really nasty books had been. Most of them were clumped around Caulfield's desk-which emanated a distinct nasty all of its own. Retrieving his laptop and setting it down on the seat of the desk chair, Tony told himself he'd best make the most of the ten minutes or so he had until Lucy's replay and his one chance to find the journal during its own time.

The top of the desk and the drawer fronts had all been re-finished to a high gloss and as he reached for the center drawer's ornate bra.s.s pull, his reflection shot him a look that clearly asked if he was sure he wanted to do that.