The Dead Room (Harrison Investigation #4)

He accepted the notepad from her. “I’ll do everything I can,” he told her.

She picked up the teacup before her on the table, her eyes distant. She drank what must have been very cold tea by then.

“I’m very sorry about your cousin,” she said softly.

“Thank you.” The words took him by surprise, though he knew instantly what she meant.

“His death was a tremendous loss to the city, but for you, of course, it was very personal, and I extend my sincere condolences.” Her eyes began to water. “I was there that night, you know,” she murmured.

“I didn’t know,” he said.

“I learned later that Gen would have been interested in going. In retrospect, I’m glad I didn’t know in time to invite her. She’d met a lot of people involved through the years. She had a lot of close contact with the police—being a social worker and all. And she knew Greta through me, of course.”

Joe couldn’t help himself. He leaned forward. “What do you remember about that night?”

“The lights, the music, the beautiful clothing, the glamour…I was in the entryway when the explosion occurred. They rounded us up and got us out immediately. I remember standing on the street and just being incredulous. I remember the sound of the sirens, the ambulances, the paramedics…and the body bags,” she said. “I am so, so sorry.”

“Thank you. Eileen, do you remember anything strange at all?” he pressed.

She gave him a pained smile. “You lost someone you loved, so you want there to be a reason, a better explanation than a gas explosion. No, I’m sorry. It’s all a blur. I was chatting, there was a noise like thunder. Someone was screaming ‘fire,’ people were panicking…the cops came and we were all ushered out.”

Joe nodded. Just what had he been hoping for?

“Thank you,” he repeated.

Her eyes met his, and her words were desperate. “I have to find Genevieve, Mr. Connolly. Please help me.”

Although her posture still seemed so regal and aloof, he reached across the table and laid his hand on hers. “I will do everything I can,” he told her solemnly.

She almost smiled. And then she turned her palm up and gripped his hand in return. Her touch was strong, and as desperate as the sound of her voice.

They talked for a few minutes longer about Genevieve, and as the girl in the picture began to come to life for him, Joe began to make mental notes as to exactly where he would begin his investigation. First he would go over the basic police work. Then he would move on to where the police, by virtue of their sworn duty, could not go.

There were others in the house.

He knew that from the beginning.

At first it was only a vague sense of awareness. They paid him no mind, seemed not to see or recognize him, but even so, he was aware that he was not alone.

There was the woman in the kitchen, for one. She was always by the hearth, stirring something in what he imagined had been a pot over an open fire. She was pretty and young, and wore Colonial garb, including a little mobcap on her head. He wasn’t sure if she had been an illicit mistress or a servant, but she hummed in a pretty voice as she stirred. Every so often she would suddenly straighten, her face pinching into a mask of pain. She would turn around, and her eyes would widen, and then she would fall…and fade away.

There was the soldier in the entry. He staggered into the house, mingled with the misty form of another individual. He would whisper something about a betrayal, and then he, too, would fall and fade away.

He didn’t want to be one of them. He didn’t want to spend eternity standing by the hearth in the servants’ pantry, laughing pleasantly, looking across the room…and then disappearing in the memory of an explosion.

After a while he realized that in addition to playing out their final moments over and over again, they did more. They recognized one another, though they might not have come from the same time. They mingled now and then.

While he…

He didn’t need to worry about eternally haunting the servants’ pantry. He couldn’t even manage that much. He could only be…aware.

So why was he there? Just to ache? Just to yearn and fear constantly for the woman he had loved? Damn it. Not fair. He’d lived his life as a decent man.

Others had died with him, so where were they? He didn’t have any sense of them whatsoever.

He saw the workmen. Heard them talk. Perhaps it should have been gratifying to have even that much contact with what had once been his world. To hear their anger that he should have died in such a stupid freak accident. They had respected and admired him. Nice to know, except that he was still dead.

Then came the day when the woman at the hearth turned to look at him at last. She even gave him a little smile. Maybe he was somehow real then. She walked over, and it felt as if she touched his cheek, like a sweet sister. “It takes time,” she told him, and smiled again.

All he could whisper was “Why?”

She shrugged sadly. “Justice? Something that must be known? The man who murdered me walked free. Perhaps it’s too late and the world will never know. So much time has passed. But it’s not so horrible, really. Maybe we’re here because we’ve more to learn?”

There was a comfort in her contact. Soon after, the soldier acknowledged him, too.

Then the burning question began in his mind. Why? There had to be a reason why he was here and the others who’d died that night weren’t.

The question dominated his thoughts, filled him with the resolve to know the answer, to solve the mystery of what had happened.

Sometimes, though, he thought of Leslie. Good God, how he had loved her….

It was late when the phone ring, but Leslie wasn’t asleep. And, oddly enough, she knew immediately who it was.

“Hi, Nikki.”

“You’re getting good.”

“Nothing to do with intuition or special gifts,” Leslie said with a laugh. “It’s late, but we’ve been on the news, and I knew that you’re the one person who might be calling.”

“How do you feel?”

“Great. I got to help find closure for people, in a weird sort of way.”

“Exactly,” Nikki said.

Leslie could picture Nikki. Slim and vivacious, with brilliant blue-green eyes. She led tours in New Orleans and loved history. She loved her city, too, and was working hard to bring tourism back to New Orleans. But she and Brent had taken time out to help Leslie adjust to life with the dead popping up now and then. What had seemed like a curse had almost become a gift with Nikki and Brent so serenely at her side.

“How’s everything going in your neck of the woods?” Leslie asked.

“Step by step, but we’re coming back. So many neighborhoods are still in need of total rebuilding, but we’ll get there. And you? Everything all right?”

“Great. I think…I think we may have seen the last of the reverend.”

“Ah. Well, bless his heart. So…I guess you’re going to see to the details now? My history is a lot easier—I just talk about it. You spend hours brushing dust off yours.”

Leslie wondered why she’d thought that Nikki already knew what she was about to do.

“Actually,” she replied, “I’m going home.”

“Home…?”

“New York. I was born in the South, but New York’s been home for a long time now. There’s a new project there, a site near…near Hastings House, and I’m going to work on it.”

“Are you ready?” Nikki asked flatly.

“Yes…No…Maybe.”

“Then…?”

“I’m not sure I’ll never actually be ready. I think I just have to do it.”

The phone line was silent for several seconds, and she knew that Nikki was carefully weighing her next words. “Leslie, you do know that although we’ve come to accept certain things and learned to use our abilities to a degree, we don’t have all the answers. You’re still fragile, whether you want to believe that or not. So be careful. And don’t…don’t let yourself get trapped in the past, in what was. You’re here. You’re alive.”

“Nikki, thanks to you guys, I’m still sane and I appreciate living. It’s just that…you know how you feel when you lose someone, like there were so many things you didn’t get to say, and you want so desperately to know that everything is all right, and of course it isn’t, because the person is dead…okay, now I do sound a little on the loopy side. But…I just wish I could say goodbye, you know?”

“You can’t know that you’ll get that chance, Leslie, even if you do go back. Matt Connolly was an exceptional man. He did a lot of good in his days on earth. He might, well…he might never be seen.”

“I know that. I promise you, I’m not going home because I’m sure I’ll see him if I do. I just know I have to go on. And this is a great opportunity.”

“Want me to hop a plane on up?”

Leslie smiled. Some things were so strange. She’d had many friends when Matt had died. Nice people. But she’d found that she had to push them away a bit. Politely, she hoped. It was just that she didn’t really want to make their lives painful, and she didn’t like people tiptoeing around her feelings. She hadn’t been able to talk, really talk, to many people. But then Nikki had stepped into her life, and it had been as if she’d known her forever.

Of course, they both saw ghosts, as did Nikki’s husband, Brent. Nikki always found it amusing that most people accepted his ability to communicate with the dead more easily than hers, simply because he had Dakota Sioux in his background. Apparently that made him a more spiritual soul in the eyes of the world.

“Leslie?”

“I’m okay. And I…I think I need to be alone a bit. But later, I’d love for you to visit. I’ll show you New York as you’ve never seen it.”

“Deal,” Nikki said.