Chasing Rainbow, Page 31

  Jake rocked back on his heels, thinking that Harvey was entirely too eager to cancel the seance—eager enough to do a number of things that could get him arrested. And that whetted Jake’s curiosity considerably. “Well…” he said slowly, “I can see you did the stuff with this magnet. But you want to tell me how you put the furniture on my ceiling?”

  Harvey hadn’t thought about that, but he had an answer anyway. “Trade secret.”

  “Mmm. And what about all the other stuff that’s been happening? You sure didn’t use a magnet to dump a plastic watering can of water on my head?”

  “Wires,” said Harvey, having the sense not to elaborate.

  “Really.” Jake was unimpressed. “I didn’t find any wires.”

  “That’s the trade secret,” said Harvey, who had suddenly realized that he was walking on thin ice. He had the distinct feeling that his explanations weren’t doing the trick.

  “And why did you do this to begin with?” Jake asked. “What was the point?”

  They hadn’t called him “The Brain” for nothing. Harvey hadn’t even considered that question, but he had no doubt he’d come up with something. His thoughts scurried frantically around, looking for a suitable excuse, and finally produced one. “Urn… to lower property values?” It came out as a question, and that was when he realized he was doomed.

  “Tell you what, Harvey,” Jake said pleasantly— too pleasantly. “You come to the seance in the morning, and pay for the repairs to this unit, and I won’t call the police. But if you don’t show up tomorrow morning, I’m going to lodge a complaint against you. And don’t forget that Abe is a witness to what you did in here.”

  Harvey whitened, terrified. “I can’t do that,” he said hoarsely.

  “Why not? It’s just a seance. What do you have to be afraid of?”

  But Harvey couldn’t answer. It had finally dawned on him that there was no way out. Either way, he was a doomed man.

  And for the first time in his life, Harvey Little, a-k.a. Herbie Moroney, considered the possibility that he wasn’t as brilliant as he’d thought.

  Twenty

  “I M GETTING MARRIED,” GENE ANNOUNCED AT breakfast. He was wearing a shirt that proclaimed, “I’ll stack my memories up against your toys any day.”

  Three women, all hunkered over their teacups and looking as if the morning had come hours too soon, turned their heads and gaped at him.

  “I’m getting married,” he repeated with a big grin. “Nellie said yes last night.”

  Roxy groaned. “Gene, don’t do this to me!”

  His grin faded. “Do what to you? I’m the one who’s getting married!”

  Roxy put a hand over her eyes. “I can’t handle this! First that Mary Todd woman, now this!”

  “Mother,” Rainbow said, “I hardly mink Gene’s announcement is in the same category.”

  “Yes, it is! Now he’ll want me to be happy for him! I couldn’t be happy for anyone this morning. I’m still too drained from that fiasco, and I need every ounce of energy I have if I’m to get through the seance this morning!”

  “Mother,” said Rainbow, “it really doesn’t take any energy to be happy for someone else. Happiness expands your energy.”

  She rose from the breakfast bar and went over to give her uncle a big hug. “I’m thrilled for you, Uncle Gene. Don’t mind Mother. She’s been drowning in self-pity ever since Mary Todd’s seance. Are you and Nellie going to live here? I hope?”

  He hugged her tightly and smiled down at her. “Part of the time. We’ve decided to keep both our homes and shuttle back and forth.”

  “Wonderful!”

  Dawn agreed. “I’m so happy for you, Uncle Gene.”

  “He’s a traitor,” Roxy said. “After all these years, he’s going to get married. He swore he never would.”

  “That was before I met Nellie. Come on, Rox, be happy for me.”

  “Well, I am. Or I will be when I get this awful seance behind me. I can’t imagine how I was so foolish as to agree to it! A room full of people—oh, it’s never going to work!”

  Still moaning, she went to get dressed for the big event. When she emerged from the bedroom a half-hour later, she was wearing a purple silk caftan, and a spangled matching turban, carefully pulled down so that it covered every last wisp of her orange hair.

  “Well, let’s go,” she said impatiently. “I want to get there early enough to get a sense of the building’s aura before the people start crowding around me.”

  After putting Dawn’s steno equipment in the trunk, they all piled into Gene’s rental car, which was bigger than Rainbow’s, and headed for the Paradise Towers. Rainbow had to hand it to her mother—the woman’s mood improved with each block they drove, and by the time they arrived, Roxy Resnick was fully on her mettle. No one would have guessed that less than an hour ago she had been depressed and complaining.

  Jake was waiting for them in the lobby. Ignoring Roxy’s glare, he gave Rainbow a hug and a quick kiss in greeting. The brief, chaste embrace and kiss left Rainbow feeling as if she were floating on a cloud. She felt a silly smile stretch across her face.

  “I set things up in the rec room,” Jake said. “It’s over here.”

  The room was large, with one wall of windows giving a view of the beach and the Gulf. Bridge tables filled nearly half the room, and ping-pong tables had been folded up and pushed to the walls to clear the other half. The chairs had been set up as for a theater, all facing a dais with a long cloth-covered table.

  “I thought Roxy could sit at the table,” Jake said. “But I wasn’t sure. Don’t you need everyone to hold hands?”

  Roxy sniffed. “I’m a channeler, not a table tipper.”

  “Oh.” Jake clearly didn’t understand the difference, and Roxy didn’t bother to enlighten him. “Dawn, set up your machine wherever you like. Rainbow, will you sit with me?”

  Dawn set her stenography equipment up right in front of the dais, and pulled a chair over to sit on. Rainbow obeyed her mother’s summons to sit at the table beside her, giving Jake an apologetic look. He returned a rueful shrug.

  Roxy folded her hands in her lap and closed her eyes, drawing deep, slow breaths as she centered herself. Rainbow waited patiently while Roxy sought calm. Minutes ticked by and the Towers residents began to find their way into the room. They moved with surprising quiet, Rainbow noticed, as if they were in church. One by one and two by two, the seats filled nearly to capacity.

  Roxy’s breathing had grown very slow and shallow, indicating to Rainbow that her mother was going into a trance. It was too soon! They hadn’t even given the usual introductory speech. She looked at Dawn and saw that Dawn recognized it, too, and was looking worriedly at their mother.

  Just then the Dustbuster brigade arrived, all five of them, under the leadership of Colonel Albemarle. Since their last gathering, they had a adopted a uniform similar to the colonel’s: khaki shirts and shorts. Only Albemarle wore a pith helmet, and he removed it as he led his men into the room.

  He formed them up and faced them. “Men,” he said, “ghosts are going to be called on today. I want you to station yourselves around the room—”

  “Quiet!” Roxy barked, in a voice far deeper than her own.

  A shiver ran through the assembly, and looks were exchanged.

  “I beg your pardon,” Albemarle started to say stiffly, but he was silenced again.

  “Be quiet,” said the low, booming voice that issued from Roxy’s mouth. “The woman is in trance! Don’t disturb her!”

  Rainbow recognized the British accent of Mustafa, one of her mother’s guides. Mustafa was an Oxford-educated Lebanese who had been killed by a bomb in Beirut. He was the most helpful of her mother’s guides, but he could also be a pain in the neck when he chose. She hoped he wasn’t in a contrary mood today.

  Colonel Albemarle positioned his men more quietly. They stood in the corners of the room, Dustbusters at the ready.

  Jake suddenly spoke. “Rainy? Ca
n you ask your mother to wait a couple of minutes? We’re missing someone who promised he’d be here.”

  Mustafa answered. “Go get him,” he said imperiously. “He will be the focus of today’s session.”

  Jake froze a moment, looking at Rainbow for explanation. She shrugged.

  “Back in a minute,” he said. “If he hasn’t already left town.”

  “He’s in his flat,” Mustafa said. “He won’t want to answer the door, so I suggest you threaten to call the police.”

  “I never would have thought of it,” Jake said drily. He left the room.

  Mustafa/Roxy looked at Rainbow. She felt the chill she always experienced at the way her mother’s eyes seemed to change in trance, becoming darker. “Give your mother the blue crystal,” he said. “It will help her focus.”

  Rainbow thought Roxy was doing quite well without any assistance, but she opened Roxy’s handbag and took out the large silk bag that contained her mother’s crystals. Drawing forth a sapphire one, she put it in her mother’s hands. The woman’s fingers immediately clamped around it.

  “That’s better,” Mustafa said. “Now we wait.”

  Jake returned five minutes later, holding Harvey Little by the collar of his shirt. Harvey looked terrified, and kept saying, “Please, please, anything but this!”

  Jake shoved him into a seat in the front row. As soon as he let go, Harvey jumped up and tried to run. Jake grabbed the back of his shirt and returned him to his seat.

  “Need some help there?” Albemarle asked. Pointedly, he swatted his swagger stick against the palm of his hand.

  “He’s going to sit right here. Aren’t you, Harvey?”

  Jake said. “Because if you try to get away again, I’m calling the police.”

  A murmur went up from the assembled residents.

  “Don’t you think you’re being a bit too harsh?” someone asked. “You really can’t force the man to come to a seance.”

  “Oh, yes, I can,” said Jake. “Call it one of the terms of his probation.”

  Harvey blanched even more, if that was possible, and scrunched down in his seat.

  “But he hasn’t done anything!” a woman in black said.

  “Yes,” said Abe Levinson, rising to his feet, “he certainly has. And if you ask me, Jake is letting him off easy.”

  “But what did he do?”

  Jake shook his head. “I promised not to tell if Harvey behaves.”

  Harvey shrank even more, but managed to say defiantly, “I don’t believe in this crap. It’s all bullshit.”

  “Language, language,” Jake said warningly. “There are ladies present.”

  “Just a bunch of old biddies,” Harvey grumbled, ignoring the glares from the other residents.

  “If I were you,” Jake said pleasantly, “I’d shut my mouth before I got ridden out of here on a rail.”

  Harvey scowled at him, but subsided.

  “We are ready,” Mustafa said.

  Every eye in the room fixed on Roxy.

  “Joe and Lucy are here,” Mustafa announced, after a pause.

  A murmur passed through the room like the sigh of the wind in the trees.

  A man stood up. “How are we supposed to know you’re not lying?”

  Rainbow tensed, wondering if Mustafa would take offense. He was usually so easily offended.

  “He’s not lying,” said a stentorious voice from the door. Mary Todd toddled into the room, leaning on her cane, an evil smile on her face. “Take it from me. You don’t want to piss off this ghost.”

  An uncomfortable laugh spread through the room.

  Mary went to the front, taking the vacant chair next to Jake. “Sorry I’m late, Mustafa,” she said to Roxy. “My golf cart battery died and I had to call a cab.”

  Roxy inclined her head. “Good morning, Miss Todd.”

  “I take it you’re not as annoyed with me as Roxy is.”

  “By no means. I enjoyed the party at your house. My hostess, however, is still in a snit.”

  “Can’t say as I blame her,” Mary said with a laugh.

  “It’s usually unwise to practice deception.”

  “Well, I can’t say I won’t ever do it again.” Mary’s head bobbed in emphasis. “I take my kicks where I can get them.”

  But Roxy’s head was sagging, and her breathing was growing deep again. Rainbow glanced at her sister and saw that Dawn was watching their mother attentively. Impatient rustlings began to fill the room as the silence lengthened, and Rainbow wondered if her mother was going to continue, or disappoint everyone by corning out of trance.

  But just as the impatient audience began to whisper among themselves, Roxy’s head lifted.

  “Well,” said the familiar voice of another of her guides, “a crowd of white oppressors.”

  “Red Feather!” said Dawn in dismay.

  A smile stretched across Roxy’s face. “I don’t get out nearly enough,” she said in the easy, slightly accented voice of her Indian guide. “I used to be Roxy’s favorite. Then that stupid Mustafa showed up.”

  “You’d get out more if you’d behave yourself,” Dawn said sternly.

  “I told you it was all bullshit,” Harvey grumbled. “She got nothin’ to say.”

  “Shut up,” said Jake.

  Rainbow looked at him, her heart sinking. Red Feather’s interruption of Mustafa was hardly likely to convince Jake that her mother was anything other than a fake. He’d come a long way in his attitude toward these things, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t regress if this seance dissolved into a circus.

  Even as she felt her stomach sinking, a shimmer began to appear in the air in front of Harvey Little.

  “I am not bullshit,” Red Feather said.

  “Men!” Colonel Albemarle barked. “Get your weapons ready.”

  Harvey stared at the patch of shimmering air in front of him and leaned as far back in his chair as he could.

  “Red Feather, no,” Dawn said. “Please don’t!”

  But Red Feather was on a roll. The shimmering air began to glow with a purple light.

  “Weapons?” Red Feather repeated. “If you want weapons…”

  The purple patch of light grew suddenly, shifting and changing like an amoeba until it finally resembled a large Dustbuster, at least four times as big as any carried by Albemarle’s cronies. Moments later a purple hand grew out of it, holding the handle.

  “No,” said Dawn.

  “Yes,” said Red Feather.

  The ghostly Dustbuster floated in the air, then began to move toward the colonel. “Shall we duel?” Red Feather asked.

  “Men!” the colonel barked, his voice cracking into an undignified squeak. “Turn on your machines!”

  At once five Dustbusters whined to life, all of them directed toward the glowing apparition.

  “Close in,” the colonel ordered.

  The five men began moving toward the glowing Dustbuster that seemed to pulse with an unearthly power. Meanwhile, residents began scrambling out of their chairs to move to the farthest reaches of the room.

  “Somebody’s going to get hurt,” Dawn said. “Red Feather, you have to stop this!”

  “This spook is a man right after my own heart!” Mary Todd said.

  The ghostly Dustbuster turned toward her and bobbed, as if nodding.

  Meanwhile, the Colonel’s brigade moved in.

  All of a sudden, the glowing Dustbuster charged toward one of the men. He jumped back instinctively at the same moment his Dustbuster died. Red Feather’s booming laugh filled the room.

  “Your puny weapons are useless,” Red Feather chortled.

  “Red Feather,” Rainbow said sternly, rising to her feet, “you stop this right now, or I’m going to wake Mother up!”

  The ghostly Dustbuster paused in midair.

  “You heard me,” Rainbow said. “Cut it out, or I’ll wake her!”

  “You’re no fun,” Red Feather complained, but the manifestation was dissolving in air, vanishing e
ven as he spoke. Then it was gone.

  “Now let Mustafa come back,” Rainbow continued sternly. “We’re here for information, not games.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” said the ghost impatiently, but Roxy’s head dropped to her chest again, and her breathing slowed.

  “It’s all right,” Rainbow said to the group. “You can go back to your seats. He likes to show off, but he can’t hurt anybody.”

  “I don’t know if I can believe that,” said one man. “Not with the way things have been flying around my condo. I even got beaned by a pillow.”

  “He’s gone,” Rainbow insisted. “It’s safe now.”

  In small groups, everyone returned hesitantly to their seats. The men with the Dustbusters shrank gladly back to the edges of the room and turned off their machines.

  Colonel Albemarle looked uneasy. “I guess they don’t work, after all.”

  Harvey snickered, but shut up when Albemarle glared at him.

  Jake spoke. “Everybody, settle down, okay? Let’s just see what happens.”

  “Easy for you to say,” Harvey muttered.

  But then Mustafa spoke again, silencing everyone else in the room. “Joe and Lucy are here. They want their friends to know they are well.”

  Harvey groaned. “How dumb can you get? Anybody could say that.”

  Mary Todd reached around Jake and poked Harvey with the end of her cane. “Be quiet, boy. Some of us would rather listen to the spooks than you.”

  Harvey rolled his eyes.

  “Joe and Lucy are well and happy,” Mustafa repeated, emphasizing each word, as if impatient. “They were called before their time, but they have no regrets.”

  Nellie Blair stood up. “I hope that’s true. Before she died, Lucy was happier than I’d ever seen her.”

  “And she’s still happy. She says she would send you another vase full of dried flowers if she could. But it was she who played the games with your watering can.”

  “Really?” Nellie brightened.

  “What I want to know,” said Zach Herschfeld, “is why they’ve been driving us crazy with all this stuff.”

  A murmur of agreement arose from the assemblage.