“I don’t think they have those kinds of programs anymore,” Nina replied.
Gretchen addressed her aunt. “Why don’t you use your psychic powers to help us out? It’s worked in the past. Can’t you put out a distress call?”
“Mayday, Mayday.” April giggled.
“I can’t perform on demand. Messages come in randomly, and they aren’t one hundred percent reliable.”
“Walk backward,” April suggested. “I heard it helps stimulate psychics.”
“The exercise isn’t about walking backward. I’m supposed to think backward,” Nina said. “And it isn’t appropriate for this case.”
“What if you held an object and concentrated,” Caroline said. “Would that work?”
“Like what?” Nina asked, looking doubtful.
“I know,” April said around a cheek filled with burger. “A piece of the skeleton would be good. Except I’m sure the police removed it from the house.”
“Yuck. I’m not touching any dead person’s bones.”
“It should be something connected to the victims,” Caroline said.
“What about the photograph?” Gretchen said, remembering that she had a copy of it in her purse.
“I held it before and didn’t feel a thing.” Nina drained her soda and set it down on the stage floor. “But I’m pretty sure the killer is male.”
“We already suspect a man,” April said. “That isn’t useful information.”
“What’s your reason for believing it’s a man, Nina?” Gretchen wanted to hear everyone’s conclusions. Maybe something would jump out at them. Other than ghosts.
“I think a man killed Allison and the same man is after you, because I have trouble ‘reading’ men.” Nina held her fingers up in quotation marks. “When we went near that neighbor’s house, I got a powerful incoming message. And there was a reason for it. They knew something important, yet disturbing. Women are easy. Men, I can’t do.”
“In other words,” Gretchen said for clarification, which tended to be a difficult task when dealing with Nina, “when we found the bones in the wardrobe, if the corpse’s killer had been a woman, you believe that you would have known that through a feeling or a message.”
“Right. But I didn’t, so it’s a man.” She glanced around the group. “I think.”
Gretchen heard footsteps overhead.
“Mr. B.,” April said, shifting her eyes to the ceiling.
Heavy shoes banged down the stairs from the apartment above. A moment later, Mr. B. entered the room. “Thought I heard something down here,” he said. “What are you doing rehearsing on a Saturday night?”
“We’re not,” Caroline said. “We’re just going over some of the finer points.”
“Four good-looking women like you should have dates.”
After a couple minutes of polite conversation he left, banging back up the steps, leaving behind the scent of cherry pipe tobacco. Gretchen sighed. Mr. B. was right. She should be out with Matt.
What was all this drama doing to their relationship?
Did they still have one?
37
The four women reflected on the stories about Flora’s son Richard related to them by Nora and Bea Wade.
“Does mental disease run in families?” April asked when the story was over.
“Genes account for so much,” Caroline said.
“That’s right.” Nina stroked Tutu from the canine’s seat of power on her lap. “Look at our family. We’re spiritual and we have special abilities.” She glanced sharply at Gretchen. “If only we’d accept them.”
Caroline, the oldest, was the most knowledgeable about psychiatric procedures practiced in the seventies and eighties.
“Shock therapy was big,” she said. “And could be given against a patient’s will.”
“I’ve seen it in movies,” April added. “Patients were strapped down to tables with no anesthesia and all those wires attached to their bodies. Then the seizures. I can’t even think about it without feeling faint.”
Caroline nodded. “Electroshock was used to treat depression.”
Gretchen had done her Internet homework. “And schizophrenia.”
Nina chimed in. “Anybody with emotional problems in those days was labeled schizophrenic.”
“That’s correct,” Caroline said. “The label was overused. But as far as electroshock goes, we learned at the library that over a million people each year still receive it. Of course, now the procedure is voluntary.”
“Who would do that?” April said. “How creepy.”
Gretchen was overwhelmed by the amount of information they’d discovered. “I think everything we’ve discussed tonight should remain between us.”
“What happens in the banquet hall,” April said with a grin, “stays in the banquet hall.”
“Seriously,” Caroline said. “Very soon, we’ll go to the police.”
“Where do we go from here?” Nina said.
Gretchen looked over at her mother. She didn’t like the plan they had concocted on the way over in the cab. It had been her mother’s idea, and Gretchen couldn’t really see the point, but she didn’t have a better idea.
“Here’s our idea,” she said, jumping into what she was sure would be extremely hot water.
38
When the women leave the banquet hall, Jerome rises up from behind the stage curtain and stretches out his cramped muscles. Lucky for him, he heard them fumbling around with the lock and whispering. If they’d found him asleep in a stage chair, he’d have been screwed. In the nick of time, he took a dive behind the stage and didn’t move a single muscle.
They stayed long enough to worry him, his body complaining like all get-out, but he remained in a frozen position. How much longer could he do it?
As long as it takes, he said in his head more than once.
He sure heard an earful, though. Man! Craziness, he thinks, is in the eye of the beholder. It’s shifty. Who gets to decide? Other crazies?
He heard the whole thing from beginning to end, and now he’s in the driver’s seat again. He is back on track, just like the strip of lighting he installed over the stage.
For a time there, he’d lost their trail. But Jerome’s a smart guy. He knew they’d show up at the building eventually. He’s good at waiting, like when he’s after a bird. Cats are the same way, although he hates cats, for what they do to birds. But he’s an observer of behavior, and cats know how to get what they want.
It’s only a matter of who has the most patience.
He rummages through the garbage in the break room, pulling out the burger bags and eating what he can find, pieces of bun, a little hamburger meat, bits of lettuce. Finished with the scraps, he wipes his hands on the gray overalls. He decides right on the spot that he likes to wear this one-piece outfit. The pockets are wide and deep, perfect to fit a bird inside.
Weapons and birds are his fields of expertise.
Everybody’s special in some way, if you just take time to find it and accept it. You don’t have any control over some things, so go with the flow, he always says, and make use of your skills.
The women left some coffee in the pot, lukewarm, but hey, beggars can’t be choosers.
He pours a little for himself, using the same cup that Gretchen Birch drank from, the one with her name on it and little dolls dancing around the rim. He can smell her scent right along with the coffee smell, and it is as rich as cream.
Jerome inhales, enjoying himself immensely, satisfied with life.
He isn’t in any kind of hurry.
Because he knows exactly where they are going.
39
April and Nina, along with their canine entourage that included Nimrod, would spend the night at Brandon’s house. Under different circumstances, Gretchen would have found humor in the situation. Brandon Kline hadn’t known what he was getting into when he began dating Nina. This family came with a lot of baggage, most of it living and breathing, and Nina was throwing all her curveballs at him at once.