Ghost on the Case (Bailey Ruth #8)(4)

A huge moon silvered a separate frame garage. A small sedan was parked in the drive. The air was chilly. I gauged the temperature in the high fifties. I rather felt that it was late October or early November. Even in darkness, the trees looked as if the branches were mostly bare. I changed into a gray cashmere pullover, navy wool slacks, and ankle boots.

Susan took a moment on the back steps to gaze about. Did she perhaps have a nosy neighbor? After that quick check, she slipped quietly down the stairs. Leaves crunched beneath her feet as she crossed the yard to the car.

I was settled in the front passenger seat when she slid behind the wheel. The car was immaculately kept though obviously an older model. I missed the days when I was a gadabout in Adelaide. Cars were simple to recognize. You drove a Ford or a Chevy or a Dodge. If you rubbed shoulders with the upper crust, you glided in a Lincoln or Cadillac. In my recent forays to Adelaide, I’d gained some familiarity with the plethora of modern cars. All I could say with certainty about Susan’s car was that it was modest, in keeping with her home, and likely ten or twelve years old. How did I know? She put an actual key in the ignition and there wasn’t a little screen set above the radio. I knew I was distracting myself from the panic that emanated from the rigid figure beside me. She gripped the steering wheel tightly with gloved hands.

I didn’t like the gloves. It might be early November and chilly, but no one needed gloves. I didn’t like her dark garb. I had a feeling of foreboding right up there with ravens wheeling in the sky or the scrape of a dungeon door. I especially didn’t like the car backing from the drive without headlights. The car eased into the street. Susan hunched forward. Peering out into the moonlit street, she drove without lights.

I almost put out a hand then steeled myself. No doubt her progress would end in a jamming of brakes if an unseen hand gripped her arm. Perhaps her stealth was caused by fear for the safety of Sylvie, whom she called Silly. Sylvie was in danger, and Susan was setting out to do something that might assure her safety. This was not the time for me to intervene. I hoped her actions saved Sylvie, but I remembered Wiggins’s somber Impossible Situation.

I leaned forward in the passenger seat, still unseen. Yes, I can appear, but the Precepts for Earthly Visitation are clear on the subject: “Become visible only when absolutely necessary.” That instruction was rather a sore point between Wiggins and me. It isn’t that I am eager to appear. Oh. Honesty requires full disclosure. I will admit I like being visible. I like being on earth, a twenty-seven-year-old redhead eager to help. I will also admit I often appeared on past missions, but in those instances I’d not felt I had a choice. Oh. Was that always true? Not exactly. Perhaps Wiggins was hovering near. I’ve never been certain whether Wiggins actually knows my thoughts at any given moment or not. Just in case, I repeated the Precepts silently to myself as the car turned a corner.


PRECEPTS FOR EARTHLY VISITATION


1. Avoid public notice.

2. Do not consort with other departed spirits.

3. Work behind the scenes without making your presence known.

4. Become visible only when absolutely necessary.

5. Do not succumb to the temptation to confound those who appear to oppose you.

6. Make every effort not to alarm earthly creatures.

7. Information about Heaven is not yours to impart. Simply smile and say, “Time will tell.”

8. Remember always that you are on the earth, not of the earth.

Susan turned on the headlights and pressed the accelerator. As the car picked up speed, we passed modest bungalows and small frame houses. I recognized the one-story frame home where my beautician had lived. A few houses down was the home of the gawky, pimply faced paperboy who faithfully delivered the Gazette and the Oklahoman promptly at five every morning. He grew up to be a lawyer and went on to a distinguished career as a federal judge. That stucco home with a tiled roof was the home of soft-spoken, kind Maisie Whistler, who worked in my dad’s drugstore.

Susan swung onto a wide street and started up a hill. I don’t know how it is in most small towns, but the best homes in Adelaide are on high ground. We drove around a clump of willows, and I spotted some familiar homes. The car continued up the hill, curved to the right. Susan slowed, perhaps because cars were parked on both sides of the street. Lights blazed from a Mediterranean mansion set far up on the hillside. The circular drive was filled with cars. Susan drove perhaps a quarter mile past the drive. She flicked off the headlights as she turned the car into a narrow road.

In the pale wash of light from the dashboard, her face was set. There was no mistaking the tight urgency that propelled her or the barely lashed panic rigidly held in abeyance.

I knew where we were. The mansion blazing with light and the drive filled with cars had once been the home of an Adelaide oil baron, Luke Torman, and later of his ebullient widow, Celine, who had a taste for younger men and loved to rhumba. The house was indeed high on the hill and separated from neighbors by a thick wood. The road we now traveled led to a private lake behind the house.

The dark was so intense in the wooded area that Susan turned on the fog lights, which provided enough illumination to follow the blacktop road past a cabin to a deserted parking area near some picnic tables. Susan nudged the car into the shadow of a pavilion. When she turned off the motor, she tucked the keys into a pocket, pulled out the leather gloves, slipped them on. She opened the glove compartment, grabbed a pencil flashlight.