A Question of Ghosts Read online

  “What is it, Becca?” Jo sat back on her heels, turning a tiny screwdriver to tighten a recessed screw in the radio.

  “There’s a funny energy between us.” Becca hoped she wasn’t making a mistake. Khadijah said Becca’s willingness to confront elephants in the room was admirable, but this elephant was Joanne Call. “We’ve had a couple of moments, lately. In the cemetery, and just now, in the car. I think I’m starting to feel some attraction to you, Jo.”

  Jo kept working, her long fingers nimble and sure on the machine. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “What?”

  “Your attraction to me doesn’t matter.” Jo positioned the radio carefully on the tabletop and adjusted its many dials. “It’s nothing we’ll act on.”

  “Okay.” Becca felt a flare of embarrassment, which didn’t surprise her, followed by a pang of disappointment, which did. “We won’t act on this attraction because we’re working together? Or because I’m alone in feeling it?”

  “Becca, what difference does it make?” Jo switched on a small screen in the box, which cast her austere features in a ghostly amber glow. It was an unfortunate effect that rendered her almost alien. “I don’t sleep with the subjects in my studies. That’s a basic tenet of ethics in any credible research.”

  “Joanne, I wasn’t suggesting we ravish each other tonight on the Pendleton rug.” Becca felt her cheeks flush with heat. Even knowing Jo’s limitations, it hurt, putting herself out there honestly and meeting such brusque rejection. “I just don’t believe in ignoring my feelings when they’re this strong. Not when I believe you might share them.” Good Lord, had Patricia spiked her manicotti? What in the world was she doing?

  Jo’s back straightened slowly and she pivoted to face her, moving with the feline grace Becca couldn’t stop noticing. “You’re the most transparent person I’ve ever met, Becca, so I’ll respond in kind. I’m not capable of the kind of emotion you’re talking about. I never have been. I don’t do people. I can be your guide in this project, and your ally, even your protector. But I can’t be your friend or your lover. I’ll never be those things.”

  Jo turned back to the radio.

  Becca lowered herself carefully into the deep sofa, that strange fog surging through her again. What kind of linguistic warp was wandering through this conversation? Becca had been talking about sexual attraction. Hadn’t she? Good old red-blooded lesbian lust. They had both felt it in the cemetery, in the car, she was pretty sure of this. But Jo was telling her she was incapable of love—emotional connection, devotion, etcetera. A miscommunication of the highest order. There wasn’t the faintest possibility on the planet that Becca was falling in love with Jo. She was almost certain of this.

  They were quiet for a long while. Jo moved methodically to each of the small radios she had set up around the room, including the yellow ball that had blasted her dead mother’s voice the day before. She adjusted them until they all hissed softly with low-key, empty static, much like Becca’s brain.

  Becca waited until the grandfather clock in the corner chimed ten and her mind had settled a little. She wanted to be sure that pang of hurt had faded. There were things she needed to know now, for all kinds of reasons, but she wanted to be sure she would speak from kindness alone. “Do you know anything about Nonverbal Learning Disorder, Jo?”

  Jo’s hands stilled on the silver machine, and the corner of her mouth lifted. She smiled rarely, and Becca had never seen this particular smile. She remembered her first impression of this woman—a tall, dark wraith who seemed quite capable of cruelty.

  “Most people guess autism. You’re closer.”

  Becca nodded. “I don’t know if you give much credence to labels like that.”

  “I don’t fit forty percent of the diagnostic criteria for Nonverbal Learning Disorder.” Jo lifted a white cloth from her satchel and rubbed her hands in it. “I have no problem with eye contact or spatial awareness. I’m not physically clumsy. I’ve worked hard to compensate for my inability to read facial expressions.”

  Becca suppressed an urge to apologize, and a stronger one to offer comfort. The anger was draining from Jo’s voice.

  “I guess I give credence to the label Rachel Perry used tonight. She said some minds are too inscrutable for modern psychiatry to help. That’s the diagnosis the best of those useless doctors gave me. That’s what they told my parents.”

  “Inscrutable?” Becca remembered the stark change in Jo’s expression when Rachel used that term. “A psychiatrist told your parents you were inscrutable?”

  “Yes, when I was ten years old.”

  “And what did he mean by that?”

  “That no one would ever really know me, basically. They didn’t have your fancier diagnoses back then, all these disorders. I decided being inscrutable is preferable to being an emotional cretin, which is how another doctor described me.”

  “Jo.” Becca closed her eyes in pain. “Please tell me no doctor laid that idiocy on a ten-year-old kid.”

  “No, I was eight when we heard that one. My parents took me to lots of doctors. Luckily, my mother and father were smart enough to let me be, for the most part. They hired competent au pairs.” Jo rested her hand on the silver radio. “May I show you this? It’s something special.”

  Becca blinked, trying to shift mental and emotional gears. Jo was doubtless only capable of a given amount of personal disclosure in one night, and she may have reached her limit. She pushed her way out of the sofa and stood next to Jo at the coffee table. “There’s something special about this radio?”

  “It’s not a radio, it’s a Spiricom. Spiritually speaking, a Spiricom is to a radio what a computer is to a hand calculator.” Jo shrugged with that note of shyness that humanized her completely. “Sorry. I’ll try not to wax too rhapsodic. But this little device successfully established afterlife communication in nineteen seventy-six, and several times since. It detects signals and broadcasts them, like a radio. But it can also send signals back.”

  Becca stared at the innocuous box and its small, glowing screen. “We can send messages back? Back where, exactly?”

  “Back to the source. Wherever they came from. I’m simplifying all this terribly, Becca. But theoretically, if your mother contacts us again, if she speaks to you…”

  “Then I can speak to her.” Becca had shot heroin exactly six times in her life and not for more than twenty years, but the craving came back on her strong and sweet and hard. She clenched her teeth on an expletive and her knees went weak.

  “Becca? Maybe you should sit down.” Jo gripped her elbow and steered her back to the sofa, and Becca sat. “Your lips have gone that alarming limburger shade again. Are you all right?”

  “Limburger lips,” Becca murmured. “Sounds lovely.” The fog was roaring through her, scraping her nerves raw. She swore if her mother bellowed out of any of these infernal radios right now, the top of her head would blow off.

  “Jo, I’d only rage at her.” She looked up at Jo helplessly. “That’s all I could feel just now, when you said she might hear me. If I could talk to my mother tonight, I’d just scream at her. I didn’t know I’m still so angry. After all these years, my work with Rachel, all the insight I have into mental illness…” Becca trailed off as her throat closed, and she felt tears threaten. Again. She knew Jo was uncomfortable with such overt emotion, but she wasn’t sure she could hold them back.

  “Slow down a moment.” Jo lowered herself beside her on the sofa. She sat in stiff silence, her expression intensely thoughtful. When she spoke, she measured her words as carefully as Becca would if she were trying to describe a mathematical theorem. “It makes sense to me that a small child would rage at a parent who chose to leave her. But I’m sure you have other feelings for your mother as well, Becca. Gentler feelings. They’re just not accessible right now, given your emotional state these days.” Jo cleared her throat. “But I hope you’ll continue with this, no matter how hard it gets. The child has a right to rage, but the adult da
ughter has a right to know the truth about what happened that night.”

  The dizziness was receding, but Becca still gazed at Jo in confusion. This was the same scientist who described her mother’s dead, bullet-pierced face without a qualm. Now she was discussing human emotion with a calm logic that Becca found soothing beyond all reason. The tears that had filled her eyes subsided easily.

  Becca sighed and rested her head against the back of the couch. “You define our relationship any way you see fit, Jo. I’m going to think of you as a friend.”

  Jo looked at Becca as if she were a queen granting her an honorable but distinctly dangerous knighthood. “Well,” she said finally. “Do as you feel you must.”

  Becca grinned and took mercy on her. “You’re really expecting us to bunk down here, for the immediate millennium?”

  “Yes, I think we can make ourselves comfortable enough.” Jo looked around the spacious room. “You take this sofa. I sleep at my desk half the time anyway. I’ll be fine in one of those armchairs.”

  “Not for nights on end you won’t, but we’ll take it one stiff neck at a time.” Becca levered herself out of the deep cushion and went to the duffel bag she had dropped in one corner. “We might be able to find a blanket or two in some drawer upstairs.”

  A muffled clank emerged from the bag as she lifted it, and Jo frowned. “What do you have in that thing, if I may ask? Bowling pins?”

  Becca opened the duffel and drew out two smooth, rounded sticks just over two feet long. They were slightly thicker than broom handles, and fit in her palms with practiced ease. “These are my chobos. Mock not my chobos.” She lifted a warning hand to Jo. “They travel with me everywhere. To the beach, sometimes to the grocery store. I’m sure not sleeping here without them. I don’t think I’d have the guts to shoot anyone, but I’d happily wale the merry hell out of any burglar with these.”

  She caught Jo’s suddenly intense gaze, and her smile faltered. “Jo? What’s the matter?”

  “You referred to money as dinars earlier. And now you use the term chobos.” Jo walked to Becca slowly. “Chobos were a weapon utilized by an ancient Amazon clan. But only an Amazon clan portrayed by a late nineties television series. The term chobos does not exist outside this particular television series.”

  Jo had reached her, and her eyes still held that strange light. Becca realized why the light seemed strange to her. Jo looked happy. She reached out and clasped the chobos gently, her hands between Becca’s.

  “Becca,” Jo said softly. “You’re a Xena fan.”

  Chapter Seven

  ‘Sin Trade.’ We could be watching ‘Adventures in the Sin Trade’ instead of this.” Marty pelted another handful of popcorn at the curved glass screen of the old television. “‘Bitter Suite,’ we could be watching. Or ‘Destiny’!”

  Khadijah made a rude buzzer noise, emitting a genteel spray of popcorn, never taking her eyes from the flickering screen. “No way, baby, we’re not watching ‘Destiny.’ No episodes where Xena dies, uh-uh.”

  “That limits our choices. A lot.” Becca was curled beside Khadijah on the living room floor. “Xena died at least once a season. So we can’t watch ‘The Quest.’ Or ‘Greater Good.’ Or ‘Friends in Need.’ Or ‘Ides of—”

  “No ‘Ides of March.’” Jo laid down the law. “Gabrielle also dies in ‘Ides of March.’ Absolutely not.”

  She had never been able to abide watching Xena’s young blond sidekick suffer so much as a parchment cut. They could kill off the Warrior Princess weekly without ruffling Jo’s feathers, but Gabrielle could not be touched. Music trickled from the ancient TV, and she straightened. “Ah. This is why we’re watching this one.”

  A few moments later, Khadijah sat back on a deep pillow and sighed happily. “Oh, my. Would you looky here at lil’ Miss O’Connor.”

  Jo assumed O’Connor was the name of the actress who played Gabrielle, but the people behind the series had never held much interest for her. It was the characters who were compelling to her, the relationship. She watched Gabrielle dance slowly among a throng of painted revelers, brushing her hand lightly across her bare waist. A sweeter portrayal of a young woman’s sensual awakening didn’t exist in popular culture, elitism be damned.

  “Gabrielle’s not so little, from here on in.” Marty got it at once, which pleased Jo. “This is the first episode where she stops coming on like a pesky girl brat, and starts moving like a woo-man.”

  “Martha darlin’, you know I cherish you.” Khadijah smiled dreamily at the screen. “But if that buxom little bard ever wants to dance into my bed, you’re sleeping in the yard.”

  “Okay.”

  “Will you two shut up and let the cute little woo-man dance?” Becca crammed more popcorn in her mouth, her eyes sparkling.

  It was their second night in the house, and Becca seemed more relaxed than she had in days. That faint line between her brows was fading, despite the location and the lateness of the hour. Time with her friends was helping.

  Unless she counted the nights she had worked sleepless in laboratories with colleagues, Jo had never attended a slumber party. Tonight was taking on the tone of one. Apparently, Marty and Khadijah had brought over the entirety of the Xena series, and they were on their third episode. No one showed any evidence of tiring, either of the stories they loved or the company. Including Jo, which surprised her.

  Jo had indulged in one pop culture celebration in her life, and it was this series. She had never shared her affection for it with anyone. There were national gatherings of Xena fans, but conferences were not Jo’s thing, unless she was presenting at science or paranormal symposiums. But the way Becca’s face had lit up as they stood together last night, holding those sticks between them, this party was all but inevitable.

  Tonight, for the first time, Jo could see this living room as a place a family would gather, rather than a room adjacent to a murder scene. Lit only by the colorful light of the old TV left by previous tenants, there was no sense of gloominess in the large space. They were lounging on the floor before the TV, Becca and her friends laughing frequently, decades vanishing from their faces as they watched. It was a cozy scene, but as the dance music faded, Jo felt the beginnings of restlessness at last.

  She got to her feet quietly and stepped around Marty’s long legs, not wanting to interrupt their friendly but rather incessant chatter. The readings on the Spiricom needed regular monitoring, and she wanted to check the tuning of the radios in the room.

  “I apologize for my earlier scorn, Doc. I’m ready to salute your taste in Xena eps.” Marty lifted her bottle of pop to Jo. “Your taste in Xena episodes is now your most redeeming feature.”

  “My only one so far, I’m sure.” Jo considered even partial redemption with these friends a positive development. She hadn’t failed miserably at the Rose, but she hadn’t made the best first impression, either. She wanted to keep her promise to Becca to do better.

  “All right, what’s next?” Khadijah squirmed closer to the box of disks. “Are we wanting blood and guts? Comedy? Jo, prove you’re on a roll now. You pick.”

  “Anything that focuses on the bond.” Jo bent over the Spiricom, adjusting its frequency minutely.

  “Heavy on the subtext between X and G?” Marty brushed her palms together. “Hot dog. More rated-PG erotica for little Marty. I’ll take it.”

  “No, not the sexual subtext, necessarily, the friendship. Their love for each other.” Jo was satisfied the Spiricom was scanning well. She glanced up and caught Becca’s gaze, unexpectedly still and searching. With that new and strange familiarity, Jo could read her thoughts, the question in her mind. She spoke to Becca as if they were alone in the room. “I may not be very good at such things, that depth of friendship. I may not be able to paint a masterpiece, either. But I can still stand in front of one and appreciate its beauty.”

  Becca smiled at her, and Khadijah looked at them both and raised a sculpted eyebrow. Luckily, Marty was distracted by something she found
on the coffee table.

  “Hey, don’t forget to check this one, Jo.” She picked up the sound recorder Jo had last used at that unsavory dinner party the night before, and extended it toward her. There was a muted click, and Mitchell Healy’s curt voice crackled into the room. “I believe Rachel has explained all that, Joanne.”

  “Whoops.” Marty tried to turn the recorder off.

  Jo bit back an impatient command. “It’s all right. Here, I can take it.”

  “Tragedies happen in families afflicted with mental illness. It’s a fact of life.” Mitchell’s voice continued from the small speakers. “Pat and I see it every day in our work, and we both deal with the carnage that kind of sickness leaves in its wake.”

  “Either find the off button on that thing or let me whack it with a chobo.” Becca tossed a small pillow at Marty. Her tone was light, but she wasn’t smiling anymore. “It was bad enough sitting through all that the first time.”

  Jo was frozen in place, and Marty looked at her in surprise. “What’s up, Doc?”

  “The best treatment in the world can’t save some people,” Mitchell Healy concluded.

  “That voice wasn’t there last night.” Jo took the recorder from Marty and tapped keys rapidly.

  “What voice?” Becca asked. “That’s just Mitchell, Jo. He was really tediously there last night.”

  “Not him. The recorder captured another voice, along with your uncle’s.” Jo reversed the recording and fine-tuned the meager filters. “I’m not surprised you missed it; I only caught a moment.”

  “Mute the box, babe,” Marty told Khadijah, who scrambled for the remote and silenced the TV.

  “Jo, are you sure you didn’t hear Patricia?” There was a new stiffness in Becca’s shoulders.