Defending the Dead (Relatively Dead Mysteries Book 3) Page 4

  “I don’t want to rewrite the history, Ned. I just want to see where the whole idea of witchcraft fits. Why people were so afraid of it. Why such an accusation could have such dire consequences. And whether any of my people or yours played any part.”

  “Fair enough. Go for it!”

  “That’s what I plan to do,” Abby said firmly.

  4

  The steamer proved easy to operate, Abby found when she tackled the back parlor walls the next morning. Add water, plug it in, press it against the wallpaper, peel. Repeat. There was still a lot of gooey paste involved, but at least it could be washed off. She set herself a goal: finish this room, and then she could indulge herself in some genealogy. Maybe “indulge” wasn’t the word she wanted, since she really was doing this to arrive at a better understanding of phenomena that were not easily explained or widely shared. She did want to help Ellie, and she was pretty sure there wasn’t some simple book like Psychic Phenomena for Dummies available. Even if there was, would such a book help? Was there any book of that kind that had been written by someone who actually possessed that ability and knew it from the inside? It was one thing to assemble a catalog but something else altogether to describe what each one felt like.

  The longer she thought about it, the more Abby came to feel that these abilities kind of fell into two major categories: the benign, even silly side, like fortune-tellers at carnivals or people who read cards after a few drinks or tokes at a party; and the darker side, the one that frightened people. Did people really believe that someone could cast an evil eye at you and make you sick? Or put a hex on you and bring you bad luck? What about superstitions? Did believing that walking under a ladder would bring bad luck make you clumsier walking under one, thereby bringing it down on your head and fulfilling your expectations? And black cats? She’d known plenty of black cats in her life, and they were as variable in personality as any tabby. None of them had seemed evil.

  She needed facts. If facts there were. She needed to see historical accounts, even if they were biased by the conventions of the day. She needed to take herself to the epicenter of the witch trials and see if she could pick up any bad vibrations—or any more, if she was right about what hints she’d felt on her first foray to Salem. Seriously, Abby? That last corny phrase made her laugh out loud. Right, she was going to go hunting for witches, modern style. What happened to a witch when he or she died, according to the beliefs of the late seventeenth century? If the body died, did the evil spirit inside die with it? Or did it hop to a new host?

  But of course, there were no evil spirits, she reminded herself. Once she would have said that dead was dead, period. Now she was less sure, but she hadn’t felt anything bad lingering among the departed people she’d seen, just ordinary people in times of great stress—mostly grief or fear.

  Would she sense something evil if she visited the site of Salem Village, which she hadn’t seen yet? Had something soaked into the earth and the stones and the houses that she would be able to see or feel? Evil was real—she could see that on the news every night. Evil had always existed, and didn’t appear to be going away anytime soon. Did she really want to go hunting for fear and hatred and malice? Based on ignorance?

  Abby, you really need to get out of the house more! The weather had turned warm and sunny, which was a huge contrast to the very difficult winter they’d had in Massachusetts. She should be out enjoying it. Well, if she could, because if she went outside and studied the house critically by daylight, she’d start cataloguing the things that needed to be done: fix the roof, putty all the windows, replace the missing bits of gingerbread trim, paint everything, shore up the wooden porch and fill in the missing rails, put in better paths than the patchy gravel ones that had survived the snow, and, oh, yes, garden. And Ned seemed oblivious to it all. Men. How could they not see it? Probably the same way they couldn’t identify a psychic phenomenon when it was under their own nose. Or maybe in their nose. Abby giggled at the thought, even though it made little sense.

  So, her plan for the day: do as much as she could in the back parlor, and then map out her research and find the best place to look for information. A lot she could do online, she knew, but she wanted—needed—to get out more, and the computer would still be there at night. She did have one strategic question: should she start with one or another of her own family lines, or should she just take herself off to Danvers and see what she could see, cold? Family, she decided, because that had worked best, or been strongest, so far. Or maybe a combination. She’d filled in the latest two or three generations of her tree, but to get back to 1692 she’d have to add a whole lot of generations. On the plus side, there should be plenty of information available for the small population of that area, since researchers and visitors had been combing through the records for three centuries.

  She should find a modern witch. Whoa, Abby, where did that come from? There was no reason for her to think that someone who claimed to be a witch—or more properly, Wiccan, today—would have any connection with what had happened in Salem Village. Was there? What was a witch, actually?

  Those thoughts kept her entertained as she steamed and peeled, and by skipping lunch she had finished clearing the walls in the back parlor by two o’clock. It was a good stopping point, so she collected all the scraps littering the floor and stuffed them in a trash bag, then stood in the large doorway between the two rooms and studied the results. Minus all the busy wallpaper patterns and the grunge, the lines of the space emerged. The two parlors together made an impressive space, punctuated by large windows. Six feet high, they must be, and no storm windows outside, no curtains inside, although there was a wealth of painted-over brackets that spanned decades at least. The Victorians apparently hadn’t worried about heating bills, or maybe they’d just worn more layers of clothes. Or they kept moving. The front room had only one heating grate, embedded in the floor, and one cold-air return. All the heat must rise to the high ceiling and sit there, doing the shivering humans below no good at all. My, how times had changed! Abby was afraid to look at the heating bills, but they must be astronomical for a house this size, with all those uninsulated drafty windows.

  Satisfied that she had accomplished at least one tangible thing, Abby cleaned up her tools, drained the steamer and headed for the kitchen for something to eat. She gulped down a sandwich, then opened her laptop to start ancestor hunting.

  She was still a novice at genealogy, she knew. She hadn’t grown up listening to family members pass on tales of great-great-grandpa’s escapades in the Civil War, or how some seven-times-great aunt had gone batty and lived in the attic for the last half of her life. Her parents really hadn’t been interested in all that old stuff. It was only when her mother had delivered to her a chair that had belonged to her great-grandmother Ruth Pendleton and she had sat in it that she’d felt that jolt, which she described to herself as a bolt of lightning, and her peculiar ability had first emerged. She’d hinted around it to her mother, but her mother had shown no recognition. Abby had finally deduced that the ability could skip generations without being lost, and her mother was one of those skips.

  In Ned’s family his mother, Sarah, had apparently passed on the ability with her son, but they’d never acknowledged it until Abby had come on the scene. She often wondered how many more people had some degree of “seeing” but either worked hard to suppress it early or felt they couldn’t talk about it with anybody. Sometimes she almost wished that Ned could come up with some sort of electronic sensor that could detect who did or did not have it. He was more likely to come up with a DNA test someday, but that would require a biological sample, which might be hard to get. She smiled to herself, trying to imagine a scenario when someone would stop a stranger and ask, “Would you like to know if you’re psychic? All we need is a DNA sample.” Most likely it wouldn’t end well.

  So where to start? She had a pretty clear tree for those first relatives she’d found, the Reeds, who were buried in nearby Concord. She should start
with the earliest one she had and work backward. And if that didn’t produce any results, maybe she could start with the “accused” witches of Salem and work forward, for those who had had children.

  She was flexing her fingers, ready to dive in, when the land line rang. At the moment there were only two phones: one in the kitchen and one in the only usable bedroom on the second floor. It hadn’t been inconvenient because it seldom rang. Ned received most of his calls on his cell phone, and Abby didn’t receive many calls at all. She didn’t recognize the number when she reached the phone—another telemarketer?—so she answered cautiously. “Hello?”

  “Abby?” A child’s voice, tentative, unsure.

  She knew only one child. “Ellie, is that you? Is something wrong?”

  “No. Well, sort of but not really. I’m kind of lost.”

  “Wait, you aren’t in school? Or after-school care?”

  “I should be.” Several beats passed. “Mom won’t let me see you. She won’t even talk about you.” Another short silence. “I miss you.”

  “I miss you too, sweetie, but you have to do what your mother wants.” Or she’ll kill me, Abby thought, but didn’t say it to Ellie. “So where are you now?”

  “Lexington.”

  Oh, hell. “How did you get to Lexington, sweetie?” Please don’t tell me you hitchhiked.

  “I took a school bus. I knew where to get on the right bus, and where to get off for Lexington. But I don’t know where your house is.”

  Worse and worse. Ellie had ditched school or day care or wherever she was supposed to be to come see Abby. That was going to make Abby real popular with Leslie. “I’ll come get you. Where are you right now?”

  “The bus stopped by the big green near the library.”

  Well, that was a plus—it was only a block away. “Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be right over—I’m real close. And I’d better tell your mom where you are. She’s still at the museum, right?”

  “I guess,” Ellie said. She didn’t sound enthusiastic about the idea, but why should she?

  “Okay, then, I’ll let her know, and then I’ll come get you.”

  “Promise?”

  “I promise. Five minutes. I’m hanging up now so I can call her. Okay?”

  “Okay.” Ellie ended the call.

  Abby glared at the phone still in her hand. Oh, damn and blast. She had to admire Ellie for knowing what she wanted and taking steps to get it. How had she even found this phone number? But what Ellie didn’t realize was that there was nothing that could infuriate her mother more than Ellie running off to find Abby. Leslie would pitch a fit and then try to have her arrested for . . . something. Not kidnapping, exactly. Alienation of affections? Did that apply only to children and parents, or married couples? Abby, you’re stalling. Call Leslie.

  With a sigh she punched in Leslie’s office number. Leslie answered promptly, although she probably had no idea that her daughter was AWOL. “Leslie Walker,” she said briskly.

  “Leslie, it’s Abby.”

  “What do you want?” Leslie’s voice was cold. Abby hadn’t expected anything different.

  No sense in making pleasant chitchat. “Your daughter is apparently sitting on the Lexington Green waiting for me to meet her. Before you go off the deep end, I knew nothing about this until she called me three minutes ago.”

  There were several moments of deep silence on Leslie’s end. Finally she said, “I’ll be there in ten minutes. Meet you at the green.” She hung up.

  Well, it could have been worse, Abby thought. She gathered up a sweater and went out the front door to walk over to the green. When she reached the nearest road, which ran along one side, she could see Ellie sitting on a bench, looking small and vulnerable. She was a child, and not even a very tall or stocky one. Almost waiflike. She could see something of Ned in the child. She realized she hadn’t called him, but she thought she should get to Ellie first. Besides, Ellie had come to her, not him. And if she had problems with Leslie, she wasn’t going to hide behind Ned. They had to work this out between themselves, preferably without Ellie watching the whole battle.

  “Hi, Ellie,” Abby called out as soon as she was close enough.

  Ellie stood up, wavered a second, then ran to Abby and threw her arms around her. Very unlike Ellie, who was usually reserved, especially for someone of her age. This excursion must have been hard for her. What had triggered it?

  Even as Abby thought, she was aware of the link with the child that physical contact gave her. Ellie was scared. Angry. She didn’t understand what was going on. She’d just started thinking about this ability of hers, and then her mother had pulled the rug out from under her. Abby was the only person Ellie knew who understood and could help her. All this came through in a flash, but the jumble of emotions had started ebbing as soon as Ellie had reached Abby.

  Finally Ellie stepped back. “I’m sorry. Mom is going to be really mad, but I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “Tell me what happened, Ellie. But let’s sit down here first. I called your mother and she’s on her way over, and she’ll meet us here.” Funny, Abby hadn’t offered to meet Leslie at the house; they would be out in the open, in a very public place. Was she scared too? “Don’t worry—I’ll explain things to her. But was there something that made you come looking for me now? Did something happen?”

  Ellie looked down at her feet. “Mom and Dad were fighting. I couldn’t hear all of what they said, but they were loud. And I think it was about you. Did my dad come to see you?”

  “Yes, he did, and we talked. Is that what the fight was about?”

  “I think so. Anyway, Mom wasn’t happy about it. She said if she had her way, nobody in the family would ever see you or Ned. But that’s not fair, is it?”

  Abby was torn. She didn’t want to go against Leslie, but she thought Leslie was acting out of fear and anger, and that she wasn’t thinking of her daughter’s best interests. But what did Ellie mean, exactly. “What’s not fair, Ellie?”

  “Mom doesn’t see them. You do. She doesn’t understand.”

  Okay, that was it—exactly what Abby had been afraid of. How to explain it to a smart child who could see more things than most people? But she was a child. “You’re right. But it’s up to us to make her understand.”

  “This isn’t going to go away, is it.” It wasn’t a question.

  “I can’t be sure, but I don’t think so. You can pretend it’s not there if you want—that’s up to you. But I think it would be better for everyone if you don’t hide anything from your mother. She loves you very much, and she wants what’s best for you. She just doesn’t know what that is yet. And this scares her.”

  “I guess,” Ellie said reluctantly, watching her mother approach. In a quiet voice, she told Abby, “I’m kind of scared too.”

  5

  Nowhere to hide. Abby stood up and waited for Leslie to come nearer. To her credit, Leslie went straight to Ellie and folded her in her arms. “Never, ever do that again, Ellie. You can’t just go off when you feel like it. How the . . . heck did you pull this off?”

  Ellie refused to look at her. “I took a school bus—I know the one that comes here, from that time I went home with Sandy, remember?”

  “Yes, but we arranged that ahead of time. Why’d they even let you on the bus today?”

  Ellie shrugged. “It was a new bus driver, I guess. Nobody asked. I just got on.”

  Leslie rolled her eyes. “Your day care could have called the police when you didn’t show up, and they would have been right to do it. Do you understand?”

  “Yeah, Mom, I get it.” Ellie did the classic kid maneuver, kicking the grass along the pavement with one toe while avoiding her mother’s eyes.

  Leslie straightened up, keeping one hand on Ellie’s shoulder. “Abby. Did you know anything about this?”

  Abby faced her squarely. “Not until Ellie called me, which was right before I called you. I came straight out here after that.”

  “Does
Ned know what’s going on?”

  “No. I haven’t had time to call him. How did Ellie manage to leave the school? Or did she get to day care and leave from there?”

  “There was a lapse in communication,” Leslie said stiffly. “Which will not happen again.”

  “Is this the first time Ellie has done anything like this?” Abby was not about to let herself feel guilty: she hadn’t done anything to encourage Ellie. In fact, she’d stuck to her agreement with Leslie and hadn’t had any contact with anyone in the family, period. Except when George had appeared unannounced, but she couldn’t see him telling Ellie to play hooky.

  Leslie didn’t answer immediately, staring at Abby’s face, her expression giving nothing away. “Did she tell you why she came to you?” Leslie finally said.

  “She said you wouldn’t let her see me or talk to me.”

  Leslie kept Ellie pulled close to her side. “That’s true. I hadn’t realized she felt so strongly about it. I was hoping she’d forget about you.”

  “Mom, I’m right here!” Ellie protested, wiggling out of Leslie’s grasp. “I asked you nicely if I could see Abby and you kept making up excuses, but you wouldn’t tell me why.”

  Leslie glanced down at her daughter. “Ellie, sometimes grown-ups do things that don’t make sense to children, but I have my own reasons, and you have to respect that.”

  “Leslie—” Abby began.

  Leslie held up a hand. “No. We can’t talk about this here. And not with Ellie.”

  “Mom!” Ellie protested. “You don’t get it! I need Abby. She can tell me what’s happening to me, and there isn’t anybody else I can ask!”

  “Talk to me, then,” Leslie said.

  “But you don’t have it!”

  “Have what, love?”

  “You can’t seen those people.”