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  David's worry about ending their sexual relationship while remaining on civil terms--a necessity in such a small town had lessened slightly when Jerry Romero had appeared on the scene, but he'd assumed that she'd be back, ready to crawl into his bed and shred his flesh as soon as Romero left town. Her words now made him realize that either she was pathologically self-absorbed, or she'd already written him off.

  Getting out of the car and adjusting his sailing cap, he realized that for the first time, getting dumped wasn't devastating: it was a relief.

  Chapter Forty-six

  The Cox Residence: 6:28P.M.

  Melanie Lord, her red hair flying and her brain fried from driving around in circles in the absolute sticks, pulled the rental car to a screeching halt in front of the ranch house on the outskirts of Red Cay. She couldn't see a house number, but it was the only one that matched Amber's description: it had yellow paint and gingerbread trim. "This has to be the place."

  Though there'd been nothing wrong with the map she'd picked up at the rental agency in Santa Barbara, Melanie had repeatedly gotten lost once she'd reached Red Cay because there was an amazing lack of street signs, and Amber had laughed when she'd asked for landmarks. "There's a cow on the corner of Mollejas and Las Cabezas."

  California was a foreign land with foreign names and, if that wasn't bad enough, her plane had arrived an hour and a half late, adding to her frayed nerves. Then the car people had made her wait another twenty minutes while they prepared her vehicle. But, she told herself as she turned off the ignition, those mundane irritations had at least kept her from going nuts thinking about what might happen when she surprised David with her presence in a public place.

  "Melanie!"

  Startled, she looked up and saw Amber flying down the front walk. An instant later, she was yanking the car door open and dragging her from the car.

  "I was afraid you chickened out!" Amber cried as she threw her arms around her.

  "The plane was late, then I got lost," Melanie explained, returning the hug. "I'm sorry!"

  Amber stepped back and surveyed her. "You're a mess."

  "Thanks a lot." Melanie tried vainly to pat her windblown hair into place.

  "Don't bother with that," Amber said as she touched her own hair, which was piled in waves on top of her head and held fast with old-fashioned pearl-encrusted combs. "It's really late and we have to get you ready!"

  Within three minutes, Melanie found herself standing in the middle of Kelly Cox's room, dry-cleaner's bags in her hands, as the two girls slipped into their dresses. Amber wore a revealing black gown from early in the century and her friend, a completely sweet little airhead, wore a red dress from the same era.

  "Cool, huh?" Kelly asked, as Amber grabbed another drycleaner's bag from the back of a chair and pulled it from the gown it protected.

  Melanie nodded, raising her arms to let the girls slip a drop-dead-beautiful green dress over her head. She felt like a half-baked Cinderella. "Amber, has your dad seen that dress you're wearing?"

  "No. It's a surprise." Amber blushed lightly and both girls giggled.

  The gown made her look twenty-five years old. "He's in for a lot of surprises tonight," Melanie said darkly.

  "I'm going to phone Jason and Rick," Kelly announced suddenly, "and tell them to get their tails over here now."

  She left, shutting the door firmly behind her. "I knew she'd leave," Amber said blithely. "Let's do your hair. I wish it was longer," she added, brandishing a curling iron.

  "Are you sure this is a good idea?" Melanie asked.

  "Uh huh."

  "What about this Theo woman? She's his date?"

  "Daddy's only going with her because he said he would," Amber said through a mouthful of bobby pins. "He found out I was right."

  "Still, she is his date. I shouldn't intrude in public."

  "Don't sweat it. All she did while I was at the house this afternoon was flirt with Jerry Romero, right in front of Daddy. It was so embarrassing. She's got her tits trussed up like you wouldn't believe and she kept shoving them in Romero's face. Poor Daddy, he was humiliated. Believe me, he'll be overjoyed to see you."

  "I hope you're right."

  Kelly came back in. "They're on their way. Wow, Melanie, you look incredible." She walked to her dresser and brought over a tray of make-up.

  Ordinarily, Melanie hated to be fussed with, but tonight it was a relief.

  "There," Amber said, holding up an ostrich feather. "We'll just stick this in your hair and you'll be all set."

  Five minutes later, Kelly finished making her up, and only pouted slightly when Melanie declined to have her modest cleavage highlighted with blush. The teen stepped back and examined her. "God," she whispered, "you look just like her."

  "Like who?"

  "You really do," Amber chimed in. "Oh, you'll look just perfect with Daddy."

  Melanie rose and walked toward the full-length mirror on the back of the door. "Okay," she said impatiently. "Spill it. Who do I look like?"

  "Lizzie Baudey," Amber said

  Melanie barely recognized herself. Her hair had been swept up in soft curls and tiny tendrils coiled down her neck. The feather wasn't garish, as she'd feared, but perfect, and the gown was beyond perfection. The emerald color matched her eyes and set off her red hair and pale complexion faultlessly.

  The gown's straight, off-the-shoulder bodice was made for her petite bustline and the skirt flowed sensuously down over her hips, caressing her legs and making the same soft swooshing sound as a satin and chiffon party dress she'd especially loved as a child. A bare flash of calf showed when she moved and, after Amber clipped small green bows to them, her soft black ballet-style pumps complimented the rest of the ensemble.

  "Wait'll you see the painting," Kelly said. "You'll freak."

  "Painting?"

  "In Body House, there's a portrait of Lizzie hanging in the parlor. She's wearing your dress." Amber snickered.. "Or you're wearing hers. Here, put these on." Amber handed her a pair of delicate marcasite-and-pearl drop earrings.

  "Girls," called Kelly's mother. "Your dates are here."

  Melanie heard herself giggling along with the teenagers and, for the first time, she was glad she'd come. If nothing else went right, at least she got to enjoy feeling like a kid again.

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Red Cay Beach: 6:50P.M.

  "Come on, Billy, we have to get to the Lodge. The party started an hour ago!"

  Billy Galiano, dressed in a pirate costume from last Halloween, looked up from the tide pool. "Just a sec, Mom! I'm coming."

  There was something in a plastic bag floating down there among the sea urchins and he intended to see what it was, even if it killed him. He climbed farther down into the rocky recesses and fished the bag from the water. "Gotcha!"

  "Billy!"

  "Coming!" He had to hurry because he was completely hidden by the rocks now and Mom would send Dad after him if he didn't reappear quickly.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something move on the rocks across from him. Crab! Delighted, he looked up, then caught his breath as he saw a mean-looking man with big black whiskers staring at him from his perch on the rocks across the tide pool. He couldn't have been there the whole time, could he? The man smiled, and he was so scary that Billy almost threw the bag at him.

  "Billy! Now!"

  The sound of his father's voice ended Billy's paralysis. He scrambled up the rocks and ran like crazy.

  His mom and dad, dressed as Pilgrims, stood waiting for him. Dad checked his watch as Billy appeared. "Get in the car, sport," he said. "Pronto."

  Billy ran ahead of his parents, wanting to see what was in the bag before they caught up, but they were walking fast too, so he couldn't. They were always afraid of him finding bad things on the shore, like hypodermic needles and stuff, and they would probably make him throw away the bag, sight unseen, if they caught him with it. They'd been extra weird about all sorts of things ever since his bes
t friend Matty Farmer fell out of the lighthouse last May. Thinking of Matty suddenly made him feel very sad.

  "What were you doing down there, Billy?" Mom asked as she got in the car.

  "Looking for shells," he said, climbing in the back seat. If he told them about the creepy man, his dad would have to go look and Billy didn't want that- he was way too scary, even for Dad.

  "Did you find any?"

  "A couple. I put 'em in a bag."

  "Well, don't get the seat dirty."

  "I won't."

  As they drove, his parents started talking to each other about other parties and other costumes. Meanwhile, Billy carefully unzipped the plastic bag and was disappointed to find that it contained nothing but a stupid old broken doll. A guy doll, which was weird, because it sure as heck wasn't a G.I. Joe. Well, he thought, maybe Janise Radsum would like it. She loved dolls--just to collect, because, at ten, she said she was too old to actually play with them. She also once told him that she liked really old stuff, too. Antiques.

  She'd be at the party tonight, dressed as a princess, and he thought that if he gave her the doll, maybe she’d give him a kiss again, like she had in the coat closet at school. Then, maybe, he'd have enough nerve to ask her to dance with him.

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Red Cay Moose Lodge: 6:59 P.M.

  David stood with Keith Shayrock and Craig Swenson in a secluded corner of the Moose Lodge. The huge room, festooned with balloons and crepe paper streamers, gave him the nostalgic feeling that he'd gone back in time to a high school dance. As he sipped watery, slightly alcoholic punch from his paper cup, he watched the small-town spectacle taking place all around them. He thought that the decorations, the costumed people, and the odd snatches of conversation he overheard, all belonged in a book.

  "It can't happen," Shayrock said suddenly. Like David, Craig, and--from the looks of things--most of the town, the doctor had eschewed the advisories of the crystal-packers' channeling service, choosing instead to dress as his own grandfather, assuming, he had explained with a twinkle in his eye, that Louis Shayrock had been Jack the Ripper. A bloody plastic cleaver stuck not-so-subtly out of his ancient black medical bag, and if you looked closely, the fingers of a severed hand poked from the pocket of his English greatcoat. He looked every inch the mad doctor, right up to his incurably stubborn shock of carroty hair, which was already escaping from beneath his otherwise distinguished derby.

  "It did happen," David said, scratching his wrist where the wool coat was irritating it. Shayrock had been saying "It can't happen" ever since they'd told him about the blood-filled dolls.

  "Yeah," Swenson agreed. He wore an old-fashioned policeman's uniform that looked equally itchy and nearly as old as David's seaman's suit. He gave his ancient nightstick a quick twirl. "It happened."

  "Something else happened," the doctor insisted. "What you two are describing is impossible. It doesn't work that way. If a doll was filled with fresh blood long ago and it was sealed tightly--and I mean airtight--and you broke it eighty years later, the blood could still be liquid. But it wouldn't be hot, like you described, Masters, unless the doll had been heated, and it wouldn't turn to powder in an hour. Blood clots." He paused thoughtfully. "However, if you broke open a doll that wasn't airtight, after eighty years, you'd probably have the powder, just like we found at the Willards'. I'd like to see the doll."

  "That's impossible," Swenson said sourly.

  "Why? Don't you have it? If I could examine it, I might be able to tell you something solid."

  Sheepishly, the chief glanced at David. "It's gone," he said normally.

  "Gone where?"

  "Into the ocean."

  "What?" Shayrock demanded.

  Swenson was looking more and more embarrassed. "Tell him, Masters," he grunted.

  "Minnie Willard stole the doll from my house. She took it home and somehow she broke it, thus releasing the spirit of Peter Castle, the man the doll represents. Castle killed the Willards--somehow."

  "Voodoo?" Shayrock asked dryly.

  "Shit," Swenson commented.

  "He was Christabel's lover, so who knows?" David cleared his throat. "The chief took the doll."

  "And I felt like I was being watched the whole time I had it," Swenson said. "So f took it to Masters here and we decided that the only way to get rid of Peter Castle was to get rid of the doll. So I threw it off Widow's Peak."

  "And I thought you didn't have a superstitious bone in your body, Swenson," the doctor chided.

  "Hell," Swenson grunted.

  "Let's get back to the blood," Shayrock said. "Masters, are you sure it was warm?"

  "Yes."

  "Was the doll in the sun?"

  "Hardly, my daughter was in the laundry room. She found it in a cupboard."

  "Water pipes?"

  "None in sight," David told him. "Amber said it was hot and it sprayed her, you know, like a vessel bursting. She said it got in her mouth and that it tasted like blood."

  Shayrock shook his head, a tell-me-another-one look on his face. "So you didn't actually see any of this?"

  "It had just happened. I walked in and found Amber screaming and covered with blood. Fresh blood." David suppressed an involuntary cringe. "She said it tasted like blood," he repeated.

  "You're sure she's not pulling your leg?"

  "I saw the results, material and emotional," David said grimly. "My daughter is not the hysterical sort."

  "I'll vouch for that," Swenson added.

  Something in the tone of their voices seemed to convince Shayrock that both the writer and the cop were deadly serious. He looked from one to the other, then shrugged helplessly. "Then I have no way of explaining it medically."

  That was exactly what David had expected to hear, but the chief wasn't ready to accept David's voodooesque theories without a fight. "Could somebody have intentionally powdered the blood in the Willard residence?" the chief asked.

  Shayrock took the derby off and scratched his head. Immediately, his hair sprang up like he'd stuck his finger in a light socket. "Someone could powder dried blood if they wanted."

  "Hey Uncle Craig!" Eric Swenson, all cowboy from his Stetson to his boots, strolled up, an attractive blond woman in gingham and a bonnet on his arm. "Hey, Doc. David, this is my mom, Holly."

  "It's a pleasure to meet you." David doffed his sailing cap.

  "And you," she said, shaking his hand. "Eric speaks very highly of you."

  "I speak highly of him."

  Eric turned red. "David, you were worried about not having any fun because people'd be asking you for your autograph all night. But they're not. How come?"

  "Eric," Holly began.

  "It's all right," David said swiftly. "Eric doesn't mince words--that's one of the things I like about him." He paused.

  "Jerry Romero happened, Eric. He's here interviewing folks about their past lives."

  "Are you angry?" the young man asked.

  "No, I'm relieved. I get to talk to friends like your uncle and Dr. Shayrock--we won't mention the topics covered, however--and that's a lot more fun than answering that age-old question about where I find my ideas."

  Though he was tired of public recognition, now that Romero and his minicam had stolen his thunder, not to mention his date--small loss--David found that, despite his words, he was also slightly miffed at being ignored. He knew he should enjoy it, savor it in fact, but as the saying went, the grass was always greener.

  "Isn't it awful about the Willards?" Holly Swenson asked, in a tone of voice that showed a distinct lack of sorrow. "Eric, would you like to dance with your old mother?" she asked as the enthusiastically mediocre Moose band struck up "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy."

  As the pair wandered off, Craig Swenson squinted in the direction of the punch table. "You said you wanted to talk to the twins, Masters. There they are."

  "Twins?" David asked, confused.

  "The Cox boys."

  David, his book complete and his enchantment with
Body House rapidly dying, had little desire any more to chat up Ferd and Andy, but he followed Craig's gaze, smiling as he studied the matched set of hawk-faced, dour-looking old men. They stood side by side, both dressed in buckskins and coon-skin hats, their arms folded identically across their chests.

  "They don't look happy."

  "They aren't." Craig chuckled. "Every year, both of them dress up as Davy Crockett, and then they fight over which one of them really was the king of the wild frontier."

  "You're kidding." David paused. "Right?"

  "Seems they went to the High Hooey Center and got themselves past life readings. Well, I guess that entity of Theo's got mixed up, what with the old boys looking so much alike, and thought they were the same person. They were both told they were Davy Crockett."

  A large woman, unfortunately dressed as some sort of Egyptian royalty--maybe not Cleopatra, but something similar--joined the twins. A cigarette waggled in her mouth as she looked, from one to the other then, obviously unable to tell which was which, pushed between them and took both their arms.

  Shayrock cleared his throat. "That's Bea Broadside."

  "The woman who saw Peter Castle?" David asked quickly.

  "The very one." Craig shook his head. "She won't talk, though. Took back every last word about the ghost walking through her." He raised his eyebrows. "Guess she's saner than you or me."

  They people-watched a while longer. "I wonder where Amber could be," David said finally.

  "I don't see much of the high school crowd in here yet," the chief said. "They all hang around outside, pretending we force them to come."

  David nodded, chuckling. "They love the dance, but it's not cool to admit it."

  "Right. They'll be in by nine--that's when they hold the costume contest," Swenson said as a couple dressed as Donald and Daisy Duck strolled by.

  "Wonder if they got advice on their past lives from Spiros?" Shayrock commented dryly.