Kindred Spirits (8 page)

Mr. Thomas squints at me.
“Has anybody ever told you you’re a very strange little white girl?”

I smile. “All the time.”

“I can’t believe how much
fun this is.” Abigail is sitting cross-legged on top of the dresser in my room
playing a game on Adam’s Gameboy. “Honestly, Adam, you don’t know how lucky you
are to have such wonderful things to play with. When I was alive people’s idea
of a fun toy was a hoop and a stick.”

Adam is staring in
Abigail’s direction, his mouth hanging open. To his eyes, it must look like his
Gameboy is floating in a cloud of gray mist, playing itself. “Next time I come
I’ll bring my laptop. You can play games on it, and it’s got a DVD player if
you’d like to watch a movie.”

Abigail looks up, her
eyes wide with excitement. “A movie! Oh, Miranda, I like your friend. It’s ever
so much more entertaining with him around.”

I laugh. “You only like
him because he’s got better toys than I do.”

“Well,” Abigail looks up
from her game. “He could hardly have worse ones.” The Gameboy plays a mournful
song, and she looks back down at it. “Oh, no. I died. The story of my life.”

I
nudge Adam. “You can see why it didn’t make any sense to me the first time I
heard the expression ‘silent as the dead.’”

Abigail loads another
cartridge into the Gameboy. “People who think the dead are silent are very poor
listeners.”

“Hey,” Adam says suddenly.
“That just made me think of something. Abigail, since you live in the world of
the dead, why can’t you just find Charlie T and ask him who killed the Jameson
sisters?”

“It’s not that simple,” I
mutter, knowing exactly what Abigail is about to say.

“You living,” Abigail
starts, like I knew she would, “ you always think that the world of the dead is
about the same size as Wilder...that it’s the easiest thing in the world to
just look somebody up. But the world of the dead is much, much bigger than the world
of the living. Think about all the generations of people who lived out their
lives, all the centuries that passed before the current generation of the
living was even born. All those people who came before are now in the world of
the dead. Our world has a much larger populationthanyours.
Plus,we’reallspiritstherewithnoreal bodies or addresses. We’re very hard to
look up.”

“There is no Yellow Pages
of the dead,” I add. “For years I pestered Abigail to find my dad, but she
never could. I think our only hope of figuring out who the killer was is to do
regular old research. We need to find out who was on the City Council when the
murder happened. Then we need to find out which of the city councilmen had
sons.”

“But what if Mr. Thomas
is right?” Adam says. “What if everybody who was involved turns out to be
dead?”

“Then,” I sigh, “I guess
we’ll never know, and your house will keep right on being haunted.”

Adam’s
hands flutter in frustration. “But what about that ESP thing you have? Can’t
you figure out who did it that way?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I
can look at people and see things about them sometimes, but except for seeing
Abigail, I don’t have any special powers when it comes to seeing dead people.”

“But,” Abigail says,
setting down the Gameboy suddenly. “If the man who did it is still alive, when
you see him, you’ll know.”

“What will I know?”

“You’ll know he is the
murderer,” Abigail says. “You’ll feel it in your blood.”

“Abigail,” Adam says,
“how do you know she’ll know?”

“Because I understand the
Sight,” Abigail says. “When I was alive, I had it, too.”

“I don’t know why I bother to watch horror movies
anymore,” Adam says. “I’m living in one.”

After Adam begged her and
promised to do a lot of chores around the house, Mrs. So agreed to drive us to
the public library in Morgan where they keep old copies of area newspapers. I
figure if they have issues of
The Wilder Herald
that are old enough, I
should be able to find out who was on the City Council the year the Jameson
sisters were killed.

“I can’t believe this is
the main library for the whole county,” Adam says as we pull into the parking
lot in front of the one-story, shoebox-shaped building.

“It’s quite a bit smaller
than the library we used to go to in Philadelphia, isn’t it, Adam?” Mrs. So laughs.

“But it’s still a lot
bigger than the library in Wilder,” I say.

I didn’t know there was a
library in Wilder,” Adam says.

“Well,
not much of one. It’s in the courthouse in a room about the size of your
bathroom.”

The Morgan County library
actually looks pretty big to me, but I’m not sophisticated like the Sos.

Once we’re inside, Mrs.
So asks, “So where do you want to go ‘juvenile fiction?’”

“Actually,”Adam says,“we
need to look at some old issues of
The Wilder Herald
.  It’s for a
project we’re working on.”

I notice Adam doesn’t say
we’re working on a school project so, technically, I guess he’s not lying.

“Well,” Mrs. So says,
“then I guess we’d better find a librarian to help us.”

“What year of the Herald
were you looking for?” a dark-haired man in a black turtleneck at the “help”
desk says.

“Nineteen thirty-four,” I
say.

“Hmm,” he frowns. “All
the really old issues of the newspapers are on microfilm, but I can find them
for you and show you how to use the equipment.”

“Oh, I know how,” Mrs. So
says. “I’m a librarian. Or at least I used to be.”

The man behind the desk
smiles. “Well, it’s always nice to meet a fellow bookworm.  I’m Dominick, by
the way.”

Mrs. So holds out her
hand for him to shake. “I’m Pat.”

“Well, Pat,” Dominick
says, “let me scurry off and get the microfilm, and then I’ll leave things in
your capable hands.”

A few minutes later, Mrs.
So sits down and loads the microfilm into the projector. Adam and I look over
her shoulders. “I didn’t know you were a librarian, Mrs. So,” I say. She seems
more comfortable and relaxed here than I’ve ever seen her.

“Oh, yes,” Mrs. So says.
“I worked in the university library the whole time Adam’s dad was in medical
school. I’m much better suited for library work than housework, I’m afraid.
Staying home all the time is hard for me. “Research like this, though,” she says,
nodding at the screen, “is fun. So... what are we looking for?”

“The names of all the
Wilder City Council members in nineteen thirty-four,” I say.

“Okay.” Mrs. So scans
down the newspaper’s pages. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”

Finally on page three,we
find an article about a City Council meeting. The last two sentences tell us
what we need to know: ‘City Council members Jack Davis, Smiley Fletcher, Eugene
Portwood, Harold Buchanan, Ancil Douglas, and Floyd Silcox were present. City
Council member Bill Bradley was absent.’

Yes!” I say, too loud for
the library. “Okay, let me copy those names down.”

“That was easy,” Mrs. So
says. “What else do you need to find out for your project?”

“Well...”Adam says, “Is
there any way we could look up who on the City Council had children and which
ones of them had sons?”

Mrs. So turns around in
her chair and looks at Adam. “This strikes me as a very peculiar school project.
What exactly is the assignment?”

When I look at Adam’s
startled face I can see right into his mind. He’s thinking, should I come up
with a story, or should I tell the truth? He’s searching his brain for some
kind of convincing story, but he can’t find one. Finally, he says, “Well, I
never said it was a school project. It’s just sort of a project Miranda and I
are working on...for fun.”

“No offense, my darling
son,” Mrs. So says. “But I’ve never known you to go to the library and research
something for fun. It’s all horror movies and video games with you.”

“Well...” Adam shrugs.
“Maybe Miranda is a good influence on me.”

“Maybe,”
Mrs. So says, but she looks suspicious. “So what is this little piece of
history you’re researching?”

When Adam looks at me,
his thoughts say, might as well tell her.

“It’s a murder,” I say,
“a murder that happened in Wilder in nineteen thirty-four.”

“In our house,” Adam
adds.

“In our house?” Mrs. So
says, much too loud for inside the library.

In a whisper, I tell Mrs.
So everything we know about the murder of the Jameson sisters, ending with,
“And we don’t think the kid who went to jail for the crime actually did it. We
think the killer was the son of one of the City Council members, and we want to
prove it.”

“Isn’t this kind of
dangerous taking on a murder investigation?” Mrs. So asks.

“Not when the murder
happened seventy years ago,” I say. “The guy who did it probably isn’t even
alive.”

“So why bother figuring
it out if nobody who was there is even alive?” Mrs. So says.

“Mom.” Adam rests his
hand on his mother’s shoulder. “You’ll probably think I’m crazy for saying
this, but something isn’t right in our house. Miranda and I want to try to fix
it.”

“Yes,” Mrs. So says,
covering Adam’s hand with her own. “I know what you mean.” She doesn’t look up
but stares down at her and her son’s hands. “Sometimes during the day when I’m
alone in the house I feel like I’m not really alone, you know? There are sounds
sometimes bumping and thumping, nothing you couldn’t reason away as the wind or
mice in the attic, but still...there’s this feeling...an unhappy feeling.” She
hugs herself like she’s cold. “And when I feel it, it makes me unhappy, too.”
She looks up, right into Adam’s eyes. “But Adam, you can never tell your father
anything about this, or he’ll think we’re both crazy.”

“I
won’t tell,” Adam says.

“Miranda,” says Mrs. So,
“you seem to come from a long line of people who are wise about the
supernatural Do you think that if we found out who killed the Jameson sisters,
this...presence would leave our house?”

“I think the chances of
that are very good,” I say.

“Well, then.” Mrs. So
smiles. “How would you like to have a professional librarian to help you with
the rest of your research?”

Over the past five days,
Mrs. So has proved herself to be a heck of a librarian. When Adam and I sit
down at his kitchen table in front of a plate of oatmeal cookies, Mrs. So sits
down across from us and pulls out a huge stack of notes. “I went to the courthouse
today,” she says. “The deeds and records office. I looked up the different City
Council members to see who inherited their property when they died. I thought
that was the easiest way to figure out who had sons.”

Adam grins. “Wow, Mom,
that was really smart.”

Mrs. So smiles back at
him. “I’m good for something besides baking cookies.” She flips open a page of
notes. “This is what I found, but bear in mind that it’s not perfect. If one of
these guys had a son who died young or got disinherited, we’d have no way of
knowing about it.”

I look down at her list:

Wilder City Council Members, 1934

Jack
Davis’ two daughters, no sons

Eugene Portwood’ two
sons, Eugene Jr. and Roy, and one daughter

Smiley Fletcher’ no
children (property left to church)

Harold Buchanan’ one son,
Harold Jr. and one daughter

Bill Bradley’ two sons,
William Jr. and Robert, and two daughters

Ancil Douglas’ four
daughters

Floyd Silcox’ one son,
Floyd Jr.

“Whoa,” Adam says, “so
this means our killer could be any one of”’ he counts the sons’ names on the
list’” six people.”

“Not necessarily,” Mrs.
So says. “Remember, if the killer was disinherited or died before his father
did, I wouldn’t have been able to find his name.”

“Also...” I stop to think
for a second. “I bet some of these councilmen’s kids were too young to have
committed the crime. Mr. Thomas said his dad described the killer as a young
white man, so that would make him a teenager, at least.” I look down at my
list. “Like, it couldn’t be Roy Portwood he’s the editor of
The Wilder
Herald,
and he’s several years younger than Granny. He was just a baby when
the murder happened.”

“So we can mark him off
the list,” Adam says, “unless you think a killer baby is a possibility.”

“I think we can mark him
off,” I say, “but we shouldn’t mark off his brother Eugene. I don’t know
anything about him.”

“Anybody else on there
who’s too young?” Adam asks.

“I don’t know for sure,”
I say. “We ought to ask Granny. She probably knows most of these people.”

Adam is already up from
the table. “Mom, can I go with Miranda to talk to her granny?”

Mrs.
So shakes her head, smiling. “Be back by six.”

Adam is out the front door with me scrambling behind him.

We find Granny in the
kitchen boiling up a nasty mixture of herbs on the stove. “Hidy, younguns,” she
says. “Stinks to high heaven in here, don’t it?”

Adam peers into the pot.
“I was just about to say I hope that isn’t your dinner on the stove.”

“No, just one of my herb
teas,” Granny says. “You ought to take you a jar home and let your daddy try
it. He might want to use it on some of his patients. It smells rotten, but it’s
the best thing in the world to keep you regular.”

I shoot Adam a look that
means
don’t go there.
“Granny,” I say, “do you remember me asking you
about the Jameson murders?”

“Of course I remember.  I
ain’t that far gone yet.”

“Well, we’ve got a list
of possible suspects we want you to take a look at.”

Granny cackles. “Listen
at you! A list of possible suspects! You read too many of them mystery
stories.” She turns off the stove and sits down at the kitchen table. “Well,
set down and show it to me.” She puts her reading glasses on her pointy nose.