Seven Turns: A Ghost Story/A Love Story

It seemed every member of the household was milling around in the front hall when Cally came down the stairs on Thursday morning. Joan, in her fresh, short haircut and new red manicure, was pacing back and forth, clutching her tea mug, barking orders at everyone. Cally knew she wasn’t going to get much work done that morning, but she did manage to get Ian’s attention and remind him once more to sign the pile of papers on the corner of the desk. Then, ignoring Joan’s speech about how nobody was taking any of this seriously enough, she carried her laptop into the dining room. She opened it and checked her email while sipping coffee and nibbling on a Danish.

Amid several perfunctory notes from her agent was a message from Emerald, with a large text file attached, titled “As Promised.” Cally sighed and felt sorry about having had a falling out with her friend, but she only read a few of the opening lines of the text file. It did indeed seem to be written in the style of a story, but it spoke of Emerald in the third person. “She has always lived in the Vale,” it began, “but the Vale has not always been the place it is now.” Cally filed the story away for later.

She carried her things back into the hall and stepped behind the desk in the crowded hall. Even George was present, she noticed, standing quietly and grinning in the shadows beside the stairs.

“Don’t sit down yet,” Joan barked at her. “I need everyone to move their cars! We need room for the investigators to park when they get here.”

“Now, Joan,” said Ian gently. “There’s plenty of room.”

“It looks like a gypsy camp out there!” she complained. “They’re going to need room for their equipment truck, as well as their cars. Come on. Everyone! That means you, too, Pedro. Move that god-awful truck.”

Everyone piled out the door with car keys in hand. The Captain didn’t own a car, but he went out to watch the spectacle as everyone moved their vehicles to park, per Joan’s shouted directions, on the grass next to the fence, further away from the house. Ignacio drove the red pickup around to the back of the barn. The three horses in the meadow seemed agitated by all the activity, running along the fence and kicking up their heels. “Be sure to arrange your vehicles by size, color, make and model!” the Captain shouted, toasting them with his coffee cup and ignoring Joan’s glare.

Cally was glad her car still started happily, despite having been neglected for the past few days. She parked it approximately where Joan stood vigorously waving, then reached back and dug through some of the boxes to remove a few of her things.

Just as all the cars had been tidied up to Joan’s satisfaction, Foster and Nell arrived and parked in one of the spaces they had cleared. “No!” Joan yelled and ran toward Foster as he emerged from the car. “No, no! Move it over there!” Nell got out of the passenger side and ran to Cally.

“I missed you at breakfast,” Cally told her. “I thought you two had gone back to Raleigh already.”

Nell gave her an enthusiastic hug. “We wouldn’t want to miss the investigation show!” she said. “We went to the Bean Garden. Well, I waited in the Bean Garden while Foster went to the lawyer. Here!” She handed Cally a bundle of cloth she had been clutching to her chest.

Cally unfolded it and held it up. It was a lavender t-shirt, hand painted in an intricate pattern of purple and green flowers. Amid the flowers wound vermillion lettering, in flowing script, that read “Ghosts Are People Too.”

Cally laughed with delight. “You bought this for me?”

“I made it!” Nell said. “It’s been for sale at the Bean Garden, but I thought you should have it, because of what you said at dinner the other night.”

“It’s perfect.” She meant it. “You have a lot of talent. I’ll wear it when the investigation crew gets here.”

Nell’s eyes shone with happiness, and she ran up the porch steps to hug her father and the Captain.

Joan was having a fit. “There won’t be room for you to stay here tonight!” she shouted at Foster. “You should clear out and stay at the Motel Nine in Blackthorn tonight or something!” He ignored her resolutely and took a seat in a wicker chair next to Ian, handing him a legal-size folder full of papers.

Nell sat on the porch steps and waited quietly. “No walks today!” she promised.

At least the commotion inside the front Hall seemed to have died down, Cally thought as she went back into the house. She resumed her position behind the desk, not sure whether to be glad or dismayed that it was starting to feel familiar. She glanced at George as she checked the voicemail. He was wearing loose white trousers, today, and an embroidered kurta. His hair was combed down straight, and he had several blue and white beads woven into his bangs.

“So. Emerald tells me you were a pirate,” she said.

George emerged from the shadows and drew himself up with a deep frown on his face. “My dear lady!” he said. “I assure you, the work my brethren and I did was perfectly legal! We were not pirates. We were privateers, working legitimately under letters of marque in the employ of the King of England himself!”

That gave Cally an approximate answer, anyway, to her question about how long George had been around. “I apologize,” she said. “I meant no offense.” His smile reemerged, like sunshine from behind a cloud. Cally glanced quickly at the front door. Joan was suggesting to Ian that he remove Bethany from the premises for the day, and Ian was assuring her that would not be necessary. “Here, Georgie,” Cally said. “I brought something from my car for you.” She extracted an old e-book reader from her pile of notebooks and laid it on the desk. “Do you think you could use this?”

He came around to her side of the desk rather more quickly than her sense of equilibrium liked, and held his hand out over the device. “Oh!” he said, almost in a whisper, and his eyes grew wide. “The Lord of the Rings is on here! And Finnegan’s Wake. And One Hundred Years of Solitude!” He turned his gaze on Cally and his eyes looked very real and very close to filling with real tears. “I can read, you know, in several languages. But I can’t turn pages, so I’ve never...” His voice choked. “This is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me.”

Cally got a little choked up, herself. “I can’t leave it sitting out here on the desk,” she told him. “But I can leave it in my room for you to use anytime you want.”

“No.” He held up a hand as if warding something off. “I promised you I would not go into your room anymore.”

He had a point. “Alright... how about if I leave it in the butler’s desk at the end of the hall upstairs?”

“That would be excellent. My zemi is there as well.” He smiled, and Cally stood and carried the e-reader up the stairs. George followed closely; sensing him on the steps behind her gave Cally shivers down her spine, and she refrained from looking back at him. By the time she had tucked the device into the wide drawer behind the fold-down lid of the desk (covering it with a few sheets of stationery, just to be safe) he was, in fact, no longer visible, but Cally liked to think he was still there, perhaps perusing the electronic table of contents.

She stopped in her room to change into the t-shirt Nell had made, then went to check on Bethany.

“How nice to see you awake!” Cally said when she saw Bethany sitting up against a pile of pillows. Someone had left a cup of tea and a Danish on the night stand beside her. Bethany cried out happily and reached a hand toward Cally.

“I’m not sure I’m really awake,” she said, smiling weakly. “I keep drifting off and dreaming. But at least the pain is better.”

Cally sat down in the chair beside the bed. “That’s good. I feel so terrible leaving you all alone up here so much, even if you are mostly sleeping.”

“Not to worry. I have feline company.” She smiled and closed her eyes, laying her head back against the pillows.

Cally agreed. Both cats were sitting like sphinxes on either side of the mound made by Bethany’s feet. “Cyndi and Doctor Boojums have hardly left your side,” she said.

Bethany’s eyes fluttered open. “Boo?” she said. “No, he’s been dead for ten years.” She closed her eyes again. “I think. Ten. Maybe nine. It was...” She fell silent.

Cally looked at the old gray cat, sitting purring with his paws tucked under his chest. “It wouldn’t actually surprise me if you were a ghost, too,” she said to it under her breath. The cat – or whatever it was – regarded her with a slow blink.

Glancing at Bethany, who had begun to snore softly, Cally stood and reached out a hand toward the cats. She wondered what she would do if she tried to pet Doctor Boojums and her hand went right through. Her stomach did a flip and she petted Cyndi Lauper instead. The little cat’s warm, vibrating softness settled her nerves. Doctor Boojums closed his eyes and purred, also. She could feel the rumbling vibration through the mattress. He had to be real.

“The white lady.”

Cally turned. Bethany’s eyes were open again, but she was looking dazedly at Cally.

“No, it’s just me,” Cally reassured her.

“She was here,” Bethany said. “She was very kind.” She mumbled a few more unintelligible words before drifting off to sleep again.

Cally felt Bethany’s forehead, though she wasn’t sure what that would tell her. “Don’t you start seeing ghosts, now,” she told the sleeping woman. “You aren’t hurt that badly. Are you? I’m sure it’s just the medication.” She would have to mention this, also, to the doctor when he came. She reached to pick up the remaining medicine bottle from the night stand so she could show it to him as soon as he arrived, and swore. Like its missing twin, the medicine bottle was no longer there. She got down on her hands and knees and looked under the bed and the chair, but neither little plastic bottle was anywhere to be seen.

---

By the time Cally returned to the desk in the Hall, the front porch was empty except for the Captain sitting in his wicker chair in the sunshine. Joan was behind her office door, shouting at someone on the phone. The household had, for the time being, returned to normal.

Hoping Katarina would know what had happened to the medicine, Cally looked through the sticky notes next to the phone for her cell number. She was interrupted by Foster, who practically danced down the stairs into the Hall and ran to the desk.

“Where’s Ian?” he asked. “He’s not answering the phone in his room. I just got the most amazing phone call!” He leaned toward her, and Cally was glad there was a solid wooden desk between them. “I’ve been given permission to submit a provisional plan that could make a small fortune. I could turn this pathetic little hick town into an important center of commerce. The business possibilities would be unlimited!”

He bent down and grinned at her. His eyes were wide and his pupils nearly filled them, even though the Hall was bright with sunshine. Cally wanted to ask him if he’d been drinking, but she didn’t smell alcohol on his breath.

“Foster, are you alright?” she asked.

“Never better!” he said, looking left and right as if trying to decide through which doorway to dash first.

“Well, I’m not sure where Ian is at the moment,” Cally told him. “I managed to avoid most of this morning’s All Hands Meeting.”

“Ah, yes, Joan probably saw him last. She probably knows where he went.” Foster glanced at the office door. “And maybe I should talk to her first anyway. Joan agrees with me that this place just isn’t making enough money to survive, the way things are. Maybe between the two of us we can persuade him to do the sensible thing. She’s right that he’s just too soft-hearted and sentimental for his own good.”

Cally thought of many things she could have said in reply to that, but did not bother to waste them on Foster as he continued to stare at the office door like a schoolchild staring at the door of the principal’s office. As he did so, his shoulders sagged and his burst of buoyant energy seemed to sift out of his body like sand. “Well,” he said at length, “it’s worth a shot. If you catch her in the right mood, she’s brilliant, but it’s a crapshoot: her moods change like the weather. Some people say she’s on something, you know.” He looked back at Cally, his expression serious now. “Not something she has a prescription for, if you know what I mean.” He took a deep breath and headed toward the closed door. “Wish me luck!” he said as he knocked and went in.

When he had gone, Nell appeared in the parlor doorway. She didn’t say anything, but Cally could guess what she was thinking. “Don’t worry,” Cally told her. “Joan might go for his ideas, but your dad never will.”

“He never has so far,” Nell admitted, but didn’t seem very comforted by the thought.

They could hear Foster’s voice through the door, talking a little too fast and pitched a little too high. Neither of them were surprised to hear Joan’s voice answer sharply. Both Cally and Nell returned to what they had been doing, and pretended not to notice when Foster left the room with his shoulders hunched and head low, carrying Joan’s tea mug toward the kitchen.

Joan left her office and stared after him. Shaking her head, she clomped across the Hall to the desk. “You aren’t going to wear that silly thing are you?” she said to Cally.

Cally looked down at her Ghosts Are People Too t-shirt. “Yes. I am. It’s nice.”

“You should put on something more dressy for the PI society. You might end up on TV, you know.”

“I think they’ll like it,” Cally insisted. “Anyway, Joan, I haven’t got time for that right now. Bethany’s medicine has disappeared. I’m going to have to call the doctor again and... I don’t even know what I’ll say this time!”

“Probably just as well,” said Joan. “She was taking too much of that stuff. They say it’s highly addicting, you know.”

“Joan, the doctor ordered her to take it!” Cally picked up the phone. “I guess we’ll have to ask him for a whole new prescription again.”

“He’s going to start thinking we’re all a bunch of addicts around here,” Joan said. “Anyway you can ask him in person. Doc’s here right now, down at the boat talking to Ian. I swear, this place is Grand Central Station. Why does it have to be today, of all days?”

Cally left her lamenting in the hall and went out onto the porch. She looked down the hill toward the pond and saw Ian and a silver-haired gentleman about the same age coming up the hill toward her. When he saw her, Ian waved cheerfully and said “Doc, I want you to meet our celebrity guest!” Cally went to the bottom of the steps to wait for them.

“This is Ms. Callaghan McCarthy,” Ian said when they arrived on the walkway. “She’s an author. Ms. McCarthy, this is Doctor Daniel Tanahey, a very old and dear friend of mine.”

“I am not so very old,” said the doctor, shaking Cally’s hand. “And please just call me Doc. Everyone else does.”

“Then you must call me Cally,” she replied distractedly. “Listen, Doc, I hate to rush you, but...”

“Ah, no problem,” he said. “I am just on my way up to see Miss Chase.”

Cally sighed with relief, and practically skipped as she led him through the front door to the stairs. She explained, as they went up, about the confusion with the medicine and about its now having gone missing.

Doc set his little bag on the coverlet beside Bethany, who seemed only vaguely aware of his presence. “Wow,” said Cally. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a doctor make a house call in real life. If this room weren’t so brightly colored, I would think we were in the middle of an old movie!”

He grinned as he put on his stethoscope. “We live in such a small town,” he said, “we all have to have each other’s backs. And anyway, Miss Chase and I are old friends. This is really more of a social call, for me.”

Bethany stirred groggily as the old doctor checked her vital signs, but she didn’t speak. “Well, I agree with you all that she’s sleeping too heavily,” he said. “But without a blood test, I won’t be able to tell if it’s because she’s taken too much medicine, or if it’s just affecting her too strongly.” He put his instruments away in his bag. “To be honest with you, at her age, I would say it’s the latter. It should wear off in a few hours, either way. And I’ll prescribe a new adjustment to the dosage.”

Cally felt a little exasperated. “Then there will be three bottles of medicine floating around this house!” she said.

Doc nodded. “It is a concern. Oxycodone is a controlled substance. But I don’t think anyone here is likely to try to sell it on the street. When the missing bottles turn up, call me and I’ll see that they are safely disposed of. And I’ll tell the pharmacy to mark a big, red X on the bottle when they fill the new prescription. That way you’ll know for sure which is the right one.” He looked down at Bethany’s sleeping face. “No, not an X. A large, pink heart.” He smiled at Cally. Bethany muttered something incoherent, tried to shift position in her sleep, and winced in pain.

Ian and the Captain met Cally and Doc in the hall when they returned downstairs. “If Merv was here, we’d be able to get the band back together,” the Captain said jovially. “We could have us a proper jam session!”

“Joan might not appreciate that today,” Ian reminded him. He turned to Doc. “How is Ms. Chase?”

Doc explained everything to them and asked, “Will someone be able to go to the pharmacy in Blackthorn to pick up the new prescription?”

“Again,” Cally said.

“I’ll send Ignacio...” Ian’s voice trailed off as he looked out the front door to where Ignacio was already busy addressing the long list of lawn beautification tasks Joan had assigned to him.

“You know what?” Cally said. “I’ll go. I’ve been to Blackthorn – I was there just last night. I’m sure I can find it again easily.”

All three men looked at her so suddenly she wondered if she had said something wrong. “Are you sure?” Doc asked.

“Well, yes... Really. It’s no problem.” She was thinking she would appreciate the excuse to get away from Joan for a couple of hours.

“Alright then.” Doc used the desk phone to call in the prescription, then told her, “You don’t have to go right away. She shouldn’t have another dose until this afternoon.”

“We’ll just be in my quarters if you need anything. Talking about old times,” Ian explained. He gestured toward the south end of the back hall.

The three old gentlemen began to make their way to Ian’s rooms, but Cally took Ian by the elbow and said, “These papers, sir?”

He smiled broadly and accepted the pen she placed in his hand. Cally took a deep, satisfied breath as he finally signed off on the bills and checks that had been waiting so long. She couldn’t wait to tell Bethany about it.

As he rejoined his friends making their way to the back hall, Ian turned back to her and said, “When you get ready to leave for Blackthorn, would you please come and let me know? I ... well, I have one other thing I wonder if you’d drop off for me on your way.”

He winked, and Cally thought she knew what he was talking about, so she nodded and said “Of course, Ian, I’d be happy to.”

She hummed quietly to herself with satisfaction while she sat at the desk placing all the bill payment checks into their respective envelopes, found stamps in the desk drawer, and got everything ready to go out in the mail. Joan came out of her office to look out the door and make sure Ignacio wasn’t slacking off.

“Where does the outgoing mail go?” Cally asked her.

“I don’t know!” Joan waved an impatient hand. “Ignacio usually takes it in to town, but he’s not going anywhere today! Where is Foster with that tea he swore would only take him a minute to bring?” She stomped into the dining room and turned toward the kitchen.

Cally decided she would just drive the mail to the post office herself, and she was no longer willing to wait until afternoon to get away from the house for a while. She put the phones into night mode, then carried the stack of mail with her to the back hall to tell Ian she was leaving.

The south end of the back hall ended at the side door with the stained-glass cardinal on it. A wide doorway on the left opened into the parlor, where Nell was sitting quietly watching television. To Cally’s right, a long, dark-paneled hallway led away into the south wing of the house. The door at the end of this hall was open, and Cally was sure this must be Ian’s study when she saw bookshelves and a paper-strewn desk through it. As she approached, she could hear the men’s voices, but she thought they sounded a little more strident than pleasant conversation between old friends should sound.

It was Doc’s voice that was loudest. “But she needs medication!” he was saying, and his voice was not the gentle, patient one he had used upstairs with Bethany.

“Not that,” she heard Ian say. “It makes her so miserable. She says it makes her feel dead.” His voice was not loud, but it was adamant.

“The new compounds don’t have the unpleasant side-effects that the old style drugs did,” Doc said earnestly. “Ian, it would help her live a normal life.”

“A normal life!” the Captain snorted. “Hah!”

“What kind of normal life can she ever have again?” Ian said.

Cally knew the person they were talking about could not have been Bethany. This was probably about Nell, she supposed, and in any case it was definitely none of her business. She tried to make her footsteps as loud as possible on the hall rug as she drew closer.

“Look, Ian,” Doc was saying. “I’ve kept your secret for what feels like most of my life. If you would just let me help you...”

“Our secret,” said the Captain.

“Our secret. But I won’t...”

The voices fell silent as someone finally heard Cally’s footsteps. She stuck her head through the doorway and knocked on the doorframe. “Hello?” she said. “Mr. May? Hello? Are you there? I’m just heading out now.”

Ian stood up from one of chairs that were gathered in a circle in front of a small hearth. He looked tired and sad, but he smiled when he saw Cally’s face. “Miss McCarthy,” he said. “Yes, well. It’s just that, I’m afraid something came up, and my little errand for you isn’t ready yet.” He gestured toward the disorganized papers covering the desk. “Can I impose on you another time?”

“Of course you can. It would be no imposition,” Cally said awkwardly. The Captain and Doc fidgeted, glancing sideways at her. “I’ll just be gone a little while. I’ve forwarded the phones to voicemail. I’m dropping off the mail,” she said, showing him the stack of envelopes, “and then heading into Blackthorn.”

All four men replied in unison. “Be careful!”

Cally shook her head in puzzlement as Ian bowed slightly and closed the door. Heading back, she saw Foster standing at the other end of the hallway, just inside the dining room. “One of their little secret meetings, then?” he asked her.

“I’m sure that’s none of my business,” she said. “I’m just going in to Blackthorn to run a few errands. Is there anything I can pick up for you or Nell while I’m there?”

He seemed distracted, peering closely at the stack of envelopes in her hand. “What?” he said, looking up. “No. Um, no, nothing I can think of at the moment.” He shook his head and pushed up his glasses. “I’ll keep watch over Bethany while you’re gone. Those foreigners keep going in and out of her room.”

“Seriously, Foster, I think if anyone would be inclined to wish Bethany ill, it would be Joan. And even she...”

“That’s an interesting thought!” He lowered his voice and glanced back into the dining room. “I’ve always suspected she wants Ian to marry her,” he said conspiratorially, “so that it will all be hers when she outlives him. And then what would be the odds she’d leave any of it to Nell?”

“If she outlives him,” Cally said. She appreciated Foster’s determination to solve the mystery, but this was just uncharitable gossip and she was glad to have an excuse to get away from listening to any more of it. “I have to get going,” she told him, “if I’m going to get back here in time with Bethany’s next dose.”