Juniper Wiles, page 7
“I had a ghost ask me to take a case.”
“What? Like you’re some kind of PI like the one you played on TV?”
“Something like that.”
“A ghost.”
I nod. “That young guy whose body was found in the park? It was his ghost.”
He studies me for a long moment. “So what’s bugging you the most? The idea of meeting a ghost, or the fact that he wants you to play the part for real?”
“A little of both. Not to mention how I can see him when other people can’t. He came up to me in a café but nobody else saw him.”
Pearse nods. “I don’t know about why you can see a ghost nobody else can, but the world’s a big place with room for all kinds of things in it—those that make sense and those that don’t. But I do know that the past can hold you back or it can push you forward. I like to embrace the past—the good and the bad—and use it to build something better.”
“Except I was never an investigator. I just played a part. A team of writers figured out the clues for me.” I smile. “When it comes right down to it, they’re the ones who got my character into trouble in the first place.”
“But…?”
“It’s weird, but now I can’t stop thinking of…the case.”
I use the term reluctantly.
“Well,” Pearse says, “I know this much. If you get in a little deep, you know how to take care of yourself.”
“Even if there are ghosts and monsters?”
“Everybody on the Spook Squad is human.”
“I’m kind of surprised you’re taking all of this at face value.”
“Like I said,” Pearse tells me, “the world’s a hell of a lot bigger and stranger than the little corner I live in. My dad used to leave milk out for the brownies.”
“Have you ever seen a ghost or one of those monsters?”
“Hell no. I’d probably crap my pants if I did.”
I stop in at the Half Kaffe after I leave O’Shaunessy’s. I’m not feeling as sore after some more stretches and a hot shower at the club. The hipster Jason is behind the counter and he chats away to me while he draws me a cup of coffee. I have no idea what he’s saying because I’m not really listening. I just nod in what seem like the appropriate places.
I’m thinking about a bunch of things. Sonora, back at the shelter. The weirdness that Ethan has brought into my life. And yeah, Nick.
When I finally get my coffee and claim a table I take Nick’s business card from my pocket and lay it down beside my takeout cup. I dig my phone out but only to check the time. Quarter to six. He’ll be closing up soon. Tam’s playing at Your Second Home with one of his bands. Maybe Nick would want to come along.
I could call him, but I decide to go by the bookstore before it closes. At five to six I step inside to the sound of the store bell and see a stranger behind the cash counter. She’s a cute college-age girl with blond hair and black horn rims, which makes me wonder if eyeglasses are to Burns’ Books what the Jason name tag is to the Half Kaffe Café.
At the sound of the bell, her head lifts from the book she’s reading and she smiles.
“Can I help you find something?” she asks.
“No, I—is Nick in?”
She shakes her head. “I’m afraid not. He usually leaves around five. Did you want to leave a message?”
“No, it’s okay. It wasn’t important.”
I leave and wander aimlessly for a while, eventually finding myself standing in front of the animal shelter. Which is closed at this time of day. I wonder how Sonora’s doing. If Jilly were here, I bet I could convince her to help me break Sonora out and she’d know just how to do it. But I don’t have Jilly’s fearlessness. I don’t think many people do.
As I put my hands in my pockets and start for home I feel the keys to Ethan’s office.
It’s a long walk down Stanton Street to Flood. I take Flood Street north for a couple more blocks before I arrive at my destination. Ethan’s office is in the old Sovereign Building, a tall brick structure that has seen better times. I remember my parents’ lawyer had an office in it before he moved closer to the waterfront. The neighbourhood surrounding it has been decaying for years, though I suppose that makes for cheaper rents.
The day is slipping into dusk when I step inside the foyer. There’s a bank of names to my left with buzzers and I look through them for Ethan’s, but come up blank. It doesn’t matter. He’s not keeping office hours anymore and I don’t need to be buzzed in.
The first key doesn’t work, but the second lets me in. I take the elevator up to the third floor. It’s a smoother ride than I was expecting from how the doors stuttered and wheezed like an old man as they were closing. When they open with the same difficulty I promise myself to use the stairs when I leave.
It takes me a moment to get my bearings and follow the office numbers down a long hall until I get to Ethan’s. It’s not breaking in, I tell myself as I unlock the door and step inside. I’ve got a key and Edward’s permission. But I can’t help feeling like a burglar.
I hit the light switch on the wall inside the door and stop. I immediately see the books and DVDs I was expecting back at Ethan’s apartment. There’s a bookcase full of them against one wall, with multiple copies of both. There are even foreign translations. The bottom shelves hold action figures still in their packaging, packs of collector’s cards, the Nora Constantine board game, and a set of coffee mugs featuring the main characters from the show. Me, naturally. My two boyfriends, James Hearne and Toby Cannon. Carmen Hale, the frenemy who could never decide if she wanted to help or hinder me. Roland Anders, the teacher’s assistant I meet in the pilot, who keeps getting sucked into my investigations. And of course Gabi Ramos, who was played by Allison Bennet, the only member of the cast that I’m still in touch with.
Gabi was the typical computer hacker that every mystery show seems to have—sort of punky, sort of Goth, with the spiky black hair, piercings and tattoos we’ve all come to expect. I blame The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo for that. The ironic thing is, off-screen Allison has nice wavy blond hair and neither tats nor piercings. Plus she dresses like the Valley girl she is.
A desk with a closed notebook computer on top faces the door. The other furnishings are an old beat up sofa and a three-drawer metal filing cabinet with a coffee maker and hot plate on top. My face looks back at me from a poster above the sofa. The other walls are papered with more posters from the show, mostly me, often in action with another character.
I quietly close the door behind me in case someone comes along, and let out a gasp when a life-size cutout of me behind the door catches me off guard. It takes me a minute to recover my equilibrium, but I’m left with a nervous chill.
I don’t have any of this crap—the mugs, action figures, posters. I left it all behind in L.A. I did bring along a set of the books and DVDs, but they’re still packed away in a box in my closet.
It’s creepy, standing here surrounded by all this memorabilia with my face looking out at me. I cross over to the desk and sit down to try to tame my wobbly knees.
I check the drawers, which are mostly empty, but have a few of the usual things you’d expect in an office: an unopened two-pack of memory sticks, notepaper, a couple of pens, the power cord for the notebook. The top of the desk’s not much more interesting, just the computer and a copy of Nora Constantine and the Secret of the Yellow Steamer Trunk.
I open the computer, expecting to need a password, but Ethan’s background image fills the screen. Naturally, it’s the publicity shot of the cast from the third season.
So much for finding incriminating evidence. If you’ve got nothing to hide, you’re not going to bother with security.
There aren’t any programs open to see what he’s been working on most recently, so I click on the Documents folder. I find a whole bunch of files named TNCS with a number following the acronym. I open the first and groan as its title appears at the top of the page: The Nora Constantine Sexcapades 1.
I don’t need to read the text below the title. Allison told me about this blog last year, and now I know who it belongs to. Beyond his fixation on the show, it seems Ethan writes fanfiction, specifically raunchy fanfic.
I think about this for a moment. Ethan’s obsessed with the show. He buys and sells show memorabilia. He’s got a trans boyfriend whom he seems to really love, yet he writes raunchy porn fanfic that he publishes in an online blog. Does this make sense? Why does he do this?
Allison thinks this stuff’s hilarious. Me, not so much. But Allison gets a kick out of putting on her Gabi wig and gear and making appearances at conventions.
I take a look at his browser search history but it’s wiped clean. His emails are all about various transactions—things he’s sold, things he’s bought—and notices of when someone’s posted a comment on the blogs he follows. There’s spam. What there doesn’t seem to be—at least from a cursory look—is a reason why someone would want to kill him. Or why he’d want to hire me. I mean, Nora.
I shut down the word processor program and close the lid on the notebook.
I still don’t have a clue why he was killed or what that cryptic text he sent to Nick is supposed to mean.
Palmer was a truly despicable character, but he was also just that. A character. A character who got killed and buried on screen—there was a pretty moving scene of Nora and a couple of the girls she’d rescued from him standing at his grave in the last episode of season two. And off-screen, Adam Hendrix, who played Palmer, is one of the sweetest guys you could ever meet, so this has nothing to do with him.
I sit there for a while, staring at the cutout and posters of myself across the room, but I don’t find a single bit of insight, the way Nora would have by now.
Finally I cross the room, lock up behind me and head for home.
I have a weird dream when I finally go to bed. I’m in an unfamiliar room, locked in a big cage like the kind they have for the animals at the Crowsea Animal Shelter. The lights are off and it’s hard to see. I have the sense that there are other cages with other people in them all around me.
I’m lying on a ratty old blanket and don’t seem to have much strength but I manage to get my fingers in the mesh sides of the cage and pull myself up into a sitting position.
That’s when a door opens across the room and this vague Nosferatu shape of a man glides into the room and comes up to my cage. It’s hard to make out anything except for his pale face, which seems to float in the darkness, but I instinctively know he’s some kind of vampire, and if I meet his gaze he’ll trap my soul as well as my body. My pulse drums as he stands there looking down at me, radiating menace.
I can’t bear the tension. I feel that I’ve lived this moment many times before. I know that I’ll eventually look up and then he will feed on me.
I wake up when he reaches for the lock on the cage.
4
Thursday
“You never showed last night,” Tam says when I come shuffling into the kitchen the next morning in my pajamas. “And when I got home your light was off. Is everything okay?”
I look around, trying to blink the sleep from my eyes. “I just didn’t feel like seeing people, so I decided to stay in and finish off my outfit for tomorrow. Then I realized I was beat and just went to bed.”
Tam pushes a mug of coffee across the table to me and I take it gratefully.
“Thanks,” I mumble. I take a swig and wait for the caffeine to do its job. It doesn’t take long. Sometimes I feel just the idea of caffeine is enough to wake me up.
“Do I really have to get dressed up?” he asks, scrunching up his nose.
“What did Geordie say?”
“Pirate shirt or anything with poufy sleeves. Jeans are okay. Maybe add a scarf for colour.”
I shake my head. Boys.
“Come on,” I tell him. “It’s not like he’s asking you to go full Renaissance Faire which, do I need to remind you, you’ve done in the past. What’s the big deal, anyway?”
“Poufy sleeves.” He sticks out his tongue.
I laugh. “Oh, grow a pair. It’ll be fun. I’ve got wings and pointy ears to go with my dress.”
“The sleeves will get in the way of my strumming hand.”
“So roll them up.”
This coffee is so good. I have another big sip then loll back in my chair, content.
“I’m thinking of getting a dog,” I say.
He rolls his eyes. “If Jilly jumps off the bridge are you going to jump off, too?”
Now I stick out my tongue at him. “Oh, please. It’s nothing like that. I just really felt connected to Sonora—that’s her name—and I hate the idea of her being stuck in a cage at the shelter when she could be living with me.”
“I’m kidding,” Tam says with a smile, then adds with more seriousness, “It’s a big commitment.”
“I know. Will you come and meet her with me?”
“Absolutely. Will you help me find a shirt with poufy sleeves?”
“Only if I get to make you try on dozens of them before we settle on one.”
“Why can’t it be simple?”
I straighten up and give him a haughty look. “Fashion is never simple.”
He holds up his hands in surrender and I settle back in my chair.
“How’s your case going?” he asks.
“Don’t ask.”
“That bad?”
I shrug. “I’m not a real detective, so it’s no big surprise that I suck at it.”
“You’re good at lots of other things.”
“I know. Like picking out poufy shirts!” I stand up and grab my mug. “I’m going to put on some clothes and then I’ll be ready to go.”
We’re planning to go to the thrift shop up on the corner of Lee and Kelly before heading down to the animal shelter, but take a short detour over to the house on Stanton Street to drop off Tam’s guitar. They have another band rehearsal this afternoon.
Bobo comes tearing down the hall when I open the front door, his high-pitched barking followed by Geordie shouting, “Inside voice!” from the kitchen. Bobo’s barking drops to a lower woof, but he continues to dance around our feet as we make our way to the kitchen.
We find Jilly, Geordie and Wendy sitting around the table. Bobo hops up onto Geordie’s lap and immediately looks as if he’s been there for hours.
“Don’t buy a shirt just for this gig,” Geordie says when we explain our errands. “I’ve got a bunch and I can lend you one.” He absently strokes Bobo as he talks.
“Can I come to the shelter with you?” Jilly asks. “I want to see Sonora’s face when she realizes she’s got a forever home.”
In the end we all go traipsing down the street, Bobo leading the way, head and tail held high. As we walk, I tell them what I found in Ethan’s office.
“What’s fanfic?” Jilly wants to know.
“It’s when readers,” Wendy explains, “get so invested in the world of an author that they write their own stories set in that world. They might make up their own characters, but they usually use the ones from canon—meaning the original books and movies and shows—and either continue those characters’ stories, or make up new relationships for them. Like Captain Kirk and Spock being a gay couple.”
“Really?”
Wendy nods. “There’ve probably been more pages of Harry Potter fanfic written than there are in the original books. Fanfic’s huge. The people writing it focus on anything that’s popular. Star Trek. Star Wars. Twilight.” She looks at me. “Nora Constantine.”
“Aren’t there copyright laws to stop that kind of thing?” Geordie asks.
“Well, sure. But it’s hard to go after somebody when they’re not trying to make money from your intellectual property. In the old days, the people writing it would trade mimeographed and photocopied versions. Now it’s all up on the ’net.”
“And Ethan Law was one of them?” Jilly asks.
“Looks like,” I tell her. “He put them up on a blog called The Nora Constantine Sexcapades.”
She grimaces in sympathy.
“And what do they get out of writing this stuff—besides titillation?” Tam asks, also shooting me a sad face.
Wendy shrugs. “It’s not all titillation. Their stories get read. You have to remember that they do this out of love for the original material. They just want more, or they think they know better how the stories should go and who should end up together. Apparently there’s a lot of steamy romance.”
“I am so innocent,” Jilly says.
“Well,” I say, “from all I’ve heard, the Nora of fanfic fame sure isn’t.”
We’ve reached the shelter now. Wendy and Geordie wait outside with Bobo while the rest of us go inside. Everybody knows Jilly, of course, because she’s in here so much, and after a couple of visits I’m starting to know some of the staff as well. The girl behind the counter is Judy, twenty-something, brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, a ready smile that jumps to her eyes when she finds out why we’re here.
Judy has us wait in a side room while she goes to get Sonora. I feel like I’m going to vibrate right off my chair from anticipation. Sonora’s just as beautiful as I remember, with the pink of her ears and her muzzle, and the black fur around one eye so she looks like she’s wearing a patch. But I can tell there’s something wrong. In temperament, she seems completely different from the cheerful Sonora I walked and played with yesterday. She still holds her head high, but she won’t quite look at any of us. Her tail isn’t between her legs, but it’s droopy.
“Baby,” I say as I kneel on the floor and hold out a hand to her. “What’s the matter?”
She sniffs my hand and lets me pet her, but it’s pretty obvious that she’s uncomfortable and it makes my heart break. I so wanted this to work out, but she doesn’t seem to like me anymore.
“I don’t get it,” Judy says. “She’s never been like this before.”
