The three of them huddled together looking at the video that had attracted so much attention. Sadie cringed seeing herself being flung to the floor, then dragged backward with her legs in the air and an obvious wet mark on her jeans as she screamed in pure terror with her mouth exposing fillings on her back molars. The entire video was less than five minutes.
"It"s no better watching it a second time. It looks like a bad scene from a B horror movie," Sadie grumbled.
"A lot of people in the comments are suggesting it"s just a publicity stunt," Maeva harrumphed.
Sadie"s eyebrows shot up and she looked at her friend.
"Well, that"s not such a bad idea. I don"t mind being a.s.sociated with a comical commercial for Psychics "R" Us. Maybe that"s exactly how we should play this thing." To Rosemary she added, "Maybe you can just put in the credits at the end thanking me for my acting services for Madam Maeva"s?"
"That"s a horrible idea," Maeva grumped. "It"ll make my company a laughingstock!"
"I think it"s better if we just let the haters believe it"s a stunt and let those who want to believe in the possibilities of an afterlife think of Madam Maeva"s as a way to reach out to those beyond," Rosemary said simply.
"Except for one thing," Sadie said. "My name and company have been mentioned in the comments. People who think it"s a stunt will laugh it off and not use Madam Maeva"s Cafe. No big loss because those kinds of people wouldn"t have searched for a psychic anyway. Those who think it"s the real deal will be burning up Madam Maeva"s phone lines trying to book appointments to get visits with their dearly departed, right?"
Rosemary nodded. "We"re booked solid with readings for the next month."
"That"s great for Madam Maeva"s. But . . ." Sadie looked from Rosemary to Maeva. "There"s no upside for me. n.o.body"s sitting around thinking that since their dearly departed committed suicide and they need someone to mop it up they might as well call the crazy Scene-2-Clean girl who peed her pants at a seance!"
"I thought that was just a shadow," Maeva said.
"Sure. A shadow," Rosemary agreed. "But there"s no shame in being terrified. It was a scary situation!"
"That"s right," Maeva said. "When the writing said "Bring Sadie" we thought it was because there was a special message for you. We didn"t think you were in any danger, or we would never have suggested you come."
Sadie rubbed her temples in a circular motion, trying to ward off a tension headache.
"Okay, I don"t want to talk about the weird vortex of doom inside that house that wants to kill me," Sadie muttered.
"But we really should talk about it," Maeva said seriously. "Whatever darkness is there needs to be dealt with."
"I agree. You go ahead and deal with it. I"m choosing to take a different route. I"m going to ignore the whole thing. Unfortunately, my problems are bigger than a stupid video and a haunted house. I"ve got a serial killer leaving me pointer fingers, and a ghost at the hotel says the murderer won"t stop until I"m one of his victims."
"You never said anything about that." Maeva offered her friend a frightened look.
"It"s a pretty new development," Sadie admitted. "Three ghosts at that hotel but only two bodies were found by the police. I dealt with the two, but this girl named Marlene seemed to only exist to warn me."
"Marlene!" Rosemary Thingvold exclaimed. "Was she wearing a brown uniform with her name embroidered on it?"
"Yes!" Sadie nodded excitedly. "How do you know her?"
"This is more serious than I thought," Maeva said, shaking her head slowly. To Rosemary she added, "We need to show her."
"Show me what?" A feeling of dread filled Sadie"s stomach next to the bagel and scone she wolfed down earlier.
Rosemary tapped on the keyboard of her laptop and began playing the video again. When the movie was near the end, she paused the footage and began showing it frame by frame before pausing and zooming in on one particular shot.
The closet appeared as a deep swirling ma.s.s of blackened smoke. In the center were two red slits of eyes; and impossibly long, smoky appendages stretched from the closet and across the floor, holding Sadie"s shoulders and dragging her.
Sadie shuddered. "Good thing you had your wand," she told Rosemary.
"I think my wand may have helped, but I have a feeling you were saved by someone else."
"Show her the next part," Maeva instructed.
Rosemary clicked and the video began to play, and then she paused it again.
"Can you see it?" she asked Sadie.
Sadie looked in at the horrible ma.s.s of smoke and eyes and could vaguely make out something else in the background.
"Get closer," Maeva instructed.
Rosemary clicked a few times and soon the screen was zoomed in on the heinous closet.
Sadie gasped.
Centered in the smoky vortex was the same ghostly figure of a young woman dressed in a brown uniform, with MARLENE st.i.tched on the blouse.
Chapter 12.
The female apparition of Marlene had her arms locked around the darkened sphere with the red eyes. In the blink of an eye and coinciding with the flash of Rosemary"s wand, Marlene appeared to envelope the monster and then both were gone as the video faded to black.
"Wow," Sadie murmured. "That"s her. That"s Marlene from the hotel." She looked from Maeva to Rosemary. "I don"t get it."
"We need more information on the history of that house," Maeva said firmly.
"And you, personally, need a serious smudging," Rosemary added.
Sadie straightened in her chair. "You are so not coming anywhere near me with your burning herbs. I prefer to keep my eyebrows."
Maeva was busy texting on her phone.
"How"s...o...b..rt?" Sadie asked. "Do you have to go?"
"I"ve got another hour until his next feeding so I texted Gayla and asked her to meet with us."
"I don"t know if that"s such a good idea," Sadie said. "I met with her last night and she seemed overwhelmed by the video and all the attention it was drawing to the house."
Maeva"s phone chirped and she glanced down.
"She"s agreed. We"re to come to her condo on Lakeside as soon as we can."
The trio dipped out into the rain and formed a three-car convoy onto the I-5, then exited at Montlake. Within fifteen minutes they were searching for parking on the side streets around the waterfront building. Once their vehicles were all squeezed and tucked into designated spots, the three met out front.
Sadie let out a low whistle as she scanned the water view. "What do you think? A million for this place?"
"Double it, I"m sure," Maeva said.
They buzzed in and rode the elevator up a few floors. Gayla Woods opened the door with a martini in one hand and a fluffy white cat in the other.
"This is Prince," she said, raising the feline up to their faces.
"Um, nice to meet you," Sadie replied awkwardly.
The cat looked like he wanted chew off somebody"s face. Sadie hoped he wasn"t partial to trauma cleaners.
"Drink?" Gayla asked over her shoulder as they followed her into the living room.
"We"re driving," Rosemary said and then after a glance at Maeva added, "And nursing."
"Not all of us are nursing," Sadie said as she elbowed Rosemary out of the way and vied for what appeared to be the only comfortable chair in the room-a navy-blue upholstered armchair next to the window.
Gayla"s apartment was decorated mostly in shades of white, including the sofa and area rugs. She"d successfully managed to combine an eclectic mix of antiques and modern furniture. None of it looked cheap, or comfortable. Sadie guessed the sofa was as stiff as Gayla"s martini but maybe she thought that a million-dollar view would make you feel better about sitting on rock-hard furniture.
"I"ll make tea," Gayla said, disappearing down the hall.
"Great," Sadie muttered. "Now I"ll have to drink tea."
Sadie had a long-standing hatred of tea because it was the beverage of choice offered by bereaved families when they talked to her about mopping up their loved ones. If death had a drink choice, it was tea.
Sadie opted to put her large new purse on the floor next to the chair and then noticed Gayla"s cream-colored Fendi handbag already there. Sadie hoisted her large bag back onto her lap and glanced down at the impressive purse. It was open and nestled inside the linen lining of the designer satchel were a number of bills. Sadie recognized the red bold lettering on many of them immediately as being past due.
Nonchalantly, Sadie grabbed the half-dozen envelopes from Gayla"s purse. She shuffled them in her hands, getting a look at bills from utility companies and a rental agency all with past-due red gleaming through the white opaque envelopes. Just as quickly, Sadie tucked the envelopes back into Gayla"s bag. When she glanced up Maeva was eyeing her curiously and Sadie just offered her an innocent smile in return.
"Look at that view," Rosemary whispered.
Sadie got her mind out of Gayla"s finances and turned to enjoy the view. It was truly spectacular with the twinkling lights of Bellevue glimmering off the lake only feet away and a backdrop of the Cascade Mountains in the distance.
"I"d have to mop a lot of blood to afford a place like this," Sadie said, awed. "Maybe I should"ve gone into real estate investing instead."
"Is that all she does?" Maeva asked. "I thought she was an accountant."
"I do both," Gayla Woods announced as she walked into the living room balancing a tray of colorful ceramic teacups, a teapot, and a refreshed martini. She placed the tray on the coffee table and told everyone to help themselves. "Many years doing accounting work in the hospitality industry helped me often find profit in areas that others might find too risky, or unappealing."
"Yes, being an accountant must"ve been very helpful with crunching numbers and finding the best real estate deals in Seattle," Rosemary remarked, reaching for a cup and filling it from the teapot.
"It"s helped," Gayla admitted. "Not all of the places I buy are in Seattle. The market here is still quite pricey compared to a lot of the country. For example, I was in Los Angeles pricing some foreclosures a few months ago when Maeva was speaking there. She made quite the impression."
"Thank you," Maeva said. "So what got you started on investing?"
"A boyfriend came upon a discounted house deal and we invested together. Mostly, I got lucky early on and that made all the difference in the world. Found a couple places that looked like bargains, fixed then up, and then resold them just as the market was taking off. Made a tidy profit and then hit repeat for ten years."
"You make it sound easy," Sadie said, thinking about how she"d scrimped and saved to get the down payment for her own place and now struggled to make the mortgage payment. But then she remembered Gayla"s past-due bills just a few inches from where she sat. "I"m guessing the way the economy has been going, it"s been tough."
"It hasn"t been all martinis and olives," Gayla said, letting out a snort of laughter. "Sometimes we"ve had some real lemons."
"What do you do with the lemons?" Maeva asked, stealing a glance at her watch.
Gayla shrugged. "We either rent them out until we can sell them for a profit or we cut and run. There"s a ranch house we own in Bellevue that was a hard sell, so I rented it out for a couple years. Now the market in that area is up and I"m selling it."
"You said "we." Do you do all your investing with a partner?" Rosemary asked.
"My fiance and I partner up on many places, but I have a better knack for discovering those with a high profit margin." She grinned proudly.
"You must be doing well for yourself, though, because this is a stunning apartment," Sadie remarked.
"Thank you, but I can"t take credit for this one; it belongs to a friend. I"m just staying here until Halladay is remodeled, and then I"m moving somewhere warm and dry with my fiance."
"What are you going to do about Halladay Street if it takes a long time to sell?" Sadie asked.
"That"s the magic question, isn"t it?" Gayla said, then put her fingers to her lips to shush a giggle. "I"m sorry. I guess that"s not politically correct, is it? To talk about magic in front of you?"
"We"re not magicians," Sadie said dryly. She began to wonder why they"d come. "In light of that unfortunate video-," Sadie began.
"And I have to say again how sorry I am about that," Rosemary added, cutting her off.
"We"re just wanting more history on the house," Sadie continued. "I mean, we all know the basics. . . . Some crazy-a.s.sed woman killed her daughter there and then went to jail."
"And then the mom killed herself," Gayla said.
"Yes, but was there any other history of wrongdoing in the house?" Maeva asked.
"Isn"t that enough?" Gayla asked, her speech slurring slightly. "A girl was killed because she was hooking around town and-"
"Excuse me?" Sadie leaned forward. "Did you say she was hooking? I thought she was fourteen? Are you saying she was a prost.i.tute?"
Gayla frowned and took a dainty sip from her martini gla.s.s. "That may have just been a rumor I heard from the neighbor." She got to her feet and began pacing, obviously frustrated.
"That could tie in everything," Sadie murmured. "I don"t know how, but if the killer was connected to Halladay Street . . ."
Gayla tossed up her hands. "I just want this house business finished. I"ve got places to go. Things to do. I own houses all over this G.o.dd.a.m.ned country and I don"t plan on staying in Seattle forever." She stared out the window at the drizzle falling lightly over the city. "I hate the rain." She planted manicured hands on her hips. "Can you help me or not?"
They were all quiet a moment.
"We"re just trying to find the cause so we can come up with a solution," Maeva said evenly.
"Rumors at that time were that the mom believed her daughter was possessed by demons and she tried holding an exorcism," Rosemary said.
"Yes, it was all very sad. I remember reading about it in the paper," Maeva added. "The mother admitted that she"d called every priest in the Seattle area but everyone turned her down, so she attempted the exorcism herself. Poisoned the demons but, actually, killed her daughter in the process."