Dinner was in the elegant formal dining room, lit by an electric-candle chandelier. I didn't care for the chairs. The backrests of crisscross bamboo reached higher than our heads, so that the three of us, at one end of the long teakwood table, looked like an odd trio of midgets. The dishes were Thai and Hunan. The drinks were rice wine with snakes coiled at the bottom of the bottles; a harsh and potent saki, and iced tea (which Top knew I would appreciate).
It was an enjoyable dinner; the widows soft-stepping into the room every five minutes to see what we might want; Moira having a difficult time chewing with her mouth closed due to an excess of excited smiles.
Top was never at a loss for words. He suited the conversation to things related to the main topic of interest, so as not to wear it threadbare, but keep it tantalizingly out of reach.
Moira and I were not sure how to react to the news Top gave us that Neal, the Undertaker's step-dad and supposed slayer of Alicia, could not make it over that night, but would be there tomorrow evening for the planned seance. Furthermore, Top had decided to switch venues. The seance (a ploy to attract the alleged murderer) was now to take place at his cabin.
That was fine with me but I knew that Moira worried that the postponement might jeopardize her chances of seeing the ghost. She didn't say it, but I could see it clearly enough in her expression. So, of course, could Top. As he was refilling her wine glass he said, "A ghost exists within the emotion that characterized the trauma that ended its life. This emotion is drawn up by the seance, wherever the seance happens to be."
After a dessert of custard pie, Moira went upstairs to our room turning on every light she came to, hoping to dispell a little of the spookiness she felt; just enough of it to be alone without jumping in fright at every snap of noise in the old walls and floorboards. She wanted to try on the silky outfits that hung in the walk-in closet, she said; but I suspected her motive was to call or text Josie. (Top had no objections to inviting Josie to the cabin, but he would have to arrange his own transportation.)
I took a packet of cheroots and went outside in my brown leather jacket, Top following with his pipe and a black felt overcoat. We walked down the drive to the expansive front lawn and into the silvered moon shadows between the trees. "We're going to kill this Neal fellow, aren't we," I remarked matter-of-factly.
"He will die of a guilty conscience."
"You mean of a heart attack, one that you'll induce."
"Indeed. If he gets in a high enough pitch of stress. And I think he will. Alicia will show herself. You do believe that, don't you?"
"I'm open to it. I've seen apparitions."
Top chuckled. "She's in my head, if nowhere else. Do you believe in coincidence?" I said no I didn't. He replied, "Of course not. Neal rented this house from Esther and was living here when he had the affair with Alicia; when the murders took place. And just before that, when I was with Esther in Pittsburg, where Neal is from, I recruited his step-son for the Roadents. This was not long before you joined us. He didn't get along well with Johnny Bee."
I grunted. "Redbone fucked the Bee Man's bitch. And she liked it. She liked it plenty and she told Johnny as much." (I had heard this from Squaw, always a ready and eager source of gossip.)
"Our loss and Shovel's gain," Top said with a satisfied puff on his pipe. "Better that Neal is the step-dad of an Undertaker than of a Roadent."
I turned to light a second cheroot, and blowing a lungful of smoke I watched Moira's silhouette on the blind of the gable window up above, her finger tapping furiously on the keypad of her phone. This meant, and I was right, that she was texting her ex-roommate's sister, Hadley Colt. They hated each other so much that they couldn't get their fill of texting.
Below, in a plot of those noxious flowers, was a fountain pedestal that reminded me of the bird bath at Marcia's apartment complex in Memphis. Then something like a premonition came over me as I listened to the cascading overflow. I suppose it might have been the bowl of rippling water and how the light from a ground-floor window danced on the surface of it that brought on the feeling that the girl upstairs would do something I wouldn't be able to handle very well, if at all. For an intense moment it chilled me.
Top stood beside me, clacking his teeth on the pipe stem as he stared up at the second-floor window. "She does realize the intended fate of Neal, would you say?"
"I don't think that's soaked in yet. All she can think of is getting a thrill in a haunted house, or during a seance. She probably thinks Neal will be scared out of his wits and run. Or confess and be arrested."
I said that without conviction. It would have been sincere had I not felt that brief chill.
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