But it was neither Joe Cap nor Declan—nor anyone of the male persuasion.
“Oh, shit,” Teddy said when she saw who was getting out of the powder-blue Cadillac SUV. “It’s Maxine. And Juanita. And Iva.”
That got Oscar popping up out of the bed, his eyes wide. “No way. What time is it? What in thehellare they doing here?”
He was frantically looking for appropriate articles of clothing when she slipped from the bedroom and made a mad dash through the cottage to the other side—where her clothes were. She wasnotanswering the door in her boxers and tee, especially after all the discussion about jumping bones from the day before.
She heard the peremptory knocking on the front door just as she yanked a sports bra into place, but ignored it. Oscar was closer, plus he’d had the proximity of clothing, and so was probably already dressed.
In fact, she took her time—pinning up her hair, brushing her teeth, and finally coming out to save Oscar after she decided on a happy yellow sundress that she knew looked particularly good on her. She even checked out her too-big butt in the mirror.
But hey, if Oscar thought it looked good, then that was fine with her. With a smile and a hope for good things to come, she left her room.
“Good morning, ladies,” she said when she joined them in the living room. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”
“We brought Sunday Morning Scones,” Iva said, offering a paper sack. “From Orbra’s.”
“It’s a bribe,” Maxine said in a stage whisper as Oscar took the bag. “She wants to see your ghost.”
And that was how it turned out that a whole stampede of them—Maxine, Iva, Teddy, and Oscar—began to clamber up the steps to the top of the lighthouse. Juanita and Bruce Banner elected to stay on the ground level so he could investigate the grounds—and so his mistress could sample the scones. She also offered to make coffee for everyone, and no one argued with that idea.
Maxine led the way up the one hundred and sixty-eight stairs with more speed and efficiency than Teddy had anticipated. That wasn’t to say the old curmudgeonspedup them, but she kept her pace steady and smooth.
It was during the climb that Teddy concluded Maxine didn’t actuallyneedher walking stick for ambulation purposes.
When they reached the top, Oscar thoughtfully eased ahead of the troop of females and pushed open the door to the lantern room so the bats could escape before anyone set foot inside.
“What a gorgeous view,” Iva said, slipping past Maxine to be the first to walk in. “Now, show me exactly where you saw the Ghostly Presence.” Her cornflower eyes were lit up like stars, and Teddy couldn’t help but share her enthusiasm.
It was a lot less creepy up here in the middle of the day, with the morning sun streaming and the sky cerulean and cloudless.
“All right,” Teddy said, leading Iva out onto the open gallery. A breeze blew in from the lake, and Teddy paused just to inhale the fresh scent. Then she showed Iva exactly where they’d been standing when the door blew closed.
“Now,” said Iva. “Do you remember what you were doing at that time? You’d already been up here for a few minutes, correct? And then suddenly the door slammed shut. I suspect it might have been a reaction to something you said or did—for there was no other warning, was there?”
“I thought the same thing,” Teddy replied. “And it makes sense, because we were talking about Stuart Millore falling or jumping from up here, andIsaid, ‘maybe he was pushed,’ and that was when the door slammed closed.”
“Exactly what I suspected,” Iva said gleefully. “It sounds to me like the Ghostly Presence was trying to get your attention—to emphasize what you’d just said. To confirm it, so to speak. Then what happened?”
As she explained how they couldn’t open the door, Teddy noticed that Maxine and Oscar had not joined them on the exterior walkway. Instead, they had their heads together—one iron-gray one, one of fiery copper—and were looking down into the base of the huge, reflective prisms. They seemed to be having an intense conversation, complete with hand gestures and emphatic motions.
“So you couldn’t get the door open,” Iva said. “What happened after that?”
“We just…waited. Sat down and tried to figure out what to do, and to wait it out. I fell asleep, eventually,” Teddy said, “and then I remember waking up suddenly because it wassocold. Like, I felt as if I’d been plunged into an arctic lake. It was so sudden and such a sharp change in temperature that it woke me.”
Iva was nodding sagely. “Definitely the sign of a supernatural presence—that sudden change in temperature, and with it being so startlingly cold.”
“Right. That’s what I thought. And then I saw the thing. The bluish-green something—whatever it was.”
“Where precisely did you see it? What did it do?”
Teddy surveyed the area carefully before she responded. “All right. The first time, when we were up here, the—well, for lack of a better term—manifestation was right here.”
“So it was standing right next to the door that had slammed shut and inexplicably locked.” Iva made a little humming sound. “Right here?” She bent to examine the area closely.
“Yes. And it just sort of floated there—Oscar said it was algae or some sort of moss that might have blown up from the lake or something, but it wasn’t. I could tell. It was…amorphous. You could see it billowing and blowing like a cloud.”
“Did it take any sort of shape? Or did it stay sort of permeable?”
