Hungry Ghosts (6 page)

“There it is!” The light shone on scratches in the ceiling two yards along that must have been the trapdoor from the saloon-turned-zendo.

“Sheesh! Do you think—”

Suddenly Tia was running down the tunnel. The dark engulfed her. Her heels and her cane clattered erratically. There was a thud—and then a scream.

“Aim the light at her!” Eamon ordered the man who had the other flashlight. But the beam was eaten by the dark in less than two yards.

“Tia?” I called.

She didn't answer.

“Tia!” I yelled. “Give me the light!”

The man with the flashlight started toward me, but a hand grabbed it and vanished into the dark.

I started after.

“It's okay!” It was Leo. “I've got her! Here!”—he aimed the light back so it made a dim path. “Help me get her out of here!”

“I'm fine. Just hit my head,” she murmured unconvincingly as Eamon and Leo half carried her, their own feet sliding in the damp mud. Jeffrey was at the top of the ladder, and Leo passed her to Eamon partway up, then with one arm hoisted her far enough for Jeffrey to pull her up and steady her on her feet.

“Get away!” She rammed both fists into Jeffrey's shoulders. He jolted, veered over the edge of the hole, and jerked away. “Just get away from me, Jeff!”

Behind me someone gasped.

“She must have really hit her head,” I said, without turning around. The whole thing was so unlike Tia, or at least the Tia I used to know. Never had she come close to anything so uncool with a boyfriend; it would have humiliated her. What was going on?

But by the time I waited my turn and got up the ladder, she had her cane and was barely leaning on it. She was shivering a bit but smiling at Leo, nodding in apparent thanks for something as he walked off.

Eamon patted Tia's back and took off at a lope, leaving her pulling the miserably damp, muddy shawl tighter around her thin shoulders. The stench of earth and decay clung to the shawl.

I grabbed her arm. “Tia, what's going on with you?”

“I'm fine!”

“Really? Lucky for Jeffrey you didn't send him flying down there.”

“Jeffrey?” Her face went blank momentarily. “I didn't . . . He wasn't that . . . I wouldn't have let him fall,” she said, looking more herself. “He's fine.”

I caught her eye. “Listen, you whack your head and you're not always the best judge of what's what. I speak from experience,
experiences
.”

She laughed, but it was a forced sound. “I've done worse and survived.”

“What I'm saying is—”

“Where are you staying in the city? With your sister . . . with Grace?”

I gave up. It was her life. “At Mom's. But Gracie's living there for now.”

“Do you have her phone—”

Eamon pulled up to the curb and waved.

She squeezed my shoulder. “Gotta go. Eamon's driving me home.” She turned toward the car, took two unsteady steps, stopped so suddenly she had to grab the cane with both hands. “Come to lunch tomorrow?”

It wasn't an invitation one declines. “Sure.”

“Noon?”

“Fine. I'll get you Gracie's number, but if you've got signs of concussion, don't wait to ask Gracie. Heads aren't her specialty.”

She laughed, and this time it sounded real. She pulled a business card from her pocket and by the time she extended it to me Tia seemed as in control as she always had. “I'm really looking forward to lunch, Darcy. It's time you came home. So, I'll see you tomorrow.” She walked slowly, but without weaving or using her cane, across the pavement, folded up the shawl, and slid into the green convertible.

In the open car, Tia looked just like she had at that high school track meet, sitting next to Mike, grinning as the fog-laden wind blew her silky hair off her face. Eamon hit the gas, and as they drove off, a gust wafted her hair and she leaned in toward him and smiled as if the past ten minutes had never happened, as if the last twenty-five years had dissolved.

I followed them with my gaze, suddenly unable to move. Concern for
her, loss of Mike, that glorious moment when I believed Mike had come back, Tia so undone: the whole swirl of emotion engulfed me. I didn't dare take my eyes off the car, lest I come apart.

And then the convertible turned the corner onto Columbus and was gone.

Slowly I retraced their route back to the curb in front of me. But now the parking spot was empty. No car blocked my view of the chair boutique across the street, and Jeffrey Hagstrom running around in the window like a crazy person.

C
HAPTER
6

I
WAS ACROSS
the street and banging on the shop door before I had time for second thoughts.

Jeffrey Hagstrom looked worse than Tia. Half hidden amid shiny gum-ball-colored accent chairs, he looked like a disoriented mole frantically rooting in a dahlia bed.

“Did you drop something?”

“What?” He jerked upright, pale round face flushed, eyes quivering as he took me in. “No. Well, nothing important. I was just . . . What are you doing here?”

“I figured you'd lost your mind . . . and you were looking for it.” I held my breath.

But I'd guessed right. After a slow double take, he mustered up a shaky grin. He glanced around at the tangle of chairs, hesitated as if about to apologize, then shrugged as if putting his emotional state into words was beyond him. The color was draining from his face now. Seeing him in this light, I realized he was taller than I'd thought, and thinner. But he looked like he would be fat—or should be. His short sandy hair seemed almost painted on. His shoulders sloped so steeply when viewed straight on, his arms seemed to sprout from just below his neck. Everything about him murmured:
Pay me no mind, or if you'd prefer, kick me
.

Which was just what Tia had done.

He let his fingers linger on the armrest of a brass pipe throne in the window as if it were the only friend who could be counted on to help him. “Jeffrey,” I said, “is the coffee shop down the street still open?”

“I guess.”

“Come on, we're going. Coffee'll be the thing for both of us.”

“I don't—”

“I was too busy at the reception to eat anything. I'm starved, and I need coffee. You can't refuse me company.”

He stood, fingers tightening and releasing the tubular armrest, as if weighing the danger of trusting me as he had Tia. Finally, he jerked his hand free. “Just let me straighten things up.” The shop was small for a business with such a narrow specialty stock. To survive in this pricey area Jeffrey would have to sell a lot of chairs made to please the eye rather than the butt. But he hadn't crammed in stock. Each piece stood as if it was the focal point. The effect was to create an awed urgency in the viewer as if he were at a cocktail party of the stars. Even now, well after closing time, Jeffrey moved methodically adjusting chair after chair. The arrangement had to be a work of love, and of art. No wonder Jeffrey and Tia had connected.

But by the time we finally stepped outside, I was thinking,
No wonder he drove her crazy
. Pacific Street was as empty as a back lot at night. No traffic, just swaths of curb with no parked vehicles, no one walking but us two. And no lights from the café on the corner, either. “Damn! It's closed!”

Jeffrey made an odd noise I took to be a laugh. “I've got a key.”

“You
own
the café?”

“No. Renzo's the block's keeper of the keys. He's got one for my shop, your place, too. Handy when you forget or the alarm goes off. He gives keys to us regulars, you know, in case of emergency.”

“Emergency? You mean
food
emergency?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah. Well, for Renzo, there are only two kinds of emergencies: earthquake and lack of coffee. Not in that order.” He unlocked the glass door of the Barbary Caffè, a space even smaller than his. Three tiny tables with two round chairs each and a bar packed it.

“Are all these tables ever full?”

“Huh? Oh . . . yeah. But you don't slide your chair back without apologizing to at least three people. Coffee? Food?”

“Is there any?”

Jeffrey managed a laugh. “That would be the third emergency: no food. Focaccia?”

“O-kay!” I sat while he took charge of the espresso maker and put the focaccia bread in the toaster oven. I had the feeling he was glad for the counter separating us, giving him time to pull his mind out of the store—or away from Tia—and focus enough to carry on a conversation with me. The familiar tasks seemed to calm him. He didn't look at home behind the counter, but at least like he was visiting home. With the blinds down and the smell of garlic mixing with the aroma of coffee, the place seemed cozy, particularly after that wretched tunnel. Still, I was shivering, and when he brought the espresso I held the cup to my sternum till it nearly burned.

He passed me the plates with the puffy, steaming bread and we wolfed it. Eating the warm bread together gave the occasion the illusion of normalcy, as if Tia hadn't just lost control or Jeffrey had not been prowling his shop like a crazy man. I wanted to ask him about her: was she on serious pain meds? And the cane! Why was Tia Dru of all people walking with a cane? I took another bite of focaccia.

Before I could swallow, Jeffrey leaned forward, inhaled, and started flinging out questions. “How do you like your Zen space? It's a real coup, don't you think? I tried to get Eamon to turn it into a period bar. He could
make a bundle from the tourist trade. The courtyard's a big plus; tourists adore drinking outdoors. But the key is the tunnel! People just eat up that kind of history, I told him.”

“You and Eamon are friends?” I asked, amazed. He didn't respond, not at first. In the flurry over the tunnel and Tia, I'd almost forgotten my original question about our too-good-to-be-true zendo site. “He gave us the space. He did a lot of work—”

“He got some breaks,” Jeffrey now answered slowly.

“Breaks?”

“Permits and things. You know, the kind of breaks you can get when you're related to the police.”

The police? My brother John, the detective? So that was his real question. “Do people assume he's related to my family, the Lotts?”

“He never says that, but if building inspectors make that mistake, he doesn't feel called upon to correct their misapprehension.”

I took a sip of espresso and then another, feeling the rush anew. He was fingering his cup but not drinking. “Jeffrey,” I said slowly. As he looked up a wary tightness flashed on his face and I wondered which question he was afraid of. “Why did Eamon renovate that space for us? It's a very generous thing for someone to have done, someone who isn't interested in sitting zazen.”

“Maybe his reward'll be in heaven.”

I laughed. “He'll have to celebrate alone. We don't have heaven.”

“Well, then, you're in the Barbary Coast tradition.” He almost smiled. “I don't mean to badmouth him. It's his money. And he does let me use the tunnel for storage.”

“Storage? It's way too damp and the smell . . . It's like a tomb down there.”

“Appropriate. It'd be for stuff of my father's that I don't want but can't throw out . . . yet. Lower it down; forget it. My dad died a couple of years
ago. Auto accident. Eamon understands. He knew my father back East; he was a recruit helping Dad close up the lab at Fort Detrick. I was still in high school, so it's not as if I really knew Eamon then. He was just another of Dad's grunts.”

“It's nice you have someone to talk with about your father.”

Jeffrey's cup stopped halfway to his mouth. He gave an edgy laugh and his cheeks colored again. “Sorry,” he muttered. “Thing is, I didn't like the old man. Eamon wasn't crazy about him either.”

“Really?” I prompted.

“Dad was military research, weapons-grade. You only need to look at me to know I'm not weapons-grade. In his eyes I was a chronic disappointment, except when I was an acute disappointment. But”—he laughed with a sort of victorious bitterness—“if he could see that I took my inheritance and opened a frivolous chair shop and it's making decent money . . . You know, I'd give up a year of my life to see his reaction.”

“That'll be
your
reward in heaven.”

He was still a moment, then laughed again. But somehow the act of laughing unsettled his hold on the present and I had the sense he was back in his shop worrying about the arrangement of chairs on his floor grid.

“Jeffrey,” I said, pulling him back, “what's going on with Tia? That whole thing in the tunnel—”

“What happened down there?” Suddenly he was all alertness.

“She ran off into the dark, hit her head, and freaked. You saw her carried out. And then, for no reason, she shoved you. Is that in character for her now?”