Shades of Grey (8 page)

Who was that ‘jealous spirit’? Dulcie had mulled that one over until a librarian came around to chase them all out, lighting up each aisle without apology. Did it refer to the ghost of the old retainer, or some other spirit who’d gotten lost in the missing pages? Dulcie underlined the phrase in her notebook and added a question mark. Perhaps— But just then a voice interrupted: ‘The stacks will be closing in fifteen minutes. Please gather up your materials.’

Her train of thought derailed, Dulcie made one last note: ‘Which ghost?’ Gothic novels were full of such spirits, though the authors tended to debunk their own tales, explaining their phantoms away by the story’s end. The author of
The Ravages
had never gotten that far; had not even had a chance to show whether the spectre was good or evil.

‘Time, people.’

Dulcie waited till the attendant had passed before reshelving the leather-bound volume. Library rules mandated that staff – not students – take charge of this task, preferring the extra labor to the risk of misshelved books. But Dulcie knew this area well enough to make sure the book went back where it was supposed to be, and, standing on tiptoes, patted it even with its neighbors. She couldn’t really say why she’d wanted to reread those segments today. She’d just wanted to check, make sure they were still there. And that she could re-enter the labyrinthine world she knew and loved.

So maybe that was why she was in a mellower mood, willing to be swayed by Suze’s enthusiasm for Alana’s party. She’d even taken some notes on what to wear from her better socialized friend, on the odd chance that she might actually go.

But they hadn’t talked about shoes. So when the phone had rung again almost immediately after they’d hung up, Dulcie wasn’t completely surprised. Suze might be falling-down tired, but she was also Dulcie’s best friend. Maybe she’d get the OK to wear flip-flops. Maybe there was even hope about the guy from Justice. Much to her surprise it was her mom, Lucy, making a rare long-distance call from the community center.

‘Dulcie, is everything all right?’

Somewhere in the background a door closed. Dulcie imagined her mother taking the phone into the communal kitchen for privacy. Without waiting for a response, Lucy kept talking.

‘I’m asking for a reason, darling. I’ve had a serious sense of something not being in balance.’

Dulcie rolled her eyes. Out of balance probably had more to do with her mother’s digestive system than any weird waves in the atmosphere. ‘Why, are you not feeling well?’

‘I’m fine. And I’m serious, dear.’

‘Well, it has been a bad week.’ Dulcie wasn’t the sort to confide in her mother. She had Suze for that. But this had been a truly awful week, and a mother, even a mother like Lucy, was supposed to listen, after all. And so she told her. ‘And I was the one who found him. I mean, Lucy, there was so much blood!’ Just thinking about it gave her shivers.

‘Good riddance to bad rubbish.’

‘
Mom
!’

‘Seriously, Dulcinea, he had bad karma. I could sense it from here. There was something wrong with that boy and I’m glad he’s out of your house. At least, I hope he is.’

Dulcie waited, wondering what was going to come next.

‘Sage sticks – that’s what you need. I’ll send you some smudge sticks for purification. Sage, and maybe some sweetgrass for inner harmony. When you get them, start one burning immediately. Burn them in sequence for three days straight, dear. Promise me you will. You don’t want any ghosts hanging around your space.’

Dulcie made a noise she hoped would be taken for assent, but her mother’s words had brought up another thought. ‘There’s one other thing,’ she said, choosing her words carefully. Anyone else would think she was odd, but the supernatural was one element Lucy Schwartz knew well. ‘I think – well, I think I’m already seeing a ghost.’

‘You are? Have you seen its aura? I may have to convene a circle to dispel—’

‘No, no, it’s not a bad ghost.’ How could she explain? ‘I mean, I’m not really sure what I saw – or heard. But before I came in that day – the day I found Tim – I thought I saw Mr Grey, and he was telling me not to go into the house.’

There was a rare moment of silence on the phone. Dulcie wondered for a second if she had finally succeeded in out-weirding her mom. But when Lucy spoke again, her voice was confident, calm and completely unfazed.

‘This is marvelous news, Dulcie. That’s not a ghost you’re seeing, you’ve got a spirit guide. Spirit guides often take animal shapes. I’ve always wanted one. Now, a cat – what would that be? I know I’ve got a book on them somewhere . . .’

Dulcie knew the call was costing her mom more than she could afford. ‘Why don’t you just look it up and write me about it?’ She paused. Had the cat been a spirit guide? ‘But maybe don’t send the sage. I mean, just in case this is the ghost of Mr Grey, I don’t want to get rid of it – of him.’

‘Oh, sage won’t disperse guardian spirits, don’t worry about that. And do keep in mind, that young man had lousy karma. Now, have you noticed anything missing? Sometimes an unsettled spirit will try anything to climb back in.’

‘Just my sweater, but I know who took that.’ If Dulcie didn’t talk fast enough, Lucy would have the entire Pacific Northwest chanting for her. ‘That was Mrs Putnam, one of my bosses.’

‘Your boss took your sweater?’

‘Well, I think so.’ She quickly told her mother how she had taken three days off work and when she returned, the sweater she’d left in her cubicle to keep warm against the air-conditioning had disappeared. ‘I mean, the one she had with her looked like mine.’

‘That city is an evil place, Dulcie. I’m not sure I like you being there.’

It had been a bad week, but Dulcie wouldn’t go back to Oregon for anything. ‘Well, it was only a sweater.’

‘A woman who will steal a sweater has bad
qi.
There’s no telling what else she’ll do.’

Dulcie couldn’t argue with that. It was an insurance office, after all. And she hadn’t even told her mother how reptilian the manager could be. ‘Well, it’s just a temp job. And maybe I’ll ask her about it. Maybe it was a mistake.’ Yeah, right.

‘You be careful, Dulcinea. And if your spirit guide comes back, would you . . .?’ Her mother paused.

‘I’ll put in a word for you, Mom. Don’t worry.’

‘Thank you, dear. Remember, I’ve always been partial to wolves.’

Seven

She hadn’t meant to be late for work but somehow, in the grand scheme of things, Priority Insurance no longer rated very high. After talking with her mother, Dulcie had stayed up way too late reading the arts and literature grad students’ journal,
Notes from Tintype Abbey
, and then simply had to write up some thoughts about setting as metaphor before going to sleep. She’d been dreaming of a haunted castle, one that seemed to be up two flights of stairs from the street, and an avenging knight who had suspiciously long whiskers emerging from his visor, when she’d been woken up – not by her alarm, which she’d forgotten to set, but by Helene downstairs, shouting.

‘I
know
you’re allergic, Duane.
Duane
!’
Ah, it was her neighbor’s boyfriend who had provoked the normally unshakeable nurse. Dulcie had never liked the pumped-up little muscle builder Helene had met at the hospital. He’d glared at Dulcie for having the temerity to live in the upstairs apartment, and he didn’t seem to respect Helene for the light and airy ground-floor place she’d paid for and furnished either. Dulcie had even seen him kick at a cat once, out on the street. The feline had dodged the little man easily enough, but Dulcie had been glad to hear her hiss. ‘Of
course
I care about your health, Duane. Don’t you know that by now?’

Dulcie couldn’t hear a response and wondered if Helene was expending all that energy on a phone call or if Duane’s asthma had finally silenced him – if he had asthma at all. Dulcie suspected that the little bully just wanted an excuse to take steroids. ‘I wouldn’t, Duane. Never. Why would I have a cat in my apartment? It must have been something else!
Duane.
’

Dulcie heard a positively feral growl of frustration and, yes, what sounded like a receiver being banged down. That’s when she noticed the time and jumped up. At least she didn’t have to wait for the shower anymore. Though, as she balanced on one foot to shave her leg, while simultaneously trying to rinse the shampoo out of her hair, she had to wonder: had a cat been in Helene’s apartment? Could this be the ghost of Mr Grey, watching over both of them? As she rubbed a towel over her curls, she could have sworn she felt the soft press of fur, the familiar figure eight of a feline wrapping around her legs. She could almost hear the purr. But when she looked down, all she saw were her own bare feet, the toenail polish beginning to chip.

Between the usual T delays and the absolutely necessary stop for a jumbo Dunkin’ iced, she was nearly half an hour late when she ducked into her cubicle. Strangely, nobody seemed to notice.

‘Psst.’ Joanie’s jet-black eyes blinked at her over the cubicle wall. ‘You missed all the excitement.’

‘Why, what happened?’ Dulcie couldn’t figure out why they both were whispering, until she realized the office was awfully quiet. ‘I overslept.’

‘Not to worry. I’ll swear you were here if anyone asks. But I doubt they will.’ Joanie paused for effect. ‘I don’t know who will even be left when they’re done!’

Dulcie thought of her sweater. Maybe something else had been stolen. ‘Come on, Joanie. Spill.’

Joanie leaned farther over the carpeted cubicle wall, savoring her moment of drama. ‘Well, first thing, when I got in, all the bigwigs were in the lobby, buzzing like someone had stepped on their ant’s nest.’ Dulcie blinked away the rather confused image that came to mind. ‘Then they all wheeled around and took off. For about ten minutes, there were no supervisors around. None. So I figured I’d take an early break. Anyway, I was just outside when I saw two big guys come in – real bruisers – and when they came out, about five minutes later, they had one of the guys from Accounting with them – in handcuffs!’

‘
Handcuffs
?’ Dulcie couldn’t keep the skepticism from her voice. Joanie was a drama queen.

But the other girl nodded vigorously. ‘Handcuffs! Real ones.’ She sounded like she knew the difference. ‘I cannot wait to grill Ricky on this. Oh, and everyone from IT is in a meeting, too. I was trying to download some music and thought I’d froze the system. Nobody home. This is big. Whatever it is.’

Now that was curious. Whatever was going on didn’t get Dulcie’s sweater back, but it did add a certain spice to the day. Around eleven, when Dulcie took her first break, she decided to poke around a bit. Maybe she would see her sweater on the back of a chair. Maybe she could ‘liberate’ it. What she found instead was an office humming with rumor, and very few managers in evidence. The temptation to find out more was too great. Joanie had her source, Ricky, in Accounting. So Dulcie headed over to IT, where at least the staff members could be assumed to be reasonably intelligent.

But when she pushed open the glass-fronted door to their section, she saw what Joanie had been talking about. The place, usually a hive of activity, was deserted. The Guitar Hero posters looked down on empty cubicles. One screen, however, was still glowing, and Dulcie walked toward it.

‘What are you doing here?’ Dulcie spun around to find herself facing a very tall, very skinny, and very angry geek.

‘I’m Dulcie. A temp.’

‘I didn’t ask who you were, I asked what you were doing here.’ He pushed past her and, leaning over the keyboard, quickly typed in something that made the screen go black. In his wake, she got a whiff of nervous sweat. ‘This area is off limits.’ He turned back to her and she saw how two purple blotches in his cheeks clashed with his acne.

‘It was unlocked. I didn’t know.’ Dulcie could feel her own face growing hot with color, but the programmer turned away to grab a chair. ‘I just wanted to know what happened.’

‘You and everyone else.’ He wheeled the chair toward his desk. ‘Forty-eight hours at least we’ve been working on this.’

‘I came in late and everything was in an uproar.’ Dulcie wasn’t good at this feminine wiles stuff, but how hard could it be? She pulled a nearby chair close and sat on the edge, trying to look demure. She lowered her voice. ‘I figured you folks here might know.’

He turned to stare at her. He didn’t look taken in. ‘And you just happened to be Little Miss Curious? You didn’t happen to input a little program while you were just kicking around?’

‘I have no idea what you are talking about.’ She sat up straight in her chair, realizing too late that this meant sticking out her chest. The pale-faced geek goggled for a second, but then turned away.

‘Somebody does. And I don’t think it was Accounting. We have to recreate records from the last several months of raw data. There’s a ghost in the machine.’

Interesting choice of words, but before Dulcie could say anything, the computer geek turned back to her. ‘Now, do you mind?’ She was dismissed.

Joanie was gone when Dulcie got back, but within a half-hour the kohl-eyed Goth was once again leaning over Dulcie’s cubicle.

‘Lunchtime – and I’ve got the goods.’ Joanie looked around. There was still no supervisor to be seen.

‘So do I!’ Dulcie felt a surge of pride. ‘Deli Haus?’

Over serious corned beef sandwiches, they pooled their info. From Dulcie’s geek, it was clear that a bug of some sort had been used to infiltrate the Priority data banks. Ricky, who by the sound of things was looking to ingratiate himself with Joanie, had been able to explain why. Premiums, thousands of them, had been jacked up slightly – some by only fractions of a penny a month – but that extra money had been siphoned off, and deposited off-site. Payments, too, possibly, though Ricky wasn’t sure about those. Altogether, it explained the meetings and the air of panic, and certainly the accountant who had been taken out in cuffs. It also made sense of what Dulcie had considered dummy work. If the files were corrupted, well, someone would have to type them all back in.

‘But how could someone do that?’ Joanie was picking her teeth with one of the wooden toothpicks the deli provided. Dulcie toyed with the last dill pickle spear.