Paradise Island Page 4

  “I was doing just fine before I inherited,” he said stiffly. “At least, I was once the reality show came along, but you’re right, there’s not much money in ghost hunting, even if you include book sales and speaking fees. Even those of us at the top of the profession sometimes struggle. I suppose I’d better get the guest bedroom ready, just in case. But I’m going to get rid of him as quickly as possible, and he is not getting a guest spot on the show.”

  “You know you were hinting at it.”

  “I made no promises. And Teddy,” he told her, “will never hear of this. This is strictly a private investigation and it won’t take long. It is not fodder for an episode of that stupid show.”

  “Ed, if you hate the show so much, why don’t you quit?”

  “I signed a contract; I’m a man of honor. And at the time the show began, quite frankly I needed the money. You’ll be there tomorrow, of course, for my meeting with Dobbs.”

  “Of course I won’t,” she said, rising. “I’m afraid I’ve given you all the moral support I have time for. The weekend’s coming up, and we’ve got all those extra pets in the shelter that lost their homes in the hurricane last month. They just need a place to stay while their humans pull themselves together, but we’re boarding them whether their owners can afford to pay for it or not. It’s a lot of extra work and expense, so we’re having a big fundraiser for them, and I am absolutely not available to run around with you after ghosts this weekend. Don’t even think about it,” she added levelly.

  “I see. Well, as I said, this won’t take long, and I don’t intend to get deeply involved. I should probably just let it go, but you know me. I’ll let you know what I find out. One meeting with The Fabulous Dobbs should be enough.”

  She grinned. “The Marvelous Dobbs. Don’t get nasty with him, Ed. He might turn out to be a nice guy.”

  “One lives in hope,” he said piously, “but I’ve met a lot of my colleagues. I’d better get on the Internet and do a bit of research on Dobbs tonight, so I can be prepared for tomorrow’s meeting. Thank you for coming over today. And good luck with the fundraiser. I’ll see you Monday?”

  She thought it over quickly. “Okay. Come out to Cadbury House for dinner. Michael will be glad to see you.”

  “And I him,” he said, conducting her to his front door and feeling settled again. It was all going to work out fine. He began to wonder why he’d let himself get so upset. For the first time that day, he felt in control. When he was done talking to Dobbs the next day, he’d be able to shake off this heavy feeling of guilt, which he was sure was completely unjustified.

  Heck, maybe Taylor would be right and Dobbs would turn out to be a nice guy. She tended to be right about things.

  Chapter 6

  “Ed knew Jessamine?”

  Taylor stared at Michael, her live-in lover. “Did you? When it was all over the news after her husband died so dramatically, you said you didn’t know him. That you just saw him sometimes at cocktail parties. You’re one of those true Southern gentlemen who never use a lady’s first name without a ‘Miz’ or a surname unless he knows her, and knows her pretty well.”

  “Or doesn’t think much of her. I didn’t know the Pissarros, really. They were part of that crowd. Always showing up at champagne fundraisers and seasonal events, the ladies wearing thousand-dollar dresses for the first and only time. That’s how Jessamine Petty met Alan Pissarro in the first place, with his first wife Wendy standing right there beside him. No, I didn’t care much for Jessamine. She was always dangling around the edges of parties and flirting with the good ol’ boys. Especially the well-connected ones.”

  “Meaning the rich ones. Did she dangle herself around you?” she asked archly.

  He shrugged. “She wasn’t my type. A little too hungry, if you know what I mean. Always on the hunt. I’m intrigued that Ed knew her, though. I’ve never seen him at a champagne fundraiser. How did they meet?”

  “She consulted him professionally.”

  They were in the living room of the mansion at the Cadbury Estate. It had been a Gilded Age winter retreat for one of the robber barons, and although built in a grand style, its age was beginning to show. It wasn’t exactly shabby, but it was growing soft around the edges, and Taylor had a list of things to present to her landlord as soon as he got himself down off whatever mountain he was climbing now. The mansion was located amid unspoiled coastal scrub at the edge of a river, where not another house was in sight.

  Taylor came around the back of the suite that marked the great room off from the banquet table at one side and the modern kitchen at the back of the cavernous ground floor, and sat down on the couch, putting her legs up. Michael released the footrest of his recliner and said, “Jessamine was the séance type? I never knew that.”

  “Ed doesn’t do séances. He’s a ghost hunter. She had a ghost. At least, she thought she did. Wait – at least she said she did. What was your impression: was she eccentric that way?”

  He quirked a smile. “Not so it showed at the first hello. Why? Does Ed think she was crazy? I know he doesn’t just automatically believe every person with a wild story that comes through his door.”

  “Ed didn’t do an in-depth diagnosis, but he did suggest she go for counseling. As to the haunting, for some reason he didn’t believe her. Were there any rumors about it going around?”

  “About Alan Pissarro coming back from the dead?” He inhaled deeply and gave it some thought. “I didn’t know him well, but Benny Flannery did. They were on the Civic Committee together one year, before Alan dropped out, right after his second marriage. Before Alan moved to Paradise Island, he lived in St. Augustine Beach with his first wife, Wendy, and Benny lived just down the block from them. Wendy was bitter about it, and she used to buttonhole people in their driveways and go off on rants about what a fool Alan was making of himself. He was trying to keep up with Jessamine, who was a good 20 years younger, and he stopped doing the things you do when you grow up – like serve on committees – and took surfing lessons and started playing tennis again.”

  “How did that work out?”

  Michael guffawed. “Sprained his wrist and nearly drowned, one right after the other. Wendy was right. He was making a fool of himself.”

  Taylor was surprised. Michael never talked about people that way, especially not ones who had recently died. “You didn’t like him, either,” she ventured.

  He stiffened a bit and frowned. “It’s hard to respect a man who does the kind of thing he did to Wendy. I didn’t know her very well either, and again, she wasn’t my type – too all-done-up-for-Christmas and lit-up-brighter-than-the-tree – but she really took it hard when he left her for Jessamine. Their kids were grown, but they took it badly, too.

  “As for the haunting part, yes, Benny did mention something. Now mind you, this is beyond third-hand, because Benny got it from somebody else on the Civic Committee, who heard it from one of Jessamine’s neighbors, but yes, there seemed to be something strange going on at her house after Alan died. Her next-door neighbor heard her screaming in the middle of the night – more than once. The first time it happened, the neighbor-lady looked across at Jessamine’s house and saw all the lights going on and off, like something was wrong with the electricity. She called to see if everything was all right, and Jessamine denied there was anything wrong with the lights. By that time, they had stopped flickering. She admitted that she’d screamed, but she said it was because she’d had a bad dream. About Alan. Well, nobody wondered about that, because they’d been struggling over the gun when Alan was shot. Of course she’d have nightmares about it.”

  “What did the neighbors think about the way Alan died? Did they believe he was really suicidal?”

  “Actually . . . they did. He’d always been moody. Some days he’d say hello and come over to talk, like everything was fine, other days he wouldn’t even acknowledge them. He’d just stare and go back inside the house.”

  “Maybe being with somebody he couldn’t ke
ep up with was starting to humiliate him.”

  “Maybe. Jessamine put some life into him for a while, but when she couldn’t magically pull him backwards in time and make a young stud out of him, it might have been a let-down. Maybe he even blamed her. Anyway, he’d always been moody, according to people who used to know him during his first marriage.”

  Taylor pursed her lips and thought it over. It was inside information about Jessamine and Alan – and Wendy, too – that Ed might be interested in, but she really didn’t want to call him. She didn’t think there was anything shocking there. Knowing Alan may have actually been suicidal wasn’t really a revelation, and keeping in close touch with Ed would keep her front-and-center in his investigation. She’d had enough of Ed’s investigations. He was always dragging her into them, believing she was psychic or something.

  Michael had been watching her. “Not going to call him?” he murmured.

  She stared.

  “After all,” he teased, “Ed might need a little inside information like this. Just to fill in the blanks a little. If you want, you could put me on the phone.”

  “No, I am not going to call him, and stop reading my mind. I’m the one who’s supposed to be psychic, remember?”

  “Oh, you’re admitting it now?”

  “I’m psychic enough to know we’re going to have a lot to do tomorrow and we need to go over how we’re going to handle the event. You can get into it with Ed when he comes over for dinner Monday night. Did I mention he’s coming for dinner Monday? He’s coming for dinner Monday. Now let’s get back to the real world. Ed’s got the other world covered, and he’s welcome to it.”

  Chapter 7

  Ed found The Marvelous Dobbs at the Karma Café, already getting a refill on his coffee. Apparently, he’d been there a while.

  “Am I late?” Ed asked, dropping his spy satchel at the table for four, where Dobbs had spread out some notebooks and a laptop.

  Dobbs smiled. “This place has such a stunning view of the ocean, I decided to get here early and watch the sunrise.”

  About that time, a perky waitress whose push-up bra was almost pushing them out of her tee shirt stopped by the table and said, “All freshened up now?” to Dobbs. “You look a lot better with a shave and a clean face. When I found you asleep in your car, I thought I was going to have to call the cops. It’s a wonder what ten minutes in the Men’s room can do for a guy. There was a little cuteness hiding underneath all that cheek fuzz.” She wafted false eyelashes. “Actually, the cuteness already showed or I’d never have let you in here that early. Hey, Ed. The usual?”

  Ed nodded to her, watching Dobbs doubtfully. What little he’d been able to pick up about him on the Internet the night before had not been reassuring. Taylor’s dire prediction of acquiring this person as a houseguest seemed even more plausible now. He would have to be strong.

  Dobbs looked as if he’d like to kill the waitress. He told her, “I’m doing fine. Dr. Darby-Deaver and I will just be having a quiet conference over breakfast, if you don’t mind.”

  “Conference away,” she said airily. “Is it about that Pissarro woman who just offed herself? You’re both ghost hunters, right? Everybody’s saying she killed herself because he was haunting her.” She moved in, nearly pressing her bust into Dobbs’s face. “The cops were in here yesterday, and I heard them saying what a nut she was, hiring, like, exorcists or something. Was that you two? Ed’s a ghost guy. Are you, too? Was she a customer of yours?”

  Ed, becoming intensely formal, said, “Please make sure the chef doesn’t burn the toast this time. And no Sweaty Devil Sauce, not even on the side.”

  Dobbs looked up into tightly-pressed cleavage and said, “If you don’t mind, miss,” obviously wanting her to go away.

  She stood up, arching a razor-sharp eyebrow at Dobbs, then she turned on Ed. “We don’t have a chef. We have a cook.”

  Left alone, the two men faced one another silently.

  The Marvelous Dobbs was indeed the kind of man Trixie would think was hot. A lot of other women, too. He had longish, blondish hair, thick and straight and slightly tousled. It had either been skillfully highlighted or the sun had bleached it to perfection. He had very light brown eyes, almost amber, and his skin was the color of creamed coffee with a hint of cinnamon, suggesting days on the surfboard instead of nights at the Ouija board.

  Ed regarded all this manly magnetism and figured that if Dobbs ever got onto the show, he would hijack it. No wonder Teddy didn’t want him anywhere near the Haunt or Hoax? projects. Teddy was a hottie, too, but Teddy had firmly passed the middle-age mark. Dobbs was in his mid-twenties. Ed had to admit it; as attractive as Teddy Force was, The Marvelous Dobbs would fade Teddy into the background. Even looking obviously tired made him more attractive. His eyes might have been called bleary, but they were by no means pouchy. The waitress had tried the wrong gambit with Dobbs, teasing him as she had, but she was obviously attracted to him.

  Ed wondered idly how the beautiful and not yet elderly Jessamine Pissarro had reacted to this hunky specimen. It would have been the equivalent of the rich lady fooling around with the pool boy, but rich ladies did, in fact, fool around with pool boys. It added another line of inquiry at a time when Ed wanted the inquiry to wrap up, not spread out.

  Ed’s breakfast arrived. The waitress, rebuffed and ruffled, asked if there was anything else he wanted and walked away before he could answer. Ed stared down at his naked-looking omelet and raw-looking toast, not really interested.

  Without buttering the toast, he picked it up and took a bite. Dobbs, seeming to grow more tense by the minute, sipped his coffee.

  Ed decided to hurry up and get it over with. “Did you keep accurate records of the work you did for Mrs. Pissarro?”

  “Of course.”

  “Good. I’m interested in your first impressions. You recorded the initial interview, no doubt. May I see or listen to your recording? I’d like to make up my own mind about her affect at the time.”

  “Recording?”

  “Didn’t you videotape your interviews with her? At least you must have made field notes while you were here on location. Site photographs, EMF readings, EVP recordings?”

  Dobbs looked caught, and as he tap-danced his answer, Ed already knew that he hadn’t done any of those things.

  “I find that pulling out machinery intimidates new clients,” he said. “I want them to talk freely. They’re already upset, you know. It’s not the way I like to begin a relationship. And I consider what goes on between a paranormal investigator and his client to be a relationship. Your reputation,” he added, gaining confidence, “is that you like to maintain a personal distance from your clients. You rely more on scientific data.” He shrugged. “Personal choice. Our approaches are different. But let me assure you, my files are complete. They’ve already been reviewed by the police, and they seemed satisfied.”

  “The police weren’t looking for evidence of a haunting,” Ed told him. “They were probably looking for evidence that Jessamine Pissarro was unhinged, and that’s why she was consulting you. Us. People like us.”

  Dobbs’s eyes widened. “I never thought of that,” he said quietly.

  “What was your impression? Was she mentally disturbed?”

  The waitress came to check that Ed’s breakfast was all right and he realized all he’d eaten was the toast. He nodded at her wordlessly and she stomped off, offended again. The omelet was cold now, and he took a bite of it. After all, it was nutritious protein, and the only protein he’d been eating lately was peanut butter. His pepsin enzymes needed something new to work on. For their sake, he chewed the rubbery bite of egg and managed to get it down.

  “Jessamine Pissarro was as sane as you and I are,” Dobbs said. Then he leaned back and said, “Look, Ed, I’ve been driving all night. I came down here to talk to you, because . . . .” He steadied himself and then let it all out. “Because you’re Edson Darby-Deaver, PhD, somebody I’ve admired and looked up to for years
. I’ve read all your books. I watch every episode of your show.”

  Ed groaned.

  “Yeah, I know,” Dobbs said with a sudden grin. “The show’s awful. Not you – the whole showbiz spin of it. But it works, and it’s about a field I’m interested in, and I watch it. I don’t watch any other ghost-hunting shows; just yours. Your data-gathering and analyses are beyond inspiring, and your working methods are pristine. I want to be just like you – a real paranormal investigator. Not one of these con artists that take advantage of people. That time I met you at the book signing – oh, man! And now I’m sitting across a table from you having coffee and talking about a case we were both working on.” In a thicker voice, eyes glistening, he added, “This is something I’ve dreamed about for as long as I can remember. I would’ve driven halfway across the country to meet with you. Heck, all the way across it. Up Canada, too,” he added with boyish laugh, looking exhausted and eager and extremely attractive, all at the same time.

  “I see,” Ed said.

  “Look, I’m not asking for an apprenticeship here, and I’m not some crazed fan you should be afraid of. I want to learn. This may be the only case we ever work on together. So – you take the lead. I spent more time with the client than you did, and I know her husband’s family.”

  “You do?”

  Dobbs nodded eagerly. “She didn’t seem to have any family of her own, but her stepchildren were involved in the investigation. Listen, man, the haunting was real. The stepchildren, they hated Jessamine, but even they didn’t blame her for his death. He’d talked about suicide before. But they were worried about his ghost – his soul. They were helping me.”