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She filed that away for future use. She wouldn’t be spending long hours here, that was for sure, not if she couldn’t bring her Cepts. The last thing she needed was to start itching and getting sick while with a subject.
Merritt led her to what looked like another room attached to the far wall of the garage, with an outside door. It turned out to be a hallway. Fluorescent bulbs cast a garish, shadowless light along its length; it felt like walking through an operating room. She pulled her sunglasses back down.
Merritt smiled. “Mr. Pyle likes bright lights. And with everything going on…”
That was a point in Pyle’s favor, certainly. It was something those who faked hauntings never seemed to think of, people’s almost instinctual desire for light when scared. Odd, but true.
Of course a point in Pyle’s favor was a point against her, but no way was she giving up this early.
Merritt opened the door at the end of the hall and ushered her through to a small, plain room, still blindingly light but empty. He gripped the bright gold doorknob. “Ready?”
“I don’t know, what do you think?”
“I know I am,” he muttered, but before she could respond he stepped through the doorway, tilting his head to the side to indicate she should follow.
The ceiling rose above her, cresting so far up it was hard to see the ridge. Pale wood beams crisscrossed below it, giving an illusion of intimacy Chess wouldn’t have thought possible.
That bleached wood was echoed in the huge mantel over the fireplace, big enough Chess figured she could almost stand in it, and the chairs and couches with their ivory cushions and pale orange throw pillows. The carpet was the same pale orange. It was a beautiful room, ostentatiously cozy.
In the center of it stood Roger Pyle. He exuded charisma the way Bump oozed sleaze; it felt like he’d physically hit her in the chest with charm, and she fought the reaction. Wouldn’t do to start liking the subjects.
But she couldn’t help liking him a little when he crossed the room with his hand outstretched and an eager, uncertain smile on his face.
“Miss Putnam, is it? Thank you so much for coming. We’re really…we’re really at loose ends here, don’t know what else to do.” He raised a hand to scratch his stubbled chin, and she noticed the bags under his eyes she hadn’t seen when he was smiling.
“I’m here to help any way I can, Mr. Pyle.” They always thanked her for coming at first. Very few of them thanked her later.
“Please, please, call me Roger. And, oh, sit down. Where are my manners—Merritt could you ask one of the maids to get Miss Putnam a drink? Drink, Miss Putnam? What would you like? We have everything, you only have to ask. Snack? There’s plenty of food, all kinds of things, cold meats and chips and shrimp cocktail, it’s all in the kitchen, we can get you anything you like…” He looked around, shoved his hands in his pockets like a guilty child who’d just been caught talking during class and was being made an example of.
Chess took pity on him and pulled her water bottle from her bag. “I’m fine, thanks.”
“Oh, you have a drink. Excellent, excellent. Well, let’s see, where do I start? What do you need to know? Did you look at the file I gave you? I mean, not you, but the Church? I put everything in there, everything I know, and the pictures and everything.”
“I’ve looked at it, Mr.—Roger. It’s very detailed. Before we discuss it, though, we really should get your family in here as well. Are they available? It saves time to talk to all of you together.”
It also made it easier to gauge their reactions and see if they tried to help one another out, but she didn’t mention that.
“Oh, of course, of course. Merritt can you please get Kymmi and Arden? I think Kym’s upstairs trying to get some sleep, and Arden—I don’t know. Maybe the rec room, or something? Her room? She could be watching TV, that’s possible.”
Merritt nodded and left the room, giving Chess a reassuring glance as if he thought she’d be nervous at being alone with Roger.
Nervous wasn’t the word for it, though. A suspicion, one that didn’t surprise her but piqued her curiosity, had already started worming its way into her head. Perhaps most celebrities talked this much. She didn’t much care about them or their lives, but it was difficult to escape the occasional headline or news story or bit of gossip, and she knew most people assumed famous people had incredible egos and talked just for the sake of it.
She didn’t think that was the cause of Roger Pyle’s unexpected loquacity, though. Or nerves. And when he sat down on the polished wood coffee table to face her, she saw she was correct.
Roger Pyle was high as a kite.
His pupils were just black spots the size of dust specks in the famously golden brown of his irises, and they veered around, never quite settling on anything. He rubbed the tips of his thumbs against the balls of his index fingers, back and forth, back and forth, as if he was playing a tiny violin, and she could see his pulse practically jumping out of his neck. He certainly wasn’t lying about having a hard time sleeping. Looking at him, she doubted if he’d be able to sleep in a vat of liquid Dream.
“I’m so glad you came,” he said again, looking up at the ceiling, out the windows, down at his tapping feet. “We’ve only been here three months, you know? Had the place built, moved in…It was our dream house, Kymmi and me. My wife, Kym, I mean, and our daughter, Arden. Well, you’ll meet them when Merritt gets back with them.”
“What made you move here?”
“I do a television show, The Monastery? It’s a comedy.”
“Of course.”
“And there’s been talk of a film. For me, I mean, not for the show, so I wouldn’t need to work so much, so I don’t have to stay in Hollywood. We thought, for Arden…not living there might allow her a more normal upbringing. We wanted to be somewhere less crazy, more wholesome. I told my producer I wanted to set up a studio here, film the show from here.”
She hid her amusement by picking up her bag and getting out her notepad and pen. Was he serious? Triumph City was a cesspit. She’d spent the night before examining a murdered prostitute and watching a fatal gang fight.
Then she caught herself. For men like him, Triumph City was more wholesome. He didn’t live in Downside, he didn’t even live in Cross Town or Northside. The white brick monstrosity he and his wife had built sat outside the city limits, out where the streets and houses grew wider and the range of experience grew narrower. What used to be a bustling suburbia and was just now starting to be rebuilt after Haunted Week had decimated the population and driven everyone into the perceived comfort of semi-communal living.
Just the thought of all that empty land outside the walls of the house made her feel she was being watched, not to mention that sitting in the presence of someone speeding into the next dimension was enough to set her twitching. She gripped her pen more tightly and looked up, hoping to ground herself somehow.
She was being watched. A blond woman whose pert nose was as artificial as the deep lavender of her eyes studied Chess from the doorway. The woman’s hair hung in loose porn-star curls around her shoulders, and the snug ivory dress displayed her swelling bosom and an abdomen Chess imagined she could bounce a quarter off of, but there was nothing sexy about her—no spark of warmth or intimacy, no sense that anything of interest hid behind those startling eyes.
“Kymmi, darling,” Roger began, jumping to his feet, “this is Cesaria Putnam, from the Church, she’s come to take care of—”
“I know who she is.” Kym Pyle gave her husband a look that could cut glass. “And don’t sit on the coffee table, please. I’ve asked you before.”
So much for the loving family. Maybe it wasn’t muscle and silicone beneath that soft jersey dress. Maybe it was steel and microchips.
“Sorry, sorry, sweetness. I forgot.”
Kym ignored him, turning the weight of her disapproval onto Chess. For a second Chess saw herself as this woman must: her dyed-black hair with its Bettie Page bangs, her faded red sweater and black jeans, her dusty down-at-heel boots. Nothing. No one of importance, an urchin, someone with no ancestry to speak of. Never mind that Chess deliberately sought to give that impression when she went on a case. It still stung a little.
Then the moment passed. She wasn’t here for a social visit. She was here to bust someone’s ass for defrauding the Church, and she was damned good at her job.
So she met that bitch-queen stare with one of her own and plastered a smile across her face. “It’s lovely to meet you, Mrs. Pyle. Why don’t you sit down too? I have a lot of questions.”
Kym raised a sculpted eyebrow but said nothing as she placed herself in one of the armchairs, her legs crossed tidily at the ankles.
They sat for a few minutes listening to Roger grind his teeth before Arden Pyle entered. Chess put her at about fourteen, pretty, with grayish eyes and a sullen air. A shapeless blue sweater covered her from neck to midthigh, with blue jeans below, and her bare toenails were painted black. For some reason the sight made Chess smile.
“Okay,” she said, “so why don’t you all tell me when this started. When did you first see the spirit, or the first spirit? Dates, places, whatever you can remember.”
“There’s no point to any of this,” Arden said, her tone belying the sweetness of her round little face.
“Arden dear, now you let Miss Putnam—”
“There’s no point”—Arden glared at her father—“because I know you’re faking it.”
Chapter Six (#ulink_992bc29d-1052-5a0b-bb6a-466abd1aba5c)
Not every family situation will be pleasant; not every home is happy. Your job will be to determine whether that displeasure has drifted into dishonesty.
—Careers in the Church: A Guide for Teens, by Praxis Turpin
“Arden!” Kym Pyle’s skin reddened beneath the perfect mask of her makeup. “How dare you say such a thing!”
Roger cast an anxious look in Chess’s general direction—she doubted he would actually be able to focus on anything—and said, “Arden, honey, you know that isn’t true. You’re being very unfair, Mommy and Daddy would never do something like that.”
Arden’s pretty little face scrunched itself into a glower. “Give me a break.”
“Miss Putnam, I assure you we’re not doing anything of the kind. Our daughter has a very active imagination.”
Maybe, maybe not, Chess thought. She’d have to make sure she got a chance to talk to Arden Pyle alone at some point. Not today—they’d be watching her too closely—but at some point. “That’s okay, Roger. Let’s just get back to the question, shall we? When did you first see the entity?”
“This is bullshit,” Arden said. Chess steeled herself for more delaying on the part of her parents, but neither reacted.
Instead, Kym spoke up. “I was in my work room. Embroidery. I’m putting our family tree on a tapestry for that wall.” She nodded to indicate the wall behind Chess, who didn’t turn around.
“I was just finishing my great-grandmother’s name when I realized it was quite cold, despite my sweater. So I got up, planning to call one of the staff members to turn up the heat, and…” Her hands clenched in her lap. “It was a woman. She looked terrified, and I spun around to see if something was behind me, but nothing was. When I turned back around to ask her what she was looking at—I thought maybe she was one of the staff—she was gone.”
“I saw a man,” Roger said. “In one of the guest rooms. I’d gone in there to check and see if we needed anything—we were having some friends stay that weekend—”
Arden snorted.
He ignored her. “—and I thought I’d check the bathroom of the room they’d be staying in, make sure we had shampoo and toothpaste, you know, the things people need. I didn’t see him so much as glimpse him, standing in front of the window—I think it was a man, anyway, taller and broader than a woman—but by the time I realized it wasn’t one of the staff, he’d disappeared.”
“Did you feel anything? Cold, nerves, fear, anything unusual?” Not everyone did, but then not everyone knew that.
“No. Like I said, I assumed he was staff, waiting for me, or taking a few minutes for himself. I don’t mind if they do that, as long as everything is done…” He caught Kym’s disapproving eye. “Well, I don’t. I thought it was odd he didn’t respond when I said hello, and then he just…poof, gone.”
“This happened during the day?”
“Technically, I guess. It was about five in the afternoon. But it gets dark so early now.” He shuddered. “The nights are so long.”
“And the sightings have grown more threatening since?”
Both Pyles nodded. Arden stayed as she was, with her arms folded and a bored look on her face.
“We were attacked in our sleep two weeks ago,” Roger said. “Kymmi was injured. It’s gotten worse since. We don’t shower alone. We don’t go anywhere alone at night, anywhere in the house.”
Chess shuffled through the stack of photographs balanced in her lap until she found the one she wanted. She assumed it was Kym; the image was of a woman’s toned back, covered in long shallow scratches. She held it up. “This was your injury, Mrs. Pyle?”
“Yes. The marks are still there.”
“Show her, Mom.” Arden turned to Chess. “My mom likes to show people her body, don’t you, Mom?”
Kym looked as if she wanted to slap the girl, but she kept her composure. “Do you need to see them, Miss Putnam?”
“If you don’t mind, that would be helpful.”
Kym rose from her seat and turned around, crossing her arms in front of her to grip the hem of her dress. Chess opened her mouth to speak—she hadn’t meant for the woman to do this in front of her child—but it was too late. The dress slipped up, displaying Kym’s silky thong and the lean expanse of her back, interrupted by a bra strap in matching pink.
Trying to behave as if this weren’t creepily inappropriate, Chess stood up to look closer. The scratches had faded. No longer the angry, puffy wounds in the picture, they were thin and scabbed over. “This happened two weeks ago?”
“They didn’t want to heal,” Roger said. “We tried everything. They’ve only just started to get better.”
“Actibac?” Chess asked, unable to resist.
“Yes, how did you know?”
“We get injured a lot, so we keep up on stuff like that.” She resumed her seat, hoping Kym would get the hint and lower her dress, but it took a good thirty seconds before the woman finally let the thin fabric slide back down over her body.
“See, I wish I’d known that, we could have just called the Church and asked them, wouldn’t that have been good, Kymmi?”
Kym gave him a tight smile, but her gaze stayed focused on Chess.
If that bitch thought she could make Chess uncomfortable, she was wrong. Chess allowed herself a tiny eye roll as she looked away and grabbed her Spectrometer. “Okay, why don’t you give me a tour of the house? Show me where the sightings and attacks have taken place? We’ll see what we can find.”
The Church operated a few living museums for the benefit of its employees; Chess especially liked the synagogue one, with instructors wearing those little hats they used to call yarmulkes. The Pyle home reminded her of one of those museums, as intensely and carefully decorated as the living room she’d already been in, and as impersonal.
They trooped up the graceful, winding staircase into a long hall. Windows at each end were blank white holes covered with blinds. Any light they might have let in was rendered useless by the bright electric bulbs at short intervals down the hall’s length. It must have cost a fortune to keep all those bulbs burning.
Ten rooms, including the master suite, Arden’s room, a computer room, library, and separate spa. The rest were guest bedrooms, unique only in their nondescript colors.
Chess’s Spectrometer gave off the occasional blip as she followed the Pyles through each guest room and bathroom, but not frequent or strong enough to give her any information. She took careful note of the layout. If the Pyles weren’t sleeping at night, it would be next to impossible to sneak in after dark and use her Hand of Glory to deepen their sleep so she could investigate. Of course, with all that security, paying an afterdark visit would be difficult whether the Pyles slept or not. She had a feeling their security didn’t. Maybe Merritt…?
No. Even if it were the sort of thing she could ask, she couldn’t ask. Trusting him would be foolish. A year or so of shared history didn’t make them friends.
“Roger,” she asked, interrupting him in the middle of showing her where he’d seen the ghost of a young man coming out of one of the bathrooms, “do you know where the boundaries of the original house stood? The one where the murders took place?”
“As far as we can tell—the foundation had been filled in and the walls demolished before we bought the land—the north walls aligned where our bedroom is. But from the measurement estimates we got from the surveyor, that house ended just after this room.” He indicated the doorway. “We haven’t seen any ghosts in that part of the house, not yet, anyway.”
“Have you been sleeping there?”
The Pyles exchanged glances—even Arden, who hadn’t spoken a word throughout the tour.
“We just haven’t been sleeping at night,” Kym said. “In any of the rooms.”
“Arden stays with a friend some nights,” Roger added. “And Kym and I stay in the living room.”
Chess nodded. She could probably use a warding spell to keep them off the top floor while she investigated up there, but it would make things more difficult. If she could even figure out a way in.
They headed back up the hall toward the master suite, the last room on the right. Chess had expected grandeur. She hadn’t expected the bed to be quite so bargelike, a slab of mattress covered with silk sheets. She definitely hadn’t expected to see hanging over it an enormous painting of a naked Kym. Was this what Arden meant when she said her mother liked to show off her body?
She certainly seemed to be enjoying it. Lying on her side on what looked like a fur rug—how original—with one hand demurely not quite covering the pale curls between her legs and the other thrown back behind her head. A lovely piece of work, Chess had to admit, but still…No wonder Arden was so grumpy, having to compare her own developing figure to the best body money could buy.
That was one problem she herself hadn’t had to deal with. Of course, in her case it would have been an improvement to be worried about how she measured up to the naked women she saw, rather than worrying about what they planned to do to her or make her do to them that time, but…
“The night you were attacked in here,” she said, “what exactly happened?”
“It was dark.” Roger looked as though he might have been coming down a bit; his eyes weren’t quite so glassy. “I don’t remember falling asleep or even waking up. Just…just hearing it, movements in the room, and Kymmi screaming, and I couldn’t seem to feel my hands…and it laughed and screamed.” His eyelids fluttered, blinking back tears. Chess reminded herself the man was a professional actor. “It was terrible.”
Kym herself was silent. Chess made a mental note to search for her private financial records. The file contained statements from several accounts, but they were all joint accounts. If Kym was looking for a good way to end the marriage and get as much money as she could, faking a haunting could be an effective, if roundabout and chancy, way to do it.
