Whispers from the Dead Read online

  They stared at me, surprised, and I went on. “This is the nicest house we’ve ever lived in. Let’s enjoy it. The murder is over and done with. Mom, you didn’t feel anything unusual in this house. Neither did Dad. It didn’t bother you before you learned about the murder, so why get upset about it now?”

  “Well …” Mom hesitated. “It’s just knowing that …”

  “Sarah is probably right,” Dad said. He actually began to look hopeful.

  Mom glanced at the windows. “Maybe we should have burglar bars installed on all the windows. If it was someone on drugs who broke in, looking for something to steal, it could happen again.”

  “It wasn’t like that.” Dad shook his head.

  “What did happen?” I asked Dad. “The people who told you about the murder must have given you the whole story.”

  “Are you sure you want to know?” Dad’s face sagged. He looked terrible.

  “Yes,” I answered. “We’re going to hear it sooner or later. We’d rather hear it from you.”

  Dad glanced at Mom for confirmation, and she gave a slight nod, so he said, “I remember reading something about the murder in our Missouri newspaper, but at the time I didn’t pay much attention, so when I arranged to buy the house, the address and the name Holt didn’t mean anything.”

  “You met the Holts when you signed the papers for the house, didn’t you?” Mom asked.

  “I met the father of the family—Martin Holt. He was a pleasant enough fellow, but his name still meant nothing to me.”

  “Was it his wife who was murdered?” Mom whispered. “Or his son?”

  “Neither.” Dad took a deep breath and continued. “A woman who lives on Fair Oaks Drive called a nearby Pizza Express and ordered a pizza. It was around one o’clock in the afternoon. She called a couple of times later complaining that her order hadn’t been delivered. The girl who had been hired to deliver pizzas hadn’t come back to the restaurant for the next order, so around two-thirty the manager went looking for her. The boy who had taken the phone order had scribbled something on the order blank that looked like Fair Oaks Lane, instead of Drive.”

  “Fair Oaks Lane. Our street,” Mom said.

  Dad continued, his voice flat with the horror of what he had to tell. “The manager found the Pizza Express delivery car parked about a block away on a side street. There was no sign of the girl, so he called the police. During their investigation they went to this address on Fair Oaks Lane. No one was home, but the side door to our garage—the garage—was standing open, and they could see a crumpled box from Pizza Express. On the garage floor, tossed next to the trash can, were a rag with stains that looked like blood and a pair of bloodstained tennis shoes.”

  Mom shuddered, hugging her arms and rubbing them as though she were cold. “Don’t mind me,” she said as Dad paused. “Go on.”

  “The police on the scene called in for a search warrant,” Dad told us, “and in the meantime some other police officers and a film crew from a television station arrived. Some of the neighbors who were home came out to see what was going on. At this point Adam Holt—the teenage son—drove into the street, saw the cars and people at his house, and did a U-turn, trying to get away. But a neighbor had seen him and pointed him out, so the police chased him for a few blocks and caught him.

  “Adam Holt confessed to murdering the girl and told the police he had buried her body in a nearby woods. It was getting dark by this time, too late to search, so the police took him downtown and booked him.”

  “Thank goodness they caught him,” Mom said.

  “That’s not quite all of it,” Dad said. “When the detectives arrived at the Holt house with a search warrant, they discovered that the parents had arrived home. In fact, they’d been home for about twenty minutes. Their son had attempted to clean up some of the blood but hadn’t done a very good job of it, so they’d seen—”

  “The blood on the walls and floor of the entry hall,” I said, interrupting.

  “Yes, and some stains on the stairway carpet that hadn’t come out,” Dad stopped and looked at me with a puzzled expression. “How did you know about the blood?”

  “Uh—it figures. Go on,” I answered quickly. “Tell us the rest.”

  He did. “Although the parents had found their son missing and the bloodstains in the entry hall, they hadn’t called the police. When they were informed about what had happened, Mr. Holt immediately hired an attorney for his son.”

  “How old was Adam Holt?” I asked.

  “Only seventeen,” Dad said.

  “Why did he kill the girl?”

  “Apparently, from what he first told the police, he tried to force her into the house. She fought back, so he stabbed her.”

  “That’s horrible! I hope he got life imprisonment.”

  “He’s not in prison,” Dad said. “His attorney kept him from making a written or taped confession, and an oral confession that hasn’t been tape-recorded or witnessed by someone other than a police officer isn’t admissible as evidence in the state of Texas. When Adam Holt came to trial, the judge allowed the oral confession as evidence, in spite of the law, and the jury convicted Adam of murder in the first degree. The defense attorney appealed, and the conviction was thrown out by a higher court.”

  “But the blood! The pizza box in his garage! Wouldn’t that be enough evidence?” Mom asked.

  “No. Apparently not. There was no one to place him at the scene of the crime. Adam Holt was never put on the witness stand. His defense had been that he had been ill with the flu, was having an allergic reaction to his medication, and didn’t know what he was doing or even where he was at the time. Without an eyewitness to place Adam at the scene of the crime, the district attorney couldn’t make a strong enough case.”

  “That’s crazy!”

  “But that’s Texas law,” Dad said. “I was told it’s the only state that won’t allow an unrecorded oral confession as evidence.”

  “You didn’t tell us if they found the girl’s body,” I said.

  “They did, but not in the general area the Holt boy had indicated. It was on the opposite side of Houston. A gas-station attendant happened to be watching the ten-o’clock news, saw Adam’s picture, and remembered filling the tank of his car earlier in the day, so he called the police. The gas station was near a rarely used, unpaved road that was muddy from recent rains. Adam’s car was caked with mud, so the attendant knew he’d been back in the woods. Early the next morning, as soon as it was light, the police checked the area the attendant had described and found the murdered girl’s body there.”

  “I should think that would be enough evidence against him!” Mom insisted.

  “I guess it wasn’t strong enough to warrant another trial. It was still only circumstantial.”

  “It’s so different on those television shows,” Mom said. “They’re always trying the wrong person, but the attorney holds up something like a matchbook cover or a piece of an earring and says to the guilty person, ‘This means you were the real murderer!’ and they arrest the guilty one and let the innocent one go.”

  “It’s a lot more complicated than that in real life,” Dad told her.

  “There’s something weird about the story you told us,” I said to Dad. “Why would Adam confess to the crime and then lie about where he’d put the body?”

  “Some people get so mixed up in lies, they’re unable to differentiate between lies and truth,” Dad explained.

  “It’s the parents I don’t understand,” Mom said. “If I came home and found my child missing, and blood on the walls and floor, the first thing I’d do would be to call the police.”

  She looked at me as though to prove I were still here in one piece, and added, “I can’t help worrying about the effect this house might have on Sarah.”

  I tried a laugh, and it came out a little shaky. “Remember that old-fashioned hotel in Colorado where we vacationed two summers ago? The manager told us about the shoot-outs and murders that
had taken place in their lobby and saloon back in the days of the Wild West. We just thought of it as an interesting part of history, and it didn’t bother our sleep. Right?”

  “Sweetheart, that was different.”

  “Not really, Mom. Those ranch hands—even the gunslingers—were real people. They didn’t want to die, either.”

  Mom persisted. “It’s different because you’re different. When we stayed at that hotel, it was before—well—before you began having those hallucinations.”

  I got up and walked to the window. The sun’s heat was shimmering in waves from the street and sidewalk, but the house was cold. Much too cold. “The presence that followed me is gone, Mom. I told you that.”

  “Well …” Mom hesitated.

  “Dorothy, listen to Sarah. Whatever happened here is over and done with,” Dad said. His voice was firm again, and color had come back into his face, but his voice dropped as he added, “I honestly don’t see what other choice we can make for the moment.”

  Mom thought a moment, then said, “I want to do whatever is best for Sarah, but I don’t know what that is. All we can do is leave the decision up to her.”

  The air shifted. I found myself in a different time and place. I took a deep breath, inhaling a pungent scent of cloves from the kitchen and stale tobacco smoke from the drapes. As deep shadows stretched like spread fingers across the thick and ragged lawn below the window, I began to feel the quiet presence of the woman. Although I couldn’t see her, I recognized the warm, spicy-sour scent of her skin. Her voice spoke within my head, begging me, frantically pleading, ¡Ayúdame! ¡Por favor!

  Who are you? I didn’t speak the words. I thought them.

  The answer came, but I didn’t understand.

  I don’t know what you’re saying. You’ll have to help me.

  A word, hoarse with tears, slid into my mind. Muerte.

  Muerte? I knew that word. Death. I gasped as the realization struck me. Are you the one who was murdered here?

  The tears were so real that I could feel them damp against my cheek. Ayúdame, she whispered.

  “Sarah?” Mom asked. “Did you hear me? Is something the matter?”

  I closed my eyes, willing myself back to the present. When I opened them, the room was normal, but the voice lingered in my mind.

  “What is it?”

  “I—I got dizzy for a minute. I’m all right now,” I told her. I was afraid of the woman who spoke to me, yet at the same time, by agreeing to help her and become a link between this woman’s world and mine, I had a strange yearning to see her, to reassure her. She had reached out to me, and I couldn’t turn away from her cry for help.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?” Mom asked.

  “Positive.”

  Dad sat forward on the edge of the sofa. “We need your decision, Sarah. It’s important to us.”

  “I want to live here, in this house,” I answered. The air that riffled against my cheek was like the soft touch of a warm hand.

  “Then as far as I’m concerned, it’s decided. We’ll stay,” Mom told Dad.

  He leaned against the back of the sofa and gave a sigh of relief.

  We all jumped at the ring of the telephone. “I’ll answer,” I said.

  “Hey, Sarah,” Eric said, “I talked to that guy about you.”

  “What guy?” I was still so deeply into what Dad had told us that I didn’t know what Eric was talking about.

  “Tony Harris. Remember? The tall guy who likes tall girls.” A strange tone came into Eric’s voice, as though he were secretly laughing at me. “Tony wants to meet you.”

  “I—I don’t think so,” I told him. I was uncomfortable with Eric. “We’ve just moved in. I want to get used to Houston first. I’m not ready to start dating yet.”

  Mom, who had picked up a magazine, pretending to read it, was suddenly alert. She motioned to me, smiling and mouthing, “Who is it?”

  “Are you there?” Eric asked. “Did you hear what I said?”

  “I’m sorry,” I answered, deliberately turning my back on Mom. “My mother was trying to tell me something, so I was distracted. What did you say?”

  “I said, if you haven’t had dinner yet, Tony knows this great Mexican restaurant, and he could meet us there.”

  “Why can’t Tony come here?”

  “The restaurant’s in West University. It would be kind of crazy if he drove all the way here to pick you up, then drove all the way back, wouldn’t it?”

  I was on firm ground now. “My parents won’t let me date someone they haven’t met.”

  “It isn’t really a date,” Eric said. “Anyhow, I’ll be with you. I’ll come over and meet them.” His voice became mocking again. “They can even meet my parents if they’re so protective of their darling daughter.”

  My face grew hot. I didn’t know if I was blushing because I was embarrassed or angry. “Forget it!” I snapped.

  It was Eric’s turn to be embarrassed. “Hey, I’m sorry,” he said. “That’s just my brand of humor. Dee Dee says it’s cruel. Maybe she’s right. I should have realized you aren’t used to it yet. I was just trying to be funny.”

  “It wasn’t funny.”

  “I’ll come over right now,” Eric said. “I was so sure you’d want to meet Tony that I set up the plan. Tony was going out to run some errands, so I can’t call him back. He’ll be waiting in the restaurant for us. Please say you’ll come, Sarah. Okay?”

  Grudgingly I agreed, “Well, all right. Come on over.”

  “Great!” he said. “I’ll be there in five minutes.” And he slammed down the receiver.

  I turned to Mom and said, before she could ask, “That was Eric Hendrickson. He wants to take me to dinner at a Mexican restaurant in West University so I can meet a friend of his who wants to meet me.”

  Mom was dubious. “Eric—the boy who asked for a beer.”

  Dad looked puzzled, so she explained.

  “He was probably showing off a little, because he’s two years older than Sarah,” Dad said, and smiled. “I remember what being eighteen was like.”

  The doorbell rang, and I ran to answer, leading Eric into the den. He was polite and friendly, and I could see Mom melt.

  “I’ll take very good care of Sarah and make sure she’s home early,” Eric said with such sincerity, it made me want to gag.

  Mom beamed at him and said to me, “If you’d like to go with Eric to meet his friend, Tony, we have no objections. You need to make friends in Houston, Sarah.”

  I couldn’t think of a good reason to refuse, so I excused myself to put on a skirt and blouse. I picked up my hairbrush, then put it down again, slowly turning from my bedroom mirror to face the room. The air was trembling against the back of my neck.

  I groaned and murmured, “Don’t do this to me! Not now! Go away!” Groping for the little Spanish I remembered from lessons in elementary school, I found the word and said, “¡Váyase!”

  The silence that followed was as taut as a held breath. Feeling a little guilty, I waited. Finally I whispered, “I don’t know what you want yet, but I’ll try to find out. I promise to help you, but you can’t keep pestering me. Okay?”

  There was no answer, only the icy tickle of someone else’s fear.

  Chapter

  Five

  Sarah! What’s keeping you?” Eric called from the foot of the stairs. The tension in my room shattered.

  “Coming!” I yelled. I brushed back my hair, snatched up my shoulder bag, and ran down the stairs.

  Eric drove a white BMW. He told me about his car in great detail while I made appropriate murmurs and wished we could talk about something more interesting. Then, abruptly, he asked, “Why did you tell Dee Dee that the Holt house scares you?”

  “I said the house was weird, that’s all.”

  “The word Dee Dee used was scared.” He quickly turned to look at me, his eyes crinkling at the corners as though he were enjoying a secret laugh at my expense, before he faced the ro
ad again. “You’ll find out sooner or later that Dee Dee is a mouth. If you tell her anything, she spills it.”

  “Come off it,” I muttered. “There’s no secret to enjoy at my expense any longer. We know about the murder.”

  The car swerved slightly, and the driver in the car in the next lane leaned on his horn.

  Before Eric could answer, I said, “It was bad enough for Dee Dee’s mother not to tell Dad about the murder, but what about the rest of you? Why didn’t your parents tell him the truth before he bought the house?”

  He looked embarrassed. “What were we supposed to do, put a sign in the front yard? ‘A murder took place in this house’? Frankly we were all glad when the house was sold.”

  “Would you like to live in a house where a murder took place?”

  Eric shrugged. “It wouldn’t bother me. What’s the big deal? You don’t believe in ghosts, do you?”

  “Let’s talk about something else,” I said. “Tell me about the high school.”

  He did, and it filled the time until we arrived at the restaurant.

  Tony Harris was waiting for us just inside the door. As we entered, standing under a bright pool of light from a multicolored glass chandelier, he stepped from the shadows and smiled. He didn’t even glance at Eric. His eyes, a vibrant blue, locked into mine, and I caught my breath.

  Tony seemed older than Eric. He was tall, about two inches taller than I am. He was broad-shouldered but slender, and his hair and mustache were dark brown. “Hello, Sarah,” he said in a voice as soft as dark silk.

  Infatuation. I had heard the word. Suddenly I knew what it meant, how exciting it could be.

  I moved a little closer to him, unable to look away, mesmerized by his voice and his eyes. Tony wasn’t that handsome. He was really kind of average-looking, but there was something different, something exciting, behind his smile; and something so demanding in his look that shivers ran up my spine. He reached out and took my hand, and I grasped his fingers willingly.

  “Come on, old buddy,” Eric said, and slapped Tony on the shoulder. “I’m starving. You and Sarah can get acquainted while we eat.”