He said, “I haven’t seen my daughter since the morning I left for work two years ago.” He motioned toward the kitchen before us. “I kissed her forehead there, but she didn’t kiss me back. She had stuck out her lower lip. She always did that when she was mad. I had, of course, taken her mother’s side of their silly argument and my baby girl was mad at me. I had ruffled her hair and laughed and told her I loved her. At least...at least, I said that.” He shook his head sadly. “You know, for someone losing his memory, I sure remember every detail of that day. It’s all I have, in a way. It’s my last memory of her alive.”
“I’m sorry you had to go through this, Peter.”
“I’m more sorry for her. And angry. So angry. I want to kill the bastard all over again. I want to kill him a million times, each death more painful than the last.”
His words hit me hard and as his discordant energy crackled through me. I tried to forget the man lying on the concrete, gasping and drowning in his own blood.
Peter looked at me. “And it was definitely her teacher?”
“It was.”
“Do we know this for a fact?”
“We will soon.”
He nodded. “I met him once, at a parent-teacher conference. He seemed...intense. I almost pulled my daughter from his class. I guess I should have...”
He released my hand and wept into his own. I nearly hugged him, nearly put my arm around him, but I refrained, afraid of what I might feel.
Finally, Peter sat back and nodded and breathed deeply, and this time, I heard a ragged sound pass over his lips. The house, I noted, was absolutely silent. Not even the hum of a refrigerator. It had been unplugged, of course. After all, no one needed it. No one living, at least.
“Peter, how did your wife kill herself?”
“She took a bottle of painkillers.”
I nodded. “Did you watch her die, Peter?”
“I did, yes.”
“And you did nothing to stop it?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Her...her pain was so great...she couldn’t deal with it anymore, or with Penny not being here. She wasn’t holding up well.”
“And how were you holding up?” I asked.
“Not much better.”
We sat together, our knees almost touching. I noted that I had sunk in much deeper on my side of the couch than he had, although he was a bigger man. He said, after a moment, “My wife wanted to be with Penny again, that it was the only way she could be happy.”
Peter didn’t bother brushing away the silvery tears that now ran down his cheeks.
“But I stayed behind. I had to find the killer. I couldn’t let that piece of shit walk the Earth a free man.”
I studied Peter Laurie as he spoke, noting the same black suit, the same haircut, the same slightly askew tie. I noted the same scuff on his right shoe. Mostly, I noted the way the air crackled when he was near. I had thought it was because I was feeling his dead wife’s energy, or even his daughter’s energy. I had, of course, been dead wrong.
I said, “You stayed behind while your wife moved on.”
He nodded. More tears spilled free.
“Except you’re not telling me everything, are you, Peter?”
He buried his face in his hands and shook his head.
“The two of you, in fact, killed yourselves together?” I said. “Didn’t you?”
Chapter Twenty-nine
Peter wavered in and out of existence.
It was the first time I’d seen him do that. One moment he was there, and the next he wasn’t, just a ghostly hint. And, unlike, Millicent, Peter Laurie was very much a ghost.
Finally, face still buried, he nodded. “Yes. We took the pills together, died together, although she went first.”
“You watched your wife die?”
“She died in my arms.”
“And then you died, too.”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“What happened next?” I asked.
“Time passed, although I don’t know how long. A day perhaps. I continued sitting near the bed while our bodies lay unmoving, dead. I was alone. Wherever my wife had gone, I didn’t know. But I was alone, as I have been since that day.” He looked at me. “Until you.”
“Do others see you?”
“Let’s just say I’ve scared off one or two potential home buyers.” He chuckled lightly.
“You didn’t want the house to be sold,” I said.
“Not then...but now...now, I don’t know what to do.”
Detective Smithy had, of course, finally filled me in about the family’s tragedy. He had known all along that Peter had committed suicide with his wife, but had played along with hopes that the case might finally be cracked. Mostly, he thought I was crazy, but wanted to see where all of this might lead. After all, the case had been cold for two years, and in came a crazy woman who claimed to have been hired by the deceased father.
Smithy had admitted to me in the parking lot at Clover Field Elementary that he’d been too dumbfounded to say much of anything. Most important, he admitted to dreaming about Peter Laurie the night before our first meeting. Although he had dismissed the dream at the time, when I had come into the office asking if Peter had contacted him, the detective, who was, amazingly, open to the idea of a spirit world, had taken that as a sign. Good for him.
Which led me back to Millicent. She would have known that her son was dead, but she had withheld that information, too. As I sat there and looked at her son’s confused face—her dead son’s face—I heard her words all over again: “Help my son.”
Why she had kept me in the dark, I didn’t know. How, exactly, she wanted me to help her dead son, I didn’t know that either. But I had some ideas...and it had to do with more than just helping her son find the killer.
Millicent had often told me that those in spirit can only help so much, that many of us must find our own paths, too. Although dead, Peter was still very much mired in the physical world.
Help my son...
Yes, I knew what she needed from me, although I did not think I was the right person for the job. Who was I, after all, other than a part-time Psychic Hotline operator?
Later, after my cry-a-thon, I called Peter’s real estate agent, and got the lowdown about the house, too. Peter Laurie’s siblings had spent the better part of nine months fighting over the home, until they’d finally come to some agreement. The house, meanwhile, had sat empty for nearly a year. Yes, there had been some interest, but buyers, in general, were not very excited to get involved in a home where a double suicide had occurred.