Laura Lippman - Baltimore Noir

A séance! Jeannie felt she was living in The Twilight Zone. Charlie left work early the next morning, but not before telling her he expected her to bring him at least three estimates by the end of the week. Jeannie gritted her teeth and agreed. If anything, a psychic hack would buoy her case for getting out.

There weren’t many psychics left in the new Baltimore, but Jeannie did find a listing in the phone book that wasn’t too far away, for a Sister Natalie’s House of Spirits, located on Reisterstown Road near Northern Parkway. Sister Natalie was just the psychic Charlie deserved. Sister Natalie, with her hands decked in heavy rings, her head covered in a zebrapatterned turban, and wearing a mumu, was exactly the stereotype of a woman who communicated with other worlds. And the things she asked of Jeannie-background on everything that had happened so far in the house, four hours to set up before the séance, undisturbed, and a $600 deposit to cover expenses-made Jeannie certain the whole thing was going to be an utter fraud. But that was okay. Jeannie wanted no chance of the sailor-suited boy actually materializing. Let Sister Natalie go off on her own tangent, giving Charlie the kind of glamorous ghosts he needed.

Jeannie spent a good hour with the psychic, telling her everything she could think of relating to the house and its history. Suddenly she realized it was 11:30, and she was going to have to race over to St. David’s to pick up Ivan. She wrote out the deposit check and handed it to Sister Natalie.

As their hands touched, Sister Natalie drew back sharply. The check fluttered to the floor.

“I’m sorry,” Jeannie said automatically, and bent to pick it up. Sister Natalie appeared frozen when Jeannie tried to give her the check again.

“Is everything okay?” Jeannie could barely hide her impatience. “I made it out to the name you told me, Natalie Black-”

“Your family is in danger,” Sister Natalie said, her voice leaden.

“What?”

“Your family is in danger. We were talking about the house before, but there’s something else you need to worry about-something very serious-”

Aha! Angling for a return engagement, Jeannie thought. An extra consultation-extra money. “I’m really sorry, Sister, but I am going to have major worries if I don’t pick up my son from school on time. I’ll see you this Friday, okay? Call me if you need directions.”

As Jeannie’s Humvee joined a stalled line of vehicles a quarter-mile prior to her turnoff from Northern to Roland Avenue, she felt her anxiety quicken. If only she could see ahead to whether or not it was an accident. Blocking her line of vision was a truck: a big white one with red lettering on the back that said, “ REEVES ENTERTAINMENT. FOLLOW ME TO MARYLAND’S GREATEST PARTIES AND MAGIC SHOWS!”

Five minutes later, when she’d managed to make the right turn and proceed toward Ivan’s school, she turned over the connection in her mind. Hodder had mentioned that his father’s family owned a large party services company. She’d thought that the company dealt solely in tents and chairs and champagne fountains. But obviously there was something more.

There was a message blinking on the answering machine when Jeannie returned home with Ivan in tow.

It’s Hodder, ” the voice on the recording said. “I was in Dewey and Rehoboth for a couple of weeks getting a jump on my spring listings, but I just returned this morning. Glad you want to get together! Can we do lunch?”

Had he heard, somehow, from Sister Natalie about the upcoming séance? As Jeannie was deliberating what to do, the phone rang. She listened to it ring, and when her answering machine picked up, she heard Hodder speak into the machine.

“Jeannie? You there?”

Jeannie picked up the phone. “I’m here.”

“Hey, did you hear my message about lunch? I called both your cell and the home, but nobody picked up.”

“Actually, Charlie and I want to invite you to join us at home Friday evening.” She had to force herself to sound normal.

“Ooh, dinner in my favorite house on Goodwood Gardens, with my favorite clients. It just so happens I am free. Let me bring some wine-would you prefer red or white?”

“Neither. It’s not exactly a dinner party, it’s a kind of-games night. There will be a couple of other people there. Could you come at 8, after Ivan’s in bed?”

“I’ll knock very quietly,” Hodder said in a low purr. “And how did you know I love games-grown-up games, especially?”

The séance was going to be a nightmare, Jeannie thought, as she spread out the skirts of her black silk taffeta gown so they wouldn’t crease while she sat reading Ivanhoe his favorite Dr. Seuss stories, even after his eyes had closed. Ivan’s tiny little hand was tucked in hers, making her sweat in the room that was already too hot. Sister Natalie had insisted on raising the temperature in the house, rather than dropping it, as if to prove how genuine her psychic feats would be.

Finally, Ivan’s hand relaxed in Jeannie’s and she carefully disengaged herself and arranged his coverings lightly over him. He was already covered in a faint sheen of perspiration, so she cracked open the window across the room.

Ivanhoe’s bedroom door was slightly ajar, and she could hear voices below. Hortense Underwood had come early, of course, and she was talking with Charlie about something, until a knock came at the door. It was Hodder, who after listening to Charlie’s booming description of the evening’s agenda, exclaimed loudly about what a great surprise the séance was. Jeannie suspected this was one instance where Hodder was genuinely surprised, and not up to his usual tricks.

It had been just a few hours earlier, when late afternoon sunshine had flooded Ivanhoe’s room, and the two of them had been putting away his laundry in the closet, when she’d found the trick: the quarter-inch nail hole in the closet door. She’d seen something flash in it, and realized, under closer inspection, that there was a very thin lens embedded in the hole that reflected its presence clearly under the glow of a flashlight.

“Ivan,” she’d asked gently, “that boy with the bib you see. Where does he stand when you see him?”

Ivanhoe pointed at a spot on the wall directly across from the closet door. “Over there.”

So the show took place after dark. When the hologram, or whatever it was, would show up most frighteningly. Hodder wouldn’t even need to be in the house to pull off the stunt; he could use a remote control, like people used for their cars, and like Hodder had done when he’d illustrated the features of the house’s state of the art security system.

Grimly, Jeannie took care of the hole in the quickest way she could-stuffing toilet paper into it. Then she’d taken Ivan with her down to the basement, where, using an icing spatula, she pried up a dozen floorboards before finding the tape recorder. She’d removed the microcassette to play on the living room stereo. Sure enough, the sounds of a bowling alley, but with added clarity from the high-quality speaker system.

She was angry; blindingly angry. Her rage seemed uncontainable, rushing out in a great wave she wished would sweep over the person who had decided to intentionally frighten her little boy, had turned him into a child who was scared of the dark and hid in kitchen cupboards. And as Ivan’s mother, it was her duty to make the amoral monster pay.

Now Ivan was asleep and Jeannie stood in the hallway, listening to the sounds of the guests below and thinking about where to go. She found herself stopping in the bedroom, opening up Charlie’s safe, and tucking the Beretta into one of the deep pockets camouflaged in the side seams of her dress. Now her dress was slightly weighed down on the right, but nobody would notice, given that downstairs was dimly lit by candles. She was going to give Hodder the scare of his life, frighten him so badly that he’d ruin his Ralph Lauren khakis for good-