Chapter Five

Chapter Five

“I’m gonna wing it.”

—Me about something I most definitely should not wing.

Half an hour after leaving Halle’s place, I was knocking on the door of a lakefront mansion I might’ve been able to afford if I sold my soul. And my internal organs. And my Harley. No way was I selling my Harley.

A man in his late fifties wearing a T-shirt and a thin pair of sweats answered. I’d felt underdressed until I saw him. Thanks to a late-night text from Jason, he knew I was coming.

“Mr. Nordstrom,” I said, greeting him with a nod.

He took my hand in a firm shake. A businessman, through and through. “Mr. Vause, call me Donald.”

“And please call me Eric.”

He gestured me inside. “I have it set up in my office, but if you have any questions—”

“I have several thousand.”

He pressed his lips together and nodded. “I thought you might.” He led me down a long hallway with wooden floors to his home office.

“Sorry for the late-night visit.”

“Please, don’t apologize.” He shook his head and rubbed his red-rimmed eyes with a thumb and index finger. He’d been crying. Jason must’ve told him about the fate I’d seen for his daughter. “Anything I can do,” he said, his voice cracking. “Any time, day or night.”

“Thank you.”

He sat me behind a massive oak desk and woke up his computer. A video was already cued up. “Just press play.”

I viewed the grainy video from a surveillance camera set up in Halle’s kitchen on the houseboat. The angle captured a tiny bit of her bedroom as she slept in the background. I could only see her blond head given the covers she had pulled up to her chin.

After a moment, a dining room chair slid slowly across the kitchen floor, scraping the tile and not stopping until it butted up against a cabinet. Creepy? Yes. Legitimate? That remained to be seen.

The video flickered as the timestamp jumped forward, the clips pieced together rather shoddily. The next clip showed a cup launching itself off the countertop and crashing against the fridge. The clip had sound, and the crash was loud enough to wake the dead. Metaphorically. But Halle didn’t move. Didn’t even flinch. That fact was even more suspicious than the cup.

“There’s one more event,” Donald said.

I waited until the next flicker. This clip was from the same camera, only this time, I saw Halle’s face in the background, blurry and monochromatic but clearly her. She breathed softly with her hands under her chin, which didn’t change, even when the blanket covering her slid down to reveal her complete state of undress.

Though I should have looked away, I didn’t blink until the door to her bedroom slammed shut with a violent boom that would’ve shaken the whole boat. It was almost a warning to anyone watching—a very possessive one.

“That’s it,” Donald said. He’d walked away to gaze out a huge plate glass window, unable to watch what his daughter had been going through.

The timestamp between the three clips showed they’d happened only a few minutes apart, and if not for a few minor points, I might’ve bought the whole thing. But probably not. I’d been at this for a long time.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“How old is this?”

“About a year. It was captured right before Halle’s mother died.”

“Jason said you had it checked out?”

“Yes. Our head of security says it’s legit. He also investigated her houseboat. There was no evidence of tampering. Nothing tied to the chair or the cup.”

“And Halle didn’t see anyone when she woke up?”

“That’s just it. She didn’t. She slept through the whole thing. It was actually our head of security who noticed it a few days later and brought it to our attention.” He pointed at the computer screen as though accusing it of wrongdoing. “We had her committed because of all this, Eric.” His voice broke, and he had to step away to gather himself. He gazed out of the window again, the darkness beyond impossible to penetrate save for a few flickers of moonlight glistening on the waves across the lake. “Years ago, we had her institutionalized because we thought she was delusional. And then we saw this video.”

The guilt was clearly eating him alive.

“And now you think she’s going to be murdered?” A husky sob rushed out of him, and he fought to keep his emotions under control.

I gave him a moment before asking, “Can you email this to me?”

“Of course. But you haven’t told me what you think.”

“I don’t have an opinion just yet,” I lied. “But let me ask you, in all of the years you’ve had security cameras on Halle, is this the only video showing any supernatural events?” And three in one night, too. How convenient.

“My wife and I tried for years to figure this out. To come up with a reason for what we thought were Halle’s delusions. To figure out exactly when it all started.”

“And?”

He shook his head. “We never came up with a specific time, place, or incident. One day, we just noticed that she was, I don’t know how to say it…”

“As honestly as you can.”

“That she was going downhill.” He raked a hand through his thinning hair. “Or maybe she’d already hit rock bottom by the time we caught on. She’s a very good actress.”

“I noticed.”

“She didn’t confide in us for years. Then one day, out of the blue, she told us she was being haunted. That a ghost had been following her, of all things. We thought she was joking at first, but the more time that passed, the further into depression she sank, and we realized she believed, truly believed, she was cursed.”

I bent my head in thought. “How old was she?”

“When she told us? Fifteen.”

“But her behavior had already changed before that?”

He nodded. “Looking back, I’d say she’d been depressed for at least two years before that. Maybe three.”

“Years?” I asked, my astonishment—my prejudice—shining through.

“I know.” He rubbed his forehead and sank into a leather chair across from me. “Like I said, either she hid it really well, or we were oblivious. I never thought we were bad parents until I saw that video. It changed everything. It’s not that we didn’t support her, but we never believed her. And now I know that was even worse.”

Part of me wanted to sympathize with him. With his plight. But to miss something so detrimental… It hit closer to home than I wanted to admit.

Then again, this wasn’t about me. It was about Halle and how we were going to perform a miracle. How we could change her fate.

I considered the video again as Donald spoke.

“I know she seems fine,” he said to me, “but don’t let her fool you. Ever since Emma died last year, Halle has gone into a tailspin. She puts on a brave face, but when she comes to work with dark circles under her eyes, hands shaking, and fingernails chewed to the quick… I’m at my wit’s end, Eric. I just don’t know what else to do. And now this?” He buried his face in his hands, and a sob shook his shoulders.

“May I ask how your wife died?”

“Car accident. A horrible car accident. She overshot a curve in the mountains and… There was little left of her or the vehicle.”

My instincts kicked in so hard they almost knocked me unconscious, especially with the knowledge of what awaited Halle. “Was there anything unusual about the accident?”

He blew his nose into a tissue and looked at me in surprise. “The whole damned thing was unusual.”

“Like?”

“She had no reason to be on that road, first of all. And a mechanic speculated that her brakes failed, but we’d just had maintenance done. Those brakes were pristine.”

I had an inkling I knew what was going on, but I needed a segue that wouldn’t look suspicious. I came up with one and crossed my fingers. “You said your head of security checked out Halle’s houseboat after this happened?”

“Yes.”

“I’d like to talk to him, see if he remembers anything out of the ordinary from that night.”

“I’ll get you his information.” He took out his phone to look it up.

I cleared my throat and asked as nonchalantly as I could, “Did he install her security system?”

“Yes,” he said absently while scrolling through his contacts. “My company has used him for years, and he also takes care of our home security.”

I typed my next question into my phone, cleared my throat again to get his attention, and turned it to show him my screen.

He furrowed his brows, read my message, and started to answer. If I hadn’t slammed an index finger over my mouth to shush him, he would’ve done just that. I pointed to his phone to clue him in.

After a moment of contemplation, he opened a notes app, typed his answer, and turned his cell to show me.

Seventeen years. Their security guy had worked for his company for seventeen years. I’d recently heard that exact number from a Nordstrom much prettier than Donald.

“So, Jason tells me you have a killer wine cellar.” He didn’t, but Donald was rich. All rich people had wine cellars, and they were all killer.

When I nodded at Donald, encouraging him to play along, he nodded back. “I do. Would you like to see it?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

He unfolded himself from the chair, but before he could lead the way, I took his phone out of his hands and put it alongside mine on his desk. I reassured him with yet another nod, and he led me through the house, down a narrow set of stairs, and into a dimly lit basement. The walls were made of stone, with row after row of wine bottles and a huge walk-in cooler.

Sure enough, one killer wine cellar, as ordered. And the walk-in cooler was like a birthday present I never saw coming.

I pulled the massive steel door open and gestured for Donald to follow me. Once the door closed, I lowered my voice and asked him, “There aren’t any cameras in here, right?”

He shook his head.

After scanning the area to double-check, I turned back. “We can’t be certain it’s not bugged, but I would be surprised if it were.”

“Bugged?” he asked.

“Let’s keep our voices as low as possible, just in case.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Before we get to that,” I said, speaking as softly as I could, “the video you showed me is about as fake as my membership card to the Yacht Club.”

He took a long moment to study me, size me up, and decide if he should believe anything coming out of my mouth. If we hadn’t been able to save Zachary’s life today, I think he would’ve kicked me out on my ear. But that, along with Jason’s endorsement, was enough to keep his skepticism at bay. For the moment. “How do you know?”

“First, every event was perfectly framed. Nothing happened out of the camera’s field of view. Almost as if it were staged.”

He seemed to think back and then agreed with a nod.

“Second, Halle never woke up. She never flinched. Her breathing never wavered.”

“W–wait,” he said, struggling to form the words he didn’t want to speak. “Do you think Halle was drugged?”

“I do. And third, there were no departed in the room.”

He shook his head, trying to process everything I was saying. “How can you know that?”

“My ability allows me to see the departed on film, in digital recordings, Polaroids, pretty much anything. They look just like everyone else to me, only a little blurrier, and the colors aren’t quite as vibrant. But who knows? My new reality defies the laws of physics and rarely makes sense. Especially to me. Maybe different kinds of recordings—”

“No. No, I think you’re right.”

“Why?”

“It was just strange how he came to us with the so-called evidence. I mean, why was he looking at recordings of her in the first place? They were there only if we needed to review something.”

I could tell his mind was racing, connecting the dots as they appeared.

“And one reason it took so long for us to believe Halle was that every time she told us a glass broke or a cabinet door slammed, there was nothing on the video to prove it. I slowly began to realize the videos Paul showed us, the ones with nothing on them whatsoever, were the same. Her blender always in the same spot. Her fruit basket always filled with the same fruit.”

“Paul is your head of security?”

“Yes. Paul Meacham. But the videos he showed us changed, just when I became suspicious. Different placement. Different fruit. Until, eventually, Halle gave up. She stopped telling us when things happened. She stopped trusting us completely.” A sob shook his shoulders again.

“If my instincts are correct, and they always are, your head of security has been terrorizing your daughter for seventeen years.”

He pressed a hand to his mouth and stumbled back against a wine rack, the shock weakening his legs. It was about to get worse.

“Donald, I hate to ask this”—and I really did—“but do you think your wife grew suspicious of him?”

He stilled, and the blood drained from his face as he thought back. “No,” he whispered, but it was an expression of denial. Simply too much for him to process. “Please, no. Why would he do that? Why would he do any of this?”

“I don’t know, but I think Halle does.” When he only gaped at me, I explained. “She knows more than she’s letting on. I’m not saying she suspects your head of security, but something definitely happened to her seventeen years ago, and we need to find out what it was.”

Another sob racked his body, and I let his emotion take over for a few minutes before continuing with my plan.

“How good are your acting skills?”

He sniffed and looked at me like I was crazy. “I’ve brokered billion-dollar business deals. Denzel wishes he was this good.”

I knew I liked him. “Perfect. You can’t let on that you suspect anything. Just act natural, whether you’re making breakfast or in a business meeting. If you usually sing in the shower, sing in the shower. Don’t change your routine. Not until we know more.”

“What if I’m going about my business, Paul walks by, and I accidentally stab him forty-seven times?”

“No stabbing him. We don’t know that he actually had anything to do with this. And even if he did, we can’t prove it. Not yet.”

“Fine.” I could see the anger welling up inside him, and it would only get worse the more he thought about everything that’d led up to this day. It would bubble and simmer and eventually boil over, and then I wouldn’t be able to stop him. I needed to figure this out before that happened.

“We need to keep this between us, obviously. You can fill Jason in with explicit instructions to keep quiet but don’t do it over the phone. Don’t call or text anything about this and instruct him to do the same. Tell him in a loud and crowded place, far away from your phones. We may need his help.”

“Should I do it now?”

“No. It’ll look suspicious if you leave in the middle of the night right after I was here.”

“Okay.” He swallowed hard, bracing himself for the trials to come. “First thing in the morning. But what about my daughter? We have to stop what is going to happen to her.”

“That’s the plan. You just need to trust me.” I didn’t mention how ridiculous that statement was. I barely trusted myself, and I was asking this man, a stranger, to place his daughter’s life in my hands. Apparently, the old saying was true: Fake it ‘til you make it.