Gilda Joyce, Psychic Investigator Read online

  Juliet poured three of the white sleeping pills into her palm and imagined herself lying on her bed, wearing a dress of black silk, her blond hair spilling across the pillow like a sad halo. She had no intention of acting on her suicidal thoughts at the moment, but she found a kind of poisonous pleasure in contemplating the tragic but beautiful image of her dead self.

  Still holding the sleeping pills rather absentmindedly, Juliet trudged upstairs, heading toward her bedroom on the third floor. But when she reached the landing on the second floor, she abruptly dropped the sleeping pills and gasped.

  A woman stood silently in the hallway.

  Juliet felt she knew this woman—the white-blond hair, the gray eyes very much like her own, the high cheekbones and porcelain complexion. But her aunt Melanie was dead.

  Juliet turned to run down the stairs, but she took only two steps before her legs weakened underneath her and everything went white. She tumbled down, down the stairs to the floor below.

  4

  Mrs. Frickle’s Wigs

  Gilda lay in bed and wondered if today would be the day she would receive a letter from San Francisco, inviting her to visit. More than a week had passed since she’d sent the letter to Mr. Splinter, and she was beginning to feel very impatient.

  I have nothing to look forward to, Gilda told herself. She felt a wave of the summer-morning sadness that often followed the euphoria of school ending. Gilda abhorred laziness—in fact, she never let a day go by without pursuing some productive goal or plan associated with her life’s “real work”—but today she felt tired as she gazed at her father’s old typewriter through half-closed eyes.

  Aren’t you going to DO something? the typewriter seemed to say.

  Gilda looked at her alarm clock. It was nearly 9:00 a.m., and she had a lot to accomplish. Forcing herself to climb out of bed, she shuffled toward her chaotic closet, where she contemplated her clothes and costumes, most of which had fallen from their hangers to the closet floor. Gilda found it unbearably dull to be stuck in the single identity of “Gilda Joyce, thirteen-year-old,” and she often wore costumes just to make life more interesting. Her closet was stuffed with hats, scarves, sunglasses, vintage dresses, a very old Girl Scout uniform—even a feather boa and a tutu.

  Gilda decided that today she would gather research for a new novel, so she decided to wear her people-watching disguise: fishnet stockings with several holes, a baggy sundress, a large floppy hat that covered most of her face, dark 1970s-style sunglasses, pink lipstick, and old tennis shoes. Her goal was to look just eccentric enough that people would instinctively avoid her, assuming she was probably a little crazy, and just unfamiliar enough that none of her neighbors would recognize her and inform her mother that Gilda had been peeking into their windows.

  Gilda ran down the stairs and collided with her brother, Stephen, who dropped the bagel he had been munching while reading an issue of Popular Science.

  Stephen scowled. “Why don’tcha watch where you’re going?” Stephen was often in a bad mood in the morning.

  “You’re the one who wasn’t looking,” said Gilda. “You shouldn’t walk up the stairs and eat and read Popular Science all at the same time. It’s too much for your brain to handle.” Gilda tried to dart past her brother, but he blocked her escape.

  “Where are you going wearing that?” he demanded.

  “None of your business.”

  “One of these days, I’m going to tell Mom you spy on people.”

  There were times when Gilda wished her brother would create a computer program to send himself into a distant galaxy. “One of these days, I’m going to tell Mom you look at porno websites,” she threatened.

  This comment surprised Stephen enough that he gave Gilda the opportunity to dart past him and out the front door.

  As Gilda walked quickly down the sidewalk, she reflected that it was hard to believe that in the old days, she and her brother had actually been close friends—real friends. They used to do things like watch black-and-white horror movies and eat cold pizza and chocolate-chip cookie batter. They used to build snow forts and “tree forts”—little more than a few boards nailed to a tree limb—and then imagine living a life of hardship and struggle in the wilderness while eating licorice and candy corn purchased from Plaid Pants at the Gas Mart.

  But after Mr. Joyce fell ill, money was a constant worry to the family, and Stephen began to think that he’d never be able to afford to go to a good college unless he won a big scholarship. He now spent almost all of his time locked in his room, clicking away on his computer and his calculator to make sure he got straight A’s (a fact Gilda resented, since her own grades were decidedly less consistent). When Stephen wasn’t at school or up in his room doing homework, he worked at Roscoe’s Chicken & Fish in an effort to save money to buy a used car. It seemed to Gilda that Stephen was always tired and grouchy these days.

  Mrs. Joyce had assured Gilda that her brother was merely going through a sullen phase (“That’s called being a teenager!”), and that he was simply under more stress than in the past, but Gilda thought it was possible that his brain had permanently frozen in grouch mode: with the exception of rare moments when Stephen would join Gilda to watch a rerun of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, it often seemed that the fun person she used to like being with was gone forever. I don’t care, Gilda told herself. I am completely independent, and I don’t need Stephen OR Wendy to have adventures.

  Gilda looked up and caught an elderly man staring at her eccentric clothing with a slack-jawed expression that looked both bemused and annoyed. Gilda stopped and curtsied right in front of him, and he quickly turned his attention back to his flower garden.

  Turning the corner, Gilda arrived at a brick apartment building. In front of the building there was nothing but a forlorn, plastic structure that had apparently been built for kids, although Gilda had never seen a single child actually play on it.

  Gilda walked nonchalantly toward the front entrance of the apartments, then crouched behind some large bushes. There she could peer through a low window into the basement apartment where Mrs. Frickle lived.

  Mrs. Frickle and her husband used to own a wig store that had burned down in a fire years ago. Mr. Frickle had apparently died of grief shortly thereafter. “Mr. and Mrs. Frickle loved that wig store,” Gilda had overheard a gossipy neighbor exclaiming. “It just killed him when it was gone—and she’s never been the same, either!”

  The fascinating thing about Mrs. Frickle was that she still had a passion for wigs.

  Each time Gilda peered through Mrs. Frickle’s window, she found the tiny, liver-spotted woman slumped in a plaid armchair, wearing a gray bathrobe, watching television, and wearing yet another one of her hundreds of wigs—each in a different color and style. She had long and short wigs, curly and straight wigs. She had wigs with bangs and wigs shaped like large beehives. She had platinum-blond wigs, dark brunette wigs, and fire-engine-red wigs. None of the wigs looked the least bit natural, especially in contrast with the sagging skin and sharp bones of Mrs. Frickle’s face, but she wore them anyway.

  Never had Gilda seen a more outrageous wig than the one Mrs. Frickle was wearing today, however.

  Upon Mrs. Frickle’s head was an enormous bouffant—the size of a small poodle or a large bag of cotton candy. The most fantastic aspect of this wig was the color; it was a bright shade of pink. Gilda stared and stared. Thank goodness she hadn’t missed visiting Mrs. Frickle today! If only Wendy Choy could see this! If only her father were still alive to hear about this!

  Gilda scribbled some notes in the reporter’s notebook she carried with her on people-watching expeditions:

  Does Mrs. Frickle pretend she’s someone else when she wears those wings? Or do the wigs just remind her of her dead husband and the good of days at the wig store? Mrs. Frickle never seems to have any company. Is she lonely? Is she insane? Will I end up like her someday? After all, I like wigs, too. On the other hand, I would never sit and watch infomercials all
day. At the very least, I’d wear my wigs in an exciting setting—like on a yacht or in a really busy shopping mall …

  Gilda wished she had her typewriter with her, because the large pink wig had suddenly given her a great plot idea for a novel. She sat on the ground and scribbled furiously:

  Plot idea: Mrs. Frickle buys a pink wig that is secretly ALIVE! At first, the wig just anuses itself by playing practical jokes on Mrs. Frickle. But then, when if discovers that Mrs. Frickle is very wealthy, the wig creeps into her bedroom at night and tries to strangle her.

  Gilda felt a chill as she looked at Mrs. Frickle’s pink wig through the dirty window. Then she stifled an urge to giggle.

  I’m freaking myself out again.

  The sun had climbed higher in the sky, and Gilda’s fishnet stockings and hat were starting to make her very hot. She decided to leave her spying post and head home to work on her novel. She would title the work A Hairy Situation.

  When Gilda returned home, she checked the mailbox and kicked it hard when she found that it remained stubbornly, mockingly empty. When would Lester Splinter get his act together and invite her to San Francisco? How could he ignore her effervescent letter?

  And what about Wendy? Why hadn’t she written yet? Gilda stubbornly refused to send the first letter to Wendy at camp; she didn’t want Wendy to think that she was sitting around with lots of time on her hands. I’ll reply AFTER she writes first, Gilda thought.

  Gilda consoled herself with the memory of Mrs. Frickle’s pink wig and her smashing new plot idea for a novel. Without wasting another moment, she ran to her room, turned on the electric fan, and began to type the first chapter of her story.

  5

  The Invitation

  Your daughter is slightly anemic,” the earnest young doctor explained to Mr. Splinter. Juliet listened as he told her father that, in addition to having a small fracture in one rib and a severely sprained ankle, she needed to add more iron to her diet. He wrote a prescription for special vitamins. “Anemia might have made her light-headed,” the doctor added, handing Mr. Splinter the prescription. “But I don’t think this fainting episode indicates a serious problem.”

  Juliet felt woozy and disoriented. “Doctor …” she began, wanting to explain to the physician and her father that it was not simply anemia that had caused the fall, but something far more frightening and mysterious. “I think …”

  “Yes, Juliet?”

  She had seen something that had made her fall, hadn’t she? A translucent face—Aunt Melanie’s face!

  Juliet felt that there was no possibility of making anyone understand what had really happened. “Oh, it’s nothing,” she said. “Never mind.”

  Back at home, hobbling on crutches and aching where a bandage had been placed around her midriff (but not even a plaster cast on her ankle to dignify her trauma), Juliet felt a wave of shame when her father noticed something lying in the hallway.

  “I wonder why I left these here?” Mr. Splinter picked up the brown plastic container of sleeping pills that had rolled into a corner. Must have dropped them, he told himself. Then he turned to Rosa, the housekeeper, to warn her about the dangers of the slippery steps that had obviously caused his daughter’s fall.

  Juliet didn’t see any point in contradicting her father or trying to explain what had really happened; her desire to create a scene had passed. At the moment, her suicidal fantasies had faded; now she simply wanted to be left alone.

  And left alone she would be. After all, it was summertime and there was no school, so nobody could make her leave her room.

  Mr. Splinter’s secretary, Summer, swung her leg impatiently, dangling a sequined flip-flop from her big toe as she spoke on the telephone. “No—no, I’m serious. I can’t leave work!” She rolled her eyes.

  “Because—dude—I’ve taken like ten days off in the past month, and I’d kind of like to keep this job, if you know what I mean. You guys go without me. Okay, I’m hanging up now. Bye!”

  Summer slammed down the phone and gazed through the window wistfully at the shimmering water of San Francisco Bay. Then she sighed, pulled a small mirror from her purse, and reapplied her lipstick. A pretty girl in her early twenties, Summer put a great deal of effort into her appearance. Her green eye shadow and toenail polish perfectly matched her tight green T-shirt, upon which the word aquarius glittered in sparkly rhinestones, and her bleached-blond bangs contrasted sharply with the short dark hair on the rest of her head. She wore Capri-cut, hip-hugger stretch pants that revealed a pierced belly button and a taut, suntanned stomach. Sitting amid the filing cabinets, folders, and austere bookcases of Mr. Splinter’s home office, she resembled an exotic bird.

  During the past hour, several of Summer’s friends had called, asking if she could get away from Splinter’s office to go to Stinson Beach. Summer was very proud of herself for refusing the invitations.

  Summer glanced at her desk calendar. Today was Friday—the day of the week when she worked out of Mr. Splinter’s home office rather than his downtown accounting firm, Splinter & Associates. On Fridays, Summer played the radio and sorted through Mr. Splinter’s personal mail—a job she particularly enjoyed, since she was somewhat nosy.

  Summer couldn’t for the life of her figure out what kind of person her boss really was. She found this frustrating, because she considered herself to be extremely intuitive about people. As much as she liked and respected Mr. Splinter as an employer, Summer felt that it was maddening to work for such a private, inscrutable person. For one thing, she had no gossip whatsoever to share with her friends.

  Summer sorted through a pile of teen fashion magazines and catalogs for dance camps and ballet costumes, all addressed to Juliet Splinter. She placed a rubber band around Juliet’s mail and tossed it aside with a decidedly annoyed turn of the wrist. Although Summer considered herself a “people person,” she had to admit that Juliet was exactly the kind of girl she couldn’t stand. For one thing, she couldn’t imagine why a girl as rich, pretty, and privileged as Juliet was always in such a perpetually sullen mood. She also hated Juliet’s habit of correcting other people’s grammar by saying things like “You mean, ‘you and me,’ not ‘you and I.”’ Summer took pride in her ability to get along with people of all ages, but despite her repeated attempts to engage Mr. Splinter’s daughter in conversation by saying things like “Got any boyfriends?” and “Cool lip gloss, huh?,” Juliet’s responses remained either monosyllabic or nonexistent. The last straw came recently, following Juliet’s injury in a fall down the stairs: Summer had tried to brighten the girl’s day by bringing her a video of the movie Clueless.

  “You’re just trying to suck up to your boss by being nice to me” was Juliet’s bitter response. It was all Summer could do to leave the room without giving her employer’s daughter a nice hard slap.

  Summer spied an envelope addressed to “Mr. Lester Splinter” that sparked her interest. Who in the world was “Gilda Joyce”? Who could Mr. Splinter possibly know in Michigan?

  Intrigued, Summer considered whether she could get away with opening the letter from Gilda Joyce. It was true that Mr. Splinter had given her permission to “open and sort” his mail, but this letter looked much more personal than his usual pile of bills, formal letters, and invoices. She contemplated steaming the letter open, but that would require locating an iron. Besides, what if she got caught?

  Summer decided to go ahead and open the note and claim that she had opened it by mistake if Mr. Splinter asked her about it later.

  As she read the letter, Summer found herself very intrigued by Gilda’s situation. So Mr. Splinter has relatives after all! And this girl didn’t sound the least bit spoiled. In fact, she seemed far more deserving of life in a fabulous San Francisco mansion than grumpy Juliet. Naturally, Summer was also fascinated by a closing remark about Mr. Splinter’s sister and a “jump from the roof.” What in the world could that mean?

  Carrying the opened letter, Summer peeked into the adjacent office, where Mr
. Splinter was working at his computer. “Excuse me … Mr. Splinter?”

  Mr. Splinter mumbled something but didn’t turn to look at Summer. He often neglected to look at people when he was absorbed in a financial problem.

  “I opened something by mistake from a relative of yours. Her name is Glinda or something? Anyway, she wants to know if she can visit you this summer.”

  Mr. Splinter continued to type.

  “Well, you probably already know all about her, but she sounds totally smart, and she has this hard life in Michigan, and her father died, and her mom works in a really yucky hospital or something. Anyway, she sounds like a total genius—really awesome—but she doesn’t have much money, so she’d probably need to have you get her a ticket and stuff to fly out here—if it’s okay for her to visit. It might be good for Juliet to have some company, you know.”

  Mr. Splinter didn’t look up once while Summer spoke. Although he claimed to be able to focus on two things at once, the truth was that numbers always received his full attention, while the words of human beings were often only partially processed by his brain. What he had just heard Summer say was “totally smart … awesome … ticket and stuff …” and he had automatically filed this in the category of Summer’s idle chatter and requests for days off from work. Although he never listened to her very carefully, Mr. Splinter actually enjoyed hearing Summer’s voice, which reminded him of the pleasant twittering of a small bird that kept his mind from dark memories he wanted to avoid.

  “So what do you think, Mr. Splinter? Is it okay if I go ahead and make the arrangements?”

  Mr. Splinter finally looked up. He blinked, noticing Summer’s neon-green outfit for the first time that day. It wasn’t exactly appropriate office attire, but then, he had hired Summer more for her cheerful, lighthearted demeanor than for her professional skills.