Gilda Joyce, Psychic Investigator Page 5

  Her shift at work had been particularly draining, because one of her patients was a teenage boy who had lost his foot in a car accident. “But my foot can’t be gone!” he kept yelling. “It still HURTS!”

  “That’s just phantom pain,” Mrs. Joyce had said, holding his hand tightly. “It takes time for your brain to understand what happened, but the pain will go away soon.”

  But getting to that point is excruciating, she thought as she sighed and stubbed out her cigarette.

  When she entered the house, she was surprised to find an alarmingly immaculate and silent atmosphere. Neither Gilda nor Stephen was sprawled on the couch watching sitcoms or reruns of Star Trek. No one had made pancakes or popcorn for dinner instead of the casserole she had taken the trouble to leave in the refrigerator. Books had been placed back on the bookshelves and photographs had been straightened. The carpet looked fluffier, as if it had been vacuumed. A wonderful aroma filled the air—the smell of Gilda’s homemade chocolate-chip cookies. This was an odor that Mrs. Joyce encountered with some trepidation, since it was usually followed by the discovery of cookie dough splattered on the walls and a wreckage of cookie sheets and mixing bowls in the sink.

  This time, nothing unpleasant greeted her—just clean countertops and a plate of chocolate-chip cookies. Next to the plate of cookies was an envelope labeled to mom.

  Uh-oh, thought Mrs. Joyce, bracing herself for some sort of bad news. She opened the envelope.

  Dearest Mother:

  I just wanted to take the opportunity to express my appreciation for you.

  Today I was feeling just the teensiest bit blue when I realized that ALL of my friends are out of town, pursuing glamorous adventures of one sort or another. Who can blame them? It’s like Dad always used to say: “Never turn down a chance to have an adventure.”

  But after vacuuming the living room, baking cookies, doing the dishes, and tidying the entire house, I sat down for a moment to rest, and I said to myself: “Gilda, how can you ever feel the least bit sorry for yourself when you have such a wonderful, beautiful mother who works so hard?! You should do everything you can to make her happy.”

  This made me feel much better. I just wanted to let you know.

  Love, Gilda

  P.S. I was invited to San Francisco by your cousin, Lester Splinter, who has taken the liberty of purchasing an airplane ticket for me. I’m sure you’ll agree that this is a great opportunity. I’ll be leaving in a week. (Please see the attached letter from Mr. Splinter’s Executive Assistant.)

  Mrs. Joyce snorted. I should have known Gilda was up to something, she thought. Leave it to her to find a way to get to San Francisco on her own!

  Mrs. Joyce didn’t like the idea of sending Gilda on a plane to visit a relative she herself scarcely knew. She knew that there were many reasons why this was a risky plan, probably not a good idea, and the sort of thing that a responsible mother would never allow. On the other hand, Gilda usually ended up getting her way through sheer perseverance, and Mrs. Joyce found it exhausting trying to argue with her once she had her heart set on something.

  Mrs. Joyce decided to get to the bottom of this situation by calling Lester right away. Nibbling on one of Gilda’s cookies, she dialed the Splinter & Associates office number that appeared on the letter from “Summer Matthews, Executive Assistant,” thinking that it would still be a reasonable hour to call San Francisco.

  “Splinter here.” A man’s brisk voice answered immediately.

  “Oh! Lester?” Mrs. Joyce spoke with a mouth full of crumbs.

  “Who is this, please?”

  “Lester, this is Patty—your long-lost cousin.”

  There was a cold silence on the other end of the phone.

  “Remember? Patty McDoogle with the braids and freckles?” Mrs. Joyce couldn’t imagine why Lester was being so silent and unfriendly, particularly since he had just invited her daughter to visit him. She remembered her cousin as a shy, serious boy—a boy with neatly combed hair who was always polite, but far too quiet.

  “Oh, yes. Patty McDoogle,” Mr. Splinter finally replied. “Of course I remember you. What can I do for you? In need of some accounting assistance?”

  “Accounting assistance? No—I thought you would be expecting my call. It seems that my daughter, Gilda, has somehow invited herself to visit you in San Francisco this summer? I mean, that was very generous of you to offer, but—”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about, Patty.”

  “I see.” Mrs. Joyce suddenly felt extremely irritated with both Gilda and her terse cousin. “In that case, it seems that my thirteen-year-old is playing a little joke; she presented me with an invitation written by someone named Summer Matthews, who she claimed was your assistant. She said she was invited to visit you in California!”

  “Really? Hmm. Just a moment, please.”

  Mrs. Joyce ate two more cookies while she waited for her cousin to return to the phone.

  “Well, this is quite embarrassing,” said Mr. Splinter, a few moments later. “It seems that I accidentally did invite Gilda to visit without realizing it; there was a little communication gap between me and my assistant.”

  “So it was all a mistake.”

  “Well, yes. But—your daughter is welcome to visit. I must admit I work long hours, so I may not be very entertaining for a young girl. But we certainly have more than enough room in the house. And my own daughter is about that age.”

  “Oh, I completely forgot! But doesn’t she live with her mother in San Diego?”

  “Juliet has lived with me for several years now. I’ve actually been a bit worried about her lately, and—well, I wonder if some company with someone her own age would do her good this summer. Who knows? Maybe Gilda and Juliet would become friends.”

  “Well, of course they would!”

  “Maybe,” said Mr. Splinter mysteriously. “But let’s not have unreasonable expectations.”

  “Why would you pack this?” Mrs. Joyce exclaimed, holding up the ratty blond wig that Gilda had packed. “Or this?!” Mrs. Joyce pulled the leopard-print jacket from Gilda’s suitcase.

  “Mom,” said Gilda, “I told you to leave that stuff alone; I might need it.”

  “For what?”

  “It just might come in useful is all.”

  “This doesn’t seem like very practical clothing to take to San Francisco, Gilda. And these stiletto shoes? How are you going to walk around the city wearing these?”

  “Well, I’m not going to wear them every day. I’m taking my sneakers, too.”

  Mrs. Joyce sighed as she neatly folded clothes that Gilda had tossed randomly into her suitcase. “Do you have enough underwear?”

  “They don’t wear underwear in California.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I’m kidding, of course. I have loads of underwear!” Gilda picked up a pile of underwear from her suitcase. “See? Enough panties for the whole city!”

  “Very funny, Gilda. I just don’t want you to get there and then find out that you forgot something like your tooth-brush, or that you have absolutely nothing practical to wear. Besides, I’m guessing that my cousin Lester is still a very formal, conservative person, and he may not understand your—your quirks.”

  “What quirks?”

  “You know what I mean.” Mrs. Joyce stood up and looked through Gilda’s closet. “Why not wear this nice sundress I bought you?”

  Gilda watched helplessly as her mother returned to the suitcase and continued to rummage through the luggage Gilda had hastily packed. She knew that her mother had a talent for fitting large amounts of clothing into small spaces and that she should be grateful for the help, but she hoped her mother wouldn’t discover the psychic paraphernalia at the bottom of the suitcase.

  “What is this? You’re taking a Ouija board?”

  Gilda tried to act nonchalant. “I’ve read that there are lots of ghosts in San Francisco—in some of those old houses.”

 
“Well, that may well be true,” said Mrs. Joyce, “but this is certainly taking up a lot of space in your suitcase.” Then Mrs. Joyce picked up The Master Psychic’s Handbook. “My goodness, you certainly are interested in the paranormal these days!”

  “Gilda’s always been gullible.” Mrs. Joyce and Gilda looked up to see Stephen leaning against the doorway to Gilda’s room. He was shirtless and extremely sweaty because he had just been mowing the lawn outside.

  “I wouldn’t assume that Gilda is merely gullible,” said Mrs. Joyce. “After all, my own mother used to claim that she saw ghosts in our kitchen!”

  Gilda had always wished she’d gotten a chance to know her grandmother better; it seemed that she might have possessed some psychic abilities. “I bet I could have learned a lot from Grandma McDoogle,” said Gilda.

  “Grandma McDoogle was nuts,” said Stephen. “She was afraid of leprechauns!”

  “Leprechauns can be scary things,” said Mrs. Joyce. “When I was a little girl, we were all spooked by the idea that they might be lurking around.”

  Stephen winced as if her superstition actually caused him pain.

  “Mom,” said Gilda, “if Grandma McDoogle was still alive, do you think she would be able to see Dad’s ghost? Or talk to him?”

  Stephen abruptly left the room. A quick exit was his usual response when the subject of their deceased father came up.

  “I hate when he does that,” said Gilda.

  “I know, but just be patient with him. Boys don’t want to talk about things as much as girls do, and it’s difficult for him to see you getting an opportunity to travel while he’ll probably be here working all summer.”

  “Well, I’ll buy him a T-shirt,” said Gilda, rather unsympathetically. She knew the feeling was wrong, but Gilda couldn’t help but enjoy the fleeting sense of superiority that accompanied doing something exciting and worthy of others’ attention for a change. It seemed to her that Stephen had always been admired for his brains and his work ethic; today it was her turn to be in the spotlight.

  “But what do you think about my question?” Gilda asked.

  “About whether my mother would be able to see your father’s ghost?”

  Gilda nodded.

  “Gilda, I don’t think your father would ever appear as a ghost. I believe he’s in heaven, and that means that his soul is at rest. Your grandmother always believed that ghosts are lost souls—people stuck in limbo. She pitied them.”

  “But—don’t you ever wish you could see Dad, or have a conversation with him?”

  Mrs. Joyce’s blue eyes crinkled in a way that suggested sadness rather than her usual smile. “Of course I do,” she said. “And the truth is, sometimes I still talk to him.”

  “You do?!” This surprised Gilda; she thought she was the only one in the family who tried to communicate with her father.

  “Sometimes I even believe that he hears me,” Mrs. Joyce said, “but he can’t answer in words.”

  But I want him to answer in words, Gilda thought.

  8

  The Splinter Mansion

  Gilda shivered in the plaid sundress her mother had urged her to wear to San Francisco. Why was California so cold? It was the middle of July, but it felt like November outside the San Francisco airport.

  Gilda waved down a cab, and imagined that she was a movie star as she climbed into the taxi and gave the driver the address in the glamorous-sounding neighborhood of Pacific Heights, where Lester Splinter lived. Here she was, all by herself in California! Here she was, riding in a taxi without her mother!

  But as the taxi sped over the highway through a landscape of dry hillsides, Gilda had a strange, wobbly feeling. Nothing seemed to grow on the rocky, red-brown soil. Where were the trees? Where was the sun? What if she had somehow ended up in the wrong state?

  “Excuse me,” said Gilda to the cabdriver. “Are you sure this is California?”

  “You kidding me, right?” the driver replied.

  “I thought it was supposed to be sunny here.”

  “July in San Francisco is fog. And wind.” The driver didn’t speak much English. He waved his hand as if dismissing the entire concept of summer as an absurd idea.

  Gilda gazed through the window at clusters of cube-shaped buildings built into the hillsides. They were small, rickety shacks built almost directly on top of one another.

  “Excuse me again,” said Gilda, leaning forward and talking into the cabdriver’s ear. “Where’s the Golden Gate Bridge?”

  “Other side of the city.” The driver glanced warily at Gilda in the rearview mirror and pointed to a remote spot on the windshield. “But we don’t go over Golden Gate from this way.”

  “Oh.” Gilda was disappointed. She had pictured herself driving over the Golden Gate Bridge with sunlight streaming through the windows and her favorite old song, “Hot Child in the City,” playing on the radio. Why is nothing in life EVER the same as in my imagination? she wondered.

  After driving through a dilapidated portion of the city, the cab turned and headed up a steep hill toward a more upscale neighborhood. Mrs. Joyce had told Gilda that the houses of San Francisco were called “painted ladies,” and now Gilda could see why: some of them resembled tall women in fancy ball gowns of pink and blue, all sitting coyly along the street, hoping to be admired; others resembled giant wedding cakes frosted with ornate façades of bows, wreaths, and flowers. All along the sidewalk there were stately palm trees and squat trees shaped like umbrellas. Large, bright red flowers hung from their branches like Christmas-tree ornaments.

  Gilda dug her fingernails into the leather upholstery of the backseat as the cab ascended a hill that seemed to be as steep as the first incline of an amusement-park roller coaster.

  When they reached the top of the hill, the driver squinted through the window at the address of one of the houses. “Is this it?” He looked at Gilda in the rearview mirror.

  “I don’t know,” said Gilda, peering through the window. “I’ve never been here before.”

  “This is the address you give me.”

  “I guess this is it, then.”

  Gilda hesitated for a moment, hoping that some cheerful adult would emerge from the house to greet her. When nobody appeared, she paid the cabdriver with the money her mother had given her and stepped out of the cab. The taxi drove away, leaving her standing alone at the foot of the huge house.

  As Gilda gazed up at the house, she felt as if she were a peasant approaching the foot of a vast castle. She had never seen anything like this in Michigan!

  Unlike the other bright, opulent houses on the street, the Splinter mansion showed signs of decay. Parts of the house’s façade were crumbling, and the faded pink-and-yellow trim around its doors and windows looked as if it hadn’t been painted in ages. One side was rounded with curved bay windows dressed with tattered lace curtains; the other side featured stained-glass decorations in dark shades of red and blue.

  Gilda shivered, partly because the wind off the bay carried an icy chill, and partly because she had just noticed something rising from behind the house—a pointed tower shaped like a witch’s hat.

  Gilda immediately felt a light-headed sensation and an inexplicable tickle in her left ear. She was now certain that there was a reason she had been drawn to San Francisco: she had a gut feeling about this house—the kind of “magnetic attraction” that her Master Psychic’s Handbook often discussed.

  This house has a secret to reveal, Gilda told herself.

  Gilda began to climb the steep stairway leading to the front door, lugging her suitcase and backpack. Her suitcase—which had no convenient wheels for pulling it behind her—was extremely heavy because it contained her typewriter. Mrs. Joyce had begged Gilda to leave the heavy machine behind, but Gilda had refused. Even though it weighed a ton, she felt better knowing it would be there with her. In this strange new place, the typewriter was Gilda’s only familiar, trusted friend.

  Gilda pressed the doorbell, and after several
minutes, a short Hispanic woman opened the door and said, “No more Girl Scout cookies today, please.” The door clicked shut.

  Outraged, Gilda pounded on the door.

  The woman cracked the door open and peered at her quizzically.

  “I’m not selling cookies,” said Gilda indignantly.

  The woman stared at her in a way that made Gilda wonder if she was at the wrong house. What if the entire arrangement had been a mistake? “Look,” said Gilda, “does Mr. Lester Splinter live here?”

  “Mr. Splinter is not here now.”

  “Well, I’m Gilda Joyce. I’m related to him, and he invited me to visit.”

  The woman frowned. “He invited you?”

  Gilda pulled Summer’s crumpled letter from her backpack. “See? And Mr. Splinter spoke to my mother just the other day.”

  Gilda felt worried: what if she was stuck here with nowhere to stay? Her imagination raced through a series of unlikely scenarios as the woman put on her eyeglasses and squinted at the letter skeptically. First, she would steal a shopping cart. She would load her suitcase in it, then wander down to the poor section of town, where she would lose her identity completely. On the other hand, she did have her typewriter with her, which meant that if she could manage to sit on a park bench and quickly type a novel, she might be able to sell it for a million dollars and buy one of these “painted lady” houses for herself …

  “Okay—you come in, and I will call Mr. Splinter. He never tell me what is going on!”

  Grateful to get out of the windy air, Gilda entered the dark, brooding house. Always fascinated with the smell of other people’s homes, the first thing Gilda noticed inside the Splinter mansion was an antique scent that reminded her of old doilies and stale tea—an elderly, refined smell that evoked a memory of a very tedious historical tour she had once taken. If she hadn’t known about Mr. Splinter and his daughter, Gilda would have assumed that she was in the home of a wealthy old woman.

  Gilda found herself in a parlor crowded with overstuffed velvet chairs that crouched upon wooden lion’s feet. Above her, a crystal chandelier that resembled an enormous ice monster clung to the ceiling. The room seemed to regard visitors with an aged, haughty attitude, and as Gilda surveyed her surroundings, she noticed no evidence whatsoever that a teenage girl lived in the house. Clearly, the inhabitants of the Splinter mansion were very wealthy, but the absence of any books, photographs, or other personal items made it impossible to guess what Mr. Splinter and his daughter would actually be like in person.