Ordinarily, calling them on a priority situation wouldn't be a big problem. In the case of Joyce, it still wasn't a problem.
The problem was Edgar.
Cree got up from the desk and paced a circle, limping only slightly now, approaching the thought warily.
Edgar. Good, wise, kind Edgar. Handsome in his stringy way, funny, smart, protective, supportive. Wouldn't think it to look at him, but he was a terrific dancer who when he took his shirt off revealed a tanned, hard abdomen cut with muscle that turned women's heads. She imagined that he was a fine lover, tender yet passionate. Certainly devoted to Cree.
It was stupid. One walk along the levee, pleasant conversation in the light of the setting sun. One night at a restaurant with that buzz of magnetism, partly fueled by exhaustion and booze. That brief, startling touch in the car, a quick kiss. She didn't know anything about Paul Fitzpatrick – for all she knew, he was married and had ten kids, and the feelings she'd experienced were not reciprocal at all.
Nah, an inner voice told her.
Okay, but this was a professional trip – business. Social involvements would only get in the way, destroy Cree's focus when someone else's life was at stake. She wasn't here to hunt for true love. She wasn't looking for romance. She didn't walk around with her heart on her sleeve, accessible to any single male who showed an interest. And she wasn't really available: She was a goddamned nun, married and still loyal to a man long dead.
Very much a widow, she thought again, hating Charmian.
And then the other blade cut at her again: Mustn't waste the bloom. Why not look for true love, singular love, lifetime love? Why shouldn't she actively seek something so beautiful and fine? Why should there be the slightest shame or reluctance? But if she admitted that's what she believed in and wanted, then she had to face that she'd already found that love, married that man – and lost him, nine years ago. So to believe in the one true love was to effectively deny it to herself for the rest of her life. Leaving the alternative: staying hard and skeptical, denying that such love could exist, killing daily her own romantic, lyrical yearnings.
Neither was a tolerable choice.
But Edgar. Whatever might or might not be possible with Paul, Edgar's presence would compound her already abundant confusions of loyalty. What was their relationship? How did she feel?
The phone rang and jolted her out of her uselessly spiraling thoughts.
"Hey, darlin', it's little ol' me." Male voice, an unfamiliar Southern accent. "And have Ah got some news fuh ya'll!"
"I'm sorry, who -?"
"Y'all don't rec'nize mah voice?"
Suddenly it clicked: "Edgar! Jesus. What a god-awful lousy accent! Nobody really talks that way here."
"Shoot. All that practice for nothing!" Edgar laughed. "How're you doing, Cree?"
"I was – I was just going to call you, actually." Cree felt some relief: Ed's calling had solved her dilemma for her. Fate intervening, saving her from making a fool of herself.
"That's nice. How come?" There was a suppressed smile in his voice, as if he had something important to say but was saving it: Edgar with a bouquet held behind his back.
"We need to get on this case. Full research and remediation. How soon can you get down here?"
"Uh, Cree, listen – the reason I called, I have just had the most amazing day and night of my life!" Once he let himself go, Edgar sounded almost breathless with excitement.
"Tell me."
"Guess what happened to me!" he practically sang.
"No shit, Ed! Really?"
"Yeah, me! Mr. Empiricism himself! I heard footsteps, Cree! I did! Clear footsteps coming through the whole house, somebody with a bit of a limp. Broad daylight, right, I turn around, expecting to see one of my witnesses, and – nobody! The hair rose on my arms, man, I got the chills."
Cree felt good for him. She could feel his pleasure in at last being able to share at least some small part of her experiences. "So what was it like? Did you experience a particular mood, a feeling – "
"Yeah, I felt I wanted to call you up and tell you! But Cree, that's not all! I'm onto something really major here. Listen, the cycles of manifestation, right? Why do people only see or hear this thing when they do? I come out here with my geomagnetic theory, which suggests sightings should occur at the same time of day or night, but the times of sightings just don't match the solar day. This one's been seen many times, by several people, so today I talk to all my witnesses and chart the times of the last dozen sightings, including my own? At first glance they look like they're scattered around the clock. But then I saw the pattern. Tides, Cree! Tides aren't on a twenty-four-hour cycle, it's about twelve and a half hours between high tides, which means they progress through the solar day! Tides mean a lot to the commercial fishermen here, so all the times are published in the papers? So I happened to spot the tidal tables and got thinking and then went and found almanacs for the last two years, and bingo, man – hundred percent correlation between tidal cycles and sighting times! I mean, this is seriously large."
Ed used "man," "big," and "large" like that only when he was really, really into something, as if in his excitement he regressed to his teenage years in Santa Barbara.
"I guess I don't know much about tides," Cree admitted. "Would it
… does it affect places inland, too?"
"Absolutely! Tides are a harmonic, a metavibration of the planet's matter, liquid and solid alike. The pull of lunar gravity meets the rotational dynamics of Earth, which has a fluid core, mostly nickel. The core bulges, so you get measurable fluctuations in gravity and geomagnetics." Edgar paused to take a breath and then went on intensely: "Cree, you get this, right? This could be the big one. This could verify the whole geomagnetic connection!"
It was impossible not to share his enthusiasm. His excitement came palpably through the phone, irradiating Cree, kicking her pulse up a notch. "Wow, Ed. This is fabulous!"
"Yeah. So I'm going over there again tonight, only now I know just when I should be there! I've got this guy Dickerson, from Harvard's geophysics department, coming tomorrow to take some readings. Give us five or six nights in a row, we should be able to verify the pattern." He paused and seemed to put on the brakes, as if just now remembering what she'd said earlier. "But you said you wanted me down there. What's going on? You didn't seem to be in such a hurry yesterday."
Cree gave him a summary of events. Ed grudgingly supposed he could call off Dickerson and drop the Massachusetts case for the time being. But she heard his reluctance: He had grabbed his own tiger by the tail and wanted very much to hang on for the ride.
"Can it wait until Saturday?" he asked finally. "Or maybe Sunday – I might be able to get there by Sunday night."
Cree hesitated. When he'd wanted to come, she'd stalled him; now that she had asked him to come, he was stalling.
At last she answered, "Sure, Ed. I'll see if Joyce can come down. But you stay there and keep after that. I'm good here." And for the second time in ten minutes, she thought, Fate intervening.
By the time Cree hung up, she was becoming very aware that it was nearly lunchtime and she hadn't eaten breakfast yet. Still, she dialed the PPJV office in Seattle.
Joyce picked up on the first ring. "Psi Research Associates."
"Got time for a trip to the birthplace of jazz?"
"I am out of here," Joyce returned. "Bye-byeee!"
19
Cree stepped quickly into the dim cool of Beauforte House, closed the door behind her, and shut down the security system. This time she went immediately into the front parlor and tugged apart the heavy drapes. Dust sifted down in the window light as she hooked the fabric back. She repeated the process at the four windows, and when she was done turned to look it over.