A Ghost for a Clue Read online

  “I can’t. That’s why I called.” He paused for a second. “I want to help you figure it out.”

  “What?”

  “I want to help with your ‘occult science.’ It would give us a chance to—”

  The deafening whirr of a vintage vacuum cleaner sucked away the rest of his sentence.

  “Hang on a minute,” I said, almost shouting. I scooted towards the door to get to the patio and tripped on a cord.

  “Sorry.” I paused to plug the vacuum cleaner back in. “In case you haven’t heard, Mom, the rest of the world has gone cordless.”

  “You mean the rest of the still-dusty world? There’s never enough power from things that run on batteries.”

  I stepped out onto the patio and slid the glass door shut. “Sorry about that,” I said into my iHub. “Mom’s still attached to her old-reliable vacuum cleaner.”

  “Yes, I heard. She ought to meet an Autobot. The AllSpark is far more powerful than those batteries she hates.”

  I peered through the sliding door as Mom restarted her loud household chore. My gaze fell on the electrical cord snaking from the appliance, and I traced its path as it curled and coiled back to the outlet on the wall.

  “Anyway,” Bram said. “I’ve got two months free. What do you think?”

  Autobots don’t run on batteries. I blinked in reflex to an idea that poked me between the eyes. “Wait. What did you just say?”

  “Two months. I could help—”

  “No, about the AllSpark.”

  “What?”

  “Why is it better than batteries?”

  “Because!” He laughed. “It’s the spark of life of every Transformer that ever lived.”

  “Right. Exactly.” I needed to end the call and chase the thought before it frittered away. “Bram, I think it’s a bad idea for you to get involved in this. Besides, I’m not really in any position to grant you access to the program. It’s not even my nursery. It’s Starr’s.” I pushed the door open and let the din of Mom’s duties drown out the rest of my words. “I’m sorry, but I can’t talk right now.” I barely heard him say goodbye as I marched into the living room and pointed at the noisy apparatus.

  “Mom.”

  “What?” She turned the appliance off. “Are you about to scold me for keeping my house clean?”

  “What’s the difference between a live vacuum cleaner and a dead one?”

  “The first one’s much better at cleaning.”

  “The live vacuum cleaner has electricity coursing through it; the other doesn’t. What’s the difference between someone alive and a dead body?”

  She scrunched up her brow. “Did I give you a hot toddy instead of hot chocolate just now?”

  I strode to the outlet on the wall. “One still has life coursing through him, the other doesn’t.” I pulled out the plug and held it up. “Electricity doesn’t cease to exist after we unplug the vacuum cleaner. We just stop seeing the effects of electricity on a machine.”

  Mom tilted her head. “Keep talking. I think you’re on the verge of making sense.”

  “Our bodies are like machines. Once infused with the spark of life, we are what we call ‘a-live.’ And when that spark leaves us, where does it go?” I let the electrical cord drop to the floor. “Life could be everywhere, Mom. Like electromagnetism and gravity. Life doesn’t cease to exist after the body goes dead—it just stops coursing through us!”

  Mom stood silent and still for a while, perhaps deciding if she should indeed declare me psychotic. “Your father.” She paused and took a breath. “He believed in a vital force that permeates the entire universe. He called it Ki. A healing life energy. But he never spoke of it this way—not as the force that animates matter.”

  My father. My breath caught, as though a potent dose of this “Ki” suddenly shot through me. Mom close-to-never talked to me and my brothers about our fathers. For her to have mentioned this, right now, told me how important she thought it was. “If this is true, that the energy that brings life is something merely harnessed and manifested by metabolic matter and therefore can exist outside of it, then maybe the biological process doesn’t truly end where we think it does. Maybe that’s how some form of ‘consciousness’ can persist beyond death. What if all that happens to consciousness after death is a metamorphosis? A form of life in suspension or dormancy we don’t yet understand.”

  Mom beamed at me. “If there’s any chance you can prove this theory of yours, then take it. Do something with it. Oh, sweetheart.” She let go of the vacuum cleaner and walked over to embrace me. I returned the hug tentatively, unused to this effusive display of motherly warmth. “Can you believe this? My daughter could very well establish the science that picks up where medical science leaves off. You can save those who’ve defied saving.”

  I flashed an uneasy smile. Greatness, it seemed, might not be so bad, except in this case, it was bound to find me out of a job. Or out of my mind.

  11

  Welcome To Greenhouse 3C

  Torula had accepted my apology but dodged the peace offering. Good thing there was some other way to bring it to her doorstep.

  “It’s great to see you, Bram!” Starr greeted me with her charming hint of an Irish accent. Standing at the greenhouse entrance, she gave me the kind of unbridled hug aunties give their favorite nephews. Her perfume, pleasant and fruity, wrapped me in its own overwhelming embrace.

  “Thanks for allowing me to come,” I said. Though all we’d ever shared were shallow chitchats inserted over video calls with Torula, Starr seemed every bit like an old friend.

  “Us, meeting face to face, is long overdue.” She stepped back and stood with hands on hips, giving a better view of a dress of blinding blue and garish green beneath her lab coat. “And it had to take a ghost to get you here.”

  “Yeah, well . . .” I grinned, grateful to have found a new excuse to spend more time with Torula. “Good thing management didn’t mind an outsider coming to take a look.”

  “As far as management knows, Tor and I have been studying the night-blooming cereus.” Her glossy lips curled into a smile, and from the pocket of her coat, she pulled out a cell phone covered in gemstones and made a call. “He’s here. Like it or not, I’m bringing him in.”

  Like it or not? I cocked my head. I guess Torula had told her about that chuckle.

  Starr put the phone back into her pocket, pressed a manicured finger on a scanner, and got an error notice.

  “Oh, not again.” She crinkled her nose. “This thing has been acting up lately.” She dug into her pocket and pulled out a bit of paper towel.

  I stopped her before she could wipe the scanner with it. “Here, let me. Paper could damage it.” I took out my handkerchief and gave the surface a quick rub. “Use some window cleaner when you can. There. Try again.”

  She did and got a green light. “You’re quite handy to have around, aren’t you?” She stared at my hand as I shoved my hanky back into my pocket. “You know, that’s not hygienic.”

  “No worries. I’ve got a bot butler programmed to enjoy doing laundry. Every handkerchief, for him, is another reason to go on living.”

  She gave a wink like a Good Housekeeping stamp of approval. “Welcome to Greenhouse 3C, honey.” She pushed the door open and led the way in.

  Tall shrubs grew in organized plant beds with cables, wires, and a mess of bric-a-brac strewn and strung amongst the branches. This had to be the botanical equivalent of an animal testing facility or something like a plant asylum where each specimen was a nervous wreck. The place was quiet, but something like the suspenseful note in movie soundtracks hung in the air—except nothing was audible. The place didn’t even need a ghost to make my hair stand on end.

  Starr guided me across stone paths in high heels, and she handled it better than an acrobat on stilts on a tightrope because she didn’t even wobble. On top of that, she managed a conversation by tossing words over her shoulder at me.

  “After you called, I thought of
the perfect reason to get you clearance to be allowed in here. I told them this was the only way I could get Torula to date anyone, and they gave me the thumbs up!” She let out a laugh as pleasant as a fairy tale with a happy ending.

  Effervescent. That was the word Torula had used to describe her. I guessed that meant Torula and I had one more thing in common: We had both gravitated to the happiest persons where we worked. Suddenly, the memory of a laughing Franco flashed in my mind, stirring a faint sense of sadness.

  We came to an elevated workstation at the center of the nursery where Torula sat working at the console table.

  “Hey, Spore,” I said as I climbed the wooden stairs, snagging my shoe on a narrow step and nearly stumbling.

  “You’ve always been horrible with stairs,” Torula said without bothering to turn and look my way, acting about as friendly as someone who’d been blindsided into a blind date. “There was a reason I didn’t want you coming here.”

  “Mind your manners, Tor,” Starr said. “He’s here to help.”

  “And I don’t think he realizes what’s at stake.” Torula stood up and faced me. “Can you imagine what NASA would say if they found out what you came here for?”

  “What’s wrong with paying some friends a visit?” I asked.

  Torula folded her arms. “When I told you I wanted to study this anomaly, you laughed and tried to stop me because it could damage my reputation.”

  “That’s because . . . I . . . hadn’t thought about it enough yet.”

  “And have you thought about what your colleagues would say if they find out you went ghost-hunting?”

  I didn’t have to. Sienna’s delightedly tearful reaction to my phone call from The Great Beyond was forever stored in my head. “Look,” I said, “there’s nothing wrong with helping you find answers. I know how curiosity can grip you and not let go. I was also a victim of a hoax, and—”

  “Victim?” Torula asked.

  “A hoax?” Starr asked.

  I swallowed. Jesus. Did I just stomp mud all over Starr’s welcome mat?

  “You’re here to prove us wrong . . . is that what you’re saying?” Torula asked.

  “No,” I lied. “Of course not.”

  “Then why are you risking your reputation by coming here?”

  “Like he said, honey,” Starr said, “he’s here just visiting old friends. So why not act like a gracious host and make our guest feel more comfortable?” She reached for a knob on the table. “Here, let me darken the Transhade a bit for you.”

  I glanced around as the invisible walls of the platform area and the glass sheet suspended directly overhead slowly increased in tint on the side facing west, shielding us better from the late afternoon sunlight.

  “Well, since you’re ‘just visiting,’” Torula said. “I’m sure you’re not at all interested in seeing the data we’ve gathered, right?”

  “Actually,” I flashed what I hoped was a charming smile, “if it’s not too much trouble, I was hoping you could show me the Verdabulary in action. I’ve never been in a talking garden before.”

  “That’s next door,” Torula said matter-of-factly. “We’re in Starr’s nursery, remember? She’s the only one who agreed to let you come.”

  “Oh, don’t be such a cold fish,” Starr said. “We’re in a greenhouse, not a seafood market. Come on.” She sashayed to the console table and pulled a chair out for Torula. “Just access your recordings from here.” She thumped the back rest in invitation.

  Torula let out a hot breath, cast me a disapproving glance, then made her way to the seat. She clicked a few times on the screen, and then a deep, spine-chilling voice sliced through the air. “Your stress is affecting me.”

  “Whoa. What was that?” I asked.

  “I call him Lurch,” Torula said, finally with a tinge of a smile. “He’s an Amorphophallus titanium.”

  “English, Spore.”

  “Literally, it translates to a badly-shaped penis. But its common names are Titan Arum or the Corpse Plant.”

  “You chose the perfect voice,” I said. “That definitely sounded like a dead guy upset about the shape of his dick.”

  A chuckle escaped Torula, and Starr arched a brow. “Well now, that’s a rare sound.”

  “The Titan’s voice?” Torula asked.

  “No, honey. You, laughing.” Starr gave me an encouraging wink.

  I glanced at Torula, who quickly turned away.

  “Ooh, do Lord Ruthven,” Starr said. “The one that sounds like a blood-sucking leech.”

  A raspy, ghoulish voice issued over the speakers. “Mmm-yum-yum-yum. Yess, yess. You are so sumptuousss, my sweetnessss.”

  “That was a mistletoe,” Torula said.

  “No way,” I said. “That’s what those plants are thinking when people kiss under them at Christmas?”

  Starr let loose her sparkling laugh. “Of course not. That’s them sucking the lifeblood out of the host trees they live on.”

  “Mistletoes are parasites that take nutrients and water from the plants they grow on,” Torula said. “If left unmanaged, they can kill the host tree.”

  “Mistletoe?” I asked. “Can kill?”

  “Once attached to a tree, they stay there until it’s dead. Not to kill it but to subsist on its water and minerals. But when it grows unchecked, yes, it can kill.”

  “No.”

  I glanced at the two women, unsure which of them had said that. “No what?”

  “That was Charlotte,” Torula said, “my spider plant, talking.”

  “No,” the plant said again. “No, no, no, no—”

  Torula clicked Mute, silencing Charlotte. “She hasn’t been watered in days, and she’s been saying no . . . to something. I’m trying to build her vocabulary for when her situation gets desperate.”

  “It’s so sad,” Starr said. “Torula has to listen to her die.”

  “What for?”

  “From what I learn here,” Torula said, “I can create recordings that will allow plants to cry for help and give instructions to inexperienced gardeners on what to do to save them.”

  “Incredible.” I swept my gaze around the nursery, captivated by its wonder—but also seeing how the “special effects” could lead one to imagine a ghost. “How does it work?”

  “I explained it all to you at the restaurant, but I suppose you were distracted by your steak.” She smiled. I gave a one-sided shrug. It was hardly my food that had kept stealing my attention that night.

  “The main thing for us to understand is what they’re feeling and why,” Torula said. “We take physiological and biochemical readings of each plant in response to certain stimuli like temperature, humidity, light, and sounds. Substances in the soil and air. Even a gardener’s mood or stress levels.”

  “Really?” I asked. “Plants can sense that?”

  “There’s this old superstition,” Torula said, “that menstruating women shouldn’t sow seeds or touch any plants because it could badly affect the plant’s growth. We have results indicating it may have something to do with hormone levels of the gardener, not menstruation per se. Which, by the way, is why I’m considering that our synchronized ovulation might have had something to do with the apparition.”

  I understood the words . . . but wasn’t sure I did. “Say again?”

  “Quite likely, Starr and I were both ovulating at the time of the anomaly. Women who spend a lot of time together generally end up with synchronized monthly cycles. What regulates it is postulated to be something that can be found in our perspiration. And since Starr and I are around each other a lot, we end up smelling each other’s sweat. Which is why we suspect our combined elevated hormone levels might be a factor that triggered the hyperwill to appear.”

  “The what?” I asked.

  “Oh, hyperwill is a term I made up,” Torula said, “to refer to the anomaly, rather than ghost.”

  “What does it mean?”

  She glanced at Starr, who pursed her lips, then turned away
.

  “I’ll go stand over where I was when it happened,” Starr said, then made her way down the stairs. “Next to the papayas.”

  Torula swiveled back to face her monitor. “I’ll explain the term some other time.” She swept her hair to one side of her neck, her sweet, heady scent drifting towards me, easily eliminating any need for an explanation.

  “I like your perfume,” I said.

  “Really? It’s Lavender Lace.”

  “Lavender.” I leaned closer and took a more intimate whiff of her neck. “It’s good on you.”

  “Thank you.” She laid two fingers against my jaw and turned my face towards the section beyond the workstation. “The hyperwill appeared over there. So if we can get back to the kiss you—I mean issue at hand, please?”

  My mouth curled up into a self-assured grin as I blindly stared ahead. There was something I really liked about these slips of the tongue.

  She pointed at an icon on the monitor, her voice all business. “See this? That’s the VeggieVolt—Starr’s defective program that was running in the background when I did this.” She clicked on the Verdabulary icon, then opened a page containing a dizzying list of botanical names. “I selected the wrong specimen name, and when I looked over there . . .” She pointed in Starr’s direction then slowly rose to her feet. I followed her gaze and saw—

  Holy mother.

  I froze and gaped at a floating, shapeless glow the size of a full-grown man that looked very much like a . . . a . . . prank. A system malfunction. A strange hallucination.

  “Florence . . .” it seemed to whisper like a faint breeze.

  It was an illusion. There should’ve been nothing to fear, but my heart thumped wildly.

  “Who are you?” Torula asked.

  A muffled moan filled the nursery, and the hair on my arms bristled. Slowly, the image grew clearer. It had clothing that belonged in another century. Lace collar. Shiny, blue silken shirt. It could have been a costume. Its lower extremities were in a haze, but the facial features slowly grew distinct enough for me to note a crooked or broken nose between striking amber eyes. Then it raised its arm and held out what looked like a cluster of blue flowers.