Ghost writer, p.5
Ghost Writer, page 5
His father took a deep breath, tilted his head to one side, and asked, “Jonathan, did you dare your brother to jump the blades?”
At first, floating in the preciousness of the moment, little Jonathan wasn’t sure he heard the question right. “What, Daddy?”
His father’s back straightened and he let go of Jonathan’s hands. “Did you tell Jason to jump those blades?”
Jonathan panicked. Did his father . . . was his father actually saying . . . no! No!
Jonathan answered as his entire body shivered. “No.”
But that didn’t seem to satisfy his father, whose eyes turned icy even with the warm light deep inside each pupil. “You must tell me. Did you make your brother do that?”
“No! No!” Jonathan screamed, backing away slowly, shaking his head and crying harder.
“Jonathan! Answer me! Tell me the truth! Jason would have never done that! He was a good boy! He would have never disobeyed me!”
“I didn’t, Daddy! I didn’t!”
His father, now standing, marched closer to him, a long, single finger extended toward Jonathan. “Whose idea was it, Jonathan? Tell me!”
“No!!!!” Jonathan cried, trying to back up more quickly. As he did so, he suddenly stumbled a bit on a lone two-by-four hidden in the hay and immediately dropped the oil lantern.
It shattered instantly and the flames spread gracefully in two directions, trapping Jonathan against the stables. He could hear his father screaming on the other side, and all he could scream back was “No! No! I didn’t, Daddy! I didn’t!”
Spice whinnied, her hooves kicking the air, then crashing down onto the stable wall, cracking the wood. Jonathan ran to the other side of the barn, away from the horses, and now his father was only a shadow as the flames rose higher. Spice anxiously clawed at the door, and the other two horses seemed to instantaneously go insane.
The roar of the fire was so loud that Jonathan covered his ears and closed his eyes, barely aware that the smoke was making it hard for him to see and breathe. All the horses were bucking, and Spice finally kicked through one of the sides of her stable and ran toward him. He moved to the right. The other horses found their way out as well, and now all three of them ran in circles of complete terror.
Jonathan’s small body was huddled in a corner, and with his ears covered, he watched the fire silently crawl above him, destroying the ceiling of the barn. Small pieces of fiery wood began to fall, and the horses started coming closer to him as they ran in what were now becoming smaller and smaller circles.
Jonathan’s eyes rolled back in his head, and he suddenly realized he couldn’t breathe. The fire, the horses, the barn . . . they were all turning black. “No, Daddy . . . I didn’t . . . it wasn’t my fault. . . .”
Jonathan was barely aware that two hands had grabbed him under his arms and were dragging him across the ground until he came to and saw the barn in the distance, completely engulfed in flames.
He looked up to find his father over him, saying something to his mother, who was crying. His chest was tight, but he could breathe. “I didn’t . . .” he mouthed, but no one seemed to be paying attention to what he needed to say. His father placed his ear close to his mouth, all the while screaming, “Jonathan! Jon—”
“—athan? Um . . . Mr. Harper? Jonathan?”
Jonathan opened his eyes, and at the door stood Sydney Kasdan.
“Are you okay?”
Jonathan slapped the pages of the manuscript together and pulled in as much air as he could in one breath. “Of course. I’m sorry. I didn’t see you there.” He glanced at his clock. It was only 7:30 A.M. What was Sydney doing here?
“I was just going to get some coffee. Want some?”
Jonathan leaned back in his chair, trying to regain his composure. He wasn’t sure what he looked like on the outside, but on the inside he felt himself crumbling. How could anyone have known about that conversation? It was only he and his father. No one else was there! And his father had passed away five years ago. How could anyone know about that?!
“Is that a ‘yes’?”
Jonathan snapped back to reality and nodded at a question he didn’t even hear.
“Black?”
“Yes,” he said. Sydney left.
Jonathan rubbed his face in his hands and moaned. What was happening? Was this all a joke? But even if it were, no one could’ve known all of that. He barely remembered it himself. There were vivid images in his head, but no details. He remembered the barn engulfed in flames and that dreaded question his father had asked him—
“Here you go,” Sydney said, handing him a small Styrofoam cup across his desk.
“Thank you, Sydney,” Jonathan replied, noticing for the first time how the morning light made her skin and eyes glow. Her smile was drenched in sweetness.
“I’ve been looking over the Embeth Wilkes manuscript you gave me.”
Jonathan’s heart pounded, whether from Sydney or the manuscript he did not know. He did know his feelings were growing stronger for her, though, and there was nothing he could do to stop them. Nothing at all.
“Tell me.” Jonathan rested comfortably in his chair and waved his hand for her to have a seat.
“You’ll be shocked,” she grinned as she sat, gracefully crossing her long legs. “But I’m impressed. So far this story looks promising.”
“Really?” Jonathan asked, leaning forward.
“Yes. It’s as if she’s acquired an entirely new writing style. I wouldn’t have known it was her writing if you hadn’t told me.”
As intrigued as he was with Ms. Wilkes’s sudden transformation as a writer, Jonathan Harper wanted to know more about Sydney Kasdan. In fact, he wanted to know everything.
“Sydney, you seem very intelligent to me.”
Sydney locked eyes with him but at the same time blushed, a very odd combination, Jonathan thought. How can one be bashful and still look you in the eye? Jonathan continued, saying, “I’m not wrong, am I?”
Sydney’s smile became a little more confident. “Well, Jonathan, I suppose I do have some intelligence.”
Jonathan nodded. She was so mature. And so beautiful. So very beautiful. “What do you like to do in your spare time?”
Sydney again locked eyes with him. “Why?”
He paused, his heart stinging with a sudden fear that perhaps the chemistry he thought they’d had was all in his head. Was she not pushing for this? Why, then, would she be in his office at seven-thirty in the morning getting him coffee? Had he gone too far? Was he getting personal when she’d wanted to talk business? He loosened his tie a bit.
“Just curious,” he said with as much confidence as he could muster. “I mean, you seem to be an odd combination of intelligence, beauty, and personality. A rare find these days.”
What? Was he crazy? Why would he say that? What in the world could’ve led him to do something like that? He watched, trembling, as Sydney tilted her head to one side and with a small smile replied, “I like sports.”
Jonathan relaxed a bit. Maybe he wasn’t as off as he thought he was. “Sports? You hardly seem like someone who’d be interested in sports.”
“Why is that?”
Jonathan smiled at her, and she smiled back. They connected in an instant, and he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that there was something there. He stood and walked around to the front of his desk and sat on the edge, near the corner. “I don’t know. I suppose it’s the way you carry yourself. Very feminine. A lot of girls . . . um, women . . . I know who are into sports are sort of, well, you know . . .” They laughed at his inability to find the choice words.
“Hard?” she asked.
“Yes.” He rubbed his hands together like a nervous teenager at a prom. “Just looking at you, it’s just hard to imagine, that’s all.”
“Well, I’ve never played a sport in my life. But I do enjoy watching them. How can I prove it to you?” She playfully twiddled her thumbs a bit and then said, “No National Football League team that plays its home games in a domed stadium has ever won the Super Bowl.” She winked. “At least not yet. And the only two days there are no professional sports games—basketball, football, baseball, or hockey—are the day before and the day after the Major League All-Star games.”
He laughed, genuinely impressed. “Wow. You sound like—no offense—one of the guys.”
She shrugged. “On the weekends you can find me on my couch, in my sweat shirt, wrapped in a blanket, watching football. But don’t be too impressed. I have a talent for retaining facts that can make me look like an expert on just about anything.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Don’t ever play me in trivia. I’ll smear ya.”
Jonathan laughed, completely amused, intrigued, and captivated by her. “Like what?”
“Like anything. I just have a head full of useless facts.”
“Come on, spill some out.”
She shrugged girlishly. “If you insist. I feel sort of silly.”
“Really. I want to hear this.”
“All right,” she said with a hefty sigh, her eyes moving upward as if searching the vast amounts of information in her head. “Got one. The name ‘Wendy’ was made up for the book Peter Pan.”
Jonathan folded his arms together. “Impressive. But you’re going to have to do better than one.”
She laughed. “You can lead a cow upstairs but not downstairs. The first TV couple ever to be shown in bed was Wilma and Fred Flintstone. Iceland consumes more Coca-Cola per capita than any other nation. And Coca-Cola was originally green.” She raised her eyebrows. “Shall I continue?”
“Yes!” Jonathan said, laughing.
“In 1987 American Airlines saved forty thousand dollars by taking one olive off each salad they served. The San Francisco cable cars are the only mobile national monument. Each king in a deck of cards represents a great king in history: spades, King David; clubs, Alexander the Great; hearts, Charlemagne; diamonds, Julius Caesar. Please don’t make me go on! I bore myself with these useless facts!”
Jonathan slid toward her on the desk. “Okay. Let’s put these ‘useless facts’ to the test, then. I’ll ask you a question and see if you can answer it.”
Sydney smiled at him. “Ah. A true test of intelligence, eh?”
“Simply application, my dear,” he joked.
“Fire away . . . by the way, the term ‘get fired’ is a term that actually refers to clans long ago, who would burn the houses of unwanted people to get rid of them. Hence the phrase to ‘get fired.’ ”
“All right, Ms. Trivia, what was the first novel ever written on a typewriter?”
She pretended to yawn. “Tom Sawyer.”
“First president ever to win a Pulitzer Prize?”
“John F. Kennedy, Profiles in Courage.”
“Only two people signed the Declaration of Independence on July fourth—”
“John Hancock and Charles Thomsen. Come on, Jonathan,” she said, resting her chin on her hand. “Challenge me, will you?”
Jonathan smiled and suddenly couldn’t remember the last time he’d had this much fun. He threw his arms up in the air. “Smartest dog?”
“Scottish border collie.”
Jonathan tilted his head, and this time he locked eyes with her. “I’ll have to take your word for it. I have no idea.”
Sydney suddenly seemed to become self-conscious at Jonathan’s relentless stare and lightened the moment with a chuckle. “Well, as fun as this is, I’m sure you have better things to do with your time than listen to me ramble off facts.”
“Not really,” he said, although that wasn’t true. Still, he could sit with her all day, and he longed to know more about this woman who seemed to be an endless inventory of facts. “But I suppose I do have a real job.”
Sydney rose from her chair elegantly and grabbed her coffee cup off his desk, her arm brushing his. “Well,” she said, glancing down at the manuscript on his desk, “I did interrupt your reading of something important, judging by the look on your face when I came in.”
Jonathan raised his eyebrows and stood, walking back behind his desk. “Um, yes. Quite interesting.” He longed to tell her about the mysterious manuscript, but in the midst of his swimming emotions, he was still able to hold on to some sort of stable judgment. “Thanks for your interest in Ms. Wilkes’s work. I’ll take a serious look at the book.”
Sydney straightened her posture and stiffened her demeanor, and suddenly, in a mere instant, they were two professionals again. Sydney nodded and moved to the door. “You’re welcome. Have a good day, Mr. Harper.”
“You too,” Jonathan said, but he was already longing for whatever form of intimacy they had just shared two minutes before. Suddenly the formalities that he once had gotten such a kick out of were not enough.
But all that became a blur when he looked back down at the manuscript. His soul was troubled again. Who was writing this? And how did they know? Had his father written this before he died and had it sent years later? Never! His father would’ve never thought of such a thing.
But who, then? Jonathan had always been in control of his life, and something like this was enough to make him crazy. Of course, he always had the option to not read it. He could just toss it in the wastebasket and move on with life.
No, that was not an option for him. He would face this mystery and face it with courage, no matter how eerie it got. And not only that, he would find the person writing it.
Jonathan ran his fingers through his thinning hair and drew in a deep breath to help him think. He needed someone to bounce ideas off of, someone who could think logically about this situation.
Kathy? Not a chance. Besides, who knew what could be in the following pages? Many things existed in his past that he would never care to discuss with her, especially right now, with their present circumstances.
Sydney? No, he didn’t know her well enough. Although he suspected he could trust her, he wasn’t about to gamble. He was never a gambling man.
He could maybe pull a few of his fellow editors into it, but he’d never formed much of a friendship with any of his colleagues, except Carl.
Perhaps . . . Clyde? Could he trust Clyde? Would Clyde think he was absolutely insane? Of course not. He had the manuscript to prove it. But the gamble was not knowing what was ahead. What facts of his life would this manuscript produce?
Jonathan walked out of his office to go fix himself his nine A.M. cup of Earl Grey. As he walked over to the lounge he hoped he would see Sydney, but she was nowhere around.
He sighed, poured boiling water over his tea bag, and steeped his tea for a few minutes. He loved the smell. It reminded him of some time he spent over in London as a young man. It also tended to clear his head.
Yes, he would call Clyde to meet him for lunch. But before he met him, he’d have to get caught up on his manuscript. Clyde wouldn’t let him off easy, and besides, Jonathan was quite intrigued by the story so far.
He poured a touch of cream into his mug, stirred it carefully, and walked to his office, shutting the door behind him. Yes. Clyde could help him. He was sure of it. He dialed Clyde’s number and left a message for him to call.
chapter 5
Jonathan sank into his office chair and turned toward the window. He adjusted himself, propping his feet up onto the windowsill. Outside his door he could hear the soft hum of the office coming to life. He switched his phone to “Do Not Disturb” and picked up Clyde’s manuscript. Flipping through the pages, he tried to remember where he’d left off. There it was . . . Keaton Spade was just about to see Dietrich Donomar in his cell.
Donomar came into view immediately, and I let out a short, definitive breath, thankful Donomar wasn’t facing the glass. I grabbed a nearby chair and slid it across the cement floor, causing Donomar to turn around, though I suspected he somehow already knew I was there.
“Agent Spade!” he exclaimed, clasping his hands together after setting down a book he’d been holding. “Thank you for coming.”
“Been a long time, Dietrich,” I said lightly, watching as Donomar organized a few things on his small desk and put away his crayons, the only writing tools he was allowed.
Donomar shrugged, smiled a little boyishly, and grabbed his own chair, pulling it in front of the large Plexiglas window. “Well, I’ve been keeping up with you in the papers. I saw the case you solved in Colorado—the girls disappearing? Caught that gentleman fairly rapidly.”
I had to smile a little. It amused me that Donomar could discuss another serial killer as if he had no relation. “Yeah, well, we got lucky on that one.”
I watched as Donomar twiddled his thumbs methodically, the only indication that inside that pretty head lurked a diabolical killer. Donomar was looking down, his light hazel eyes barely noticeable against the whites of his eyes. He soon picked up on the awkward silence and raised his head.
“Sorry,” he apologized graciously, “I’m a little distracted today.”
“Is that so?”
Donomar smiled knowingly at me. My hair stood on end. “Yes.”
I casually adjusted myself in my seat. “I was pretty shocked that you wanted to see me.”
“Why, Agent Spade? I like you.”
My lips spontaneously pressed together. “Yes, well, Dietrich, I wish I could say the same about you.”
Donomar sighed a bit and lifted his hands in a quiet, unassuming manner. “Keaton, I wish you wouldn’t take everything so personally.”
“It’s my job,” I said quickly, and then reminded myself to never let Dietrich Donomar in. Ever. His tongue was slick and deceptive. “Why did you want to see me?”
