Ninth Key tm-2 Page 3

  Cee Cee went on, peeling her banana, "His friends call him Red. Don't ask me why, since he doesn't have red hair. Why do you want to know, anyway?"

  This was always the tricky part. You know the why-do-you-want-to-know? part. Because the fact is, except for Father Dom, no one knows about me. About the mediator thing, I mean. Not Cee Cee, not Adam. Not even my mother. Doc, my youngest stepbrother, suspects, but he doesn't know. Not all of it.

  My best friend Gina, back in Brooklyn, is probably the closest to having figured it out of anyone I know, and that's only because she happened to be there when Madame Zara, this tarot-card reader Gina had made me go to, looked at me with shock on her face and said, "You talk to the dead."

  Gina had thought it was cool. Only she never knew - not really - what it meant. Because what it means, of course, is that I never get enough sleep, have bruises I can't explain given to me by people no one else can see, and, oh, yeah, I can't change clothes in my bedroom because the hundred-and-fifty-year-old ghost of this dead cowboy might see me naked.

  Any questions?

  To Cee Cee I just said, "Oh, it's just something I heard on TV." It wasn't so hard, lying to friends. Lying to my mother, though, now that got a little sticky.

  "Wasn't that the name of that guy you danced with at Kelly's?" Adam asked. "You remember, Suze. Tad, the hunchback with the missing teeth and the terrible body odor? You came up to me afterward and threw your arms around me and begged me to marry you so you'd be protected from him for the rest of your life."

  "Oh, yeah," I said. "Him."

  "That's his father," Cee Cee said. Cee Cee knows everything in the world because she is editor - and publisher, chief writer, and photographer - for the Mission News, the school paper. "Tad Beaumont is Red Beaumont's only child."

  "Aha," I said. It made a little more sense then. I mean, why the dead woman had come to me. Obviously, she felt a connection to Red through his son.

  "What aha?" Cee Cee looked interested. Then again, Cee Cee always looks interested. She's like a sponge, only instead of water, she absorbed facts. "Don't tell me," she said, "you've got it bad for that tool of a kid of his. I mean, what was that guy's problem? He never even asked your name."

  This was true. I hadn't noticed it, either. But Cee Cee was right. Tad hadn't even asked my name.

  Good thing I wasn't interested in him.

  "I've heard bad things about Tad Beaumont," Adam said, shaking his head. "I mean, besides the fact that he's carrying around his undigested twin in his bowels, well, there's that embarrassing facial tick, controlled only by strong doses of Prozac. And you know what Prozac does to a guy's libido - "

  "What's Mrs. Beaumont like?" I asked.

  "There's no Mrs. Beaumont," Cee Cee said.

  Adam sighed. "Product of divorce," he said. "Poor Tad. No wonder he has such issues about commitment. I've heard he usually sees three, four girls at a time. But that might be on account of the sexual addiction. I heard there's a twelve-step group for that."

  Cee Cee ignored him. "I think she died a few years ago."

  "Oh," I said. Could the ghost who'd shown up in my bedroom have been Mr. Beaumont's deceased wife? It seemed worth a try. "Anybody got a quarter?"

  "Why?" Adam wanted to know.

  "I need to make a call," I said.

  Four people in our lunch crowd handed me a cell phone. Seriously. I selected the one with the least intimidating amount of buttons, then dialed Information, and asked for a listing for Thaddeus Beaumont. The operator told me the only listing they had was for a Beaumont Industries. I said, "Go for it."

  Strolling over to the monkey bars - the Mission Academy holds grades K through twelve, and the playground where we eat lunch comes complete with a sandbox, though I wouldn't touch it, what with the seagulls and everything - so I could have a little privacy, I told the receptionist who picked up with a cheerful, "Beaumont Industries. How may I help you?" that I needed to speak to Mr. Beaumont.

  "Who may I say is calling please?"

  I thought about it. I could have said, "Someone who knows what really happened to his wife." But the thing is, I didn't, really. I didn't even know why it was, exactly, that I suspected his wife - if the woman even was his wife - of lying, and that Red really had killed her. It's kind of depressing, if you think about it. I mean, me being so young, and yet so cynical and suspicious.

  So I said, "Susannah Simon," and then I felt lame. Because why would an important man like Red Beaumont take a call from Susannah Simon? He didn't know me.

  Sure enough, the receptionist took me off hold a second later, and said, "Mr. Beaumont is on another call at the moment. May I take a message?"

  "Uh," I said, thinking fast. "Yeah. Tell him . . . tell him I'm calling from the Junipero Serra Mission Academy newspaper. I'm a reporter, and we're doing a story on the . . . the ten most influential people in Salinas County." I gave her my home number. "And can you tell him not to call until after three? Because I don't get out of school till then."

  Once the receptionist knew I was a kid, she got even nicer. "Sure thing, sweetheart," she said to me in this sugary voice. "I'll let Mr. Beaumont know. Buh-bye."

  I hung up. Buh-bye bite me. Mr. Beaumont was going to be plenty surprised when he called me back, and got the Queen of the Night People, instead of Lois Lane.

  But the thing was, Thaddeus "Red" Beaumont never even bothered calling back. I guess when you're a gazillionaire, being named one of the ten most influential people in Salinas County by a dinky school paper wasn't such a big deal. I hung around the house all day after school and nobody called. At least, not for me.

  I don't know why I'd thought it would be so easy. I guess I'd been lulled into a false sense of security by the fact that I'd managed to get his name so easily.

  I was sitting in my room, admiring my poison oak in the dying rays of the setting sun, when my mom called me down to dinner.

  Dinner is this very big deal in the Ackerman household. Basically, my mom had already informed me that she'd kill me if I did not show up for dinner every night unless I had arranged my absence in advance with her. Her new husband, Andy, aside from being a master carpenter, is this really good cook and had been making these big dinners every night for his kids since they grew teeth, or something. Sunday pancake breakfasts, too. Can I just tell you that the smell of maple syrup in the morning makes me retch? What is wrong, I ask you, with a simple bagel with cream cheese, and maybe a little lox on the side with a wedge of lemon and a couple of capers?

  "There she is," my mom said, when I came shuffling into the kitchen in my after-school clothes: ripped-up jeans, black silk tee, and motorcycle boots. It is outfits like this that have caused my stepbrothers to suspect that I am in a gang, in spite of my strenuous denials.

  My mom made this big production out of coming over to me and kissing me on top of the head. This is because ever since my mom met Andy Ackerman - or Handy Andy as he's known on the cable home improvement show he hosts - married him, and then forced me to move to California with her to live with him and his three sons, she's been incredibly, disgustingly happy.

  I tell you, between that and the maple syrup, I don't know which is more revolting.

  "Hello, honey," my mom said, smushing my hair all around. "How did your day go?"

  "Oh," I said. "Great."

  She didn't hear the sarcasm in my voice. Sarcasm has been completely wasted on my mother ever since she met Andy.

  "And how," she asked, "was the student government meeting?"

  "Bitchin'."

  That was Dopey, trying to be funny by imitating my voice.

  "What do you mean, bitching?" Andy, over at the stove, was flipping quesadillas that were sizzling on this griddle thing he'd set out over the burners. "What was bitching about it?"

  "Yeah, Brad," I said. "What was bitching about it? Were you and Debbie Mancuso playing footsie underneath your desks, or something?"

  Dopey got all red in the face. He is a wrestler. His neck is as th
ick as my thigh. When his face gets red, his neck gets even redder. It's a joy to see.

  "What are you talking about?" Dopey demanded. "I don't even like Debbie Mancuso."

  "Sure, you don't," I said. "That's why you sat next to her at lunch today."

  Dopey's neck turned the color of blood.

  "David!" Andy, over by the stove, suddenly started yelling his head off. "Jake! Get a move on, you two. Soup's on."

  Andy's two other sons, Sleepy and Doc, came shuffling in. Well, Sleepy shuffled. Doc bounded. Doc was the only one of Andy's kids who I could ever remember to call by his real name. That's because with red hair and these ears that stick out really far from his head, he looked like a cartoon character. Plus he was really smart, and in him I saw a lot of potential help with my homework, even if I was three grades ahead of him.

  Sleepy, on the other hand, is of no use whatsoever to me, except as a guy I could bum rides to and from school with. At eighteen, Sleepy was in full possession of both his license and a vehicle, a beat-up old Rambler with an iffy starter, but you were taking your life into your hands riding with him since he was hardly ever fully awake due to his night job as a pizza delivery boy. He was saving up, as he was fond of reminding us on the few occasions when he actually spoke, for a Carnaro, and as near as I could tell, that Camaro was all he ever thought about.

  "She sat by me," Dopey bellowed. "I do not like Debbie Mancuso."

  "Surrender the fantasy," I advised him as I sidled past him. My mom had given me a bowl of salsa to take to the table. "I just hope," I whispered into his ear as I went by, "that you two practiced safe sex that night at Kelly's pool party. I'm not ready to be a stepaunt yet."

  "Shut up," Dopey yelled at me. "You … you … Fungus Hands!"

  I put one of my fungus hands over my heart, and pretended like he'd stabbed me there.

  "Gosh," I said. "That really hurts. Making fun of people's allergic reactions is so incredibly incisive and witty."

  "Yeah, dork," Sleepy said to Dopey, as he walked by. "What about you and cat dander, huh?"

  Dopey, in out of his depth, began to look desperate.

  "Debbie Mancuso," he yelled, "and I are not having sex!"

  I saw my mom and Andy exchange a quick, bewildered glance.

  "I should certainly hope not," Doc, Dopey's little brother, said as he breezed past us. "But if you are, Brad, I hope you're using condoms. While a good-quality latex condom has a failure rate of about two percent when used as directed, typically the failure rate averages closer to twelve percent. That makes them only about eighty-five percent effective against preventing pregnancy. If used with a spermicide, the effectiveness improves dramatically. And condoms are our best defense - though not as good, of course, as abstention - against some STDs, including HIV."

  Everyone in the kitchen - my mother, Andy, Dopey, Sleepy, and I - stared at Doc, who is, as I think I mentioned before, twelve.

  "You," I finally said, "have way too much time on your hands."

  Doc shrugged. "It helps to be informed. While I myself am not sexually active at the current time, I hope to become so in the near future." He nodded toward the stove. "Dad, your chimichangas, or whatever they are, are on fire."

  While Andy jumped to put out his cheese fire, my mother stood there, apparently, for once in her life, at a loss for words.

  "I - " she said. "I … Oh. My."

  Dopey wasn't about to let Doc have the last word. "I am not," he said, again, "having sex with - "

  "Aw, Brad," Sleepy said. "Put a sock in it, will ya?"

  Dopey, of course, wasn't lying. I'd seen for myself that they'd only been playing tonsil hockey. Dopey and Debbie's fiery passion was the reason I had to keep slathering my hands with cortisone cream. But what was the fun of having stepbrothers if you couldn't torture them? Not that I was going to tell anyone what I'd seen, of course. I am many things, but not a snitch. But don't get me wrong: I would have liked Dopey to have gotten caught sneaking out while he was grounded. I mean, I don't think he'd exactly learned anything from his "punishment." He would still probably refer to my friend Adam as a fag the next time he saw him.

  Only he wouldn't do it in my presence. Because, wrestler or not, I could kick Dopey's butt from here to Clinton Ave., my street back in Brooklyn.

  But I wasn't going to be the one to turn him in. It just wasn't classy, you know?

  "And did you," my mother asked me, with a smile, "feel that the student government meeting was as bitching as Brad seems to think it was, Suze?"

  I sat down at my place at the dining table. As soon as I did so, Max, the Ackerman family dog, came snuffling along and put his head in my lap. I pushed it off my lap. He put it right back. Although I'd lived there less than a month, Max had already figured out that I am the person in the household most likely to have leftovers on my plate.

  Mealtime was, of course, the only time Max paid attention to me. The rest of the time, he avoided me like the plague. He especially avoided my bedroom. Animals, unlike humans, are very perceptive toward paranormal phenomena, and Max sensed Jesse, and accordingly stayed far away from the parts of the house where he normally hung out.

  "Sure," I said, taking a sip of ice water. "It was bitching."

  "And what," my mother wanted to know, "was decided at this meeting?"

  "I made a motion to cancel the spring dance," I said. "Sorry, Brad. I know how much you were counting on escorting Debbie to it."

  Dopey shot me a dirty look from across the table.

  "Why on earth," my mother said, "would you want to cancel the spring dance, Suzie?"

  "Because it's a stupid waste of our very limited funds," I said.

  "But a dance," my mother protested. "I always loved going to school dances when I was your age."

  That, I wanted to say, is because you always had a date, Mom. Because you were pretty and nice and boys liked you. You weren't a pathological freak, like I am, with fungus hands and a secret ability to talk to the dead.

  Instead, I said, "Well, you'd have been in the minority in our class. My motion was seconded and passed by twenty-seven votes."

  "Well," my mother said. "What are you going to do with the money instead?"

  "Kegger," I said, shooting a look at Dopey.

  "Don't even joke about that," my mother said, sternly. "I'm very concerned about the amount of teen drinking that goes on around here." My mother is a television news reporter. She does the morning news on a local station out of Monterey. Her best thing is looking grave while reading off a Tele-Prompter about grisly auto accidents. "I don't like it. It isn't like back in New York. There, none of your friends drove, so it didn't matter so much. But here … well, everyone drives."

  "Except Suze," Dopey said. He seemed to feel it was his duty to rub in the fact that although I am sixteen, I don't have a license yet. Or even, for that matter, a learner's permit. As if driving were the most important thing in the world. As if my time was not already fully occupied with school, my recent appointment as vice president of the Mission Academy's sophomore class, and saving the lost souls of the undead.

  "What are you really going to do with the money?" my mother asked.

  I shrugged. "We have to raise money to replace that statue of our founding father, Junipero Serra, before the Archbishop's visit next month."

  "Oh," my mother said. "Of course. The statue that was vandalized."

  Vandalized. Yeah, right. That's what everyone was going around saying, of course. But that statue hadn't been vandalized. What had happened to it was, this ghost who was trying to kill me severed the statue's head and tried to use it as a bowling ball.

  And I was supposed to be the pin.

  "Quesadillas," Andy said, coming over to the table with a bunch of them on a tray. "Get 'em while they're hot."

  What ensued was such chaos that I could only sit, Max's head still on my lap, and watch in horror. When it was over every single quesadilla was gone, but my plate and my mom's plate were still empty. After a whil
e, Andy noticed this, put his fork down and said, in an angry way, "Hey, guys! Did it ever occur to you to wait to take seconds until everyone at the table had had their first serving?"

  Apparently, it had not. Sleepy, Dopey, and Doc looked sheepishly down at their plates.

  "I'm sorry," Doc said, holding his plate, cheese and salsa dripping from it, toward my mother. "You can have some of mine."

  My mother looked a little queasy. "No, thank you, David," she said. "I'll just stick with salad, I think."

  "Suze," Andy said, putting his napkin on the table. "I'm gonna make you the cheesiest quesadilla you ever - "

  I shoved Max's head out of the way and was up before Andy could get out of his seat. "You know what," I said. "Don't bother. I really think I'll just have some cereal, if that's okay."

  Andy looked hurt. "Suze," he said, "it's no trouble - "

  "No, really," I said. "I was gonna do my kick-boxing tape later, anyway, and a lot of cheese'll just weigh me down."

  "But," Andy said, "I'm making more, anyway....

  He looked so pathetic, I had no choice but to say, "Well, I'll try one. But for right now, finish what's on your plate, and I'll just go and get some cereal."

  As I was talking, I'd been backing out of the room. Once I was safely in the kitchen, Max at my heels - he was no dummy, he knew he wasn't going to get a crumb out of those guys in there: I was Max's ticket to people food - I got out a box of cereal and a bowl, then opened the fridge to get some milk. That was when I heard a soft voice behind me whisper, "Suze."

  I whipped around. I didn't need to see Max slinking from the kitchen with his tail between his legs to know that I was in the presence of another member of that exclusive club known as the Undead.

  CHAPTER 4

  I nearly jumped out of my skin.

  "Jeez, Dad." I slammed the fridge door closed. "I told you not to do that."

  My father - or the ghost of my father, I should say - was leaning against the kitchen counter, his arms folded across his chest. He looked smug. He always looks smug when he manages to materialize behind my back and scare the living daylights out of me.