I helped Sheyenne retrieve the scattered papers and folders in the ghost’s aftermath, but I let her do the organizing (since she understands our filing system better than anyone). Robin retreated into her office to start drafting the contract between Ramen Ho-Tep and the museum.
And I finally told Sheyenne my idea of having her do a little fieldwork on the Jekyll case. “You never know what we might find,” I said. I didn’t even have to twist her arm, metaphorically speaking.
“I’ve been a med student, exotic dancer, cocktail waitress, nightclub singer, paralegal, and administrative assistant, but I’m happy to add a few more titles to my résumé. Besides, Harvey Jekyll or one of his henchmen could have been the shooter last night.”
Miranda had provided a detailed description of the Jekyll mansion’s layout, so we knew where her husband kept his secret materials. Since she would never deign to make a sketch, that after-noon Miranda sent over a pristine copy of the house’s construction blueprints, obtained from the county records office.
With a magnanimous swish of her hand, she unrolled the drawings onto Sheyenne’s desk. “Here you are, sweethearts. Legally speaking, I can’t imagine why you might be interested in the design and arrangement of my home, especially not the location of Harvey’s secure and private study right here.” With a sly smirk, she pointed to the appropriate spot on the blueprints. “I’ll just assume you’re remodeling your offices and wish to study prime architectural examples.”
I began to speak, but Miranda raised one scarlet fingernail. “Not a word! As I said, I don’t want to hear it … at least not until you have something.” She flounced out of our offices, leaving Sheyenne and me to study the blueprints.
Robin was uneasy. “I don’t like the precedent, Dan. By law, any evidence you obtain in this manner is tainted and inadmissible.”
I don’t generally keep secrets from my partner, but Robin still didn’t know precisely how I’d gathered the documents that proved JLPN’s involvement in the vampire shampoo scandal. “Think of it this way,” I said. “Miranda Jekyll is still the legal co-owner of that home, and until the divorce case is settled, she’s entitled to fifty percent of the contents. Unless her husband succeeds in nullifying the prenuptial agreement, aren’t we within Miranda’s legal rights, if she asks us to enter on her behalf? And borrow an item that is fifty percent hers?”
Sheyenne added, “It’s not technically breaking and entering if I just walk through a wall or a window, is it?”
Robin remained skeptical. “We’re on very shaky legal ground here. It could jeopardize our case—and get me disbarred, not to mention thrown in jail.”
“On the other hand, unless we secure this evidence, we don’t have a case to jeopardize,” I pointed out.
Not willing either to admit defeat or give us her implicit permission, Robin took a stack of files into her office. “I’m going to prepare a brief. I’ll be unavailable for most of the night.” She closed the door. “And don’t you dare get shot.”
Sheyenne and I glanced at each other and decided it was time to go.
* * *
I was no longer limber or athletic enough for the cat-burglar acrobatics I would need to break into Jekyll’s mansion. I’d always solved my own problems and done my own legwork, so it was frustrating to be on the sidelines. Sheyenne had to take part of the risk without me.
As soon as full night fell, I parked the car under a thick overhanging willow two blocks away from Jekyll’s tree-lined mansion, which was surrounded by a red brick wall topped with wrought-iron spikes. During my initial round of surveillance months ago, I had managed to snap a few photos of a man with little social life occupying himself with uninteresting activities at home. It hadn’t been worth the risk.
Now, however, Sheyenne knew where to look, and she was our very best chance for getting what we needed.
Since this was her first covert mission, I needed to see what Sheyenne saw. We settled on a tiny video camera, the kind of thing that would have awed a 1960s-era James Bond, but was now everyday technology. Sheyenne’s spectral presence made the grainy image fade in and out when I received it on my smartphone stream.
The sound from the speaker was fuzzed with static, but I could hear her voice. “Check. Beaux, can you hear me? Check.”
“Loud and clear, but let’s be a little less loud, please.”
“Sorry,” she whispered.
Fidgeting, I waited under the willow, well out of sight of Jekyll’s security guards who patrolled the grounds, while I watched the images on my smartphone. Sheyenne could make herself mostly transparent and could pass through solid walls; however, the camera, while admittedly small, could not pass through walls and might catch the eye of an alert observer as it drifted through the air. She needed to be very careful.
She crossed the grounds and pointed the camera to show me a couple of business-suited Secret Service types standing at strategic points. Two Dobermans trotted the perimeter like angular shadows.
“Stay clear of the dogs,” I whispered. “If they start barking, everyone’ll be on alert.”
“Don’t worry, I’ve never had trouble with dogs.”
Some ghosts drive dogs into a frenzy of growling and barking; other ghosts, like Sheyenne, could have worked at the animal shelter without causing any particular distress. Even so, I didn’t want the Dobermans to chase the small floating camera as if it were a chew toy.
Sheyenne drifted to the east wing of the home, then levitated to a set of windows on the second floor that marked Harvey’s private study. “I can just pop inside and take a look.”
“Bring the camera,” I told her.
“In a minute. I need to make sure the window doesn’t have alarm wires before I open it and bring the object through.”
She set the small camera on the outer windowsill, leaving me with an extreme close-up image of the English ivy that Jekyll’s landscapers had planted along the brick walls. I endured five minutes of nerve-wracking silence, punctuated only by a woolly caterpillar munching its way through a leaf. Finally, the study window swung outward just enough for Sheyenne to slip the camera through and carry it into the study.
“He did have an alarm system,” Sheyenne said into the microphone. “I went to the control box and tickled it, made all the lights go haywire.”
“Be careful.”
“Do you hear any alarms? Don’t worry, I’m inside. Let me get to work.”
She panned the camera for me, and I got my first view of Harvey Jekyll’s study. It looked like a perfectly normal home office with a large desk, cherrywood file cabinets, comfortable executive chair in oxblood leather, Italian designer lighting, and a high-end stereo system beside a marble shelf filled with old CD jewel cases.
It was too much to hope that she would find secret Nazi flags, embarrassing transvestite outfits, or even some of the vampire pedophilia that Gomez Ricketts had been selling out of his storage unit. Sheyenne panned the camera across the CD spines: The Best of Hall and Oates, the Bee Gees, England Dan and John Ford Coley, the Little River Band, and more Barry Manilow.
Yes, this was Harvey Jekyll’s study, all right.
Then I saw one of the bullhorn-on-toaster gadgets he had kept in his corporate office. A portable ectoplasmic defibrillator. “Be careful around that device,” I said. “Jekyll designed it to protect against ghosts.”
“I’m not touching any controls, just having a look around.”
A folded newspaper with a half-finished crossword puzzle lay on the desk next to a calculator and a day planner. Sheyenne flipped through the planner, looking for anything suspicious. He had marked a tiny asterisk on the day when I’d spotted him and Brondon Morris going to their secret club meeting; several other dates also bore asterisks. Other than that, Jekyll had jotted down only a few dinner parties, a dentist’s appointment, and a note to pick up dry cleaning.
“He wouldn’t leave anything incriminating out in the open,” I said. “Can you find the locked drawer that Miranda told us about?”
She pointed the camera down at a heavy secured lock. “It’s pretty obvious. Let me do my poltergeist thing and see if I can jiggle the tumblers.”
“Be careful,” I warned.
“Don’t be a worrywart.” She worked for a few minutes, and finally the bolt popped down so she could slide open the drawer. Inside, she found a floppy purple head covering, like a dunce cap, and a foot-long golden measuring stick, some kind of ceremonial object.
Sheyenne figured out the significance. “It’s a straight edge, Beaux.”
From the bottom of the drawer she took a small velvet case that opened to reveal a thick silver ring. “Well, look at what I found.” Sheyenne pointed the camera close. A straight line had been scribed across the silver surface on the face of the ring, surrounded by the words Grand Wizard.
I felt cold as the realization sank in. Harvey Jekyll wasn’t just dabbling with the Straight Edgers. According to this ring, he was their leader.
“Now, that’s certainly something Harvey wouldn’t want made public,” I said.
Suddenly the camera jerked, and the sound pickup transmitted the door banging open, voices shouting. I heard a man say, “The desk alarm was triggered—somebody must be in here!”
The view from the camera swung wildly back and forth. I glimpsed Harvey Jekyll looking like a gnome in a fur-lined smoking jacket, flanked by two burly security goons. They charged into the room.
“Spooky, get out of there!” I yelled.
The crossword puzzle newspaper and day planner flew up into the air, twirling around as Sheyenne unleashed her inner poltergeist. The desk lamp flicked on and off. File drawers opened and closed, clattering as folders sprayed a geyser of loose documents. The guards shouted, to little effect.
Jekyll, though, staggered into the spectral whirlwind and dove for the credenza. He grabbed the ectoplasmic defibrillator and turned the end of the bullhorn toward Sheyenne.
The image from the camera shot forward as if I were riding a bullet, heading straight toward the widening eyes of Harvey Jekyll. Then the screen went blank, filled with static. The camera feed was gone.
“Spooky!” I called, but got no answer.
Even from two blocks away I could hear the commotion behind the brick walls. I needed to go there and help Sheyenne somehow, but I knew I’d never get past the alerted guards. Bright beams stabbed into the dark as security lights blazed around the mansion perimeter. The Dobermans howled.
Suddenly, with a gusting cold breeze, Sheyenne was there in front of me. “Better get in the car and head out of here, Beaux. They’re bound to do a sweep in just a few seconds.”
“What happened? The camera went dark. I thought …”
“I had to distract them, so I threw it in Jekyll’s face. I didn’t want to forget this.” In her ghostly hand she held up the Grand Wizard ring.
“I wish I could kiss you right now,” I said. I settled for giving her a heartfelt wink.
“Ditto,” Sheyenne replied. “But use your imagination and figure out how to thank me later. Let’s get back to the office.”
I started the rusty Pro Bono Mobile with a roar and a putter, and we raced away.