Ghost Wanted Read Free Page B

paid particular attention to Adelaide. Because of Lorraine Marlow? How could he have known her?
    I reached out, touched the edge of the portrait frame. “Lorraine, can you tell me—”
    â€œWho’s there?” His flashlight beam flipped up the stairs, down, over the railing to the dark rotunda below. “Nobody there. Must be upstairs.” He clattered up the steps, shouting, “Stop! Whoever you are. Trespassing. Stop.” Obviously Ben hadn’t confused my lower husky voice with Lorraine’s, and he was in full pursuit of an unseen interloper.
    Now the portrait was in darkness, but I remembered Lorraine Marlow’s long, delicate face framed by soft golden hair, her smooth forehead, aristocratic nose, high cheekbones, and delicately pointed chin. There was an elfin quality to her beauty, a haunting sense of gentleness and kindness lost too soon. Her widowed husband endowed the library with much of his fortune after her early death, and the portrait was hung in her memory. At his death, Rose Bower, their fabulous estate that adjoined the far side of the campus, was left to Goddard College and became the site of the college’s most elegant parties and receptions and served as well as guest quarters for distinguished visitors.
    Thoughts tumbled in my mind. Wiggins’s summons. His distress. Precept Two. My bewilderment when my promise to strictly adhere to Precept Two—“No consorting with other departed spirits”—made Wiggins even more miserable.
Dastardly deeds in Adelaide.
Well, why didn’t he just tell me I was supposed to help Lorraine Marlow and to heck with Precept Two?
    Ben was too far away to hear me, but I kept my voice low. “Wiggins sent me.”
    Silence.
    Words are not always necessary. Emotions communicate without a whisper of sound. I knew Lorraine Marlow listened, breath held, amazed, surprised, shocked. Wiggins meant something to her. Yet I felt resistance. It was as if a door had closed solidly, firmly.
    I plowed ahead. It always amazes me how often everything could be made right if people spoke honestly. However, no one has ever accused me of pussyfooting around. “I’m Bailey Ruth Raeburn. I grew up in Adelaide.” I was trying to remember some of her history. I thought she had come to Adelaide after she married Charles Marlow.
    No response. The only sounds were slamming doors on the second floor and Ben’s gruff shouts. The silence on the landing was sentient, wary.
    Was there sadness in her silence? Or dismay? Or fear?
    I said gently, “How did you know Wiggins?”
    A quick intake of breath.
    Train travel dominated the country in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Women in long skirts alighted from carriages to enter bustling stations, accompanied by hatted men in dark suits. Wiggins was a product of his times in a stiff white shirt, suspenders, black woolen trousers, and high-topped black shoes. I knew him in his Heavenly station. I didn’t know anything about his life on earth except that he had loved being a stationmaster. “Wiggins has a train station in Heaven. He sends emissaries to earth on the Rescue Express to help people in trouble.”
    â€œOoh.” Her voice was soft. “How like Paul. He loved his station. He planned to go back—” She broke off.
    Paul? Go back?
Lorraine and I both were making discoveries. Wiggins’s first name was Paul. She hadn’t known him as a stationmaster. “When did you know”—I paused. I scarcely felt it proper to call Wiggins by his first name—“him?”
    â€œPaul sent you here?” There was a wondering tone in the light, high voice.
    â€œI just arrived.” I put two and two together. “Wiggins wants you to come to Heaven.”
    Abruptly, the silence was empty. I was alone on the landing. The portrait was only a picture.
    Heavy steps announced the watchman’s return. He was a little breathless from his