“I’m worried,” Manfred said, and his head moved restlessly. “I’ve talked to all the Joyces and to the boyfriend. I’ve compiled a list of the rest of the household staff who worked for Rich Joyce while Mariah was there. But I don’t know how far I’ll get. I can’t do any more tonight. I think someone followed me to the office. Rudy?” Manfred pantomimed someone holding a cell phone. “I hate to leave a message, I haven’t talked to you in so long. But I think there’s someone following me, and when you’re lucky enough to have a cop as your friend, you should call them when you’re in a fix like this. I don’t want to lead them to my mom’s when I pick up MariCarmen. Well . . . ’bye. I’m leaving the office in about ten minutes. I got some phone calls to make.” Half the time Manfred was telling us, though in the first person, what Victoria had been thinking, and half the time he seemed to be speaking as if he were in Victoria’s body.

Now Manfred’s hands were moving. It was clear he was performing some task, but I couldn’t interpret his gestures. I looked at Tolliver and raised my eyebrows in a question. Tolliver pointed at the stack of files on the coffee table. After a moment, I understood. Victoria was tamping papers into a neat stack, then closing them into a folder and stacking it on the others. Then she got a rubber band out of a drawer and worked it around the stack. “Put this in the trunk,” she whispered. “Come back, make the calls.” There were slight movements in Manfred’s feet and shoulders that suggested Victoria (through Manfred) was going outside, opening the trunk, tossing in the files, shutting the lid, moving back into the office.

This was a very strange experience. Enlightening, but strange.

“Someone’s coming,” Victoria/Manfred muttered. “Huh.”

I understood better, now, why I made people so nervous after they saw me in contact with that other part of the world, the unseen part that was so hard for most people to access. I could feel the tension in Tolliver’s hand.

Again, little twitches of Manfred’s body suggested that Victoria’s movements were happening in his head. He made a definite yanking gesture. I was sure he was pulling open the sleeper couch to insert Mariah’s folder. She—no, Manfred—turned her head to look at something, very abruptly, and then Manfred’s eyes flew open with a look of complete terror on his face.

“I’m going to die,” he said. “Oh, my God, I’m going to die tonight.”

Fourteen

Fourteen

IT took at least fifteen minutes for Manfred to completely come out of walking Victoria through her last moments.

“Who did she see?” Tolliver asked.

“I don’t know,” Manfred said. “I couldn’t see them.”