Disclaimers: Not mine. Don't sue.

See previous chapter for full header information.

- I -

"Haunted"

Andrea Moreno sighed as she sealed up the box and placed it on the table alongside a half-dozen others going to the same customer in Chicago. Since putting photographs of some of their more expensive and rare inventory online, business had been brisk at Same As It Never Was. Brisk business was good business.

But brisk business also meant late nights.

Her Chinese take-out had long since grown cold. The radio station that had been keeping her company had switched to its after-hours classical format. Soft piano strains drifted from the speakers.

She glanced at the clock. Half past ten. Only one more box to pack and prep for shipping in the morning. She would be out of here by eleven, at the latest. Still, it was later than she had planned to be here. After all, she was opening in the morning. Melinda was in earlier - how long ago had she gone home?

She could clearly remember Melinda leaving and Andrea herself saying, "I'm right behind you." That was two, three hours ago, at least.

Just one more box to pack and then all the shipments would be ready to go out first thing in the morning. Searching around, she couldn't locate the last item, a lamp. I must have left it out front, she thought wearily. She headed for the main showroom, humming softly to herself along with the radio.

"La da la da la da la da dah..." Some tune by Beethoven or Bach, one of the B's, she thought. She was certain it had been used recently in a television commercial and the original composer probably wasn't receiving any royalties off of it. She reached for the volume knob to turn the radio up. The dial turned smoothly in her hand, but the radio was silent.

She got a low, sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach as it dawned on her that the radio was turned off, had been turned off for some time.

The soft piano music was still emanating from the front of the building and that stopped her cold.

There was an old upright piano that sat against the wall in the rear of the showroom. For as long as she could remember, the piano had been in the store, dropped off in the early days, having belonged to someone's great-grandmother. Andrea wasn't even sure if it still worked.

But it was playing - being played - now.

Had she not been scared, she might have recognized the beauty of the tune and the instrument. Ancient as it was, it was very nearly in tune and still capable of producing wonderful music.

Every instinct in her body told her to run but she took a tentative step towards the front. There was always a chance that some human intruder - albeit, a musically gifted one - had managed to get in without triggering the security alarm. It was possible.

She hadn't heard the alarm, glass breaking, items shuffled about, or any of the other tell-tale sounds that would indicate a burglar in the antique shop.

Should I call the cops? Melinda?

That hollow feeling in her stomach indicated to her that whoever was out there was probably more along Melinda's line of expertise, not the police department's.

She found a Louisville Slugger on a nearby shelf and her fingers tightly circled the grip. She had never played baseball, but Andrea was certain she could swing it and make contact, if she had to. If there's something, someone, to make contact with.

The music had tuned melancholy. The simple refrain was familiar and, as she listened, moving forward in millimeters, she couldn't quite place it, though the title was on the tip of her tongue, figuratively speaking. What is this song?

Andrea flattened herself against the wall, squaring her shoulders. The bat was carefully poised on her shoulder. Here goes nothing...

With a half-primal yell, she pivoted on the ball of one foot and swung around the corner.

There was a crash of cacophonous chords from the piano, as if a startled pianist had slammed his or her hands down on the keys.

Then the store was still, silent. The piano sat as if it had never been touched.

Andrea was not surprised, really, to find the front door was securely locked and bolted. She lowered the bat and quickly walked back to the storage room.

The unfinished shipment was still spread out on the table. The last carton was still unfilled.

"It can wait," Andrea told her herself. She grabbed her coat and hurried out the back door.

"The driver didn't make it. I didn't make it."

Melinda woke with a start. Her heart was pounding, seeming to echo in the stillness of her bedroom. She wiped an arm across her face and it came away wet. She had been crying. Her dream - her nightmare - had been so real...

She had been having the dream off and on for four weeks, ever since witnessing the fatal car crash. It was the same each time. She saw a silver SUV, monstrously out of proportion, barreling down on the car she and Jim were riding in.

"The driver didn't make it." That was what the real driver - an out-of-towner named Jacob Sloan, according to the newspapers - had said to her. Only, in her dream, it was Jim who spoke those words, Jim who stared at her with haunted eyes, Jim with the horrible gash on the side of his head. Jim...

...who was sleeping soundly beside her. She watched his chest rise and fall, his breaths even and slow. He was okay. She was okay.

The clock on the nightstand glowed red in the darkness: 12:02. Her throat suddenly felt dry; she needed some water. Careful not to disturb her husband, Melinda swung her legs over the side of the bed and softly slipped out of the room.

Downstairs, she flipped on the kitchen light. She took a bottle of drinking water from the refrigerator, unscrewed the cap, and drank deeply. Her throat was parched and she felt as if she had been running a marathon.

Four weeks.

Closing the fridge, she located a folded newspaper article taped to the doors. She had clipped it from the paper and saved it, though she wasn't quite sure why. It had appeared in the paper the morning following the wreck, below the fold but on the front page. The headline solemnly announced:

HOLLYWOOD COMPOSER KILLED IN EVENING CRASH

Jacob Sloan was the man's name and he was apparently a popular composer of music for blockbuster films. The name rang no bells in Melinda's mind. However, Andrea was familiar with his music. A music buff to begin with, she was the kind of person who read all of the opening credits at the movies.

The article briefly mentioned how Sloan had been in Grandview visiting an old friend, an independent film director who had shot his movie in town. That, Melinda remembered because traffic had been snarled for two days in front of her store. The director, Michael Dorsey, had been the passenger in the BMW. The article listed him in 'serious but stable condition.' The Suburban driver, a local man named Padgett, was treated and released.

The article listed Sloan's filmography and talked of his current project with Dorsey, but there were few personal details mentioned, save that he had a wife and son, and that his California funeral would be closed to the public.

There were only few paragraphs in the paper a week later, when Dorsey was released from the hospital. They rehashed the same material, nothing new, and nothing about the dead man's life. The accident put Grandview on the national map for a day or two at most, and then the world went on.

But Melinda could not forget.

She could still see the man's eyes, blue-gray, pained. They were not the eyes of a spirit at peace, her experience told her that. She expected to see him in the days following the accident, but he didn't show up, didn't come to her for help. Deep down, she hoped that he had been able to cross over.