Fade To Black

1

Bryan McFadden could always feel her, of course. As soon as she decided to grace him with her presence.

Yes.

She was there again.

Watching him, his every move.

He pretended that he didn’t see her. He also did his best to hide a smile.

She wanted something, of course. Or he was due for a lecture, a long litany on how to live his life.

He’d been splitting logs outside his cabin when he’d first become aware that she was there; he continued to chop firewood. If she was going to haunt him because she wanted something, she was bloody well going to have to do so with more than a bunch of her dramatic sighs.

He paused for a moment; the sun was riding in the sky on a beautiful day. The mountains and valleys of Virginia were, in Bryan’s mind, the most beautiful places in the world to be. Here, right at the base of the Shenandoah Mountain, he could enjoy both.

This place had been—as long as he could remember—a haven. He and his brothers, Bruce and Brodie, had always been able to go a little wild out here. They’d never been bad kids, but they had been full of energy and ready to run, climb, fish, swim and love the rugged beauty of the land.

The family cabin was just a weekend retreat.

Home was DC, near the National Theatre, a half-dozen other theaters and easy access to the casting agents who were closer to their parents—Hamish and Maeve McFadden—than any blood relative might expect to be.

Though he and his brothers had long ago left their boyhoods behind, they had managed to stay in the same basic area. And, mainly because each of them had joined a branch of the service—Bryan, the navy; Bruce, the marines; and Brodie, the army—they had maintained the manor house close to a river in Northern Virginia where they had actually grown up.

He was heading back there in the morning. His time here—used to reflect on his choices regarding the future—was at an end. He wasn’t sure he was feeling more certain any one course was right above the others. Bruce and Brodie were coming in the following week; it was time for them to really decide what they were going to do.

As kids, they had quarreled and squabbled. Tumbled on the ground and tussled now and then—and stood ferociously against anyone who insulted one of them or dared to speak ill of their parents.

But life had gotten hard—and made them close.

They were all pretty sure they could work together; they’d talk it out for the final decision in the weeks to come.

Of course, she was still watching him. Still waiting for a response.

She sighed again. Maeve McFadden was certainly an example of the word diva. Not so much in a bad way—she had an ego, but not the kind with which to hurt others. She was passionate, she was demonstrative; she didn’t just “talk with her hands,” she talked with her arms, with her whole body.

But if she wanted something now, she was going to have to talk to him.

With words.

Finally, she did. She rather wafted over and leaned against the wood rail fence that surrounded the little cabin and the area with the chopping block where he was working.

“Bryan McFadden, you’re ignoring me!” She pouted.

“And it’s not working, eh?” he asked, but he smiled at her—she was his mom, and he did love her.

She smiled back and then plunged right in.

“Her name is Marnie, and she really needs help. My friend Cara—Cara Barton, I know you must remember her. She was one of the stars of that yummy vampire show, Dark Harbor, and before that, we were both way younger and in a Christmas romantic comedy together. That doesn’t matter. What does matter is this—Cara was tragically cut down. And now Marnie needs your help. I’m not sure she knows it yet, but Cara has told me. And poor Cara! She’s dead. Most horrifically and dreadfully dead.”

“Mother—”

“Don’t you dare tell me that dead is dead—dreadful or otherwise. She was murdered. Viciously murdered by a sword-wielding villain. Well, someone in a costume. But... Oh, Bryan. It was horrid, quite horrid—you must have heard about it on TV or in the news online!”

“Nope,” he told his mother.

“How could you have missed the news?” Maeve demanded. “Oh, I do hate to say it, but Cara is far more famous now in death than she was in life.”

“I come out here to enjoy the mountains and scenery, Mom. Not watch TV.”

“The news would be on your phone.”

“News is on anywhere, Mother, if you look for it.”

“All right then, I’ll tell you about it. Comic Con—West Hollywood.”

“I thought the big comic cons were in San Diego. Maybe New York.”

“Comic cons are all the rage—they are cropping up everywhere,” Maeve informed him. “And this—Oh, son... Horrible, horrible, horrible. Cara was my good friend. Okay, so imagine this. The cast of Dark Harbor is lined up at a booth. People are flocking over to them for signed pictures. There’s a Blood-bone character whipping his sword around—at first, all to the delight of the crowd. Then he walks up to the Dark Harbor cast booth and starts off as if he’s performing with them—and then he brought his sword down, slashing poor Cara to death, right across her throat!”

“In the middle of a crowd of people, some costumed character slashes a woman to death and walks away?” Bryan demanded, incredulous.

“Well, that’s just it. People thought it was a performance. Cara fell dead, the others began to realize it—people were clapping, thinking it was just an impromptu show done very well. Blood-bone walked off... The cast began to scream. Cops came, but by then, the killer was gone. From what I understand, it was a zoo.”

“But no one noticed a masked man in costume?”

“Well, of course, they did. They gathered up at least twenty Blood-bones—you know, conference attendees in Blood-bone costumes—but they don’t believe that the killer was any of the men, or the one woman, with whom they spoke. They couldn’t find a Blood-bone with actual blood on him or a lighted sword that was really a sword. Don’t you understand? Someone is going to get away with this. Bryan, you have to do something.”

“Mom, at the moment, I’m not a cop.”

“Don’t be silly, darling, I know that. And if you had stayed on the force, you’d be a Virginia cop, anyway. However, you did get your PI license.”

“Yes, I did.”

“So you need to get out to California and help Marnie Davante. Please.”

“Mom, you know that I’m supposed to be meeting with your other sons next week. They’ll be back by then.”

“I know where they are,” Maeve said indignantly. “Brodie took a temp job as a bodyguard for that chain store CEO, and he’s still in China somewhere. Bruce was helping out a friend who is with the Texas Rangers.”

“Right. But we’re due to get together and decide if we do want to form an investigation company.”

“That would be in the near future. You need to help Marnie now.”

“Mom, I have no ins with the West Hollywood Police or even the California State Police. I’m sure they would resent—”

“Please.”

“Mom, again, I’m not in Hollywood. I’m sure there are very capable police out there. Your friend isn’t being threatened—she’s already dead. I’m not sure—”

“It’s Marnie! Cara is terribly worried about Marnie.”

Bryan stopped pretending that he could continue chopping wood. He leaned on the ax and looked at the ghost of his mother.

“Does Marnie know that she needs my help?”

“How could she?”

“Come on then, what do you want out of me?”

“Someone who is invested in the horrible thing that happened—and in Marnie—believes that a dead woman is out there trying to help solve her own murder. Please, Bryan. It’s you—you need to help. You were just working with that FBI friend of yours, helping track down that missing child. And you said that he knows Adam—my friend Adam Harrison? Well, my friend and dad’s friend. I think your father knew Adam first.”

“Yes, I was working with a friend named Jackson Crow, and we were lucky—we found the missing child.” He didn’t mention that his old friend was with a special unit of the FBI, or that he’d suggested that Bryan might be just right for that unit.

He could only hope that she didn’t know that her old friend Adam Harrison had actually created the unit.

“How is Adam? Such a dear man.”

Hopefully, she hadn’t seen Adam since she’d...

He could never think the word died.

Maybe because she was his mother, and he did love her.

And maybe because she had never really gone anywhere.

“And you—all three of my boys—still at odds and ends, taking on various odd jobs.”

“Good jobs, Mom. We help people. You should be a happy camper. All three of us served our time in the military and went through college. And yes, in the last year or so we have taken on some strange jobs, but they’ve been good ones, jobs that help people.”

“And here’s someone who needs help. Yes, I hope, eventually, you and your brothers are going to get together. You’re looking to form a company. I do like that idea. You want to know what to do with your life? You’re doing quite nicely at the helping people thing, and this—this!—would be an important part of that. I mean, you broke my heart when you completely ignored the fact that your father and I were known for our extreme talents and absolute love of live theater. And you didn’t even want to head in the direction of film. I must say, I created—I created!—three of the most handsome men one could ever want to imagine, and you’ve no interest in using that beauty to a good—to a paying—end.”

“Mother,” Bryan said, “I believe you and Dad did emphasize that in life, looks mean nothing, that the heart and soul of a man or a woman matter most.”

Here she was, giving him a pitch about helping someone.

And she was still brokenhearted she hadn’t produced a single actor among them.

“Yes, well, of course,” Maeve said, sweeping back a long, curling strand of her dark hair. “Looks do not matter. Heart and soul and kindness and compassion. Things like that matter most with everyone you meet. Seriously, of course, decency—it’s a total given. But I have these three strapping lads! Strapping, I say—tall, dark and absolutely, stunningly handsome—and not one of you chose to use such wondrous good looks.”

“Mother, you don’t think you might be a little prejudiced on that?”

He moved past her to fetch another piece of wood.

She waved a hand in the air. “One can only be so prejudiced!” she said. “But that’s so far beside the point. I am afraid that I must have done something terribly wrong if not one of you felt the lure of the stage. The military! Well, I do understand. Your father and I were gone and... The military. Noble. What an honorable and lofty ideal—to serve one’s country. Yes, that was all quite fine, and thankfully you all came home in one piece. But that was then, and this is now. You went out and got a PI license. You’ve been working with the FBI and cops. You do realize that if you were to just choose to be an actor, I might not be so determined to haunt you?”

Bryan had the strange feeling that, one way or another, his mother was going to haunt him. And Bruce and Brodie. At least he had two brothers to share the burden. Of course, mothers were known to torment their sons.

Not usually, though, mothers who had passed away.

Bryan was the eldest; he had been twenty-four on the day that Hamish and Maeve had been leads in a DC run of Murder by Gaslight; they had both been killed—hand in hand—when the famous chandelier had fallen onto them both, killing them instantly.

It might have been fitting—they were known for having achieved the rarest of the rare, an amazing marriage and a true love affair; they were always together, beautiful people, blessed to have a wonderful family with their love and their three strapping sons.

It had been an incredible tragedy—for their sons more than anyone else.

Bryan had been the first to pull himself together. He’d been the first to see his mother. She had tiptoed behind him at her own funeral, bringing a finger to her lips and whispering, “Shh!”

He’d assumed he was suffering from PTSD—they’d lost both parents in a single blow.

And then he’d heard his father’s voice.

“Stop that, Maeve. I believe the boy can hear you. Don’t be a tease.”

“Don’t be silly. We’re dead. The living can’t hear us. I’m simply being a diva, darling,” Maeve had assured Hamish. “I’m making sure that the funeral is appropriately massive and...well, that people are properly emoting for us.”

“They’re emoting all over, including our sons,” the ghost of his father had said sternly.

“Oh, dear, yes—our precious boys!”

Then they had been gone. And that night—after an appropriate amount of Jameson whiskey—Bryan had convinced himself that they hadn’t really been there. That it was the shocking loss affecting him. Because he’d known it was what they would have wanted: a massive funeral with all kinds of press coverage.

Even if he and his brothers wanted to believe that they were strong and capable of managing the tragedy, they had loved their out-there, talented and ever so slightly crazy parents. It was natural that the grief might be intense.

Then...

They had moved back in.

It had been quite the night when each one of the brothers had tried to pretend that he wasn’t seeing the ghosts of his parents. But Maeve had heckled and teased—she was really quite as good at being a ghost as she had been at acting. She had quickly learned how to make the fire snap, how to press a glass just hard enough so that it appeared to move across the table and how to touch them...with a gentle stroke on the cheek, the way she had touched them in life.

Brodie—the youngest—had been the first to snap. Maeve had counted on that; Bryan was certain. Eventually Brodie had leaped out of his seat and screamed, “Can’t you see them?”

Bryan had looked at Bruce, and in that moment, they had realized that their parents, while not alive, were still with them.

Hamish was worried; he didn’t know why he and his wife were still there, and he was sorry—a father needed to let his sons lead their own lives. But they were young. Maybe he and Maeve were still there because they were needed. The boys might still need help; they could be there to guide them as they grew older and became men.

Maeve informed them all that she knew the very solid reason they had remained on the earthly plane—were they all daft? To guide their sons, yes. But she and Hamish had been taken too soon. They were kind, decent people—and young and beautiful!

They had basically been robbed of life.

Now they’d been granted the chance to help their boys, though, of course, they hadn’t really been at all sure that the boys could see them until Brodie—bless him—had cried out the obvious.

Maeve and Hamish were home.

At first it was wonderful. It was still wonderful. Other than still wondering now and then if he was sharing a terrible hallucination with his brothers.

If it weren’t for the other dead people his mother and father always wanted to help. The dead they brought home, too.

Because his parents’ reappearance had opened some kind of door, and now he could see the dead. And Bruce and Brodie could see them, as well.

“You do remember Dark Harbor, right? The run ended...oh, five or six years ago. You three were grown-up, but I remember that even you said they managed to make it pretty darned scary and that the plots were good.”

“Kudos to the writers,” Bryan said. He slammed down hard on his hunk of a log.

She came up before him, suddenly very serious.

“Bryan, please. A friend of mine was viciously attacked. And I’m worried sick about a young actress who I thought was wonderful—and who was very dear to Cara. My friend was murdered, Bryan. Do you understand me? Murdered—cruelly and with malice. And now, she sincerely believes that the other members of her cast are in trouble.”

“And why is that?”

“Because of the way the killer came to the table. Cara was always ready to jump up and get out front, and that’s what she did, and she was worried that, well, maybe someone else was the intended target.”

“Someone else.”

“There were five main cast members, Bryan. I know you remember the show. You would have had to have slept through seven years to have missed it. Cara Barton was the matriarch, but Scarlet Zeta was the most popular member of the cast—and she was next to Cara when she was killed.”

“Scarlet Zeta?”

“Marnie. The actress’s name is Marnie Davante. Her role was that of Scarlet Zeta.”

Bryan did actually know. He’d seen the show. He’d actually enjoyed it. He wasn’t usually that big on the paranormal—especially now, living a life in which his dead parents haunted him and brought home their dead friends now and then.

But Dark Harbor had been good.

And he knew who Cara Barton was—or had been. He grudgingly remembered that she had come to the funeral when his parents had died; she had been kind.

And he knew who the actress Marnie Davante was—true, only someone who had been on Mars for the past decade or so would not. She had been great on the show—sexy and endearing, an American sweetheart who might well have sent a few adolescent boys into their first solo sexual experiences. But on many talk shows she’d also come off as an amazing human being. She loved animals, gave to all kinds of children’s charities and appeared to be a really decent human being.

“What is Marnie Davante now, about twenty-seven, twenty-eight?” he asked.

Maeve sighed. “Twenty-nine, but what difference does it make?”

“I’m trying to find out about her. She has a good reputation among coworkers, right?”

“Yes.”

“They’re all in danger, so you say. Why are you most worried about Marnie Davante?”

“Because,” Maeve said, “I told you, the Blood-bone-costumed guy was coming for Marnie first. Cara wanted the extra attention and pushed her way forward. Maybe the killer got mixed-up. Maybe it was supposed to have been Marnie.”

“I’m assuming the police are already looking into it.”

“Ah, but will they look far enough? Bryan, someone who cares, who is willing to give the murder his full attention, needs to be out there.”

Bryan looked up at the sky.

When he’d gone to help in the missing child case, he’d been asked for his assistance.

Getting in on a high-profile murder case where police certainly had to be touchy, and might not want an outsider’s help, wasn’t a pleasant contemplation.

“Well?” Maeve demanded.

He didn’t answer right away.

Then he heard his father’s voice.

Yep. The ghost of Hamish McFadden was there as well, standing behind his wife. His father was a dignified man, and someone who might have been a performer, but who had also lived his life always trying to do the right thing.

“Might as well say yes, son. I believe the young lady will need you. Not to mention your mother will haunt the hell out of you, day and night, until you do. You know that what I’m saying is true.”

Bryan looked up. His father had been an exceptional actor; he’d won an Emmy and a Tony. He was a tall solid man with ink-dark hair that he’d passed on to all three sons, along with his formidable height and shoulder breadth.

Somehow, his father and his mother had kept their careers and been good, loving parents, as well. They’d chosen work to stay as close to their sons as often as they could.