Free Polterheist: An Esther Diamond Novel by Laura Resnick Page A

modesty pretty quickly, so I didn’t think any of the guys would be upset if I caught them in their briefs; but I wanted to give anyone who was naked a chance to cover up.
    “I’m the only one here, and I’m perfectly decent,” was the friendly reply to my warning. I recognized Super Santa’s voice.
    “Hi, Rick.” I pushed open the door, entered the room, and went to hang up Satsy’s replacement costume in his locker. Rick had evidently just arrived, since he was still in his street clothes. I said, “I see Miles tracked you down.”
    “Hi, Esther.” He hung up his winter jacket in his locker. “It sounds like you guys had quite a morning.”
    “You heard what happened?”
    “I was just in the break room. Twinkle and Satsy told me about it.” He paused. “Their story was a little confusing. I’m still not really sure what happened.”
    “I feel the same way, and I was
there.
”
    Rick smiled at that. He had a solid, amiable face; nothing handsome or remarkable, but pleasant. Though still in his twenties, his hairline was receding, and it was easy to guess what he’d look like in middle age. He was a few inches under six feet tall, with a square, stocky build. What people mostly noticed about Rick, though, was his calm, reassuring manner.
    “Actually,” I said, “I told Satsy I’d check out the freight elevator. His story is so disturbing that . . . Well, it really seems like someone should take a look. And experience suggests we can’t rely on Fenster’s to do it.”
    Rick looked at his watch. “Jeff hasn’t been on the floor that long, and I haven’t clocked in yet—so, officially, I’m not even here. Why don’t I come with you?”
    “I was kind of hoping you’d offer,” I admitted. The experience Satsy had described made me anxious about investigating the elevator on my own.
    “Then let’s go take a look,” Rick said. “You’re right about both things: Someone needs to do this, and Fenster’s won’t bother until someone actually gets hurt.”
    The store was keen on profits, obsessed with shoplifters, rigid about rules and punctuality . . . and very slack about safety.
    I said, “Yeah, I’ll bet you that despite Miles’ promise to Jonathan’s mother to have security ‘scour’ this floor, they never even showed up.”
    “Who’s Jonathan?”
    “Oh. I guess Satsy didn’t tell you that part of the story? Come on, I’ll tell you on the way to the elevator.”
    Following the route which Satsy had mentioned to me earlier, we cut behind the solstice mural and then proceeded across the fourth floor, finally going through the “Employees Only” doors at the other end of Solsticeland and coming to a halt at the freight elevator. I pressed the button to call it—and saw from the numbers that lit up on the panel that it was currently down on the same level as the docks. So it had evidently been used since Satsy’s scary experience. I wondered if anyone else had been terrorized inside its confines.
    When the elevator car got to our floor and the doors swished open, we looked inside.
    After a moment, I noted, “Well, Satsy did say it looked perfectly normal when he left.”
    And it looked perfectly normal now. Just an ordinary elevator car, big enough to carry large freight, with a scuffed floor and fluorescent lights.
    “Let’s make sure,” Rick said, entering the car. “Why don’t we take a ride?”
    “What?” I blurted, hanging back.
    Seeing my anxious expression, he said, “You wait here. That way if anything goes wrong—”
    “No, I’ll come, too,” I said, shamed into accompanying him. I entered the car and pressed the button for the bottom floor. “Let’s be thorough.”
    Rick said, “And whatever happens, let’s keep our heads and not start another stampede of Santa’s visitors, okay?”
    I nodded. I wouldn’t have done this alone, not after what Satsy had told me; but Rick’s calm manner was easing my tension as the elevator descended. When we