An Uninvited Ghost (28 page)

Paul vanished up to the research room, and I vamped. “This was how long ago, Warren?” I asked.

“It was nineteen seventy-four,” he said.

That left me with little to say, even vamping, for a few long seconds. “That long ago, and he’s still worried?”

Warren shrugged just as Paul came back down, again nodding that things had checked out. “He’s a sensitive soul,” Warren told me.

On cue, Jim walked through the open doorway (in fact, I had taken the door off the library during the renovation, to present a much more open space and to convey that the books were always available) and saw us talking. “Sorry to interrupt,” he said.

Warren and I insisted he was doing no such thing, so Jim sat down. But Warren, getting pink in the face and not knowing where to look (so he looked mostly at the rug), was obviously in distress, so Jim asked about it.

“I told Alison about your . . . misadventure,” he told Jim.

Jim, in the process of taking a stick of gum out of his pocket, froze. “You did?” he said. He blinked, then started moving again. “Well, I guess there’s really no harm in that.”

Warren’s head sprung up as if a rubber band in his neck had been snapped. “You don’t mind?” he asked.

Jim seemed to think it over, tilted his head from side to side and said, “No, I suppose I don’t. It was a long time ago, and Alison’s not going to hold it against me. Are you, Alison?”

“Certainly not,” I said. “You paid the price for what you did, and you never did it again. Right?”

Jim chuckled. “Right.”

Then I remembered something Maxie had told me about him. “But I’ll bet you didn’t mention that . . . misadventure when you applied for the grant you received from the charitable foundation Arlice Crosby underwrote, did you?”

Paul’s face became very serious, and he watched Jim carefully for a reaction. Jim looked positively baffled.

“What grant?” he asked.

“In nineteen eighty-nine, he received a grant from the Selective Entrepreneurial Experiment Development Fund,” Paul told me. “It helped him set up his business.”

I passed that along to Jim, who nodded. “Oh yes, the SEED money. Did Mrs. Crosby have something to do with that?”

I assured him, after checking with my semitransparent friend, that she had underwritten much of SEED.

“I had no idea,” Jim said. “But if I
had
known, I would have been more than grateful. That money helped set up my business, the one I sold for six million dollars three years ago. I had no reason to be angry at Mrs. Crosby.”

My suspects were clearing themselves with alarming ease. After Paul confirmed the sale of Jim’s business through Maxie, I stood up and thanked the two gentlemen for their candor. I promised not to mention Jim’s long-ago transgression to anyone, unless it became relevant to McElone’s case. They nodded.

I walked out of the library and toward the game room, but I didn’t get far. Standing in the hallway was Dolores Santiago, and despite being Dolores Santiago, she was not the strangest thing there.

Next to Dolores, who was staring at it with fascination, was a child’s easel, a plastic one of red, blue and yellow. “This is lovely,” Dolores said. “Is this how you communicate with the spirits?”

On the easel were black plastic block letters, no doubt magnetized on their backs, spelling out the message “WE SHOULD MEET.”

“We’re getting too close,” Paul said.

Mom and Melissa were eating pizza in the kitchen for dinner. I wasn’t hungry, but it seemed a safe haven, so I was sitting there with a Diet Coke and a slice on my plate that I wasn’t eating.

“I love how you always make it about ‘we,’” I told him. “I don’t suppose I have to remind you that
I
can still be harmed by people who are mad at me.” I glanced at Melissa and was sorry I’d said anything. But she chewed on her extra-garlic crust and didn’t seem to notice. I knew she had registered what I’d just said, but she wasn’t going to react to it now. Liss doesn’t like to get me upset.

“Of course I do, but focusing on that isn’t going to do us any good right now,” Paul answered. He was sitting on the stove, which was on to keep the food warm, but Paul didn’t have to worry about that. “The point right now is to think about who could have left that easel in the hallway.”

I’d balked at the idea of calling Detective Lieutenant Anita McElone yet again. For one thing, I’d already used up about six months’ worth of visits with the detective this week, and for another, I’d have to explain the whole “talking to the ghost with toy letters” concept, and I just didn’t have the energy for it.

“There’s the Santiago woman,” my mother offered. I liked that; it sounded like a movie title:
The Santiago Woman
, starring Penelope Cruz or Carmen Miranda. “She was standing right next to the easel when Alison found it.”

“Yeah,” I said. “But she seemed completely fascinated by the thing, and asked me if that was the way I talked to Paul and Maxie. I also don’t think Dolores is strong enough to have lugged that thing to that spot without me hearing her drag it, anyway. I mean, the door to the library was open.”

“There is no door on the library,” Melissa pointed out. Kids love to catch you being inaccurate. They know what you mean, but they want to have that moment where they can correct you and not be contradicted.

“But Jim did come into the room just before you found the easel in the hallway,” Paul pointed out. “It’s possible he positioned it there, and then just let you find it when you left the library.”

“I guess.” That last slice wasn’t looking so bad, really. I could force down a bite or two just to keep my strength up. “I really don’t think Jim or Warren is the killer. They’re too nice.”

Paul gave me one of those looks that indicated he might be wondering if he’d chosen the right living partner for his investigation firm.

“There’s a clock running now,” I said, wondering if we had any more garlic knots. “I need to answer the message on the easel.”

“Do you?” Mom asked. “Can’t you just leave it unanswered?”

Paul shook his head. “No, Loretta,” he told Mom. “Alison can’t let the murderer dictate the terms here. She needs to take the lead and start being in charge.”

For once, I agreed. “The real question is what to answer,” I said.

“If it were me,” Melissa said, “I’d agree to a meeting, but be sure it’s here in the house. That way, Paul and Maxie can be there without the murderer knowing they are, and that gives you a big advantage. And I’ll bet that if you asked Mr. Avalon, he’d be sure to have a camera and a microphone you could use to record evidence.”

Everyone sat there and stared at my daughter for what seemed like a half hour.

“The child is a genius,” my mother said.

I had what was left of the pizza and washed it down with the soda before I went back out to the easel. “Move it somewhere else,” Paul advised. “Show that you’re not accepting their conditions.”

So I took the easel—with some help from Mom and Melissa—to the game room, which was, as I’d anticipated, empty. Not much was going on in there until the pool table could be repaired, something Bobby had promised would only take a few days.

“Why can’t we just hide in here somewhere and see who comes out to read the message?” I asked Paul.

“Anybody could wander in and read it,” he answered. “Villains don’t really rub their hands together in anticipation and shout, ‘Bwahahahaha!’ you know.”

Well, if he wanted to be rational about it.

“What do you think I should put up?” I asked the gathered crowd.

“Just the place and time,” Paul said.

“That’s so rude,” Mom suggested. “No
please
or anything?”

Melissa looked at her. “It’s a meeting with a killer, Grandma,” she said. “You don’t have to worry about manners.”

“You
always
have to worry about manners,” my mother retorted.

I started to reach into the yellow plastic drawer that held the extra letters, but Maxie stuck her head through the ceiling and said, “Hold on. I’ve got something to show you.”

It took a minute or so for Maxie to make her way down from the attic, where she’d been holed up. When she carries the laptop or something too large to conceal in her clothing, she can’t go through solid objects, so she has to use doors and stairways, just like a solid person. Maxie showed up in the game room, a wicked smile on her face, carrying the laptop. If one of the other guests noticed it, by now the ways of flying objects were ingrained enough that they would barely notice.

“I’ve got something on that crazy necklace the old lady gave you just before she died,” Maxie announced with her usual brand of sensitivity and tact. “It’s something called the Key of Solomon.”

I gasped. “She gave me something that ancient and priceless?” I marveled. “We’d only just met.”

“Yeah, don’t get too excited,” Maxie answered. “You can get one for about seven bucks on eBay. The one she gave you, in silver, is worth maybe thirty.”

I looked at the amulet and frowned. “Still, for someone she’d just met . . .”

“Oh, get over yourself. The thing that’s interesting is that the amulet is supposed to be a way to control or contact evil spirits.” Maxie grinned, no doubt picturing herself as an evil spirit. I could make the case, but the fact was, neither she nor Paul really belonged in that category.

“So that explains why Dolores was so fascinated with the amulet,” I said, bringing myself back to the conversation. “She thinks she can contact ‘the spirits’ with it.”

“Would she kill for it?” Paul asked, apparently thinking out loud.

“She had plenty of opportunities to get it from me without killing me,” I said. “She could have just asked me for it. I probably wouldn’t have given it away, but aside from that bizarre sleepwalking trick she tried to use, she hasn’t done anything to get the amulet from me. If she is after just that, she’s going about it in a really roundabout way.”

“Besides,” Melissa said, “she never asked Scott to get her the amulet. Whoever was sending him the messages just wanted him to scare Mrs. Crosby.” I was starting to think that letting Melissa in on all these conversations might not be the best parenting strategy. But she was currently the best analyst out of the bunch of us.

I looked up at Paul. “What do you think our strategy should be now?” I asked. “Do we go ahead with the meeting and see who shows up, or do we assume it’s Dolores looking for the amulet?”

“That seems like a stretch,” Paul said after a moment of goatee-stroking. “If Dolores is the killer, I don’t think it’s for the amulet. But you still haven’t questioned one suspect in the case.”

I’d been anticipating this, and had an answer ready. “Well, I would have talked to H-Bomb, but the crew is out filming on the boardwalk all night tonight. Haven’t had a chance.”

“Oh, they’re back,” Maxie said happily. “It started to rain while they were out there, so they all came back. They’re in the den right now. Trent was saying something about looking for you.”

Damn! “Thanks for the update, Maxie,” I said. “Later on, I’ll show you some color chips for when I renovate the attic.”

She looked as if I’d slapped her, which technically was impossible. And she snapped my laptop computer shut and carried it at top speed out of the room and toward the stairs.

“You really are mean to her sometimes,” Melissa said.

“I didn’t really mean it,” I said.

 

 

“Why would I kill that old lady?”

H-Bomb, otherwise known as Helen DiSpasio, had been dragged, not quite kicking and screaming but certainly complaining, to be interviewed. We stood just outside my back door, where my backyard once sat so quietly and serenely. Now, it was covered with double-wide trailers, light towers, satellite vans and equipment I could not, even after having it explained to me, identify. What had been a sanctuary of peace in my sometimes hectic world had been turned into NASA mission control for the gel-and-ab-crunches set. Even in the now-light rain, it was a hub of activity.

I’d asked Trent for a few minutes of H-Bomb’s time and had been rewarded with this audience, but only on two conditions, one of which was that the interview had to be filmed. I had argued, cajoled, whined and threatened to try to shake this, but Trent was used to such behavior and stood his ground.

I decided he wasn’t attractive in nice guy mode
or
producer mode.

“I really don’t think you would want to cause Mrs. Crosby any harm,” I answered. “But I’m questioning everyone who was near to her just before she collapsed, and you were there.”

“So were Mistah Motion and Rock Starr,” she countered. “How come you’re not
questioning
them?” She picked some imaginary thread off her bikini bottom, which was so small it could legitimately have been considered a bandage under the right circumstances. “What about Tiffney? That skank.”

“Tiffney was seen passing behind Mrs. Crosby just before she fell,” I agreed, a little too enthusiastically. “Mrs. Crosby turned to look, and then she collapsed. What happened?”

“How should I know? I wasn’t even looking in that direction, okay? That skank Tiffney was in the key light just this side of the glass doors, and then she moved across the room to get an even better camera angle from above, where you can see cleavage. I was so migraine annoyed. I don’t know what happened to the old lady.”

“
Mrs. Crosby
was a very wealthy woman,” I noted. “Were you aware of that?”

“I wasn’t even
aware
she was there until she hit the floor,” H-Bomb insisted. “I wasn’t looking that way. I was totally focusing on that skank Tiffney.”

Which, alas, led to the second condition Trent had imposed on the interview. I had to ask H-Bomb, “Do you have any idea where Tiffney is now?”

She rolled her eyes so broadly Melissa would truly have been envious. “Of
course
migraine not!” she shouted. “If I knew where that skank was, wouldn’t I have said something by now?”