Chance of a Ghost (50 page)

Catching my breath was becoming a hobby. “Sure,” I managed. “Tyra was just…”

“Leaving,” she said, and stepped out of the car, letting even more subzero air into it. Not that I was complaining; anything that got her out of my backseat was a resounding success in my book. She looked Josh up and down. “You provide a lot of service to your customers,” she said.

“This one’s special,” Josh told her. He looked at me, making his point. “What time am I picking you up for
Peter Pan
tonight?” he asked.

Oops.

Tyra’s eyes registered the information. “So I’ll see you at the show tonight,” she said, looking directly at me with something in mind other than adding my name to her Christmas card list.

“You’ll be there? At the show tonight?” Josh asked Tyra.

“Of course,” she said. “I do the special effects. And there are a
lot
in this one.” She turned toward me, so Josh couldn’t see her face, and glared into my eyes. “So we’ll talk
later
,” she said. Then she turned and walked back to her Hyundai, which probably had a working heater and would have been a better venue for this conversation.

Josh leaned over into my window a little to talk more privately as Tyra drove away. “Better to let her get a head start,” he said. “Now what was that all about?”

“It’s a long story, and you’re freezing,” I told him. “I’ll explain it all when you come for dinner tonight. Just not in front of my mother or daughter, okay? I don’t want them to worry.”

“I’m starting to think
I
should worry.”

He was just figuring that out
now
? “Go back inside with your grandfather and sell paint,” I said. “I’ll be all right.”

Josh looked like he was going to say something, then decided against it. He leaned into the window and kissed me quite casually, just a good-bye thing, which was sort of interesting. “I’ll see you later,” he said. “It’s cold outside. Couldn’t you tell?”

“Hadn’t noticed,” I said.

He ran back across the street and into the store, and I got my GPS out from the glove compartment. I knew how to get to Whispering Lakes, but I wasn’t going to see Mom, and those places are so similar that it’s best to get your directions clear. Better to give the little box time to line up its satellites.

I had a ghost to track down.

On the drive to Manalapan, I tried to sort out the facts as I knew them: Lawrence Laurentz, amateur theater buff and
colossal irritant, had died about six months earlier, a death the medical examiner of Monmouth County had determined to be from natural causes. Except that Lawrence, whose real name was Melvin Brookman, was convinced that he’d been murdered by way of an electric toaster thrown into his bath.

It was true that Lawrence had annoyed a great many people: Penny Fields, his boss, had all but said he was a snitch and a pariah among the staff at his job. Although according to Tyra, a former fellow employee who was formerly a fellow, Penny was sleeping with Lawrence. Tyra believed Lawrence had gotten her fired. She had also belonged to a community theater group with Lawrence, as had Frances Walters, who didn’t have a grudge with him (except maybe that he’d informed on the group to the cops and gotten them all hauled in for public nudity) but had been ostracized a bit by her colleagues for bringing such a pain in the butt into the troupe. The group’s director, Jerry Rasmussen, admitted he didn’t like Lawrence, had thought he was a bad actor and a poor sport and had seen to it that Lawrence was drummed out of the group.

Not long after he was, the troupe was raided during an overly reverent performance of
Hair
and a number of its members arrested, all because of an anonymous tip, presumably from Lawrence. The only ones held overnight, though, were Frances and Jerry, on suspicion that they were running some sort of illegal Viagra ring. No charges had been filed, but it seemed odd that the cops had dropped it so quickly.

And now Lawrence had banished himself from Mom’s house and I was probably no longer officially (although with a dead client, that’s always a little fuzzy) hired to investigate his death. So why was I still investigating?

The truth was, I felt bad for the guy. Yeah, Lawrence was a pompous blowhard and possibly a tattletale, but underneath it you could see the kid who’d always been picked last
for the team, the man who was just hoping to find his niche all his life and who never did. Someone had to be his champion. And that left…me. If that’s not a reason to feel sorry for the old guy, I can’t imagine one.

So now I was on my way to the scene of his death because I was fairly sure I’d find him there. Where else did he have to go?

His town home was on the other side of the complex from Mom’s. The GPS got into a funny mood for a minute, insisting I had “reached my destination” when I was actually at the community’s clubhouse (they all have clubhouses) but found its bearings and eventually deposited me at the address Mom had given me. A quick check of the mailboxes showed that the name “Laurentz” had been painted over but not entirely obliterated. This was definitely the place.

Lawrence’s unit was the usual brick front, small deck in the back with French doors leading into the kitchen. The house wasn’t really any different from a few thousand others in this community alone, and surely hundreds of thousands elsewhere, though it was a different model from Mom’s, an “up and down” town home, meaning it had an upstairs unlike Mom’s single-level, better for those who have difficulty with stairs (not that Mom does, but she likes having everything on one floor).

Having worked for some months in the door and lock department of a home improvement store, I know a little bit more about picking a lock than, let’s say, almost everybody. It would have been easy for me to get into the house as Nan and Morgan did, by calling the real estate agent showing Lawrence’s home. But I didn’t want to disrupt her working day on a sham (I certainly wasn’t interested in buying this or any other place while I was still paying the guesthouse’s mortgage). And I really didn’t relish the idea of trying to locate Lawrence’s ghost while hiding my intentions, and what would have seemed like my insanity, from an unsuspecting stranger. Not to mention it would take longer.

Still, I didn’t want to attract attention if my skills were a little rusty, so I walked around to the back—which was a real eye-opener, literally, with the frigid wind blowing in my face—and went to work on the lock to the French doors, the same way Penny Fields said she’d entered the night Lawrence died, which was probably a lie.

It took me about ten minutes to gain entry using a tiny screwdriver made to fix eyeglass frames, mostly because it’s hard to pick a lock when you’re wearing mittens and are being stubborn about taking them off. Once I finally admitted defeat and removed them, the lock picking itself took only a minute or two. But my fingers got really cold. Life is full of trade-offs.

There was no reason for this to feel eerie, but it did. There was nothing especially different or noteworthy about the place—it was clean and neat, having been more or less “staged” by a real estate agent, no doubt—with the matching white appliances, faux-granite countertop and laminate flooring that was supposed to look like ceramic tile. Whatever water damage might have been visible on the ceiling after Lawrence’s demise had been repaired.

But it was creeping me out, and I couldn’t explain why.

For one thing, it was quiet. “Maybe
too
quiet,” they’d say in the movies. There’s a feeling you get when you’re in someone else’s home in their absence—when a relative is on vacation, perhaps, and asks you to water their plants—that casts a strange pall over the place, and that’s part of what I was feeling in this case.

The town homes were really row houses; they were attached in groups of three. Lawrence’s was a corner unit, so he had only shared a wall on one side, but it still meant that I had to be wary of calling too loudly for him; I’d noticed a car in a spot designated for neighbors and so assumed someone was home next door. They’d know the unit adjacent to theirs was supposed to be empty, and I’d end up explaining my purely honorable intentions to the Manalapan police,
no doubt while my mother, who would have been strolling by in the Antarctic-style weather on a whim, watched in horror.

Yes, that’s how my mind works, and no, I’m not proud of it.

I started out calling in a conversational tone, the way I do when there are civilians in the guesthouse and I need to talk to Paul. “Mr. Laurentz,” I said, as if asking if the mail had been delivered yet or the coffee was brewed. There was no answer.

The living room was no less unsettling in its complete averageness. The plush furniture looked to have been recently vacuumed along with the generic beige wall-to-wall carpet, not the kind of décor I’d have expected from as flamboyant a soul as Lawrence Laurentz. There were no books on shelves, no music in cases, no DVDs visible. Clearly the real estate agent had come through here, too, and had eradicated pretty much any lingering remnant of a particular taste.

“Mr. Laurentz?” I tried, just a little bit more boldly, as I got to the foot of the staircase. There was no escaping it; I’d have to go upstairs. I did notice the lack of creaking, something I could not brag about at the guesthouse. Of course, my stairs were over a hundred years old, so I couldn’t really complain. Because then I’d have to fix them.

There were two bedrooms upstairs, one of which Lawrence had obviously used as a den or office, with a desk that must have at one time held a computer in one corner. The only decorations that indicated Lawrence had ever lived here were theatrical posters framed on each wall. One of them, announcing the opening of
Gypsy
—the original cast, from 1959—was signed by Ethel Merman, Jack Klugman and Jerome Robbins. If the toaster hadn’t gotten Lawrence, the fact that Stephen Sondheim had not signed it had probably killed him.

It also occurred to me that he’d likely taken his “stage name” as an homage to Arthur Laurents, who had written
the book for that musical as well as for
West Side Story
and a great many others.

I called his name a few more times in the den, then advanced to the bedroom, which was the next–to-last place that I wanted to look (the last was the bathroom, but I was fairly sure that having died there, Lawrence would not want to revisit that particular spot). But again, it had been homogenized to a beige, bland sort of place. The den was the only room with a hint of personality left.

“Mr. Laurentz, it’s okay. I talked to my mom, and she’s not mad at you anymore. Please come talk to me.”

Nothing.

Well, I’d gotten an idea when I was in the den, though I hadn’t wanted to try it for fear of alerting any neighbors in the area. But if Lawrence was going to be stubborn about it, though, I’d have no choice.

I walked into the den, looked around and called his name out one more time, still with no response. Might as well give it a shot, and if local security showed up, I could always run like hell.

I took a deep breath and, completely cold, started belting out a tune from
Gypsy
.

“‘You’ll be swell! You’ll be great! Gonna have the whole world on the plate!’”

Lawrence materialized over the desk almost immediately, looking downright nauseated. “Stop!” he shouted. “You’re butchering it!”

I grinned and stopped singing. “So. You were here all along, weren’t you?”

“Yes. Please, just don’t sing anymore.” Lawrence wiped his brow as if there were sweat on it, with a cloth handkerchief he produced from his inside pocket. He was no longer wearing the cape but was still in a suit and tie. Just in case Cole Porter came by later for a few cocktails. Which, let’s face it, was possible. “Why,
why
have you come looking for me? Why couldn’t you just leave me alone?”

“Because you still haven’t told me the whole truth, have you? What was the story with you and Penny Fields? She didn’t just come by to deal with job issues that night. She was
here
because you two were having a relationship. Why didn’t you tell me?”

Lawrence looked profoundly embarrassed and stared at the ceiling, which was only a few inches from his head. “There are some things one simply doesn’t disclose,” he said with a sniff. “But your insinuation that Penny might have had a hand in…what happened to me…is incorrect. She would never hurt me. She didn’t like me, but she wouldn’t hurt me.”

“She had a funny way of showing she didn’t like you,” I suggested. “And your feeling that she wouldn’t throw a toaster in your tub is very touching, but not what I’d call ‘evidence.’ Where was she when you were taking a bath?”

“She went out to get us some tea,” he said, adding, “I refuse to discuss this matter with you any further,” he said. And he looked away, which led me to believe he might be planning on vanishing again.

I sat down in his office chair and looked up at him. “We still don’t really know what happened to you,” I said. “That’s why I didn’t just leave you alone.”

Lawrence wrinkled his nose and looked away. “Why? Nobody ever truly liked me when I was alive. I lied to you about your father. I asked you for help but then withheld information about Penny and the Thespians. I went through your mother’s furniture to find ways to further deceive the two of you. What makes you care?”

I’d had to think about that one myself, so I had an answer ready. “Because every human being deserves to live. Because that was taken away from you and it’s not right.” Then I looked up at him. “And because I disagree that nobody ever liked you. I think it was more a question of
you
not much liking most other people. But you came to my mom after you died, you sought her out. She enjoyed
your company; you’re the one who didn’t want to admit that she considered you a friend. Penny, clearly, liked you. I think you were so afraid that nobody would like you that you beat them to it. You need to loosen up a bit, Lawrence.”

He didn’t speak for a while. Finally, he said, “I think it might be too late for that.”

“You are…existing proof that it’s never too late,” I told him.