Hanging by a Thread (8 page)

“Did they quit?”

“Oddly enough, no. They kind of dared each other, and it turned into one of those macho games. But it worked, they stuck with it, and finally got it done. I think they were even more relieved than we were by the time they finished up.”

Bershada said, “Funny he doesn’t aim any of that stuff at you. I mean, doesn’t Cecil realize you were the reason for all those big changes to ‘his’ house?”

“Well, I
am
grateful he didn’t think I was an intruder and try to run me off,” said Carol. “I wonder if perhaps he understands there’s a bond between Susan and me. For example, just the other night we were finishing supper and I heard music coming from upstairs. ‘What’s that?’ I asked. ‘Do you hear that music?’ Susan’s mother got the funniest look on her face, and Susan went up to see what it was. It was a big old music box, the kind that plays when you open the lid. She brought it down to show us.” Carol moved her hands to describe a box about fourteen by eight inches. “No one had touched it in years, but she walked into the kitchen with it still playing. You know the song, ‘Two Sleepy People’?”

“Sleepless in Seattle!”
exclaimed Emily. “That was one of the old songs from that movie.”

“Yes, and that’s what was playing on the music box. Susan’s mother said Cecil loved that song and bought the music box as a present for his wife.”

“Awwwww,” said Emily. “That’s kind of nice.”

Martha agreed, “For a ghost story, it wasn’t very scary.”

“It scared the carpenters and the plumber. But I’m glad Cecil’s only concern is that his remaining daughter is all right. He loved Susan’s mother the best of his girls, and he’s still concerned about her.”

There was a little silence, then Comfort said, “I saw a ghost once.”

“Tell us about it!” said Bershada.

“Well, remember when Paul and Angela Schmitt were murdered?”

“Oh, not that again!” said Martha. “We talked that to death last week, remember?”

“Did you?” said Carol. “I’m sorry I missed it. I would have told you how Angela and my sister Gretchen were best friends in high school.”

“Did you know Angela?” asked Betsy alertly.

“Not really. But the day she was killed, Gretchen came over and cried for hours in our mother’s kitchen. She was sure Paul had done it; that is, until he was shot two nights later.”

Comfort said, “It was Paul’s ghost I saw, and on the night he was shot.”

“Really!?” exclaimed Carol. “What was he doing? Did he know you? Did he tell you who murdered him?”

“No, it wasn’t like that, not as if he came especially to speak to me. You see, I was walking up Water Street from the Minnehaha ticket office—I volunteer there four days a week when the boat is running,” she explained. “Anyway, it was near the end of the season and I’d stayed late to do some bookkeeping and restock the racks of sweatshirts, so it was after dark. The weather was pretty much like it is right now, wind and all, and there wasn’t another soul on the street. I stopped in front of the bookstore to turn my umbrella right side out, and noticed they had replaced the broken front window. I stood there a minute because my eye was caught by the display of Jim Ogland’s
Postcard History of Lake Minnetonka.
That book has such a nice cover. And then I saw someone in the store. A man.”

“Was he all bloody and awful?” asked Bershada hopefully.

“No. Or at least it was so dark, I couldn’t see much detail. The wind died down suddenly and my umbrella came to its senses, and then I saw someone move. At first I just thought someone was in the store, an employee. But then I realized there was only that dim light burning at the back, the one they turn on as they leave for the night, so then I wondered if I was seeing a burglary in progress.”

“That would have been enough for me,” declared Emily. “There are lots of things just as scary as ghosts, and burglars are one of them.”

“You’re right, and I should have run away, but I was so surprised, I just stood there, gaping. Suddenly, the man stooped down, and I thought he’d seen me, but then he straightened up again. I couldn’t imagine was he was doing. It was dark in the store, and I wasn’t even sure I was seeing someone. He was over beside the checkout counter, near the wall and halfway behind that rack where they keep the finger puppets, or used to. He moved, kind of glided, away from there and went behind that couch they have for browsers. He was standing sideways, and I could see his silhouette against the light, and suddenly I recognized Paul Schmitt. He was standing still, head down, like he was praying, or waiting for something. Then he turned away—and all of a sudden he was gone, like he melted into the shelves. I couldn’t think what he was doing in there. I had been thinking, it’s a burglar, I should go call the police, but I couldn’t get my feet to move. Now I recognized Paul Schmitt, that nice man from church, not some unknown burglar. Then I thought about Angela, and I was embarrassed, like you get when you see someone doing something and he thinks no one is looking. I wondered if he wasn’t paying a private visit to the scene of his wife’s death.

“That made me feel embarrassed to stand there staring, so I got my feet back under control and walked away.”

“You should have called the police,” said Alice.

“And told them what? Any story I tried to tell them would sound ridiculous. I went on to the Lucky Wok and had some of their moo shi pork for dinner and then walked home.”

“Weren’t you scared to go home?” asked Godwin. “I mean, you live alone and all.”

“No, not at all, because I didn’t know it was a ghost I’d seen. I was tired and went to bed before the news, so it wasn’t till the next morning I heard that he’d been found murdered in his house. And when I thought about it, it seemed to me that I saw him in the store right about the time that someone shot him.”

“Ooooooooh,” breathed Bershada, and they all looked thrilled down to their toes—except Alice, but she didn’t say anything.

Emily said, “I suppose he went there to gather up his wife’s spirit and take her with him to the afterlife.”

“Well, I don’t recall hearing any reports that Angela’s ghost was seen in the bookstore,” said Comfort. “Do you?”

“Well ... no,” said Emily. “But that doesn’t mean she wasn’t there. Maybe she knew he was going to follow her into the spirit world and kind of hung around waiting for him.”

“If I were Angela’s ghost, I certainly wouldn’t hang around hoping the ghost of my husband, who I doubt was going to heaven, would come and take me with him,” declared Alice.

“Why wouldn’t he go to heaven?” asked Godwin.

“Anyway, she certainly did,” declared Martha. “She was such a sweet and good woman. Maybe he hoped she would put in a good word for him.”

“That doesn’t explain why she waited for him,” said Bershada. “How did she know he was coming so soon?”

“We don’t know everything about the afterlife,” said Emily. “Maybe she did know.”

That brought a little pause while they reflected on the mysteries of love and the afterlife.

“He did love her very much,” said Godwin softly.

“I don’t think he did,” said Alice. “I think it was more like an obsession.”

“I’d like someone to be obsessed with me,” said Bershada. “Someone whose every thought is about my happiness.”

“No, you don’t,” said Alice firmly. “It’s not about your happiness, and it isn’t nearly as pleasant as true love. And when someone dies, my understanding is that such things as human relationships are abandoned.”

“Oh, I don’t believe that!” said Godwin. “Surely true love would last through eternity! There are all kinds of stories about a ghost coming to the bedside of a husband or wife.”

“Yes, Alice, how can you doubt such serious things as love and ghosts and the afterlife?” said Bershada.

“I’m not doubting the afterlife, which I believe in most firmly,” said Alice. “But ghosts are stuff and nonsense.”

“But all those stories!” reiterated Godwin. “There are fictional ghost stories, I know that, but there are true ghost stories, too. And Comfort is only telling you what she actually saw!”

“I think that when it’s late at night and you’re tired or hungry and already nervous because you’re out in a thunderstorm, or you are all alone in an old house and perhaps have been reading spooky stories, naturally you may conclude an unusual noise, or a dance of headlights on the ceiling, or even your own reflection is a ghost.”

Martha said, “You’re right, of course, Alice. But how to explain what happened to me back when I was about eleven or twelve? It was the dead of winter and the middle of the night. My father used to turn the furnace down at night to save fuel, so it was very cold in the house. I had a thick quilt on the bed and was sound in a cozy sleep—until something bumped into the bed and woke me up. I thought it was the cat jumping up, and I waited for him to come up to the pillow purring like he usually did.” She smiled. “There’s nothing quite as friendly as a cat with cold feet. But it wasn’t the cat, or at least he didn’t come up to ask to be let under the covers. Then I heard a voice say, plain as day, ‘Her eyes are open.’ It was pitch dark in that room, there’s no way anyone could have seen whether my eyes were open or closed.”

“Cool!” said Carol. “Then what happened?”

“Nothing, I burrowed under the covers and didn’t come up till morning.”

There was a reflective pause. “It was probably your mother,” said Alice, “checking to see if you were all right in the cold.”

“No. It was a woman’s voice, but definitely not my mother’s. Anyway, like I said, no one could have seen if my eyes were open or not.”

“Were they?” asked Emily.

“Of course. I told you, I woke up when something bumped my bed.”

“Who do you think it was?” asked Carol.

“I have no idea. And I never heard them again.”

“ ‘Them’?” said Betsy. “How do you know there was more than one?”

“Well, she wasn’t talking to me, she was talking about me. So that meant at least one other ... person was present.”

“Ooooooooh,” said Bershada, moving her shoulders to dislodge a delicious shiver.

Godwin said maliciously, “How do you explain that, Alice?”

Alice shrugged. “A dream, obviously.”

“It wasn’t a dream,” said Martha. “I was wide awake, I’d been wakened by the bump. But there also weren’t any weird lights or footsteps or a chill breeze, or any of the usual stuff of ghost stories. And it wasn’t my father, either,” she said with a little sniff, forestalling Godwin’s next sly suggestion.

So instead Godwin said, “How about you, Bershada? Do you have a ghost story?”

“Well, actually, I do. Only mine’s different from Martha’s, I didn’t know it was a ghost. I thought it was an usher.”

“At a
wedding
?” said Martha, scandalized.

“No, no,” said Bershada, laughing. “At the Guthrie!”

“Oh,
him
!” said Godwin. “You saw Richard Miller!”

“Yes, that’s the name. Have you seen him, too?”

“No, but I’ve heard about him. When did you see him?”

“Oh, this was years ago. My husband’s parents took Mac and me to see
Amadeus,
and this usher kept walking up and down the aisle, blocking our view. The ushers are supposed to go out to the lobby during a performance, so it was annoying. He didn’t seem to be looking for someone in particular, like you’d expect if it was an emergency or something. And he didn’t seem interested in the play, either. He was just kind of observing the audience. I could see he was young, maybe only in his late teens, and he had a big mole on one cheek, very noticeable. I knew he was an usher because he had the sports coat they wear, with the insignia on the pocket?” She made a gesture over her left breast. “So during the intermission we complained to one of the other ushers, and he laughed and said we’d seen Richard Miller, who was an usher back in the sixties who committed suicide.”

“How did this usher kill himself?” asked Betsy. “Hang himself from a balcony rail?”

“
Betsy
!” said Emily.

“He didn’t kill himself in the theater at all,” said Godwin. “He did it in the Sears parking lot on Lake Street.”

“That old place?” said Bershada. She explained to Betsy, “It’s closed now, has been for a long, long time, but the building is still there, and the parking lot. It’s a big building, very nice-looking in that art-deco way. They keep talking about doing something with it, but haven’t so far. Anyway, you’d think he’d haunt that building.”

“Maybe he does,” said Martha. “Only there’s nobody around to see him.”

“Or he haunts the parking lot,” said Comfort. “I can just hear the warnings: ‘Don’t park in row three, slot nineteen, or you’ll come back to find a see-through stranger in your backseat.’ ”

Emily giggled uncomfortably, but Alice cleared her throat in a disparaging way.

Godwin said, “Instead, for some reason, he came back to the Guthrie and he gets in the way of customers.” He frowned and said, “Maybe that’s what Paul Schmitt was doing, not haunting the house he died in, but a place where something sad happened.”

“Or a place where he did something wicked,” said Carol.

“What do you mean?” asked Martha.

“Well, suppose he found out about Angela and Foster and murdered Angela. True love can turn to hate in a wink of an eye, you know. I remember wondering right after Angela was murdered if maybe Paul hadn’t done it.”

Godwin objected, “Well, if that’s a cause for haunting, you’d think Paul would haunt Foster Johns’s office. After all, Foster murdered Paul.”

Alice said, “Nobody knows that for sure. Everyone’s been saying how nice Paul was. Well, suppose he wasn’t nice, despite his smiles. Suppose someone were to get serious about looking into his and Angela’s deaths.” She raised an eyebrow at Betsy. “I think it’s possible there might be other suspects.”

“You shouldn’t speak ill of the dead,” said Bershada with a frown.