The Ghost and The Haunted Mansion (34 page)

I glanced at Eddie. “That man?” I mouthed.

“April wrecked her marriage over her affair with him—that man Jim Wolfe,” Mrs. Fromsette went on. “Now the two want your house!”

I hit the tape player again.

“Why?” Miss Todd’s recorded voice now asked. “Why? Why? Why?”

“April believed that despite what happened between us, you’d still leave me the house. That’s why she did it.”

“Why? Why? Why?” Timothea’s voice repeated.

“Anything I inherited, April knew I’d share with her. It’s not her fault what happened. That man Jim Wolfe put her under his spell!”

“WHY ARE YOU TORMENTING ME?” Timothea’s voice boomed.

“I told you, it wasn’t me! I’m so sorry, Timothea. Arthur tried to tell me what April was planning. He tried to stop her. Then he had his accident, and after that, the will to care about anything anymore went out of me . . .”

The woman’s voice trailed off. I hadn’t played the tape for a few moments, so I could hear her torrent of words. Now, in the silence that followed, Mrs. Fromsette began to become suspicious.

“Timothea? Are you there? Is that really you?”

I hung up and dropped back in my chair. Eddie and Leo visibly relaxed, too, but not Seymour.

“
April
was behind all this?” he said. “But she told me she
liked
me!”

Leo grunted. “Women are fickle, Tarnish. Get used to it.”

I rolled my eyes. “Seymour, you said April has her own phone line, right?”

Seymour’s brows knitted. “Yeah. So what?”

“So I have another idea,” I replied, thinking about what Jack once told me: Criminals always give themselves away. You just need to set up some bait and wait for them to take it.

“But first we have to set some things up back at the mansion,” I told the men. “And, Eddie, we’re going to need a little more help, too.”

 

IT WAS NEARLY dawn when the mansion’s doorbell rang, but it was still dark enough for our purposes. At the sound of the regal
bing-bong,
a nervous Seymour jumped out of the love seat.

“Calm down,” I told him. “You know what to do.”

Seymour nodded, then hurried to the front door. I stayed in the den with our other guest, close enough to eavesdrop on the conversation in the foyer.

“What’s going on, Seymour?” I heard April ask. “You sounded frantic on the telephone.”

“I’m sorry to bother you so late. I mean, so early,” he said, locking the door behind her. “Things got really weird around here, and I didn’t know who else to call.”

“You can always count on me,” April replied, her tone sincere. Then, after a pause: “You said you found something really valuable in the house. Is that right?”

“Yeah. Come into the salon and I’ll show you.”

April rounded the corner a moment later, and stopped dead, her beautiful turquoise eyes wide at the sight of Jim Wolfe and me sitting on the couch. The man was still wearing the same clothes from the Quibblers meeting, but they were rumpled now and he smelled like a gin mill.

“You should have told me you had guests, Seymour. I’m hardly dressed to meet polite company.”

After Seymour’s call, April had pulled a pair of tight jeans over her long legs, stretched a T-shirt, sans bra, over her model-slender torso. Despite her haste, I noticed the woman had taken the time to fix her sleek, sun-kissed hair and perfectly apply her makeup.

“Hello, April,” I said, rising. “How have you been since the séance the other night? I was worried about you.”

She didn’t answer. Instead, her turquoise gaze shifted to Jim Wolfe, who refused to look up or even acknowledge her presence.

“Who’s your other guest?” she asked.

“Oh, come on, April,” I said. “You know Jim Wolfe. In fact, you used to do Jim’s bookkeeping when you lived in Boston.”

April shook her head. “No, you’re mistaken. I never met him before.”

“In fact, Jim was just telling us a funny story about how you convinced him to sabotage Seymour’s brakes the night you learned that Mr. Tarnish here inherited Todd Mansion instead of your mother.”

“I’m leaving.” April took a single step and bumped into a wall of Seymour. “Sit down,” he said, backing her into a chair.

“No, I—”

“Sit down!” Seymour barked, and she dropped into the seat.

“What’s this all about?” April demanded, submerging her obvious fear with some quickly mustered arrogance.

“It’s about murder, Mrs. Briggs,” I said. “The murder of your aunt, Miss Todd. It’s also about Timothea’s restless spirit, which still haunts this house.”

April’s glossy mouth twisted into a disgusted sneer. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I saw the ghost, April,” Jim Wolfe said, speaking for the first time. “Miss Todd is with us now. She won’t rest until you admit your guilt.”

April’s eyes narrowed. “This is some sort of sick joke, isn’t it?”

Just in time, I heard a rushing sound, like a wind blasting through the room. Yet we felt no current of air and no curtain stirred.

“What’s that noise?” April asked.

Jim Wolfe met her nervous gaze. “She’s coming,” he said ominously.

“Who’s coming?” April’s voice cracked.

“Why, Miss Todd, of course,” I said.

“What!” she cried, her voice just on the edge of panic.

The lamps in the room flickered and then went out. Now the crimson blaze in the fireplace was the only illumination.

“Miss Todd wants you, April,” Seymour said. “She told me so herself. Timothea won’t rest until you confess your crime.”

The howling intensified, and over the noise we heard the sound of a woman’s sobs.

“Look! It’s Miss Todd’s ghost!” Jim Wolfe shouted, pointing to the staircase.

April whirled and her eyes went wide when she saw the silhouette floating down the steps. She gasped. “It
can’t
be.”

“It’s her, I tell you!” Wolfe cried. “Look at the clothes. The tiara on her head! It’s the ghost of Miss Todd!”

On cue, an eerie, scarlet glow illuminated the figure on the staircase. Not enough light to reveal any detail, just enough to give the impression of a supernatural presence.

Jim Wolfe shrank back on the couch. Then he clutched his throat with both hands. “She . . . she’s killing me,” he rasped. “April!”

“Jim, this is a stupid trick!” April cried. “Can’t you see that?”

“My heart,” Wolfe gasped, reaching into his jacket as if to clutch his chest. “You have to tell them or I’ll die!”

“Jim! Snap out of it!” April shouted.

“Confess!” he demanded.

“What’s happening to you?” April howled. She tried to get out of her chair but Seymour pushed her back down again.

“No,” she rasped, staring in horror as Jim Wolfe began to choke and cough. Then he brought his hands out of his jacket and covered his mouth with them.

“He needs help!” April shouted at Seymour. “Call an ambulance!”

Seymour held April back as she watched Wolfe wail and convulse and slump back onto the couch. His hands dropped limply to his side, and bloodred gore gushed out of the man’s mouth and rolled down his chest.

“No! No! Help him! Please!” April shouted.

“You know what the spirit wants!” I said. “We know already, April! Jim told us!”

“Yes! All right! Yes!” April yelled. “I
killed
Miss Todd. I used the stuff in the secret room under the house to frighten her to death. Now
please
, get Jim an ambulance!”

Suddenly the room was filled with light. April jumped up and lurched toward her lover. Strong hands reached out and grabbed her before she could make it to Wolfe’s side.

“What! Who?” April sputtered.

Eddie Franzetti snapped handcuffs around the struggling woman’s wrists. Chief Ciders stepped out of the darkness, joined by Deputy Bull McCoy from the steps.

“April Briggs, you’re under arrest for the murder of Miss Timothea Todd. You have the right to remain silent . . .”

As Ciders finished reading April her rights, Jim Wolfe opened one eye, then both. He glared at Eddie. “Am I
done
?”

Eddie shook his head. “Not by a long shot. We’re going to book you, too—
and
get a statement.”

Jim Wolfe smacked his bloodred lips and ran the back of his hand along his gore-soaked mouth. “What is this stuff anyway?”

“My family’s pizza sauce,” Eddie replied. “Delicious, isn’t it?”

“Come on,” the chief said to Wolfe.

Sheepishly, the construction hunk rose and Bull McCoy cuffed him. Without an escort, Jim simply followed Chief Ciders out the front door.

I stepped under the chandelier and gave a thumbs-up to the surveillance camera. “Good job, Leo. You can come in now.” Then I faced Eddie. “You were great, too. I couldn’t have done this without you.”

Eddie smiled. “Face it, baby, we make a good team.”

My eyes widened. “
What
did you say?”

But Eddie was interrupted by Bull McCoy. “We found Wolfe right where you said he’d be, Mrs. McClure. He was boozing it up at the girly bar with Bud Napp.”

“Oh, jeez,” I muttered. “Do me a favor and don’t tell my aunt Sadie about the girly bar part.”

“Jack!” I shouted in my head. The sweet breeze was back! I couldn’t believe it. His presence was swirling around my body, brushing coolly past my cheek. “You’re here! You didn’t fade away!”

“Oh, yeah? Since when? I’ve been trying to reach you all night!”

“Why didn’t you say something? Why didn’t you answer me?”

“I get it.” I raised an eyebrow. “So how did I do?”

I smiled wide just then and Eddie caught it. “Gotta go, Pen,” he said with a smile of his own. “I want to be in on April’s interrogation.” Then he pointed at the cardboard cutout on the steps, the one dressed in Miss Todd’s clothes, wig, and tiara. “You want that back?”

“The Zara Underwood standee? Why? You need that for evidence?”

“No. I’d like to have it.”

“I don’t think your wife would be too happy about that.”

“She won’t see it. I thought the guys at the station would get a kick out of it. Most of them are reading
Bang, Bang Baby
.”

“I guess I’m in the clear now,” Seymour said. “Hey, Eddie, thanks for your help.”

“Don’t mention it,” Eddie said.

“Oh, and Bull!” Seymour called. “One more thing. Something I owe you.”

“What is it
now
, Tarnish?”

I heard a smack, and saw Bull’s wide butt hit the plush area rug. Seymour stood over him, shaking his just-used fist.

Stunned, Bull rubbed his chin.

Eddie glanced at Seymour, then glared at Bull. “What are you laying around for, Deputy?” he barked. “We’ve got work to do!”

EPILOGUE

Don’t hurry away, old man. We like you around. We get so few private dicks in our house.

—The Long Goodbye
, Raymond Chandler, 1953

 

 

 

“OKAY, MOM, THE dumps are stocked up. What do you want me to do next?”

Spencer’s face was red, this time from exertion and not the mild sunburn he’d brought home from camp last week. He’d been busy since eight this morning, first hauling regular and recyclable garbage to their respective bins, then restocking the picked-over displays.

“A new standee arrived yesterday,” I said. “You can put it together.”

Spencer grinned and saluted. “Okey-dokey,” he said before bounding off to the stockroom.

Sadie appeared at my shoulder. “Where’d he get ‘okey-dokey? ’ That’s not the sort of slang I’ve heard youngsters use. That’s an old-fashioned phrase.”

“Oh, he’s probably just watching those classic black-and-white cop shows again on the Intrigue Channel.”

“I see,” Sadie said.

The front door buzzed before I could give it any more thought. I moved to the front of the store and saw Eddie Franzetti in a sharp blue suit, waving at me from the other side of the glass.

“You’re out of uniform,” I said, unlocking the door.

“Like it?” he adjusted the silver-and-blue silk tie. “I’m driving to Providence to give my final deposition on the Briggs-Wolfe mess. Lots of state officials and lawyer types.” He smiled. “Just like Seymour, I’m blending in to my environment.”

“Come on in.” I led him to the counter, where Sadie greeted him and he helped himself to a warm, glazed pecan roll from the Cooper’s bakery box.

“So what’s the
almost
final verdict?” I asked, pouring him black coffee from our thermos.

“Plea deal all the way,” he said between bites of buttery roll. “Jim Wolfe cooperated, so he’ll do less time. But he’ll
do
time, and that’s what counts.”

“And April?” I asked.

“She’ll probably plea down to manslaughter on Miss Todd’s murder. ‘Frightened to death’ is a tough count to prove. But her stepfather is a whole other ballgame. When she confessed to killing him on the boat, that put her away. There’s a psychological evaluation pending, but I can’t see the shrinks helping her.”

I didn’t, either. It seemed to me April’s sickness came from an overdeveloped sense of entitlement and a whole lot of greed. The psychologists haven’t identified those traits as pathologies. Not
yet,
anyway.

“So what exactly was the story on April and her stepfather?” I asked.

Eddie washed down another bite of roll with a gulp of coffee. “Arthur Fromsette got curious about what April was doing, taking that path from their house to Miss Todd’s folly so often. One day, he followed her. The scheme to scare her aunt to death came out. April admitted that she expected her mother to inherit Todd Mansion. Mother Fromsette always had been generous to a fault with her daughter—loaning her money, paying off credit cards close to the point of personal bankruptcy. So April figured anything her mother inherited was as good as hers. But Arthur was appalled. He knew about her affair with Jim Wolfe, too, and probably the fact that April was cooking Wolfe’s books with the tax man to keep his business going.”