Preserving Peaches

by Pamela Burford

  Burke’s gaze was steady. “I love my wife very much, Jane. It’s not a burden to care for someone when you can’t imagine life without her. And as I said, Ellen has many good days when no one would guess anything is amiss. Or rather, she did before we separated. Now...” He gave a sad shake of the head.

  “She claimed you didn’t let her have a job,” I said.

  “Ellen couldn’t possibly hold down an outside job. She’d tell you so herself during those interludes when she was thinking clearly. After a number of disastrous attempts, I encouraged her to concentrate on the activities that brought her joy.”

  “You said she’s a woodworker?” I said.

  “She designs and constructs birdhouses. Well, she used to.” He produced his phone, tapped the screen, and handed it to me. “This is her Instagram.”

  I scrolled through the pictures. “Oh, these are gorgeous.” And they were. Each birdhouse was more elaborate and whimsical than the last.

  “Most of those have been sold.”

  “Oh. So it’s more than just a hobby,” I said.

  “I converted the garage into her woodworking studio,” he said. “Then on the weekends we did the craft-fair circuit. I also helped her with online sales through her website. She had repeat customers and was justifiably proud of what she’d accomplished. All that ended after she moved out.”

  “Where is she living now?” I handed back his phone.

  He scowled. “In Connecticut, with her sister, Trish. I like to think Trish means well, but her brand of help creates more problems than it solves.”

  “How so?” I asked.

  “Trish believes in alternative treatments for every sort of ailment, no matter how serious. Dietary supplements. Healing crystals. Essential oils. It’s all about auras and chakras, that sort of rubbish. She rejects medical science, particularly psychiatry. The doctors are trying to cheat people, you see, keep them sick. It’s all a dark conspiracy.”

  I thought I saw where this was going. “Does Ellen’s treatment plan include physician-prescribed medications?”

  “It did when she was still seeing a physician. You will recall she mentioned drugs in her letter to Peaches. That I was trying to push them on her, something like that. Sometimes when Ellen was having a good stretch, she’d decide she no longer needed her meds, and then I’d have to monitor her carefully to make sure she kept taking them. When she was having a bad day, my gentle reminders were often interpreted as verbal abuse. That was Trish’s influence.”

  “And now?” I said.

  “For the past half year Ellen’s sister has been ‘healing’ her with her voodoo treatments. She refuses to let me visit, which is ironic considering Ellen’s letter to Peaches had accused me of keeping her from her friends and family. Which was never the case, of course.”

  “I take it Ellen is no longer doing her woodworking?” I said.

  “Correct, and she hasn’t done a craft fair since the summer. Even her website has been shut down.”

  “Isn’t there anything you can do? Legally?” I asked. “I mean, if her proper medication is being withheld.”

  “Ellen is considered capable of making her own health-care decisions,” he said. “There’s nothing I can do for the woman I love, short of kidnapping her. Meanwhile I lie awake at night heartsick over what she’s going through. I know Ellen, I know how confused and frightened she becomes, not only when she’s off her meds but when the two of us are separated for even a short time.”

  Burke sounded so sincere, and yet I had to remind myself he could be spinning a tale for his own criminal purposes. I couldn’t discount the possibility that he’d mistreated his wife and that she’d finally managed to extricate herself from a living nightmare.

  Absently I picked up a slice of pizza and bit off a chunk. Heaven. I wiped my mouth and said, “You say you’re still devoted to your wife, and yet you joined a dating site.”

  “It’s called going through the motions.” His expression was bleak. “Yes, I joined the site, but I’ve yet to go on a date.”

  “A real date, you mean.” As opposed to our phony-baloney date.

  “I should, though,” he said. “It’s been seven months. All my efforts to see Ellen, to even open a dialogue, have been rejected. The only communication we have is through our lawyers. It’s time I accepted that our marriage is over.”

  “I have to admit I was put off by Peaches’s response to Ellen’s letter,” I said. “I mean, on the one hand it was typical Peaches, but I can’t help thinking she might have handled it in a more constructive way.”

  “I’ll tell you who did handle it in a more constructive way,” he said. “The other advice columns Ellen wrote in to.”

  My eyes widened. “There were others?”

  “Two that I know of. One of them, she wrote to about three years ago, the other a little over a year ago, both times during one of her low points.”

  “Similar content each time?” I asked. “I mean, the same sort of complaints?”

  He nodded. “Almost exactly the same letter she sent to Peaches. I only learned about them after the fact. Ellen has her own computer and cell phone, of course, and access to the Internet.”

  “How did those other advice columns respond to her plea for help?” I asked.

  “By actually trying to help her,” he said. “The first columnist happened to be an actual psychologist. She exchanged a couple of emails with Ellen, then spoke with her on the phone to make sure she really was okay. By that time Ellen was doing better and was able to explain the situation and thank the woman for checking up on her. The second time was a bit more fraught, but it all worked out.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “This columnist also emailed Ellen, but she was too depressed to respond. So the man—he was an ethicist by training—contacted the police, who paid us a visit at home. Unfortunately, Ellen was suffering through a particularly bad patch, and she stuck to her accusations. So it was a bit of a kerfuffle, as you can imagine, but the officers handled it in a professional manner, and in the end it was all sorted out.”

  “That’s not the only run-in you’ve had with the cops,” I said.

  “I wouldn’t categorize any of the encounters as run-ins,” he said, “but yes, there have been a few. Fortunately, they’ve all ended satisfactorily.”

  Which meant one of two things: Either Burke was indeed the dutiful husband and all-around nice guy he presented to the world, or he was a sociopath with a really good act. A dog-loving Dr. Lecter.

  “Well, let’s see,” I said. “The cops talked to you back in November after Peaches told them you’d been stalking her. Which, coincidentally, was shortly before she died.” I picked up another slice of pizza. I had to remember not to clean my plate. I’d promised Sexy Beast a doggie bag, and the greedy little poodle wasn’t likely to forget it. “And then our Crystal Harbor detectives interviewed you a few days ago,” I continued, “because the victim of your stalking had turned up as a shriveled corpse. So I guess they figured, you know, another chat couldn’t hurt.”

  “Okay, a tad judgmental,” he said, “but accurate as far as it goes.”

  “What?” I said around a mouthful of pizza. “It’s judgmental to say you were stalking her?”

  “There’s a difference between stalking and harassing. And make no mistake, I bloody well did harass that woman, every chance I got.”

  “So you admit it.”

  “Let me back up,” he said. “After Ellen decided to follow through on Peaches’s divorce edict, I immediately emailed Peaches. I explained the situation and asked her to help defuse the crisis she’d created with her irresponsible advice. I appealed to her better nature, in other words. Sadly, that only works with someone who possesses a better nature.”

  “No one who knew Peaches has ever accused her of having one of those,” I said.

  “It soon became clear she had no intention of trying to make things right. Eventually she changed her email address.”

>   “What did you do then?” I asked.

  “I contacted her editor at You Know It magazine,” he said. “The publisher, too. They ignored me. So I showed up at their offices. They had security escort me out of the building.”

  “So you did do some stalking.”

  “It’s called trying to have a meeting,” he said. “They had no interest in hearing me out. Peaches’s column was a rich source of advertising revenue for the magazine. To them, she was a cash cow. They don’t care about real people or the lives they’re ruining. I realized I could expect no help from anyone involved. That’s when the gloves came off.”

  “I know you did your share of online trolling,” I said.

  “If you want to call it that. I was convinced that if I could generate enough outrage on social media, it would force Peaches, or the magazine, to do something. Apologize. Issue a retraction. Something.”

  “Obviously it didn’t work,” I said.

  “My pain, and my wife’s, were viewed as just another source of entertainment, particularly by Peaches’s dedicated fans.”

  “Did you threaten her?” I asked.

  “I know we just met, Jane,” he said, “but do I strike you as the kind of dim-witted git who’d put an actual threat in writing?”

  “Okay then, did you ever speak with Peaches?” I asked.

  “Not in person, but I did manage to procure her phone number,” he said, “which she promptly changed, naturally. We had one conversation.”

  “And?”

  “And what? Did I threaten her verbally? Knowing she couldn’t prove it?” He wore a pleasantly neutral expression meant to give nothing away while at the same time telling me everything I needed to know.

  I hope you won’t judge me too harshly if I admit I found it hard to blame him.

  Yet isn’t that how sociopaths operate? Manipulating everyone around them while remaining blissfully unencumbered by a pesky conscience?

  “What else did you and Peaches chat about?” I asked.

  “I tried to find out the name of her ghost.” He lifted his last slice of pizza. “No luck.”

  “Wait, her...? Did you say ‘ghost’?”

  “As in ghostwriter.” Watching my jaw drop, he said, “I didn’t realize it either until I read the emails she sent me. They could have been written by a child, one who lacked even a rudimentary grasp of grammar, punctuation, and spelling.”

  “Well, but people are never as careful in email as they’d be in, say, a business letter.”

  “This went well beyond simple carelessness,” he said. “Her writing was a disorganized mess, barely coherent. Granted, the ‘Peaches Preaches’ column wasn’t exactly high literature, but trust me, this woman wasn’t capable of producing even that.”

  I recalled Evie saying that her mother wasn’t a very good writer. “She had an editor, though,” I said. “Isn’t it his job to whip her writing into shape?”

  “The most gifted editor in the world couldn’t have turned Peaches’s prose into anything publishable. The only option would have been a complete rewrite.”

  “Meaning a ghostwriter,” I said. “Hired by the magazine, do you think?”

  “I suppose it’s possible,” he said, “but why would they go to such lengths? If Peaches had been a celebrity, then yes, I could see it, but she was far from a household name when her column debuted.”

  “So you’re thinking, what, that she hired her own ghostwriter?” I asked. “And that You Know It never knew it?”

  “It’s the only explanation that fits,” Burke said. “I reckoned if I could get her to tell me who actually wrote the column that destroyed my marriage, I might be able to persuade that person to intervene on my behalf.”

  “I’m guessing she refused to admit she used a ghostwriter.”

  “Not that I expected her to,” he said, “but it was worth a try.”

  “But what about the nasty tone of her column?” I said. “From what I understand, that was pure Peaches.”

  “All that means is that the ghost was someone she knew. Or more to the point, someone who knew her and was capable of writing ‘advice’ that reflected her malignant personality. What?” He was suddenly alert, watching my expression. “Do you know someone who fits that description?”

  “I might, but...” I shook my head. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “What doesn’t make sense is semiliterate Peaches Gillespey penning the columns that bore her name,” he said. “Who is this person?”

  “I’m probably wrong. No, I’m definitely wrong. Forget it.”

  Burke placed his napkin on the table and signaled the waiter for the check before returning his attention to me. “Ellen is my life, Jane. If I’ve lost her for good, then little else matters. If you know something that can help me get through to her, it would be a grave mistake to withhold it. Please do not underestimate me.”

  10

  Pork Rinds for Everybody!

  SO THAT WAS a threat, right? It felt like a threat, but it wasn’t, you know, blatant or anything. And he said it with that sexy-scary accent, so how was a girl supposed to process something like that?

  I was still fretting over Burke’s words the next evening while preparing for a séance in the home of my new client, Betsy van Heel. It was Betsy who’d hired me to get in touch with her dead husband, Harvey. She’d offered a thousand bucks if I made a sincere effort, and an astounding twenty grand if Harvey actually decided to interrupt his fourteen-year dirt nap to pop in and say howdy.

  I’d tried to explain that this sort of thing wasn’t in my skill set, but Betsy had insisted I give it a try, having thrown away an ungodly sum of money on con men and women over the years. I might not be a professional medium, in other words, but I was a professional Death Diva with a reputation for honesty and integrity, and that was good enough for her.

  In the end, I’d agreed to take the assignment, on one condition. I required Betsy to sign a written statement declaring that no matter the outcome of our séance—whether Harvey deigned to finally make an appearance or remained his old, elusive self—she would never spend another dime trying to communicate with him. I even went with her to have the paper notarized, thinking it might make her take it more seriously.

  Of course, if she decided to break her promise, there wasn’t a darn thing I could do about it. Her reliance on fakes and charlatans was a kind of addiction, and in the end only she could kick the habit. I hoped our signed “contract” would give her a shove in the right direction.

  So this was (fingers crossed) my client’s last hurrah when it came to summoning poor dead Harvey, and I was determined to give it my best shot. While it’s true I’m a confirmed skeptic when it comes to all things supernatural, I do acknowledge the existence of unexplained phenomena. I don’t claim to have all the answers, and I respect the efforts of those who struggle to fill in the blanks. Communing with the spirits via séances has a long, albeit sketchy, history, and during the past five days since accepting the job, I’d made it my business to learn the right way to go about it.

  And lest you accuse me of bilking a grieving widow: The Death Diva code of honor—aka my conscience—would never permit me to take unfair advantage of a client. Not once did I consider trying to bamboozle her out of that twenty grand.

  In any event, by the time I found myself setting up in Betsy’s home office, I’d put in so many hours on preparation, I felt like I’d already earned my thousand bucks. Or I should say, my five hundred. I needed a partner for this job, and Martin was the natural choice since we’d worked together before, so I’d be splitting the fee with him. Unfortunately, the various props I’d purchased to give the séance an authentic feel took another big bite out of my take-home.

  I suppose I could have omitted the props, but cutting corners would have made me feel like one of those frauds who’d taken advantage of Betsy for so long. So in the end, this assignment had turned out less lucrative that I’d hoped. So what? I wasn’t missing any meals.

&nbs
p; Betsy had declared that the séance must be performed in her home since that was where Harvey had lived and where his spirit, or ghost (not the writing kind), or whatever you want to call it, would naturally hang out. I’d chosen her home office for several reasons: It was closed off from the rest of the house, meaning fewer distractions; it used to be Harvey’s man cave, meaning he might be drawn to the space; and it was already furnished with a round table, a holdover from the poker games he’d once hosted there. One of the first things I’d learned about chatting up spirits is that a round table is de rigueur.

  I’d had the bright idea of asking Betsy what her late husband’s favorite color was, thinking that would be a good choice for the tablecloth.

  Plaid. His favorite color was plaid. Seems Harvey wore an awful lot of plaid. Not wanting to get into a verbal tussle with my client regarding the definition of color, I went out and bought a plaid tablecloth, which I’d placed on the poker table, along with several objects that had held special meaning for him: A Romeo y Julieta cigar, lovingly propped in Harvey’s favorite ashtray, which he’d filched from the MGM Grand in Vegas in 1999. His well-used DVD of Dumb and Dumber. A can of Miller Lite. A bag of pork rinds. A bottle of Frank’s RedHot sauce (to flavor the pork rinds, natch). A framed, autographed photo of Sylvester Stallone. The collar and tags once worn by Harvey’s favorite beagle, who was named for his favorite actor. See above.

  To these I added three snow-white pillar candles, which I arranged in the center of the table, around a crystal ball. Seems spirits are attracted to the heat and light candles emit—a cozy break from the damp chill of the grave. I didn’t have any particular plans for the crystal ball, but it had looked so darn cool sitting there in the occult shop I’d visited in Manhattan, I couldn’t resist.

  I heard the doorbell ring, followed by Betsy’s voice greeting Martin. That was another thing I’d learned about séances, that you need at least three people. I’d been planning to act as medium, but Betsy had insisted only a man would do, the better to summon a male spirit. I suspected she was inventing a lot of these rules on the fly, but I was afraid that if I ignored her preferences, she might decide the thing hadn’t been done right, a perfect excuse to go back on her promise to stop spending money on crooks.