Elizabeth Webster and the Court of Uncommon Pleas

by William Lashner

  “That’s interesting,” said Charlie. “Very interesting. Mr. Singh knew her.”

  “Who’s that?” I said.

  “Anil Singh owns a tech company on City Line Avenue,” said Doug. “Singh Electronics. Charlie and I did an internship there.”

  “It wasn’t really an internship,” said Charlie. “It was a couple of weekends with the computer club. Community outreach, you know. They gave us some programming tasks to work on, but the stuff was pretty basic.”

  “It wasn’t BASIC,” said Doug, “it was Python.”

  A pack of hyenas broke out in laughter right there in the library. I glanced up at Henry, who had invited them. He shrugged.

  “Our teacher set it up,” said Charlie. “It should look good on the old résumé.”

  “You can never have too much on the old résumé, right, Henry?” said Doug.

  “It depends,” said Henry. “I think there are some things that Grimes won’t put on his.”

  “Can we get back to work here?” said Natalie, which was as un-Natalie a thing as she had ever said.

  I gave her a look before reading out the following date. Doug whirled the film spool and then stopped at another article. We were, all five of us, quiet as mice as we read.

  BEATRICE LONG, 15

  by Delores Baird

  Beatrice Long, a Willing High freshman, was buried today by her parents, Forrest and Sandra Long of 213 Orchard Lane, at a ceremony at Mount Lebanon Cemetery in Willing Township. Miss Long, who had gone missing on Halloween night, was found by a hiker and his dog one week ago at a secluded spot by Whistler’s Creek. Police have labeled her death a homicide.

  Friends and family remembered Miss Long as a friendly, outgoing girl who loved animals and was a loyal friend to many. Miss Long had been a junior varsity cheerleader and was a member of the Social Action Club. “Beatrice was just so pretty and sweet,” said her sister, Roberta, a junior at Willing High. “She loved the outdoors and was a friend to everyone. For this to happen to anyone is a tragedy, for it to happen to my sister breaks our hearts. When they find who did this, we’ll all make sure justice is served.”

  Also at the funeral was Anil Singh, a classmate of Miss Long’s who has been questioned by the police. An altercation at the funeral between Roberta Long and Mr. Singh was broken up by Officer Derek Johansson, who was attending the funeral on behalf of the police department. No charges were brought as a result of the incident.

  The family has said that donations in lieu of flowers may be made to the Willing Conservancy.

  “You know what?” said Henry. “Just reading about funerals makes me thirsty. Hey, Charlie, didn’t you say something about getting us sodas at the Wawa?”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Harrison, sir,” said Charlie. “Coke?”

  “Sure,” said Henry, “Anything for you guys?”

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  “Seltzer,” said Natalie.

  “Right away,” said Doug.

  “And why don’t you guys get something for yourselves, too,” said Henry, dragging a few bills out of his wallet and handing them to Charlie.

  “Why, thank you, sir,” said Charlie. “That’s very kind of you, sir.”

  When the Fraydens left on their soda run, Natalie turned to Henry and me and said with wide eyes and a low voice, “Of course identification was difficult. She was missing her head.”

  “It didn’t say that,” I said.

  “No, the cops were being polite, but that’s what was going on,” said Natalie. “Read between the lines. The condition of the body making identification difficult. Using the clothes to ID her. Well, they had to, didn’t they, because there was no head.”

  “Did the killer take her head so they couldn’t identify the body?” I said.

  “He’s not so smart if he did,” said Henry. “The clothes were a dead giveaway. And what about fingerprints and stuff like that? No, taking the head was about something else.”

  “That’s a frightening thought,” said Natalie, rubbing a hand across her neck.

  “Do you think the killer threw it in the creek?” I said.

  “Do heads float?” said Natalie.

  We all thought on that for a while without coming up with an answer.

  “But if it was in the creek and it wasn’t found,” said Henry, “then it would have dissolved or been eaten by fish long ago. Beatrice wouldn’t have sent us searching if the head didn’t still exist. I know it.”

  “But you don’t know where it is.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t, either,” said Natalie. “That’s why she’s haunting Henry, to find out. We need to talk to the sister.”

  “We need to talk to Anil Singh,” said Henry.

  “We need to get them in a boxing ring,” said Natalie, “and let them go at it.”

  “What’s the use?” I said. “The police have already gone over this again and again, and they found nothing.”

  “What did your grandfather say?” said Henry. “That sometimes old crimes give up their secrets more easily than new ones. That might be true here. We have to try.”

  “Of course we have to try,” said Natalie. “We’re detectives.”

  I looked at Natalie, with her bright eyes, and knew she was right. This was part of it, my new role as attorney for the damned. It wasn’t enough just to show up in court and win or lose depending on the whims of some undead judge. It was also about doing whatever needed doing to help the client. My father understood—that was why he was caught on the other side. The client now was Henry, and he needed my help, and playing detective was the only way to give him what he needed.

  “Okay, so we’re detectives. What do we do?”

  “The first thing we do,” said Natalie, “is get ourselves trench coats and hats.”

  “Then, I suppose,” said Henry, “what we do next is ask some questions.”

  “And I know just where to start,” said Natalie.

  “I don’t understand,” said Roberta Hamilton as Natalie, Henry, and I sat in her living room and tried to balance teacups on our laps. An older woman with big forearms, Beatrice Long’s sister leaned back on her chair and eyed us suspiciously. “Why exactly are you here again?”

  “It’s for a school report,” said Natalie, repeating the cover story thought up by Charlie Frayden, of all people. The one thing we couldn’t say was some crazy tale about a headless ghost and a ruling by a long-deceased rehanging judge regarding how we go about getting rid of the thing. I mean, we were in the middle of it and we could barely believe it ourselves. “We have to write the story of our houses for history, and when our friend Henry started researching his own house, he learned about what happened to your sister.”

  “What happened,” said Roberta, “was a murder.”

  “We loved that house,” said Sandra Long, Roberta and Beatrice’s mother, who was also sitting with us. “We had such joy in that house, until…”

  “I can imagine staying there would have been difficult,” I said.

  “We had no choice but to move on.”

  “So, we thought that it might be interesting to learn about what happened to your daughter,” said Natalie. “Maybe even find some answers that have been missing.”

  “Wouldn’t that be something?” said Mrs. Long. “Wouldn’t that be remarkable?”

  “We thought so,” said Natalie with a bright smile.

  Even though it was Roberta we had come to visit, it was Mrs. Long who, standing with a walker behind her daughter in the half-opened doorway, had invited us in. And it was Mrs. Long who insisted we stay for tea. Our ghost’s mother was a thin, tired woman with pale blue eyes. She was too old for me to figure out how old she was, but she was old, like really old. And she seemed so sad, though out of that sadness she smiled kindly at us, almost as if she knew us. Almost as if she had been expecting us all along.

  “I’m not sure we want to dredge up old memories for a history paper,” said Roberta. “They’re very painful.”

 
“I understand,” said Henry.

  It hadn’t been easy to track down Beatrice’s sister. She changed her name when she had married, but we found someone online who knew someone who remembered the whole story and where Roberta lived now. Henry had a car account to help him get to his swim practices, so the day after our visit to the library, we caught a ride right from school. Unfortunately, we hadn’t gotten around to getting the trench coats.

  “They never found her killer,” said Roberta. “The case went cold and then they turned their backs. It still hurts.”

  “The police tried,” said Mrs. Long. “They worked very hard, dear, you know that. There was that one officer who kept coming around, asking all kinds of questions.”

  “Was that Officer Johansson, who was in the news reports?” asked Natalie.

  “Yes, that was his name,” said Mrs. Long.

  “Not that he found anything,” said Roberta.

  “One of his sons was a special friend of Beatrice’s, so he took a keen interest,” said Mrs. Long. “But he said he wasn’t even sure it was a murder.”

  “He was wrong,” said Roberta. “Of course Beatrice was murdered.”

  “The officer said the case was confusing,” said Mrs. Long. “The condition of her body when they found her indicated she was murdered, yes, but the cause of death wasn’t clear.”

  “None of this needs to go into the young man’s paper,” said Roberta.

  “In the newspaper article about the funeral,” said Natalie, “there was a mention of some sort of confrontation between you and…what was his name?”

  “Singh,” said Roberta. “Anil Singh. I didn’t think it was right that he was there. He disagreed. And then maybe I tried to make my point a little more forcefully than I should have.”

  “Why shouldn’t he have been there?” said Henry.

  “I don’t really remember. It was so long ago.”

  “No it wasn’t,” said Mrs. Long. “It feels like yesterday. I bought her the skirt from a thrift shop for her Halloween costume that year. I helped her dress for the party. She even wore an old pair of my saddle shoes. She looked so nice all dressed up, instead of her usual ripped jeans and T-shirts. We shared stories and lipstick as she got ready to go and then she was gone. You know it killed my husband, the heartbreak of it.”

  “That’s enough, Mother,” said Roberta.

  “They should know,” said Mrs. Long. “Losing your child is the kind of tragedy from which you never recover.”

  “Did you suspect Anil Singh of something?” said Natalie.

  Roberta glared for a bit, as if Natalie was prying. I was surprised, too. Natalie seemed to be taking to her new role as detective with a little too much enthusiasm. But she asked with such courage and assurance that, after a moment, Roberta replied as if she had no choice.

  “Anil was smart, and handsome, and he played varsity soccer,” she said. “He was the most popular boy in the school. All along we knew he was going to Harvard. Beatrice was pretty and young, but he was out of her league. He shouldn’t have been going out with her in the first place.”

  I saw it then, a still-living resentment aimed at the younger, prettier sister. And it seemed as if Roberta was also jealous of all the attention Beatrice continued to receive because of her death. Talk about ghosts. It kept getting sadder and sadder, the whole Beatrice Long story.

  “Anil was too full of himself,” continued Roberta. “He didn’t take care of her like he needed to. That’s what I was upset about.”

  “How didn’t he take care of her?” said Natalie.

  “He was a boy. He acted like a boy.”

  I glanced at Henry, who nodded along with the answer as if it were somehow too obvious to need an explanation.

  “Now he’s rich,” said Roberta. “He comes to the reunions with that big smile. I had to stop going myself. To see him so content with everything in his life made me sick to my stomach.”

  “More tea?” said Mrs. Long.

  I began to beg off, intending to say, No, thank you, we need to be going, but Natalie interrupted me before I could get out the second word.

  “Yes, please, that would be lovely.”

  “How nice,” said Mrs. Long.

  “And are there any more cookies?”

  “Of course, dear. They’re store bought, I’m afraid, but Roberta can open another box when she refills the pot. And while you’re here, maybe you’d like to look at her things.”

  “Mother, I don’t think that—”

  “We’d love to,” said Natalie. “That would be so great. For Henry’s paper, I mean. Thank you.”

  I looked at Henry, who was staring at Natalie as if her hair had just turned purple. Who was this girl full of questions and a ravenous hunger for tea and cookies? I turned to Natalie and she winked at me.

  A few moments later there was a fresh pot of tea, a plate of cookies, and a cardboard box, square and closed, sitting on the coffee table between us.

  “I had to pack up her room when we moved out of the house,” said Mrs. Long. “My husband couldn’t bear it, so I did it alone. I only boxed what I thought she would have wanted me to keep. I used to sift through the things, as if there would be some clue in there, but I don’t do it much anymore.”

  We all stared at the box. It seemed sacred sitting there, like a crypt. And yes, it was just about the size of a head.

  “Well, go on,” said Mrs. Long. “Don’t be shy.”

  Even as we leaned forward, I couldn’t help but wonder what would have been in my box. My black canvas Converse All Stars, my copy of The Math Book, my scrolled-up credentials? I grew depressed just thinking about it.

  And then Natalie opened the box’s flaps.

  All of it was aged, all of it from a different time. There was a browned Willing High cheerleader sweatshirt and a maroon-and-white pom-pom. There were little records with big holes in the middle: “Lady Madonna” by the Beatles, “Jumping Jack Flash” by the Rolling Stones, something called “Bad Moon Rising” by Credence Clearwater Revival. There was a yellowed paperback copy of Rosemary’s Baby. There were little stuffed animals. There was a pair of black suede high heels. As we searched through the box, Henry looked soulfully at each item, not like he was seeing it for the first time, but like he was remembering it instead.

  Something odd in a clear plastic holder caught my eye. When I reached for the holder—

  ¡Snap!

  I jerked my hand away from the spark and rubbed my fingers to dull the pain. Inside the plastic holder was a skull, small and flat, with almost human-looking molars on the sides and four front teeth. The spark—and the size of the gap between the molars and the front teeth, a gap that would perfectly fit an acorn—clued me in to whose head this was. I picked up the holder and examined the little skull closely. Alas, poor squirrel of my dream, I knew it well. But how had Beatrice gotten hold of it?

  “Do you know what this is?” I said, holding up the plastic holder.

  “I don’t, no,” said Mrs. Long. “But Beatrice loved animals. She volunteered at the zoo, and sometimes she would go into the woods, find injured birds, and bring them home. I can still see her feeding sugar water to her little patients with a dropper.”

  “And what’s this?” said Natalie, lifting a metal whistle that was attached to a long silver chain.

  “Well, now, look at that,” said Mrs. Long. “It was a cheerleading thing.”

  “I didn’t know cheerleaders used whistles,” said Natalie. “I might have to join after all.”

  “Oh, Beatrice loved being a cheerleader,” said Mrs. Long. “She was so proud when she made the junior varsity as a freshman. Most of the rest were already sophomores. Would you like it, dear?”

  “The whistle?” said Natalie.

  “Yes.”

  “Really?”

  “No, we couldn’t,” I said. “These are your memories of your daughter.”

  “They’re just reminders,” said Mrs. Long. “And I need them less and less. It�
�s like every day Beatrice and my husband visit. That’s why I don’t go through these things much anymore. It would mean so much to me, and to Roberta, and even to Beatrice, I’m sure, if they got used again. Take it, please.”

  “Okay,” said Natalie, “if you insist.”

  “In your paper, young man,” said Mrs. Long to Henry, “please make sure to say that she was a darling girl with an open heart.”

  “I will, ma’am,” said Henry.

  “And you also must say that with all the love she showed to animals, and people, too, what happened to her was a crime against nature.”

  “What got into you?” I said to Natalie as we waited for the car to take us back to Willing Township. “You were like some movie detective the way you went after Beatrice’s sister.”

  “I was just asking questions. That’s what we went for, isn’t it?”

  “But you were so relentless, and then you asked for more tea, as if you were some English lady.” I gave my voice a high-pitched British accent. “More tea, please. It’s time for tea.”

  “Don’t you ever watch television, Lizzie? The detective always asks for coffee or tea or something. That way she can’t be rushed out before she asks all her questions. As long as she’s drinking her tea they have to keep talking.”

  “It seemed to work,” said Henry.

  “But then you went and took the whistle?” I said. “That didn’t seem very nice. I mean, it means more to Mrs. Long than it could ever mean to you.”

  “Well, I might try out for cheerleading in the spring,” said Natalie, “so it could come in handy. And look how shiny it is. And it says ‘Thunderer’ on it, which is pretty cool for a dead girl’s whistle.”