Anyone who’d ever seen his movies or met him would recognize him as Shane Halloran. Alive and well and living in New York City.
And being hunted by a killer who’d waited forty-three years for a second chance.
Chapter Eighteen
I opened the door to Apartment 207D and called out, “Addie? We have a guest.”
Addie appeared in the hall, holding back a ridiculously excited Boo-Boo. “You find another ghost, girl?” she asked, looking down at the dog. “Should I let her loose to attack with kisses?”
Shane chuckled. “I’m good with dog slobber and paw prints.” He squatted down to the dog’s level and held his arms out.
Addie gasped. “Well, this is a surprise! Looks like you did find another ghost. Way to go, Boo-Boo.”
Addie let go of her grip on the pup’s collar and Boo-Boo immediately knocked Shane to the floor. For a moment there was a flurry of pats and wild cries of delight—from Boo-Boo. Shane was a bit more restrained, though not by much.
Addie waited by the entrance to the living room, grinning like a gorilla eyeing a banana cream pie. She waited until Boo-Boo decided to allow Shane to leave her side, then politely inquired, “Shane Halloran, I presume?”
“You presume right. And may I presume I’m addressing Miss Adelaide?”
Addie reached down to give him a helpful boost back to his feet. “Make it Addie or I’ll sic the mutt on you again.”
Shane gave Addie a huge hug. “I’m so glad to meet you. Forty-three years late.”
“Likewise. I believe I was in Paris when you two were involved. Holly was a terrible correspondent, and Paul kept hinting my niece was dating someone older and mildly famous, but problematic. Most annoying. I knew I’d get the full scoop from Holly once I flew in from France, but that never happened. I only found out who you were when Holly got back from—wherever she’s been all these years. Which sounds ridiculous when speaking about a ghost. No offense, darling niece.”
“Yeah, yeah. You’re having way too much fun rubbing in the whole spirit thing.”
She ignored me. “So, Shane, how are you dealing with everything? ‘Everything’ being our ghost girl?”
“Hard to wrap one’s head around it all. I have to admit, Addie, I take my proverbial hat off ta ya. Holly told me how well you’ve handled her, um, reappearance.”
Addie said far too serenely, “She doesn’t see how many times a day I pinch myself—or consider pinching her.”
“Gotta find me first, Auntie,” I teased. “Now, ladies and gents, if the greetings and jokes are over we need to tell Addie what just happened in the park. Things are bad. So bad that we need to provide Shane a safe house here for a while.”
Addie and Shane simultaneously asked, “What?” and “Why?”
I gave Addie the highlights regarding the attempted murder of Shane only a few hours ago. I then told her about seeing the article in the Village Voice identifying Jordan Matthews as a resident of Upper Manhattan. Shane handed Addie the paper.
Addie grabbed a pair of reading glasses from the coffee table and studied the photo. “Oh yeah. Well, damn and beyond, Shane Halloran, but you aged way too well. It’s like someone spattered a little flour on your hair and said, ‘Go out and pretend you’re in your seventies.’”
Shane laughed. “Thank you for the compliment. And I return it. I see so much of Holly in your face and since she was twenty-one when I last saw her, I’d say you’ve done a terrific job of looking more like her sister than her aunt.”
She beamed. “You sweet ol’ flirt, you.”
I sighed. “Are you two senior citizens done with the flattery yet?”
Shrugs from both. Addie echoed my sigh. “If we have to be.”
“Well, I’m thrilled everyone still looks young enough to get carded but this is important. The photo has got to be the reason the killer went after Shane.” I tried to get my thoughts in order and finally said, “Look, Shane can’t go back to his apartment and needs to lay low until we can sort this out. Right?”
Addie answered, “Yep. And you’re in luck. I just went to the store this morning so there’s food in the fridge, and there’s always take-out for the duration.”
“And, Shane, you’re taking my room.”
Shane glared at me. Or at least tried to since I was roaming around the room. “I am not taking anyone’s room, including yours. I’ll sleep on the couch.”
I snorted. “Shane. You are over six feet tall. This couch is more like a loveseat. Forget it. My room. If it makes you feel better, Boo-Boo will join you and she tends to steal covers.”
Shane threw his hands up in surrender. “Fine. I’ll take your room. You are a stubborn Irish cuss, Miss Malone, aren’t ya?”
“Undeniably.”
Addie grabbed her cell phone, which was perched on top of a DVD of one of the Bourne movies. “If the sleeping arrangements are settled, I’m ordering Indian food and we can all get down to figuring out who’s after you, Mr. Halloran.”
“Assuming it’s the same person who shot us off the Henry Hudson Bridge.”
“Excellent ideas,” Shane said. “Both the food and the figuring. But I’ll be paying for the food and don’t any of you be arguin’ with me.”
Addie ordered. Shane went to clean up. I sank down into the rocking chair and closed my eyes in an effort to block out the violence I’d witnessed in the park.
Addie waited until the food had arrived before hitting Shane with the question I’d hesitated to ask.
“So, Shane, after forty years, how the heck can you not know who’s responsible? No offense, but it seems to me this person must be someone rich enough to be able to hire hit men and keep news out of the media. Should be easy to find.”
Shane almost whispered, “Addie, the simple answer could well be sheer cowardice.”
“Shane!” I protested. “Not true!”
“No, Holly, it is. I saw you fly into the air. I hid for a few days and read the reports with everyone speculating I was dead. There was no mention of you and I took that as proof you hadn’t made it off that bridge alive. Once the news died down, I just wanted to get as far away from the city as possible. So I did. I didn’t care about anything. I was in shock. I considered coming forward and if someone wanted to shoot me, well, fine. But I guess basic survival instinct kicked in. And given some of my experiences with the cops in ’73, I figured I wouldn’t find any justice if I went to them with what I knew.”
“Which apparently wasn’t much, so I doubt they could have helped,” Addie noted.
“My rationale exactly. Anyway, I found a way to get to Australia and become someone else. The few times I debated coming back and trying to do a little sleuthing to figure out what had happened, well—what good would it do? I couldn’t bring Rob back. I couldn’t bring you back. So I lived in silence until I felt compelled to return to New York.”
“How?” I asked. “I mean, what compelled you?”
“You’ll love this. One fine afternoon at the bar I was working outside of Sydney, I saw a bald eagle perched on some pole right near the ocean. It wasn’t, of course; it was a local bird, a white-bellied sea eagle, but damned if it didn’t look like the real deal to me. I swear he was staring at me and suggesting I come back.” He stared down at the plate Addie had just handed him. “Shoot. It was more like he was demanding I come back. I haven’t had a strong feeling about much of anything since the day I met you. A bloody damn eagle shamed me into returning. And not even a real bald eagle at that.”
I protested, “You weren’t a coward. Hell, you were damned smart to haul it to Australia. If you’d come back earlier, the same thing that happened today would have happened, except I wouldn’t have been in the park to warn you. You’d’ve been dead, right along with everyone else who’s ever known anything. Need I mention Crimson? There was…there is…one massive cover-up going on.
A good one, since it appears no one suspected anything but accidental deaths years ago and now we have unidentified muggers taking pot shots adding to the mayhem and mystery.”
Addie said, “Shane, I’m sorry. And that apology is to both of you. I may be projecting my own frustration about not being here until after Holly died. I doubt I could have done a damned thing to help but then again, I would have been looking at this with the eye of an objective observer. I’m talking about Rob’s draft of the play. I’d been a reporter for about ten years back then. Shit. I could have dug into Rob’s background while all this was going on. If I’d seen a bare portion of the script, something might have struck me about his characters. I don’t know. I’m probably hanging on to a lot of guilt for leaving Paul alone those first months after Holly went missing.”
I proclaimed, “Okay. I’m going to claim my ghostly prerogative and call a moratorium on recriminations and guilt and regrets. We need to figure out who’s responsible for killing Rob and me and Crimson Cloverly, since Shane and I feel her accident was somehow not an accident. Addie, don’t ask. I’ll tell you later. We’re all brilliant and wise and intuitive and we need to stick together!”
Silence. Finally Shane chuckled. “Ghostly prerogative? Did you find that in the manual for spirits?”
“Like it? I just made it up.”
Addie chuckled. “I’ll add it to Chapter Two when I write the book.”
“Meantime, folks, I, Holly Jordan Malone, am officially announcing the start of our informal, impromptu but informative investigation.”
“An alliterative investigation as well,” Addie noted with appreciation. “Okay. What do you guys remember? Big things, little things, if they include Rob or anything associated with Trapped in the Basement. Especially the week before you ended up on the bridge.”
I started with, “Zip. Okay, call it a shade above complete zip but what I’ve remembered so far have been events involving Shane. I do remember Rob telling me he was in danger on the day he was mugged and someone stole the first draft of the script. What strikes me now is he never went inside the theatre where the rest of the cast was waiting, and the only people he talked to in the lobby were Derek, Shane, and me. I can’t recall if Derek’s assistant heard him or not.”
“Where are you heading with this?” asked Shane.
“Well Frannie said Rob got spooked when he ran into someone who had something to do with Vietnam. It couldn’t have been Derek since they were friends. But since Rob didn’t see any of the other cast members the day of the mugging… Oh, shoot, I have no idea if this is at all important.”
“It’s important. I’d already pretty well knocked Derek out of the running for killer.” Shane brightened. “But with he and Rob being good friends, I should be able to safely talk to him. See if he has any answers since we’d be fairly certain he wouldn’t shoot me in the back after tea.”
Addie nodded. “Okay. So one bad guy down and no idea how many to go if your park gunman has friends. What else did Frannie say?”
“Pretty much what we’ve just told you about Rob freaking out over seeing someone from his past,” Shane replied. “Which we already knew.”
I closed my eyes and tried hard to remember what Rob had told me when he asked me to co-author the script, but not to let anyone else find out.
It hit.
My eyes opened wide. “This is a very, very long shot, but it’s the last thing Rob said after telling me he was in danger. He told me if anything happened to him I had to fix it. But I also remember he mentioned something about a support group. I’ll bet he meant a veterans’ group here in Manhattan. If so, could he have seen someone there he knew from the war?”
“Someone who recognized Rob?” Addie asked.
Shane answered, “More than a strong possibility. It could narrow down the suspects—well—if we can find out who else was involved.”
“Do you suppose the group was strictly for the men who’d served? Or could it have included family members?” I asked. “I kind of hope not. We need to narrow our list of suspects, not widen it.”
“We’ll check.”
Addie inquired, “So, who’s on the list? For that matter, do either of you have a list?”
Shane shrugged. “Nothing official. Mainly notes from an Internet search.”
“Well, I made a list,” I said. “And I checked it twice. It’s not huge and it may be wrong but right now it’s all we’ve got. Ready?”
“Yes.” Two voices chorused.
“Okay. In no particular order, these are the people I remember as being in some way connected with Trapped in the Basement and are still alive.” Without hesitation I recited, “Chandra Petrie, Derek Fergus, his wife Angela and her brother Larry, Derek’s no-name assistant, Shane’s not-so-best-buddy Wynn Davenport, and Mr. Rick Sueng Tan.”
I took a deep breath. “And I’d bet my ghostly spirit that one of them is a killer.”
Chapter Nineteen
“Care to share the ‘why’ of your collection of suspects, Holly?” Addie asked.
“I know none of these are exactly original or new. We’ve talked about almost all of them but I found out more when Shane was looking up folks at the café on the computers.”
“You’re a stalker, Holly Malone,” said Shane.
“Arrest me,” I teased. “Anyway, here’s the rundown on motive, at least from the little I remember. I’ll start with Chandra.”
Shane chuckled. “You never did like her.”
I wished Shane could see me wrinkle my nose at him. Instead I replied, “Yeah, well, we’re talking total mutual distaste. She always acted like she owned you and I was a tick stuck to a dog’s back. It’s hard to build a friendship with Miss I’m-So-Superior. Shall I go on?”
“Motive. We get your whole ‘we’re not besties’ deal with Chandra, but this is murder,” Addie said. “Anything really suspicious?”
I stopped. “Wait. Where do you come up with these words? ‘Besties’? Sounds like pajamas for toddlers.”
“Well, I like ‘besties’, so much more than BFF—and before you ask, it means Best Friends Forever. Now, can we ignore the lingo of the twenty-first century and discuss killers?”
“I’ll admit Chandra’s motive is iffy. I mean, if she’d been so determined to snag Shane, why try to kill both of us? Why not just me?”
“Not to mention, why Rob?” Shane asked.
“Which leads back to the play. Was her character too close to something in her past? She’s a big television star now, but I didn’t see much of anything written about her before she hit the big time, at least in soaps. Did she once do something so awful it could have hurt her reputation to the point of getting her blackballed from any and everything show biz?”
“It’s possible,” Shane said. “Although Chandra was always one of those ‘even bad publicity is good publicity’ types. But go on. What about Wynn?”
“He didn’t like me. I’m not sure he liked you. He definitely didn’t like the two of us together. He didn’t like controversy. Heck, I’m amazed he allowed you to take the role.”
“All true. Yet he did, so it makes no sense he’d then kill to get me out of the play.”
“Wynn’s motive could be as simple as sheer prejudice, nothing to do with the play. On the other hand it doesn’t explain Rob’s death at all, so he’s not exactly rising to the top of the list.”
Shane poured himself another cup of chai, a treat I never knew existed before Addie introduced me to it and I was now addicted to. “Okay. Forget Wynn for now. Why are you including Angela and her brother?”
“Angela divorced Derek after a ridiculously short marriage. Kinda weird. Could the play have contributed to the divorce? What does she do these days? We need to find out. Larry sort of insinuated himself into the whole discussion the day Rob was mugged. It’s not the greatest reason for adding him as a suspec
t but he probably knew more about Basement than most of the actors simply because he was Angela’s brother.”
Shane said, “I didn’t consider either Angela or Larry so I didn’t look up anything about where they are now. Easy enough to do.” He turned his phone on and typed in a name.
“Hmm, Larry is the CEO of some company called L.M.O. Angela is the COO.” He glanced up. “They were, I mean, are, twins. I forgot that, but it’s not exactly relevant. Anyway, I can’t see why they’d be interested in killing Rob or shooting at Holly and me. No motive jumps out at me. So, who’s next?”
“Derek’s no-name assistant. She was there the day Rob got mugged and could have overheard him talking to me. Yeah, I know, slim for motive, just like the others.”
Addie rose and began to pace. “Guys, the problem is the play could be motive for anyone. It all depends on whether they equated a character or an event to their past, or a friend or loved one’s. Given the right kind of crazy, anything could have sent someone into a killing spree.”
“Good point,” I said. “Okay. In chronological order, our murderer spots Rob somewhere in New York and recognizes him from their past. Killer then gets involved in the play somehow, to sabotage if necessary. Rob isn’t involved in casting after all. Rob is super slow with the script, possibly because he was worried about finishing it and naming a war criminal, albeit disguised within the story and with major name changes. Our bad guy, not willing to wait for what little of the script Rob did finish, arranges a mugging, reads the draft, realizes it’s more damning than originally feared. He asks himself, ‘Who else knows about this? Who has Rob told?’ And, ta-da! We’re looking at a serial killer.”
Shane agreed with my analysis. “It’s more than a little convoluted but then, I don’t have the mindset of this creep, so mugging and murder were perfectly logical to him. And the scary thing is the only people we’re sure had nothing to do with murder were Holly, Rob, Crimson, and me.”
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