And that reminded me of my argument with Paul to begin with. “Are you saying I’m not any good at it?” I asked. I didn’t mean to sound angry with Melissa but my voice was not performing as I was requesting.
“That’s not it,” my daughter was quick to answer. We got out of the car and walked toward the back door, Maxie floating alongside us. “I’m saying it’s better to have two people working on something than just one. In school when we do group projects, you have to let other people do stuff, too.”
“Like how I do all the research,” Maxie helpfully chimed in. She doesn’t do all the research but she has a need for validation that she exercises more frequently than I do my triceps.
I opened the back door and walked into my kitchen. Vance McTiernan was there, hovering by the refrigerator as if he was about to get some food, though he was, of course, far beyond the need for nourishment. At least physically.
It had gotten to the point now where I sort of expected to see Vance; you can get used to anything. It’s like when you get a new sofa and you can’t help but admire it whenever you walk into the room, but eventually it’s just the thing you sit on.
Maybe Maxie and Liss were right: maybe I should just swallow my allegedly misguided pride and ask Paul for help. He wasn’t the type to lord it over me and I would feel better if things could be at least closer to the way they usually were when I pretended I was a detective. I’d seek him out shortly and get him on board.
“What’s going on, Vance?” I asked when we were all inside the kitchen. I put my car keys on the hook next to the kitchen door. See how casual I was about having Vance McTiernan in my very own kitchen? I’m so professional.
“Where have you been?” He sounded insistent, which caught me off guard.
“I was doing some work on your case,” I said. It is slightly possible I had the smallest touch of defensiveness in my voice. It is also possible I was lying, since technically I had been out collecting my daughter from school.
Then I sneezed, just to remind me of what I hadn’t done, which was getting some allergy medicine from the drugstore. Absolutely next on my agenda after the impending spook show.
“Have you been crying?” Vance asked.
Maxie, floating near the ceiling (Vance was lower, more on eye level with me), snorted.
“No, I haven’t been crying. I have allergies.”
Melissa, normally interested in such things, hustled through the kitchen and toward the stairs to her room without stopping. Odd, but she’s eleven.
“Well, if you need something for it, I know a good pharmacist in almost every town in the world,” Vance said. Suddenly I was glad Melissa had left the room.
“Maybe another time, Vance. I think with this one I’ll go for the over-the-counter stuff.”
“Your choice, love. I wanted to tell you there’s someone I think you should be looking for. Friends in the business, who only just passed on recently, tell me she had a big album on the way from Vinyl Records. Maybe that’s why somebody wanted her dead. Jealousy, or greed or something.”
Now, please keep in mind that I worshipped Vance McTiernan’s music. I’d spent much of my life identifying with him and wondering what it would be like to have him as a friend. Before I went to college, I spent a week in my room playing Jingles albums to get me past my anxiety about leaving home (don’t tell my mother, okay?).
But I knew a line when I heard it. And I was hearing it.
Maxie was faster than me, though. “Oh, gimme a break,” she howled from the ceiling. “These days anybody who wants to can have an album. Why would somebody kill your daughter because of hers?” She pointed at me. “You’re gonna have to do better. She’s not as stupid as you might think.”
“Don’t help me,” I told her. She looked a little surprised. Makes you wonder.
“I’ve simply realized the error in my ways,” Vance said, his accent getting just a little less Ringo Starr and a little more Kenneth Branagh. “You were right, Alison. I wasn’t thinking straight. I was so upset with my grief that I wasn’t helping you find Nessa’s killer. I want to help now. You got through to me and I want to thank you for it.”
He floated over toward me and put his hands over mine. It’s not true that the ghosts can’t touch us at all; they can. In fact, Maxie and Paul have been capable of carrying Melissa through the “flying girl” sections of the spook shows—something all parties concerned who aren’t me enjoy immensely—and Maxie once carried me out a window.
Vance McTiernan’s hands on mine felt neutral and unresponsive. It was like having an object touch me. It wasn’t scary or threatening; it had no sensation attached to it other than a sort of inanimate contact. I was at once surprised and disappointed: The idol of my adolescence had just touched me and he might as well have been a block of wood.
“You helped me see the error in my ways,” he said. “You did it through the way you think and the way you talk. I can’t possibly thank you enough.”
This tactic should have worked. Vance was a consummate showman who knew how to put over an act to an audience. But he had miscalculated in one crucial area. He had not considered my past (which was not his fault because he knew nothing of my past). If he had, he would have known that was exactly the kind of line The Swine had used on me a hundred times, and he would have realized that I could spot that hogwash seventeen miles away.
“Nice try, Vance,” I said. “Now tell me what’s really going on.”
Vance actually looked hurt. How could I not have simply swallowed his insincere praise and utterly false declarations of change when he was pretending to mean them so deeply?
“What I said,” he tried.
“I don’t think so. You have an agenda. You’re a man who’s used to getting what he wants. And now you want me to believe your daughter was murdered, and to some extent I do. But if you really think I’m going to do what you ask, you’ll have to tell me the truth. So I’ll ask again: What’s really going on?”
“I read about the album in Billboard, in the back section that lists new signings. Nobody I know told me about it. I made that up.” His voice was raspy and forced.
“Why?”
“It’s part of my charm,” he said. And then he was gone.
Maxie made a noise with her lips that I can confidently report was not meant to be respectful. “Something’s definitely going on with him,” she said.
“Ya think?”
I walked out of the kitchen and into the den, where once again Maureen Beckman was sitting, this time with a long scarf she was crocheting. “How’s it going, Maureen?” I asked as I passed by.
She looked up as if I’d startled her from a light nap. “Oh, I didn’t hear you there, Alison. I’m doing just fine; how about you?”
“Pretty much the usual,” I said truthfully, and smiled. She didn’t need to know what my “usual” was.
The scene with Vance might have given me more resolve. It might have convinced me that I was definitely on the right track, because you can be sure that you’re doing something right when a person without a lot of credibility tells you to do something else. It might even have made me feel empowered and fierce, as if I should go out and start snooping on Once Again immediately, but I had that planned for tomorrow.
Instead, I had a sneezing attack in my front room just as I heard my mother call from the kitchen on the other side of the house. “We’re . . . I’m here!” she shouted. “And I could use some help with the groceries!”
Knowing it wasn’t a dire emergency, I didn’t break land speed records getting back to the kitchen. Maxie had vacated the premises, probably in favor of the roof. Once there, I saw Mom unpacking the child’s backpack she uses in place of a purse (“It’s easier on my arms”) with what appeared to be enough food for seventeen people.
“Did you invite the 101st Airborne Division without telling me?” I ask
ed, grabbing eight ears of corn from her hands and putting them on the counter. “There’s only four of us who’ll be eating dinner.” Sure, there would probably be three or four other people in the room while we ate, but being dead apparently cuts back one’s appetite pretty severely.
“I get what’s on sale,” Mom said. “Don’t be a wise guy.”
“I’m not criticizing what you bought. It’s how much of it you bought.”
“How do I know how hungry Josh will be?” Mom still acts like it’s a novelty when Josh shows up for dinner. She pretends this hasn’t happened at least twice a week for the past year. “He works hard all day.”
I would like to explain right here that my mother was not taking a dig at me, not implying that I don’t work hard all day. My mother believes everything I do is astonishingly wonderful. Yeah, you think it sounds good, but believe me it gets to be a real pain after thirty years or so.
My father, who was removing an uncooked beef brisket the size of the Battleship Missouri from Mom’s backpack, floated over to the fridge and put it inside by hiding it in his jacket (which was a very large jacket), walking into the fridge, and then emerging sans brisket. It’s a system, and it works for him. “Hey, baby girl,” he said.
To this day I get the urge to hug Dad when he calls me that, but since that wasn’t going to be a rewarding experience, I gave him my best grin and said, “Hi, Daddy.” He loves it when I call him that. “I’m glad you’re here.”
My father looked over, eyebrow raised. “What needs fixing?” He knows about six times more about home maintenance than I do.
“Nothing, for a change.” Dad looked disappointed, so I added, “But the handle on the toilet upstairs is a little wobbly.”
He gave me a satisfied nod. “I’m on the job.” And off to the basement—where I keep my tools—he sank.
Mom and I finished unpacking the ingredients for our dinner. My mother can take something the size of a backpack and pretty much fit an entire restaurant kitchen’s cooking equipment into it. The woman can pack.
“Is Mr. McTiernan still here?” she asked casually.
“Yeah, and I’m really sort of conflicted about it.” I updated Mom on the situation and told her how Vance had lied to my face only minutes ago under circumstances I didn’t especially love.
Mom listened carefully, wiping down a counter I thought was already clean, and sort of puckered her face, which indicated that she was thinking. “You’re reacting differently to this than to anything before,” she said finally. “You really want to help this man because of the music you listened to when you were young.”
“Well, yeah, but also because it really does seem like something crazy happened to his daughter, Vanessa, and nobody’s done anything about it,” I said. “Isn’t that a good reason?”
Mom’s face twitched the way someone’s does when they’re worried that what they’re about to say will offend or anger the other person. “Yes it is, but that’s never really driven you before. Anytime one of these investigations came up, you did all you could to get out of it.” Then she actually took a step back as if I was in danger of exploding and she wanted to shield herself from the fallout.
“This is different,” I said, doing my very best to exude calm because I didn’t want Mom to think she’d crossed a line she shouldn’t. “This is one I took on myself, and, yes, it was because of the Jingles and what they mean to me. But now . . . now I don’t know.”
“The way you talked to Paul last night,” Mom said. “That wasn’t like you.”
That again. “I have to apologize to him. I just got unnerved when he told me not to trust Vance, and then I thought he was telling me I was a bad detective and I got mad.”
“I was telling you that,” came the voice from behind me. “I think you’re in over your head and you should stop investigating immediately.”
I turned around to see Paul, his goatee looking more unkempt than usual and his hair mussed, which frankly shouldn’t be possible, hovering near the kitchen door. It took me a moment to digest what I’d just heard.
“Don’t pull your punches,” I told him. “Tell me what you really think.”
“I just did.” Paul is from Canada. Sarcasm just doesn’t come naturally to him. It’s more of a Jersey thing.
“Alison.” He floated over and tried to soften his expression. “I have been concerned about you since Vance showed up yesterday. You are not thinking rationally. You are acting like an overenthusiastic teenager when he is around. Whatever this connection is that you have to Vance, it clouds your judgment. You’re getting yourself into a situation you would never allow under normal circumstances.”
“The part I can’t get past is where you’re saying I’m a bad investigator,” I told him. “That’s what’s hurting me.”
Paul looked away. That isn’t ever a good sign, in case you’re wondering.
“So deep down that really is what you think,” I said. “Even when you told me I was improving, you meant that I was marginally less awful than before, is that it?”
“No.” But he still wouldn’t look at me. “I really do think you have potential, and that you are progressing.” Then his eyes narrowed and he did face me. “I thought you never cared about this before. I thought it was a question of commitment.”
So that was it. Paul had been harboring resentment because I hadn’t been taking his “detective agency” seriously enough. Well, I do believe that he tends to see it as something more than it is—namely, a real detective agency—and that tends to lead to some less than reverential remarks on my part. That, too, is a Jersey thing.
“I’m sorry if I made you feel that way,” I said. From the corner of my eye I could see Mom beaming at me. She loves it when I’m reasonable, if only because she doesn’t get to see it very often. “I act like that because I’m insecure about it.” Jeez, I hadn’t opened up this much to the therapist I saw when The Swine left for sunnier climes. “I didn’t mean to give you that impression.”
Naturally, the next thing I’d hear would be Paul apologizing for the way he had made me feel and I could be incredibly gracious about it. Then we’d be back on equal footing, he could tell me what the heck to do about Vance and the Vanessa investigation and I could breathe out for the first time today.
“Very well, then,” he said.
I waited. One Mississippi, two Mississippi . . . Nothing.
“That’s it?” I said. “I apologize for something and open up like that and all I get back is, ‘very well, then’?”
Paul looked surprised. “I don’t understand. What were you expecting?”
“Don’t you want to apologize for making me feel like you thought I was a bad detective? And then help me figure out Vanessa’s death?”
I wouldn’t swear to it in a court of law, but I’m pretty sure I saw Mom wince.
Paul gave me the same look he would undoubtedly give someone who told him the aliens were coming for her and she knew because of the signals coming from her tinfoil hat. “I’m sorry,” he said in a tone so unconvincing I doubted Melissa would have believed him. When she was two.
“No, I can tell you aren’t.”
He spread his hands and looked toward the ceiling, no doubt for guidance in dealing with someone irrational. Which would be the place to look, because Maxie was probably up there somewhere. “I honestly don’t know what you want,” he said. “I warned you from the very first that I thought taking on Vance McTiernan’s investigation was a mistake, yet you decided to go ahead. That’s your prerogative, but I don’t see why my opinion on the subject should change.”
Mom was filling the teapot with water. It was much too early to start cooking dinner and she’s uncomfortable in a kitchen unless she’s making something. “I think Alison is trying to ask you for help,” she said to Paul. Then she glanced toward me. “Isn’t that right, honey?”
I didn’t know how to answer. Paul clearly wanted to make some kind of nutty point about how he was right and I should have listened to him all along, and I wanted him to validate my efforts and help me with something I thought was becoming too difficult for me to handle alone.
If I’d wanted to have this kind of problem, I could have stayed married to The Swine.
It didn’t matter anyway, because Paul looked at Mom and answered, “I don’t see how I can help with an investigation that is based on the statement of an unreliable client.”
There were sixteen different ways I could have argued with that. I could have pointed out that we’d had clients who had been less than completely truthful before and Paul hadn’t minded. I could say there was evidence—Paul’s favorite thing—beyond just what Vance had told us. That there was some strange data in the medical examiner’s report. That it was weird Vance had ordered me off the case as soon as I’d found something to investigate. Four or five other tactics might have come to mind.
Instead I said, “This is because I asked him to play during the spook shows, isn’t it?”
Paul stared at me, opened his mouth, made no sound, and sunk down through the kitchen floor.
“That didn’t go so well, did it,” I said to Mom.
“No dear, it didn’t,” she answered. “Would you like some cocoa?”
Nine
The ghost with the wagon was outside the house when I went to pick up the newspapers from the curb the next morning.
“Have you seen Lester?” she demanded as soon as I walked out the front door.
“Not yet,” I said. I don’t have many neighbors but I do usually wear an unconnected Bluetooth device in my ear when I’m outside, just to cover any talking I might do to people who “aren’t there.” I didn’t have it on now, just to retrieve the papers, but on the other hand, my building does have a sign on it that says Haunted Guesthouse. Passersby would just have to cope.
“I’ve been asking around, but I haven’t gotten much response. Can you give me a more detailed description?” I asked as I bent to pick up the New York Times. We are a classy establishment.
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