Gem of a Ghost: A Ghost of Granny Apples Mystery

by Sue Ann Jaffarian

  Lin laughed. “You mean that hippy-dippy place in San Clemente?”

  “Serenity Place seemed quite lovely to me,” challenged Emma. “And Lainey appeared content. Her doctor told me she’s greatly improved.”

  Lin replaced his cap. “We tried to get her into a place that would provide real help, not some touchy-feely summer camp for spoiled brats.”

  “Lin, please.” Joanna glanced at her husband. “Lainey wanted to go there, and she did. She’s getting help, and that’s all that matters.”

  “Help. Bah! All she’s receiving is reinforcement of her bad behavior.”

  Lin turned his gaze from Emma to Phil, looking for confirmation of his opinion. He received none. “My stepdaughter is a drama queen, plain and simple.”

  Emma felt her eyes narrow in anger in spite of her attempt to keep her face a blank tablet. “You don’t believe Lainey tried to kill herself?”

  He weighed his thoughts like whole coffee beans before letting them spill. “I believe she tried to make it appear as if she were killing herself.”

  Lin leaned back in his chair and crossed one long leg casually over the opposite knee. “But, come on, we all seem to be reasonably intelligent people here. If someone really wanted to kill themselves, they would eat the barrel of a pistol or something irreversible like that.” He raised his glass to make the point. “The first two attempts were clearly daddy rage, and the last was a joke.” He took a long sip of his cool drink. “Who in the hell tries to stab themself?”

  Phil asked dryly, “You’ve never heard of hara-kiri?”

  Lin ignored the comment. “Just spoiled, unbalanced baby divas looking for attention, that’s who does things like that.”

  Emma wasn’t watching Lin. Her eyes were on Joanna’s hands. While she appeared calm, her fingers were fidgeting with the china coffee cup as if it had a paper label that could be peeled off.

  “Did you find that man as insufferable as I did?” While Emma talked, her fingers were flying, typing out a text message to Kelly on her phone.

  At the wheel of Emma’s SUV, Phil chuckled. “He was pretty full of himself, that’s for sure.” He glanced over at Emma. “What are you writing over there, a novel?”

  “I’m asking Kelly if she’s ever met Linwood Reid or if Lainey mentioned him to her.”

  “Remind me to find that Forbes article for you.”

  “I’d love to read it.” Emma finished the text off with xoxox, Mom and put her phone away. “You didn’t tell me you knew who he was.”

  “And you didn’t tell me Joanna was married to Linwood Reid. You only said her last name was now Reid. Being married to him explains that palace of a house, though.”

  “Yes, that was pretty amazing. Both you and I live in lovely, large homes, but next to that, we might as well be living under an overpass of the 405 Freeway. Even that monstrosity I shared with Grant is a shack next to the Reid home.”

  The GPS in Emma’s car directed Phil to turn left off of Sunset at the edge of the UCLA campus. “So who exactly is Linwood Reid?” she asked.

  “He’s some big global money guy. Built a fortune financing a variety of successful high-risk, high-return ventures, anything from treasure hunting to oil expeditions. He’s also a major player in international construction and energy companies.”

  “Like Halliburton?”

  “Not Halliburton, but companies like it. Although here’s a trivia tidbit for ya.” Phil flashed her a grin. “He’s supposedly a close pal of Dick Cheney.”

  “A pal close enough to shoot?”

  Phil laughed and turned left at another intersection, following the next instruction called out by the automated voice of the GPS. They were on their way to Lainey’s condominium to see Keith Goldstein.

  “Where did he make his seed money? You have to have money to start to turn it into money of his present magnitude.”

  “There’s a lot of speculation on that. It’s well known he was one of the pirates in the Enron mess.”

  “One of the executives?”

  “No, one of the initial investors. One who bailed with a boatload of cash just before it all turned to shit.”

  “Just savvy or an inside tip?”

  Phil shrugged. “Who knows. It was never proved he knew anything about the internal finances of the company.” He made another turn onto Wilshire Boulevard. “There were also rumors of him being involved in selling guns overseas.”

  “What?” Emma nearly snapped her neck as she whipped around to stare at Phil.

  “Again, nothing was proved, but the rumors claim he provided financial backing for international gunrunners and made an obscene amount of money.”

  “Wow. I may have traded up, but it seems Joanna didn’t, at least not in character.”

  Phil blew her a loud, sloppy kiss.

  “Speaking of wow.” Phil pulled into a circular drive of a high-rise building on Wilshire Boulevard. “Are you sure this is where Lainey lives?”

  “This is the address she gave me.”

  After the doorman directed them to visitor parking, they made their way into the marble-encased lobby to face the concierge.

  “Yowza!” said the disembodied voice of Granny. “Is this a hotel?”

  Emma turned to Phil and pretended to whisper something to him. “Nice time for you to show up, Granny. Max popped in at Joanna’s, then popped out just as quickly.”

  “Hey,” the ghost said with annoyance as heavy as her boots. “I’ve been trying to get him for ya, but it’s not like he’s standing around on the other side waiting for me to pick him out of a lineup.”

  Knowing this wasn’t the time and place to argue with the cranky ghost, Emma plastered a smile on her face and turned to approach the dark-skinned young man at the desk. He gave her a gracious nod and closed-lipped smile. He was movie-star beautiful, with black slicked hair and intelligent eyes the color of dark roast coffee. His name tag said Shaheen.

  “Shaheen, I’m Emma Whitecastle. I believe Elaine Naiman in 1202 called about giving me access to her apartment.” Emma dug out her wallet and presented her ID to the man. He glanced at it, then checked something on the computer recessed into his desktop.

  “Yes, Ms. Whitecastle,” Shaheen said in a softly accented voice, “Ms. Naiman called yesterday with instructions. If Mr. Goldstein isn’t at home, we’re to give you a key.”

  He picked up a phone and punched in a number. After a few moments, he put the phone down. “It seems Mr. Goldstein is not in.” Shaheen unlocked a cabinet in the desk console and from it plucked out a key and handed it to Emma. “You can take one of the two elevators to your left to the twelfth floor. Unit 1202 is all the way down the hall, an end unit.”

  Emma and Phil took the elevator. Granny had taken off again.

  “When I was in college,” Phil said during the ride in the mirror-walled elevator, “I shared a rundown two-bedroom house with three other guys. Our furniture was hand-me-downs from family, and our tables and bookcases were made from planks of wood and bricks.”

  “I know what you mean. My digs weren’t that … um … rustic, but I did share a modest apartment with my cousin Marlene. It wasn’t too far from here, but it was a world apart in amenities.”

  “That’s right, you went to UCLA, didn’t you, Fancy Pants?”

  “Both Grant and I went there. We met during our junior year.”

  When the elevator doors opened, Emma immediately saw Granny. The ghost was in the midst of materializing. She stood just beyond the elevator, patting her foot on the hallway carpet with impatience.

  “What’s the matter, Granny?” Emma asked the ghost. “You didn’t want to keep us company?”

  “Don’t like those darn contraptions, not one bit. They’re like coffins that move.”

  Emma repeated the comment to Phil, who shivered and shook his head. “That’s something to remember for our trip back down.”

  “I’m a bit confused,” Phil said as they started walking down the quiet hallway with Grann
y floating alongside. “Did you tell Lainey you were coming here to interrogate her fiancé?”

  “Not exactly.”

  Both Phil and Granny stopped and stared after Emma. “What exactly did you tell her?” Phil asked.

  Emma stopped halfway down the hall. Just as she was about to say something, a door to her right opened and a slight, middle-aged man with thick black glasses with circular frames came out carrying a tiny orange Pomeranian. He smiled at Emma, then noticed Phil and nodded to him. The dog noticed Granny and started yipping with excitement.

  “Baxter,” the man clucked at the dog. “Shush.” He turned his attention back to Emma and Phil. “Can I help you folks?”

  “We’re looking for number 1202,” Emma told him.

  He pointed in the direction they had been heading. “All the way down to the end, on your left.”

  Phil took Emma’s elbow. “Thanks.” They started back down the hall.

  The man put Baxter down on the carpet, and the little dog went nuts, wagging his tail and pulling on his leash to follow Emma and Phil … and Granny.

  The man laughed. “Are you folks carrying raw filet in your pockets?”

  Granny, sensing she was the problem, disappeared.

  Phil chuckled. “The little guy must smell our animals. Between our horses and dogs, we have quite a zoo at home.”

  Picking up the excited dog, the man gave them a final smile and headed for the elevator.

  Phil tugged gently on Emma’s elbow. “So, what did you tell Lainey?”

  “You’re not going to drop this, are you?”

  “Nope.”

  “I simply asked Lainey if there was anything she wanted from her apartment while I was up in Los Angeles. She was very grateful and gave me a short list of items, mostly makeup and a couple articles of clothing.”

  “Uh-huh. But you really wanted to get inside her place and see if you could get a sense of Max’s presence, right?”

  “Yes, and this seemed a good way to do it without alarming her.” When they reached the door to 1202, Emma inserted the key. “I couldn’t exactly ask her about her father’s ghost, could I?”

  “Lying, threatening folks with blackmail—doesn’t quite sound like you, Fancy Pants.”

  She opened the door several inches, then stopped. “I’m sorry, Phil, if you’re disappointed in me, but I did what I felt I had to do to help the girl.”

  “Don’t get so defensive, Emma. I’m not disappointed—intrigued, yes. This is a side of you I haven’t seen before. I find it rather fascinating.” He paused long enough to plant a short kiss on her lips. “As long as you don’t use those new talents on me.”

  “It’s a deal, Cowboy.”

  “Are you two going to moon after each other all day or do some work?”

  Emma turned to the ghost. “There you are, Granny. I thought you’d left.”

  “I did, but just until that fool dog got out of the way.”

  Phil pushed the door open.

  “Wow!” exclaimed Phil, stepping inside Lainey’s condominium just behind Emma. “Exactly how rich is this girl?”

  nine

  “Who knows? Max was no Johnny Depp, but at the time of his death he was bringing in between twenty-five and fifty million a year.”

  Phil stopped in his tracks. “How do you know?”

  “I thought you read Forbes. Each year they publicize the top-earning actors in Hollywood.”

  “I must have missed that issue. Or else I blocked it out of my mind so as not to cause brain damage.”

  “Lainey said she received an inheritance on her eighteenth birthday. I’m sure that was substantial enough to fund this place.”

  They walked deeper into the apartment. The great room was huge and was partitioned off into a sitting area and formal dining area by the use of expensive area rugs over a glistening hardwood floor and clusters of sofas and chairs in bold colors and designs. A large table with enough textured fabric chairs to seat eight dominated the dining area.

  “This doesn’t seems like the home of a college student at all,” noted Phil. “It looks straight out of a design magazine.”

  “This is hardly a crash pad, and I’ll bet it was professionally decorated.”

  “Fancy-schmancy,” added Granny. “I prefer Kelly’s digs.”

  Emma turned on her heel to face Granny. “Kelly’s? How do you know what Kelly’s apartment looks like, Granny?”

  “I meant her room at the Millers’ house. Much more appropriate for a young woman in school.”

  Two walls of the great room were composed of floor-to-ceiling windows, providing a panoramic view of most of Los Angeles. The largest wall of glass was divided by a large natural-stone fireplace. Sliding doors led out to a wrap-around patio containing several lounge chairs, small tables, and charming potted plants.

  The solid walls of the condo were painted a dark but muted yellow, almost a deep, soft gold, that played nicely with the furniture. A long mirror, framed in black, hung on the wall over a sofa. In the dining area, a matching mirror hung over a modern built-in buffet. Artwork on the walls was also framed in black.

  In front of the largest sofa sat a square coffee table made of a huge slab of glass resting on a stone pedestal. In the middle was a tall, graceful orchid arrangement. On the table, scattered around the orchid, were glasses and beer bottles and a dish that had been used as an ashtray. It was then Emma noticed bits of clothing tossed about.

  Identifying jeans, a tee shirt, and a skimpy top in the mess, Emma next picked up a hot pink lace bra from the arm of one sofa. “I guarantee Lainey did not leave this place like this a month ago.”

  Phil eyed the bra, one brow cocked in suspicion. “And even if she did, I’m sure this place comes with an experienced housekeeper who’d make sure stuff like this wasn’t lying about.”

  Next to the sofa were two pairs of shoes—a pair of men’s athletic shoes and a pair of high-heeled sandals. A few feet away from the sofa, almost to the doorway leading to a long hall, Emma toed a pair of bikini underwear that matched the bra.

  She entered the hallway and peeked into the first room. It was a kitchen with state-of-the-art appliances, granite counters, and a nice-sized eating area. It was also a cluttered mess of dirty dishes, empty beer bottles, and glasses. On the counter were open bags of chips and half-eaten deli sandwiches, along with two empty pizza boxes.

  “The food on the counter and dishes stacked in the kitchen aren’t more than a day old,” she reported when she returned to Phil. “Looks like a party went on here last night.”

  “Humph,” scowled Phil. “While the cat’s away, the fiancé will play.”

  “Ex-fiancé,” Emma corrected. “But it still seems very thoughtless considering he’s living in her luxurious apartment.”

  Granny came floating in from the hallway. “That bathroom is a wonder. Makes the ones at the Miller house seem like outhouses.”

  “I’ll tell my mother that, Granny. She’ll appreciate it, I’m sure.”

  “No need to get sassy about it. I was just saying.” The ghost sniffed. “Guess you also don’t want to know nothing about the man passed out in the back room.”

  Emma threw the bra down on one of the sofas and turned to Phil, lowering her voice to a whisper. “Granny says there’s someone passed out in the back.”

  When Emma started for the hallway, Phil grabbed her arm. “Stay here,” he ordered. “I’ll check it out.”

  Picking up a sculpture from a nearby table, Phil held it like a police baton and started down the hallway past the kitchen doorway. Emma held back, then followed close on his heels. He glanced back. “I told you to stay.”

  “I’m not Archie,” Emma hissed back at him. “I go where I please.”

  Shaking his head, Phil returned his attention to his mission.

  “See,” Granny said to Emma. “I told you he should’ve brought his gun.”

  The hallway was long and wide, with the solid areas painted the same color as the walls i
n the great room. Frosted glass doors took up most of one side. Emma quietly scooted one glass door back. It glided open soundlessly on a track to reveal a large and neatly organized closet. On the painted wall, framed photos and mementos hung in an artful arrangement like a pictorial display of Lainey’s life. Emma’s eye caught on several photographs of Max with Lainey and Joanna, and even a couple that included Kelly when the girls were young. There were also some taken recently of Lainey with a young man.

  Phil slowly opened a door on the frosted glass wall side. It revealed a den with a built-in desk and bookcase unit. On the desk was a laptop and a printer with school books stacked around it. The room was cozier than the great room and appeared more lived in. There were glasses and bottles and empty plates with dirty napkins on the table in front of the sofa. Across from the sofa, a massive flat-screen TV hung on the wall.

  The next door on the other side revealed a good-sized bedroom with a large window, through which the afternoon sun beamed brightly. It was nicely decorated like the rest of the condo, but obviously not the master bedroom. In this room, several boxes were stacked against one wall, along with ski equipment. Two high-end bicycles were parked against another wall.

  The next room was a large bathroom almost the size of the bedroom, with a sunken soaking tub, dual sinks, and a shower that could fit four comfortably.

  “Jesus,” Phil said to Emma in a barely audible volume, “that bathroom is nearly a religious experience.”

  “So Granny told me,” she whispered back.

  On the other side of the bathroom was a bedroom much like the first, though not used as much for storage. Both bedrooms had doors connecting them to the bathroom.

  “Psst,” Granny whispered, even though only Emma could hear her. “Quit lollygagging. It’s the last room at the end.”

  At the end, facing the hallway, were a set of double doors. Keeping the sculpture aloft, Phil gently turned the knob and peeked in. Sensing no danger, he pushed the door open more to show Emma what Granny had found.

  On the huge California King four-poster bed was sprawled a young man with dark locks of hair from whom gentle grunts and snores emitted. He was on his stomach and naked, only partially covered by the tangled sheets.