Mom bit her lip, but she didn’t cry. “It must have been awful for you,” she said.
Dad closed his eyes and nodded. “He didn’t want to; he held out for what seemed like a very long time.” He opened his eyes and looked at me to make his point. “But he really is a compassionate man, and he couldn’t bear to see how I was suffering. He waited until the nurse’s shift was changing and put something in my IV drip. And the next thing I knew, I was…like this.”
“And that’s why you haven’t come here or talked to us in five years?” I asked, incredulous. “But you came to see Mom once a week, on Tuesdays. If you could do that…”
“I couldn’t see you,” Dad said, his voice quivering. “A husband is different from a father, baby girl. Believe me I wanted to all the time. But I thought…well, I broke my promise to you. I looked you right in the eye and promised you I’d fight until the end. Besides, just because you didn’t see me doesn’t mean I wasn’t here. I was with you sometimes when Melissa was at school, before you met your two friends there.” He gestured toward Paul and Maxie, who were uncharacteristically silent. “And sometimes I’d sneak in and see you, Lissie, when you were sleeping or from a distance. I couldn’t really stay away from you.
“It wasn’t until Dr. Wells was here, like us”—he gestured to Paul and Maxie—“and he was saying you needed to know, and if I didn’t come clean, he’d tell you himself, although he insisted it wasn’t his place to do that. But I couldn’t get the courage together to do it until that Laurentz guy told us your lives were in danger. Then I had no choice,” Dad said. “But if you can’t forgive me for being so weak at the end, I’ll understand.” He looked at me. “You don’t ever have to see me again, Alison.”
It was very hard to fight back tears, and Dad was right—I was angry at him. But not for the reason he thought I was. “The only thing I won’t forgive,” I told him, “is that you didn’t give us the chance. I understand how much pain you had, and I don’t blame you a bit for asking Dr. Wells for help. I didn’t ever want you to suffer like that.” I made serious eye contact with my father, something I’d wished for desperately over the past five years. “But you assumed we’d never want to see you, when that was the one thing we wanted most of all. Don’t you dare ever go away again, Daddy.”
I don’t think there was a dry eye in the kitchen, among those of us who still have tear ducts, anyway. The others weren’t faring much better.
“I won’t, baby girl. I promise.”
Josh Kaplan called a little while later to see how I was dealing with the snow. I shoveled out the front porch and the walk (with a little help from some “invisible” shovelers) and left the rest for Murray to do the next day.
“It’s clear enough for you to come over if you want to,” I said.
Josh sounded his usual amiable self, but there was a hesitation I hadn’t expected. “I don’t think so, Alison,” he said.
I knew I shouldn’t have involved him in all this, ushering a guy I’d just gotten involved with into this crazy life with my family, my guests and my criminal investigations (he didn’t even know about the ghosts!) so soon. Another huge miscalculation. “I understand,” I said. And I did. I didn’t like it, but I understood.
Josh chuckled. “No, I didn’t mean it like that. I’m just exhausted from shoveling two and a half feet of snow from in front of my house and the store. I’ll be happy to come by tomorrow, and maybe we can do a patch on that plaster wall that self-destructed in your house.”
“You know how to show a girl a good time,” I told him.
“Mr. Smooth,” he said. “That’s me.”
Phyllis Coates loved the story of the naked senior arrests, the contraband Viagra and, by extension, the murder of Lawrence Laurentz for ratting out people when he hadn’t done so at all. She did some digging, however, and said the police investigation into Frances Walters had turned up a stash of illegal prescription drugs and enough “medicinal marijuana” to have kept her in jail for some years even if she hadn’t killed Lawrence.
“Her son the pharmacist was the supplier, but Frances was the dealer,” Phyllis reported. “And when she thought Laurentz ratted her out, she went crazy.”
“She was crazy long before that,” I said. “You weren’t standing there with the gun pointed at you.”
“Well, a gun wasn’t her weapon of choice. She went to Lawrence’s house that night straight from a Peter Pan rehearsal, and Jerry asked her to take the fishing rod home with her because he had no room in his car. She went to see Lawrence, found out Penny was there, and decided she had a patsy to hang it on. She’d practiced with the rod and reel, so it wasn’t hard. Problem was the cops questioned Penny and let her go, so there was no obvious suspect. Frances just kept her head down.”
“And almost got away with it,” I said.
Phyllis’s call came just after Nan and Morgan Henderson heard the Garden State Parkway was once again open to traffic and had decided to head home. But Morgan had one last question: “We never found out who left those messages for you all over the house.”
“Frances confessed to leaving them,” I lied. “She knew Mom well enough to make insinuations about my father’s death. Thought she could scare me off or distract me.”
“But you didn’t know who to be scared away from,” Morgan noted, shaking his head. “And that business card of your father’s?” he asked.
“We’ll never know how she got hold of that,” I told him. We would never know, because it hadn’t happened. It’s a way of looking at things.
“It’s a crazy world,” Morgan said. He had no idea.
He and Nan packed their bags into the car and we all hugged at the door. They promised to come back again sometime. I told them the next stay would be on the house, but Nan wouldn’t hear of it.
I had called Jeannie with the news of Frances’s arrest and the story (minus supernatural elements) of how it happened. She said she was happy the case was closed but that she wouldn’t be able to join my firm on a full-time basis, which I found comforting, since I’d never asked her to. Jeannie said she was thinking about returning to work as soon as she could find suitable day care for Oliver (as if). “It’s important he learn to separate from his mother before preschool,” she explained.
Phyllis was clearly taking notes. “Yeah, how did you get out of that whole situation, anyway?” she asked, bringing me back to this conversation. I could hear the pencil scraping on some old receipt on her desk. A good reporter is never off-duty. “The cops weren’t clear on how Frances was subdued, just that she was already tied up and groggy when they arrived.”
“What did Frances say happened?”
Phyllis barked a laugh. “She claims the rope tied itself around her.” We shared a chuckle over that. “So what really went down?”
“Jerry Rasmussen risked his own life to save me and Mom,” I told her. “The man’s a hero.”
“Uh-huh.” Phyllis, somehow, did not sound convinced, but that version would appear in the Chronicle the following week, complete with information on the arrest of Frances’s son Philip the pharmacist (read: supplier of illicit prescriptions) and the announcement that Jerry was considering writing an opera based on the saga called Laurentz in Water.
“What about Penny Fields?” I asked Phyllis.
“She’s in the clear. Always was. Talking about moving to an active adult community herself, though,” she answered. “Says she’s lonely.”
“Frances’s house should be available soon,” I pointed out. Then Lawrence could come visit.
“And what about Tyra?” Phyllis asked me.
“Back at the Basie,” I said. “I think she got fired from the tire job, something about mouthing off to a customer who wanted to know why they don’t make white walls anymore.”
Phyllis said she was glad everything had worked out and apologized for not having gotten that clip file about Dad together for me yet.
I told her there was no rush.
Lawrence him
self couldn’t stop thanking me via text on Mom’s phone once she got a ride (in Murray’s truck, as he’d come to plow late and deliver an exorbitant bill, which I paid immediately) home for the evening. We’d tried to get her to stay, but she looked at Dad, Melissa and me and said we needed some time together.
I told Lawrence repeatedly that I’d just been doing my job and that he had, in fact, helped save my life, but he didn’t take that for an answer and promised to haunt Mom’s house whenever she would have him. Dad, of course, felt that Lawrence should send a note and ask permission before showing up.
“What if she’s in the bathtub or something?” he asked me late that night after Melissa had gone to bed and the other ghosts were elsewhere, giving us time. Dad was floating high above the floor of the hallway, widening the hole he’d made in the plaster above the library door.
“I think Larry is going to stay away from all bathtubs for a very long time,” I told him. I pointed at the rectangle he was creating in my wall. “You know, you could have come up with something less cryptic than ‘stop go up.’”
Dad shrugged. “It made sense. You wanted to widen the door. You couldn’t. But you can get more brightness in the room with a window here. You needed to stop what you were doing and go up. Take out a piece of the wall above the door, bring in more light.”
“You’re a master,” I told him.
“You’re my daughter. You’re supposed to think so.”
I watched him smoothing the edge of the plaster he’d sanded down. “In this case, I happen to be right,” I said.
Dad looked at the hole he’d made, which would eventually house a stained-glass panel made from light colors, which I’d found in the basement of the guesthouse when I’d first moved in. Tony had said he’d install the panel for me and offered to make the sturdy brace to hold it, but Dad was already at work.
“Do me a favor, baby girl,” he said. “Go get me a two-foot level, would you? I need to make sure this is right.”
“Sure.” I knew just where that was in my tool room in the basement. I went down the stairs quickly, headed straight for the level, found it hanging on a pegboard and rushed back up the stairs. I stopped at the basement door and took a moment to ponder. A drop of anxiety hit me just as I opened the door.
But when I swung it open, Dad was still there, hanging up in the air, smoothing the joists he’d cut to get ready for the four-by-four brace he’d put in sometime later in the week. I smiled.
“Don’t just stand there,” he said. “Let’s see that level.” So I handed it up to him.
We stayed up talking until very late in the night.
Thirty-three
“I couldn’t look you or Melissa in the eye,” Dad said.
We were in the kitchen at the guesthouse again. I’d secured a promise from my father that he wouldn’t fly off into the clouds and leave me wondering, and Dad always kept—keeps—his promises.
There hadn’t been time to have this talk, which no doubt would be a doozy, while we were at Mom’s. Morgan had found Melissa and called in a connection at the New Jersey State Police. Those guys don’t worry about snow. They’d made it to Mom’s, gotten the power restored and contacted the plowing service at her complex, so they could speed in and arrest Frances. This had the added benefit that the roads were cleared by the time we’d sorted things out.
It pays to have friends in high places. Speaking of which, Lieutenant McElone called ten minutes after the state police must have posted a report on Frances’s arrest and apologized for not calling back in real McElone fashion, saying, “You should have mentioned it was an emergency.” Clearly, it was my fault.
Frances was very, very arrested, particularly after my voice recording of her stating in no uncertain terms that she’d killed Lawrence and was going to shoot the three of us was played. When she came to, Frances denied it, said we’d been rehearsing Jerry’s latest play and was put in a trooper’s cruiser in rapid succession.
Jerry, who owned up to snitching on just about everybody in the New Old Thespians, was not arrested but had to change his clothing after the scare he’d gotten. Before leaving, he said he thought his next production would be The Mystery of Edwin Drood. The man’s an artist.
The troopers had been kind enough to give me a ride back to Harbor Haven, and I’d insisted Mom pack a bag and come, too, which took very little convincing, since she wanted to hear Dad’s story. Many of the large roads had been plowed by now, but there were still hardly any cars on the road, and we were home in no time, much faster than traveling by ghost. Maxie and Dad tagged along in the trunk. Well, their legs were in the trunk, anyway. If I’d been driving, it would have been disconcerting to look in the rearview mirror and see my late father and my deceased tenant staring through the back window, but luckily the trooper didn’t have that problem.
We’d had to leave Lawrence at Mom’s, since he wasn’t able to travel beyond the community’s boundaries. He’d explained that he’d been lurking out of sight in the powder room when Frances had begun threatening us and went off to find help. He couldn’t leave, but he apparently could tap into the Ghosternet like Paul, and Dad had come running (flying?). They’d met in the garage, grabbed the rope and gone to work.
Dr. Wells had been at Madison Paint, having been alerted by the grumpy ghost, an old patient of his (a painter crony of Dad’s named, incongruently enough, “Sonny”), where Dad had been hiding the whole time, and heard the call from Lawrence. (Lawrence had not tried to contact Dad, having gotten no response in any of his previous attempts. But he’d heard Mom discuss Dr. Wells and, in a Hail Mary play, focused on the doctor.) There hadn’t been time to sort it out, and they’d both answered his plea.
The doctor turned out to be a very nice man haunted by Dad’s case, for reasons he wouldn’t discuss. But Dad put his arm around Dr. Wells and thanked him (asking him to pass the sentiment along to Sonny). The doctor gave Dad a few more stern looks, said something about “coming clean” and went off.
Melissa had been clearly relieved when we’d returned but strangely shy around her grandfather. She was spooked (pardon the expression) by his odd absence for all this time and seemed wary of what he was going to tell us, though despite my concerns that the conversation might be upsetting for her, she would not be moved. Frankly, I couldn’t blame her.
“What do you mean, you couldn’t look us in the eye?” she asked Dad.
Dad looked absolutely forlorn when he turned toward Melissa. “I was ashamed, honey. That’s the truth. I was so ashamed, I couldn’t even talk to you or your mom. I thought you’d hate me.”
“Dad!” I shouted. Maxie, hovering near the ceiling, started at my volume. Luckily, after a lengthy briefing on the Laurentz case, Nan had insisted they go out to explore the blizzard and forage for food. If they weren’t back in two hours, I would call the National Guard.
“It’s true, baby girl,” he said. “Your mom knew I was upset, but she still doesn’t know why, and I’m sorry for that, too, Loretta. I shouldn’t have handled it the way I did, blocking out our daughter and granddaughter, and not telling you the reason.”
Mom looked over at him and sniffed. “I still don’t even know what we’re talking about,” she said. “It’s time to unburden yourself, Jack.”
Dad nodded.
“Dr. Wells sent your friend Sonny here after he died, and he wrote two things, Dad. He said he knew where you were, and then he said you didn’t die the way we thought. Is that what this is about?”
Dad looked like he was mortally wounded, which under the circumstances was impossible, but he nodded. “The doctor knew exactly what was going on, and once he passed away and found me again, he tried to get me to tell you, but I refused, so he tried to push you into finding out. I’d been bragging about my daughter the detective.”
“So you went into hiding,” I noted.
Dad waved his hand. “Hiding? I didn’t go into hiding; I just managed to be away from you and Mom for a while so I could think. W
ells guessed where I was from conversations we’d had in the hospital room…back then…and he sent out a message. Sonny heard it. The two of them have been badgering me at the store for days.”
“You were there the whole time?” Mom asked.
Dad nodded again. “Mostly. I knew you wouldn’t look there, Loretta,” he said quietly, then looked at me. “But it didn’t occur to me that you would come looking there. I had to duck out pretty quick when you showed up there. And what’s this about you and Josh Kaplan?”
“This is your confession,” I reminded him.
“It’s true,” Dad agreed. “And I have a lot to confess.”
“Like what, Grampa?” Melissa wanted to know. “You can tell us anything. We won’t be mad.” Twenty years from now, when you meet my daughter, don’t judge her for being a successful prosecutor. Judge her based on her heart.
Dad smiled, but it was a sad smile, if such a thing is possible. “Okay, Lissie.”
“Nobody calls me that anymore,” Melissa told him. But after a beat, she added, “But you can.”
“Thank you,” Dad said. He seemed to gather his thoughts and said, “Dr. Wells was right. You really didn’t know what happened when I died.” He turned and looked at me. “You remember, Alison, what kind of shape I was in at the end.”
Paul, all stiff-upper-lip restraint, was having a hard time watching the scene from the area around the stove. He seemed to be fascinated by something on the ceiling. Except there wasn’t anything on the ceiling.
“I remember you were in a lot of pain,” I said. “It was so hard to watch. I felt awful for you.”
Dad nodded slowly, remembering.
“We know that, Jack,” Mom told him. “And it’s natural for a family to be upset when someone goes the way you did. But you have nothing to be ashamed of.” She reached out to Dad, but he was a few feet up out of her reach.
“Yes, I do,” he answered. “I didn’t want to leave you, not the three of you, at all, but it got so bad—the pain—that I couldn’t stand any more. And that night, Dr. Wells told me it could be six or seven more days before I…before the pain ended. That sounded like forever. So I asked…No. I begged him to make the pain stop.”
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