Ghostwriter Anonymous

by Noreen Wald

  Between us, Carla and I propped Vera on the couch and encouraged her to sip the brandy while holding the damp towel to her forehead. All of her style and any aura of assurance had vanished. Vera Madison appeared grief-stricken and disoriented. She sat sobbing, saying nothing, simply staring at Kate’s dead body.

  “Carla, who visited Kate this morning? Who was she in conference with for so long?” I asked, as Caroline, who’d carried my phone to a far corner of the room, whispered to Patrick.

  “Why? You think he killed her, Jake?” Carla sounded confused and frightened, but at least she was on her feet and functioning.

  “Looks that way. He didn’t leave by the front door, did he?” I gestured to the open French doors and watched as comprehension covered Carla’s face. Then I asked, “Had you ever seen him before? Can you de­scribe him for me, Carla?”

  “No. I never saw him ’til this morning. A young man. Medium height and kind of skinny. A mustache. He wore those droopy jeans and a baseball cap. Dark glasses.”

  My pusher. “What color mustache? What kind?” No other witness had mentioned a mustache.

  “Blond. Just a plain one, Jake, nothing special about it.” Maybe Carla could work with a police sketch artist.

  “What did he say?”

  “He just asked to see Miss Connors. He’d laughed and said to tell her the wolf was at the door. He thought that was pretty funny.”

  God almighty. “Carla, this is important. How did Kate react when you told her that?”

  “Well, you know how she is, er, she was.” Carla choked up for a second. “Always in control.”

  “Yeah, I know. So what did she say?”

  “She said, ‘Jesus H. Christ.’ I’d never heard Miss Connors say anything like that before. Then she kind of sighed and told me to tell you that she’d be in confer­ence for an hour or so.”

  “Then what?”

  “I showed him to the Conservatory, but he opened the door and went in alone. That’s all I know, Jake. Honest.” I could hear the stress in her voice. I patted her hand.

  “That’s fine. You’ve been a big help.” I reached into my bag and retrieved my Tylenol, swallowing them neat. Would my head ever stop aching?

  Compounding the pain, an annoying little ditty went round and round my brain. To the tune of “Who’s Afraid of the Big, Bad Wolf,” “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” played over and over. I couldn’t tum it off. Why couldn’t I connect the dots? What a nagging nuisance, both that name and its importance to this case. The answer seemed to be buried in some cubbyhole in my mind. Didn’t I want to remember?

  Caroline walked over to me, still on the phone. “Pat­rick’s with a patient. He’ll be here as soon as he can.” I grabbed the phone from her hand and took it into the garden.

  “Patrick, this is Jake.” I spoke in a low but firm voice. “I’m on my way to Murray Hill. Stay put. We have four murders to solve, and we can’t do it here. Listen, that’s the police siren. They’re here now. We’ll return to Sutton Place together after we finish. Regress me, Patrick. Free my repressed memory.”

  “Come on down.” I hung up before he could change his mind.

  Ignoring Caroline and the still mute Mrs. Madison, I shouted to Carla, “I’m heading out through the garden gate. Tell the police that the guy in the Ford Explorer is one of their own. And when Ben Rubin shows up, tell him I’ll explain later.” This last, I yelled over my shoulder as I exited the gate, turned left unto York Av­enue, and tried to hail a cab, heading in the wrong direction.

  As I settled in the taxi, I told the driver to take Second Avenue downtown to Patrick’s office, and took stock of my screwy behavior. Like a Robin Cook heroine allow­ing the mad scientist to inject her with a three-days-and-you’re-dead virus, I could be willingly wading into troubled waters. Granted, Patrick might be able to dredge up my missing memory, but he also had a multimillion-dollar motive for Kate’s murder. As Caro­line pointed out, she had just come into a bundle of big bucks. Kate’s death would also free Caroline to marry, and Patrick would seem to be her most likely groom-elect. Kate Lloyd Connors’ royalties alone could keep the happy couple in Rolls Royces for the rest of their lives. Patrick could have killed Kate, wearing a fake mustache.

  The noontime traffic frustrated both the young Israeli driver and me. There hadn’t been time to read any of Kate’s journal as I’d copied its pages, so I only knew what Caroline had told me. I flipped through a few en­tries, written before she’d murdered her father.

  Kate—Sarah Anne—spoke of a bleak, dreary life, a childhood with little love, and that ending when her mother died. Sarah Anne was ten. Her father began abusing her the following summer. The way Sarah Anne described the freezing, cold day that she’d drowned her father in Lake Superior, I felt as if I’d been there with her.

  Dad jerked back as if he’d felt a sharp tug on his line. Somehow he lost his balance—he’d been kneeling on the edge of the hole, a foolish way to ice-fish—screaming, “Help me, Sarah Anne!’’ And I screamed louder, “I’m pregnant, you bas­tard!’’ As he desperately clawed at the breaking ice on the sides of the fishing hole, I lay down on the ice, carefully stretched out into the freezing water, put both my hands on top of my father’s plaid woolen cap and pushed him under the bitter cold water. I held him there, laughing, as he squirmed for a few seconds, then sank. When I pulled off my soaking wet gloves, my fingers were red and raw. My only regret was that he’d died so quickly. I hope it hurt.

  I ran home, threw some clothes in our one old canvas suitcase, took the three hundred dollars hidden under the mattress, Dad’s total nest egg, and walked two miles in below-freezing temperatures to the Honey Bucket bus station, where I caught the bus for Detroit, vowing I’d never look back.

  Wow. “Hurry, driver, please.” I fast-forwarded through the diary to Detroit.

  My landlady’s turned into my fairy godmother. Vera Madison likes me so much that it’s scary, but she always has an answer for my problems, start­ing with my new identify. An absolutely creepy friend of hers is a forger, so I bought a birth cer­tificate from him for fifty dollars, then applied for a social security card as Kate Lloyd Connors. I love my new name. It reeks of elegance.

  I’m proud of myself. Not only did I get my GED while working two jobs, but I’m earning an A in Creative Writing at the Community College. And I was smart enough to give my baby away. I used my real name for the last time. That way no one will ever link her to Kate Lloyd Connors. I’m go­ing to be a famous writer someday. Vera believes in me. My biggest fan. Total devotion. It’s kind of nice to have her waiting on me hand and foot. She’s going to pay for the move to Manhattan. Of course, she’s coming along.

  “We’re here, lady.” I put the journal back in my briefcase, but Kate Lloyd Connors’ words lingered in my mind.

  Patrick greeted me with a professional manner and a twinkle in those deep blue eyes. “I never expected to have the pleasure of hypnotizing you, Jake.”

  “Yes, Patrick, four murders can drive a potential vic­tim to unexpected measures. Now how does this re­gression business work?”

  After I’d explained how I’d lost a name that could help us identify the killer in what might be a repressed memory, Patrick nodded. “It happens. Sit here, Jake; we’ll give it a try.” He indicated a sleek leather recliner.

  I sank into its comfort, my aching body somewhat eased, but my spirit shaky.

  “There is nothing mysterious or threatening about hypnosis, Jake. No one will ever do anything under hyp­nosis that would be against his or her moral or ethical code. Most people tell me they’re never more aware than when they’re in a session with me.” Probably re­alizing that his last remark might be construed as vain, he added, “Or any certified hypnotist.”

  I closed my eyes as suggested and tried to relax, also as suggested, but not as easy to achieve. Patrick helped. “Picture a beach: whit
e sand, blue skies, aqua ocean. You’re all alone, drinking in the warm sun.” He paused, and I thought: He forgot to put a color before the sun, then told myself to get serious about relaxing. “Start with the toes on your right foot,” Patrick was saying, “and relax each one. First the big toe...”

  By the time he reached my forehead, I was putty. “Jake, you are serene; you are completely relaxed. Let’s go back a bit—to a younger Jake. Can you picture yourself in your late twenties? Maybe in a special outfit? Perhaps at a party or a dance? Is there a special song being played?”

  I was in a splendid salon, surrounded by beautiful women in formal gowns and fussy hairstyles. I, how­ever, wore pants and some sort of a tailored, old-fashioned man’s jacket. A handsome young man sat at a piano, playing a polonaise.

  “Where are you, Jake?” Patrick sounded far away.

  “In my home, in Paris.”

  “Did you ever live in Paris? What’s your name?”

  “George Sand,” I answered.

  “Oops,” Patrick said. “We went back too far.”

  Thirty-Three

  Patrick brought me back to the present. I told him, “My misplaced memory seems fairly recent, maybe from a conversation I had a few years ago; certainly not from one that took place in the nineteenth century.” Although I’d enjoyed my cameo as George Sand and hoped to replay that incarnation during some future regression, I asked Patrick to hypnotize me again, concentrating on the last decade of this lifetime.

  “I’m off my game, Jake. All I can focus on is Car­oline coping all alone with the police at Sutton Place.” Patrick frowned, shaking his head.

  Oh God, was he changing his mind? He really did seem concerned about Caroline. “Patrick, please, if we don’t do this right now, the killer’s name may escape me forever.”

  My phone rang. “Jake, it’s Ben. I just got here. Where the hell are you? Come back here immediately, and bring that goddamn journal with you.”

  “Don’t get so testy, Ben. I’m at Patrick’s, trying to recall an important memory, the Virginia Wolf connec—”

  “You’ve left the scene of the crime and you’ve taken stolen evidence with you. Get in a taxi this minute.” He hung up.

  I looked at Patrick “Er...do you think we could do this regression in the cab, while we’re heading up to Sutton Place?”

  The Haitian cabbie seemed to feel at home with what, from his point of view, could be two certifiable weirdos practicing voodoo, American-style. Patrick said, “Put your head back, close your eyes, lift your arms and splay your fingers. Now reach for the sky, um, well, the top of the taxi, anyway. Slip off your shoes, wiggle your toes, then stretch your feet out as far as possible in front of you.” Good thing we’d caught one of the few big Checkers left in the city. “I will count backward from ten; at the count of three, you will be totally relaxed, opening the portals of your mind and ready to retrieve your memory.” If only I was as sure as Patrick sounded. He’d agreed quickly to this journey down memory lane during our trip uptown—probably just doing it so he could get to Caroline.

  On the count of seven, my phone rang again. “Dennis. What have you learned?”

  “Where are you, Jake? Everyone from your mother to Ben Rubin is on your trail. I can’t believe Kate’s dead. Are you on the lam? You didn’t do it, did you?”

  “Very funny. Do you have any news for me?”

  “Yes, and some advice: Get your butt back to Sutton Place.”

  “I’m on my way. Hurry up, Dennis, tell me what you know.”

  “The cable station is an international, twenty-four-hour cook-a-thon.”

  “Cooking?” I flexed my bare feet. And turning away from the phone, I whispered to Patrick, “I’ll be right with you.”

  He frowned at me, muttering, “We’re already at 39th Street. How many years do you think you can travel back with less than a mile to go?”

  “A mile can turn into years in New York traffic, Patrick.”

  “Who are you talking to?” Dennis asked.

  “Patrick,” I said to Dennis. “He and I are in the middle of a regression, about to release my repressed memory, and we’re almost there.”

  “Well, I’m very happy for you both.”

  “Dennis, please. Just finish what you were saying.”

  “Seems the show’s akin to Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous meets Geraldo. Only here, the viewer will visit the celebs as they cook in their kitchens, pull vegetables from their gardens, or host their formal dinner parties...while revealing their secrets. Live. Round the clock. In the treatment for the pilot, Sophia Loren trades recipes with Elton John in Nelson Mandela’s kitchen.”

  “Bizarre,” I said.

  “There’s one other thing, for what it’s worth. I just found out from Larry Helms that ‘aubergine’ is French for eggplant. Seems to all tie in somehow, doesn’t it? And, Jake, call your mother; she’s frantic.”

  My brain buzzing, I turned to Patrick. “Let’s do it. Now.”

  Ten minutes later, as the cab hung a right on 52nd Street, forging east to Sutton Place, and missing a rollerblader by inches, I’d retrieved my memory and had my answer. An answer I hadn’t expected and didn’t want to accept. Horrified, I tried to work the steps of the Ghostwriters Anonymous program. Just as we ghostwriters couldn’t control our anonymity but had to accept it, I couldn’t control the killer’s identity and would have to accept who done it…even though I’d hate it.

  Funny how my lost memory had become all mixed up with lost identities. Since we ghostwriters never had our names on the book covers, using a pen name would seem to be an oxymoron. Even our program’s suggested use of the first initial of our last name—just like in AA meetings—reeked of irony. I now thought of Modesty as Modesty M.; however, her last name was Meade. We always referred to Jane as Jane D., almost forgetting that her last name was Dowling. And Ginger S. had a last name too. Smthye. But that was a nom de plume. And that was what I couldn’t—maybe hadn’t wanted to— remember. When we’d co-authored Cooked to Death all those years ago, Ginger had said, “My real name’s the same as a famous writer, but I’ve been using Smthye in preparation for my own future fame.” When I’d asked Ginger which well-known writer shared her real name, her answer had been: Virginia Woolf.

  Patrick shook my shoulder. “I don’t know what’s the matter with you or why you refuse to reveal what you’ve remembered or even talk to me. I know a patient can’t fake a recovered memory. But why would anyone pretend she hadn’t reached her repression? I heard that, ‘Oh, God.’ I know you got there.”

  “Patrick, would you please shut up? I’m trying to think.”

  The clues added up. Who but Ginger would be a silent partner in a corporation with a French name that translated into “eggplant?” Who but Ginger would be crazy enough to want to host a round-the-clock, international cable celebrity cooking channel? Certainly not Kate Lloyd Connors, who was even less creative in the kitchen than she was at the computer. And since half the ghostwriters in New York seemed to have worked for Kate at one time or another, why not Ginger?

  If Ginger had found that journal—or some other evidence regarding the revered Queen of Murder-Most-Cozy’s lurid past—and, having proof that Kate was a killer, had been blackmailing her, the cable station might have been Ginger’s big payoff. Then, when Emmie had discovered Ginger’s scheme and shared her secrets with Barbara, Ginger would, as a dear friend and fellow ghostwriter, have had no problem getting into either of their apartments to “explain” things.

  More ghastly memories—ones I would have preferred to forget—surfaced. If my theory proved true, then on that Saturday, a little over a week ago, when Ginger had supposedly searched all over the Upper East Side looking for Emmie, she’d already killed her the night before. Actually, that day, Ginger had been busy murdering Barbara. And, of course, Jonathan had signed his own death warrant when he’d tri
ed to sell Kate’s secrets to the National Enquirer, infringing, unknowingly, on Ginger’s blackmail territory. And, after Emmie’s wake, when Modesty had dropped her off at home, Ginger had popped over to Kate’s and book-bashed Jonathan to death. Then this morning, dressed as a man, she’d killed Kate. There you go. Motive, means, and opportunity for each of the four murders.

  But…still…Ginger was my friend and I loved her. So did Mom. And Gypsy Rose. We’d shared ghost stories, holidays, and hope. How could sunny, funny Ginger be a murderer? How could Ginger have fooled so many people for so many years? Not Ginger. Impossible. It couldn’t be Ginger. How could this woman I knew so well be a sociopath? A serial killer?

  My God—if this is true, Ginger shoved me in front of that taxi. She tried to kill me.

  There had to be some other explanation. Unbidden, Arthur Conan Doyle’s quote from The Sign of Four—“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth”—assaulted my brain and chilled my soul.

  Patrick said, “Driver, let us out here; we’ll walk the rest of the way. Come on, Jake, get out of the cab.” He pointed to the police cars piled up between York Avenue and the East River and the ambulance parked in front of Kate Lloyd Connors’ house, the block a mass of media who’d flocked like homing pigeons to the fresh homicide.

  “Wait, I have to call my mother. I won’t have a chance once we get into that mess at Kate’s.”

  I dialed. Ginger answered on the second ring.

  “What are you doing there?” I screamed. “Where’s my mother?”

  Patrick stepped out the cab, pulling bills out of his pocket to pay the driver. “Are you coming, Jake? Caroline needs me.”

  “I’ve given your mother a nice cup of tea,” Ginger said, in her Lauren Bacall voice. “She can’t come to the phone at this moment. But you’d better come home. Alone. Now.”