by Ali Brandon
“You forgot that Morris was my brother—my twin—and I would do anything for him. I wasn’t going to let you hurt him. I even grabbed that stupid sign some girl left lying in the trash bin so that he wouldn’t accidentally see it. You were surprised, weren’t you, when I pulled off my hood and you saw it was me and not him out there on the street with you. And then when I told you I didn’t care about keeping Morris’s identity a secret anymore, that I was going to have you arrested for attempted blackmail, you were furious.”
Her voice lowered, she finished, “Furious enough to . . . kill.”
“The whole thing was your fault!” the agent wailed, sinking back onto the sofa again. “You said terrible things to me. You said you were going to fire me. You said you’d have your lawyers break our contract so I wouldn’t get any more money off your books. It wasn’t fair! You were rich already anyway, and you kept getting richer. I wanted that. You were my way to the big time!”
“The big time,” Valerie echoed, her light voice filled with disgust. “I guess we were, weren’t we? And I have to give you credit. You were lucky enough to be the agent’s assistant who found Morris’s manuscript in the slush pile, and you were clever enough to talk your boss into promoting you to a full-blown agent because you knew you’d stumbled over something good. And Morris was so thrilled that someone wanted to represent him—someone who didn’t know our family, someone who valued him for his work and not his bank account—that he barely even looked at the contract. He didn’t notice that you’d changed the commission rate from fifteen percent to twenty-five, or that you had locked him into a five-year agreement.”
“That’s not my fault,” Hillary huffed. “You could have said no.”
“I signed it because he asked me to. I’d already promised him that he could submit his manuscript under my name. He knew that if it sold, he could never deal with the pressure of doing all the things an author is forced to do these days to get his name out there. But I’d done it before and liked it, and so I agreed to be his public face. We made a good team, don’t you think?”
“You wouldn’t have been anything without me. I worked hard for my money.”
Hillary had regained her earlier aggressive attitude and was pushing back—at least, as much as one could against a phantom. “Everyone wanted vampires. No one wanted ghosts. That book was a hard sell, and I—”
“You had four major publishers bidding for it the first week,” Valerie cut in, “and it was a free ride for you from there on out. But you weren’t satisfied, were you? You thought you deserved a bigger piece of the Valerie Baylor action, and when I wouldn’t give it to you, you tried to poison my brother against me. That’s how you found out that he wrote the books and not me, wasn’t it? You thought you’d hit an even bigger jackpot then, until you found out we weren’t going to play your game.”
The ghostly author’s voice dropped now to a purr. “So tell me, Hillary, had you planned to kill me off all along, or was this one of those spur-of-the-moment things?”
Hillary shifted guiltily in her seat now. “It was an accident, all of it. I, I wasn’t in a right frame of mind!”
“Tell it to the Janitor,” the author softly said. “You see, Morris and I aren’t going to let you get away with what you did to me.”
At that, the remaining lights flickered out.
They flashed on again a few heartbeats later, illuminating the area where Hillary huddled on the love seat. Darla gasped despite herself as she saw that the phantom Valerie now loomed over the frightened agent. Then the ghost leaned closer, and in a scathing voice demanded, “Oh, for Chrissakes, Hillary, just admit you deliberately shoved me into traffic and killed me.”
“All right, I did!” the young woman shrieked. “You deserved it for the way you treated me, and if it makes you feel any better, I’d do it again just to shut you up. The only thing I’m sorry about is that you died right away. I would have laughed to see you squirming around on the street for a while before you croaked!”
The distant roar of applause from the theater above greeted her confession as the agent cowered in her armchair, her head covered with her hands as if to ward off a ghostly attack.
The second act must be over, was Darla’s first irrelevant thought as she stared wide-eyed through the fake foliage at the scene before her. Her second, more pertinent realization was that the phantom Valerie now looked as real as she had the night of the autographing. She stood preternaturally still, her visage twisted into a look of horror and outrage as frightening as anything Darla had ever seen. The figure slowly raised a fist over the huddled woman, and Darla saw something else she hadn’t noticed before.
The phantom Valerie wore a large gold puzzle ring on her right hand.
“Don’t do it, Morris.” Jake’s voice, clear and firm, rang out from beside her. “You don’t need to do anything more. You’ve got two other witnesses here to Hillary’s confession.”
“I didn’t confess to anything!” the agent shrieked, even as she crouched lower in her seat. Darla heard a faint intake of breath from the ghostly figure hovering over her. And then, a man’s familiar baritone replied, “I’ve got videotape as well. Come out, please, and make yourselves known.”
Morris’s voice sounded weary as he lowered his hand and tugged off his long black wig, revealing spiky blond locks beneath. He raised his other hand, which had been concealed beneath his cloak, and Darla could see he was holding what appeared to be a remote control. He gave it a couple of clicks, and the remaining basement lights flared on again.
Darla stiffly rose from her crouched position and gratefully slipped on her shoes. She and Jake came out from around the bush. Morris gave a small sad smile as he caught sight of them.
“Darla, Ms. Martelli,” he greeted them with a formal nod. “I rather expected I might see you two tonight. Mrs. Gleason told me that she’d seen two women enter my apartment before I arrived. Since she was watching through the peephole, she’d thought the tall one was Mavis in a curly black wig. It wasn’t until a bit later that she wondered if she’d been wrong. Her description of you two was quite accurate.”
“But how could you know that we knew you were meeting Hillary here tonight?” Darla asked in confusion.
He shrugged. “The two of you had been painfully persistent in questioning me when I stopped by your store the other day to see the lighter—which was just a ruse to get me there, I presume? Since you said Ms. Martelli used to be a police officer, I made the leap and assumed she looked about my place for some obvious clues. As you know, there were a couple of saved voice mails from Hillary that confirmed our plans for tonight.”
“It’s a trick . . . a trap,” Hillary weakly protested. “You can see how he can pretend to be someone else. He, he imitated my voice.”
Darla, meanwhile, was giving Jake a pointed look. It was the latter’s turn now to shrug as she pulled her cell phone from her purse and powered it on. “Oops. Guess we did it the hard way. Remind me next time to check the voice mail, kid.”
Addressing Morris again, she said, “If you and Darla will keep an eye on Hillary, I’m going to go upstairs and call for some official backup. I can’t seem to get a signal down here.”
While Jake made her way back through the maze of props, Darla joined Morris where he stood looking at the agent, still huddled on the sofa and now loudly weeping. Tentatively, she touched his arm.
“I am so sorry about your sister, Morris.”
He flinched a little but did not pull away. Staring down at Hillary, he softly said, “She could have done anything she wanted to me, and it wouldn’t have mattered. But to take my sister from me . . . she’s cut me in two, and I’m afraid I won’t survive it.”
“You will survive it, Morris, I promise,” Darla rushed to assure him, emotion clogging her throat. “You’ll be scarred, but you’ll carry on. Wouldn’t you want Valerie to do the same if your positions were reversed?”
“I suppose so.”
Tears trickled dow
n his face, sluicing trails in the white face paint that he wore. Then he raised his head and gazed around him, as if seeing the place for the first time. His words were little more than a sigh as he said, “Welcome to life beyond the Janitor’s closet.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
JAKE’S PHONE CALL BROUGHT TWO POLICE CRUISERS WITH lights flashing, though since the immediate emergency was long over with, they had refrained from turning on their sirens. One of the four cops who rushed in through the theater’s front doors turned out to be Officer Hallonquist, the same patrolman who had cited Darla at the coffee shop a few days earlier. He shook his head a little at recognizing her, but made no comment as he and his partner hustled the handcuffed agent outside and loaded her in their car for the trip to jail.
Reese had shown up right after the uniformed officers. “Yo, Fiorello,” one of the younger cops had called with a grin and a wave at the detective.
Reese gave the rookie the old finger-across-the-throat gesture, but it was too late. Darla had overheard. With a delighted grin of her own, she stared at him and said, “Wow. Fiorello is your first name?”
“Yeah,” the rookie interjected, poking his forefinger to his cheek to form a dimple. In a simpering voice, he added, “It means ‘little flower.’”
“Correction,” Reese snarled back. “It means ‘he who kicks ass.’ So shaddup already, if you don’t want your butt handed to you.”
The rookie snickered but obligingly shut up. Then Reese turned to Darla. “Yeah, so sue me. My dad was German and my mother was Italian. I got his looks, and she won the baby-naming contest. But we don’t use that name, got it?”
“How about this?” Darla replied, trying to keep a straight face but failing miserably. “If you don’t call me ‘Red,’ I won’t call you ‘Flower.’ Deal?”
“Deal. Now, forget about me. What the hell is going on here?” he demanded with a stern look at both her and Jake.
Quickly stepping back into serious mode, Darla waited quietly by and let Jake explain what they’d been doing at the theater in the first place. Then Darla gave Reese a quick rundown of the private conversation she’d had with Morris in the basement after Jake left, and before the police arrived.
Morris told her he had followed Hillary and his sister down the sidewalk that fateful night, and so had witnessed Valerie’s death. He had been the caped figure who had rushed into the street to help her, and who Reese had pushed aside. Realizing there was nothing to be done for his sister, Morris’s next thought had been to pursue Hillary, who had already melted back into the crowd.
He’d had little doubt that Hillary’s actions were deliberate. Despite his grief, however, he’d also realized that, under the circumstances, it would be his word against hers should he accuse her of a crime. And so, he had made the difficult choice to pretend that he’d seen nothing. Instead, he had returned to the store, determined to find some way to later pry a confession from the agent. Hillary had not been content with murdering Valerie, however. A day later, she had contacted Morris with another blackmail threat, and that was when he’d had the inspiration for staging the ghostly intervention.
In the time it took for Darla to make her explanations, Morris had changed back into his street clothes and commandeered the theater’s offices for further interviews. Darla wondered how a lowly makeup artist had managed such a feat, until Morris explained with a wry smile, “I don’t think they’ll mind, considering that I own the place.”
Once the statements had all been given—according to Reese, Morris’s official account had squared with what he had told Darla—Reese rejoined Darla and Jake in the lobby. The play had ended, and most of the theatergoers had already departed, leaving behind a handful of curious employees to finish closing up the place. Morris reappeared as well. He gave a few whispered instructions to the same tuxedoed female usher who’d politely demanded Darla’s ticket. The girl nodded and made hasty work of rushing the other employees out the door.
By then, the remaining patrol officers had driven off, leaving the three of them alone with Morris. He gave Darla and Jake a tired smile.
“Detective Reese was asking about the ghost illusion,” he said. “Perhaps all of you would care to see how it was created?”
At their eager nods, he led them back down to the basement. There, he demonstrated how he had conjured Valerie’s ghostly appearance.
“It’s an old theater trick called Pepper’s Ghost Illusion,” he explained as they stood in the lounge area where the phantom Valerie had confronted Hillary. “If you’ve ever been to Disney’s Haunted Mansion, or even one of the professional haunted houses that spring up each year for Halloween, you might have seen this effect before. We use it here at the theater on occasion. I had some of the stage crew set this up for me a few days ago.”
He showed them how the space beyond the lounge area actually formed an equilateral L, with the lower portion of the L blocked from their view by a wall of shelving. A sheet of glass sat across the elbow of the L at a forty-five degree angle, with the red velvet chairs positioned behind it. The unseen portion of the L had been where Morris in his ghostly disguise had been hidden. That area was curtained in black fabric that formed a backdrop on all three sides and was empty, save for what appeared to be a set of freestanding steps that were also draped in black. Like a good host, he gestured them to sit on those stairs.
“When the lights are dim here and bright there,” he said, pointing toward the chairs, “all the audience sees from the outside is exactly what’s in that space.”
With his remote control, he adjusted the lights so that a cheery beam illuminated the red velvet chairs, while the light in their half of the L dimmed.
“But if you lower the lights there”—he again indicated the chairs and turned down the illumination—“and raise the lights on this side, whatever’s here reflects on the glass and looks like a ghost on the side to the audience that’s watching.”
As he spoke, a light came on overhead. Now, the four of them were reflected with almost mirrorlike precision in the glass, their transparent images seeming to hover over the chairs, just as Valerie’s ghost had done.
“Pretty cool,” Jake muttered, while Darla nodded her agreement.
Reese grinned a little, like a kid figuring out a new trick. “It’s like when you have a lamp on in your house, and you look out the window at night. You can see everything behind you—and even yourself—reflected in the glass, so it kind of looks like you and your room are outside on the street.”
“Exactly,” Morris said with an approving smile. “The lighting is crucial, as is the black backdrop on this side. It’s a simple enough effect, but very powerful if the audience is in the mood to believe.”
And it seemed that all of them had been in that mood, Darla told herself, remembering the chill she’d felt at her first sight of the ghost. Probably, Morris had tinkered with the air-conditioning down there, too, and had lit the cigarette to further trigger the connection to Valerie.
Reese remained behind at the theater awhile longer, while Darla and Jake made their good-byes and returned to the brownstone. It was after midnight by the time the taxi they’d commandeered at Darla’s insistence left them off on the curb. As she stepped out onto the sidewalk, Darla noticed in surprise that the Valerie shrine with its guttered candles and dead flowers had been cleared away sometime during their absence, leaving the sidewalk bare once more.
Jake followed her gaze and nodded.
“Our sanitation department at work,” she observed. Then, noting Darla’s troubled expression, she added, “Don’t feel bad, kid. That mound of flowers couldn’t have stayed here forever, you know.”
“I know. It just seems a shame that all those poems and letters and tributes that Valerie’s fans left for her ended up in the back of a trash truck.”
“Actually, I think Mary Ann gathered all those things up this morning. She thought the family might want them, so she was going to package up everything and give it to you to forw
ard.”
“I’m sure Morris and his parents will appreciate that,” Darla agreed, relieved and yet feeling a bit guilty that she hadn’t thought of doing the same thing.
They parted after agreeing to meet back at Darla’s apartment when Reese finished at the theater and stopped by to update them on the situation. Yawning, Darla went upstairs to change out of her theater clothing. Hamlet was waiting for her, his expression disapproving.
“Sorry, boy, we were chasing down ghosts and murderers,” she explained, earning a spit and a hiss from Mr. Anxious Parent Cat for her trouble.
Once snuggly attired in sweats, she flipped on her computer and did her official scan of the store. Everything appeared in order, so she left the screen up and turned on her favorite all-news television station. Within a few minutes of watching, she discovered that word of Hillary’s arrest had already hit the media.
“And in breaking news,” the jowly broadcaster proclaimed, “a twenty-nine-year-old New York City woman has been arrested in what is now considered to be the murder of bestselling author Valerie Baylor last week.”
Snippets of video from the autographing rolled as he described what little the police had released to this point. Darla was glad for Morris’s sake that, at least for the moment, no reference was made to Mavis or ghosts. And a fleeting shot of Hillary doing the perp walk made Darla smile in grim satisfaction.
A knock sounded at her door a few minutes later. It was Jake and Reese, the former having exchanged her chic leopard-print dress for a pair of sweats and a T-shirt like Darla’s, and the latter wearing his usual leather motorcycle jacket and bearing a chilled bottle of sparkling wine.
“Hey, I had it in the fridge and thought we should celebrate,” he said, popping the cork before Darla even had a chance to chase down the proper glasses. Then, with a mock disappointed look, he added, “Of course, I’d been planning on drinking with a couple of hot broads, and not two kids ready for a pajama party.”