GHOSTS: 2014 edition (THE GHOST STORIES OF NOEL HYND # 1)

by Noel Hynd

  “I’m sorry, Joe. It won’t happen again.”

  She knew that on the other end of the line, Joe was lighting a cigarette. Annette’s gaze drifted to some pieces of her jewelry which she had left carelessly scattered on the top of her dresser. “Okay,” he said finally. “Now that we’re on the subject of client misbehavior, and since you haven’t hung up on me yet, can I bark at you a little bit more?”

  “Bark all you want, Joe,” she said.

  She fumbled with the telephone cord, stretched it and settled onto a chair. She glanced at the area of the closet where she had seen her first ghost. Then her eyes drifted back out the bedroom window down onto the lawn below. Tim was gone. She saw the small dark reddish clump in the grass that had held his attention. She couldn’t tell what it was.

  She continued to stare out the window as Joe growled about the importance of Annette Carlson’s next project. She listened and watched the progress of an afternoon shadow creep across the lawn. Then her eyes rose and her gaze settled back into the bedroom as she listened to her agent’s voice over the wire from New York.

  Despite having graduated from both Lawrenceville and Stanford, Fischer could wreck immeasurable violence upon the English language. Annette tuned back into Fischer and was conscious of a question being asked.

  “You know I’m doing this ’cause I love you, don’t you?” Fischer inquired. “I’m not doing this for my fifteen percent. My fifteen percent doesn’t mean diddly-crap if a client is unhappy. Okay, Annie? We understand that, right?”

  “Right,” she answered. Alone in the bedroom, she was highly conscious of the sound of her own voice. There was a very slight echo in the woodwork of the antique house. The ear of an actress, finely tuned to even the smallest acoustical quirks, could focus upon it.

  “We understand that, Joe. What are you leading up to?”

  “Who says I’m leading up to anything?”

  “You did. A second ago.”

  “All right. What’s wrong with these scripts I’ve been sending you?”

  “I haven’t liked any of them enough to want to do them, Joe. It’s that simple.”

  “Okay. Okay, I understand that,” he said. “The trouble is, Annette, honey, I can only get you the first look for so long. I’m sending some very good scripts back to producers. Other actresses with half your talent are snapping up the roles you’ve turned down.” He paused. “You’re not forgetting how the game works in Los Angeles, are you? Are you sure you haven’t been back east just a little too long?”

  “Joe, you’re back east right now, yourself, aren’t you?”

  Fischer laughed. “So I’m in New York. Tel Aviv-on-Hudson. Is that such a crime?”

  Annette didn’t answer.

  “Okay, okay! Maybe it is,” he allowed, nearing his point. “But, look. Here’s what I’m saying, Annie. You’ve looked at nearly thirty scripts. All of them I screened for you before I sent them. But not one of them even interested you a little bit?”

  “Not enough to do, Joe,” she said.

  “Okay,” Fischer said flatly. “Again. Joe Fischer can handle that. But that brings us to the script I sent you three days ago. The one you’ve been kind enough to not even look at yet, much less scan my efforts at a cordial covering letter.”

  “It’s television, Joe. The boob tube.”

  “Annie. It’s not ordinary television. If you’d read my letter, you’d know that. I don’t normally call you to push a script. But this time I am. Now, I admit this much to start: the writer is one of my clients and I’m involved in the packaging of this. But can I keep talking?”

  Joe was suddenly very serious. Annie said he could keep talking.

  “One of the things you and the other clients pay me for, Annie, is to advise you against bad career moves. If you’re not careful, you’re going to make one.”

  “What are we talking about, Joe? The television script you sent?” Her eyes went back to the dresser. With a sinking sensation she noticed that one of her favorite necklaces, a gold filigree chain which supported a small gold star, had been inordinately tangled and knotted.

  “How do delicate pieces of jewelry tangle and knot themselves?” she wondered. She cradled the phone between her shoulder and chin and used two hands to try to work loose the knots in the necklace.

  Meanwhile, Joe spoke business.

  The script, Fischer said, Message From Berlin, was a three-part six-hour cable miniseries being developed for autumn of the following year. It was based on a best-selling novel. The sequences that were not done in a studio in California would be filmed in Washington, New York, London and Berlin.

  “This isn’t just dumb-assed ordinary television for the peasants out in Nebraska, Annie, honey,” Joe Fischer said. “This is going to be top-quality stuff for one of the best cable networks. The money’s excellent, the exposure’s excellent.”

  He named the director who had already committed himself to the project. He was a man who already owned two Oscars and three Emmys. The producer was top-of-the-line, too. He paid his bills and had never been associated with a disaster.

  “The lead female role is yours, Annie,” Fischer said. “They want you. You say yes and I can start squeezing the dollars out of them.”

  “How many dollars?”

  “I think they’d pay a million to have you aboard,” he said softly. “I think they think you’d make the story work and kick them up an extra Nielsen point or two. So I think that’s what I could get you.”

  Annie was quiet. With all that had transpired in her house over the last weeks, maybe Joe was right. Maybe she hadn’t been attentive enough to the scripts she had been reading, or to what her career demanded next.

  “It would be a six-week shoot in October and November,” he said. “Four in the U.S., two in Europe.” He also said that the search for a leading man was down to four names, all of whom were ready to commit to the project if an offer found its way into writing. Annette liked all four names.

  She was now listening attentively.

  “The thing is, Annie,” he then cautioned, “and this is why I’m calling, they’ve been doing some sniffing around. They know you’ve rejected more than two dozen scripts. So they’ve already got their feelers out elsewhere.”

  “Where’s ‘elsewhere’?”

  Fischer named a pair of actresses. Both were good and specialized at television movies. They were logical alternatives to Annette.

  “Uh huh,” she said.

  “Meaning, if their second or third choices come back to them quickly and will work for less, I know these characters, they might come down with a case of preemptive cheapness. See what I mean?”

  Annette saw. She promised that she would read the script overnight and give her agent a callback first thing the next morning.

  “That’s all I’m asking, Annie,” Joe Fischer said. “That’s all I wanted you to understand.”

  She hung up the telephone. For a moment she wondered what had possessed her to agree to read three hundred sixty pages of script overnight. She sighed. Well, she told herself, she would give it a start. She would know after the first third whether it was any good. Then she could…

  A movement through the window caught her eye and distracted her. It was Tim, down below on the lawn, carrying a small shovel from the garage. She couldn’t fathom what he was doing. She went downstairs and outside to investigate. When she walked onto the front lawn, Brooks was intent on his small sad task. He made a shallow hole in the loose soil of the flower garden at the front of the house. Then he returned to the reddish clump which Annette had seen from above.

  “See what I’m doing?” he asked.

  She didn’t. Not until he showed her.

  He walked back to the small forlorn object in the grass. Annette drew close enough to see what it was. It was a dead bird, a female cardinal, lying with its wings askew, its head twisted at an impossible angle from its body.

  Gingerly, Brooks picked it up with his shovel. “I’m buryin
g the poor thing,” he said. “Can’t just leave it lying in the grass.” Annette looked at it and grimaced.

  “What happened to it?” she asked. “Cat get it?”

  “Doesn’t look that way,” Brooks said without expression. “Its neck is broken.” He dropped it into the hole in the garden.

  “How does a bird break its neck?” she asked.

  Brooks raised his eyes and looked at her, the dirt in place. “Maybe it flew into the side of the house,” he said. “Hit a window. Or something.”

  She looked at the grave.

  Then, with the backside of the blade of the shovel, he pushed dirt upon the body of the slain bird. Annette and Timothy exchanged the same thoughts. But they said nothing.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Shortly after dinner, Annette picked up her copy of Message From Berlin and began to read. She was familiar with the novel upon which the script was based, but she had never read it. She had tried to read several books by the same author and had always found the plots too dense, the characterization too shallow and the action unbelievable. Nor did the author have a particularly good prose style, even though he had sold millions of books all over the world. Annette had never been able to finish any of his books. Hence, her initial reluctance to pick up a screenplay based on the same man’s work.

  But a screenwriter named Jonathan Reed had adapted the book for six hours of cable television. Reed had taken several liberties with the story. With all of them, his instincts seemed to have been right.

  Reed had cut away the overblown prose and had boiled down the plot. The characters were sharply defined from the start, their motivations clear. And they were sympathetic. Annette was hooked from page two.

  She read all three scripts. As was frequently the case, Joe Fischer was right. This was an excellent piece of popular entertainment—quality cable television combined with an excellent financial offer.

  Yes, she was interested. So, at a few minutes past eleven P.M. the same evening, she went to the phone and called Joe Fischer in New York. He was staying at the Hotel Carlyle.

  Fischer knew no difference between any hour of the day or night when he was busy putting together an entertainment package.

  “They’re still hot for you, honey,” Fischer said. “I talked to the producers an hour ago. Told them you were reading the script as we spoke. Did you read it? They want your body in this project and they want it very badly.”

  “I want to do it, Joe,” she said. “Get it for me.”

  “That’s my girl!” Fischer exclaimed. “Look. Tomorrow’s Saturday. Fly down. I’ll arrange a meeting. Maybe we can start working out the money in the afternoon. That will give the producers a lot more leverage with other parts of the package. It might allow them to raise foreign production money right away.” Fischer paused. “Plan to stay overnight. I’ll book a room at the Carlyle for you.” The agent paused again. “Jon Reed’s in town, too. If you want to talk to him about the script, he’s already told me he’d love to meet you. You can choose. Just be here.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  In sum, it was the type of conversation any actress would kill for. Annette began to enjoy the surge of excitement inherent in becoming a central part of a promising production. Suddenly one of her most pressing problems—what next direction to take professionally—had solved itself. Now she could make some money, gain some positive visibility and allow herself more time in finding a feature film project.

  And all with one deft move. Thank you, Joe Fischer! Next time I’ll read your covering letter right away!

  Then Annette made a final call for the day. She telephoned Detective Brooks at his home, asking if he and his minister friend wanted to come into the house on Cort Street while she was away. She might be off-island for as much as two days, she explained.

  “I still can’t find Reverend Osaro,” Brooks answered.

  “He’s not home?”

  “We think he might have gone to Boston. Or at least that’s what everyone at the church thought. He hasn’t come back yet.”

  “Is that unusual?”

  “Maybe not,” Brooks said. “He’s separated from his wife and son. He may have gone to see them. Didn’t want anyone at the church to know his business. He can be a little private like that.” He paused. “The truth is,” Brooks said, “I expect him to turn up in a day or two.”

  “If that’s the case,” she said, “I’m going to leave you a key.”

  “You’re sure?” Brooks asked.

  “I wouldn’t offer if I weren’t.”

  “If George doesn’t materialize tomorrow do you mind if I have another walk-through by myself?” Brooks asked. She thought for a moment.

  “No. I don’t mind,” Annette answered. “I’ll leave you my agent’s number in New York. If anything happens, you can call me there.”

  He agreed. She said she would leave the key under a large mossy rock in a flower garden beneath the kitchen window. There was just one other thing, he asked. He wanted her to leave open the two interior doors that were usually locked. The attic and the basement.

  She felt a twinge of foreboding when he mentioned those two doors. But she said she would unlock both.

  “I would think those places would make you nervous,” she said.

  “They probably would,” he said. “But I’m hoping Reverend Osaro turns up. It’s pointless to go through if we don’t go through thoroughly. So if you’re willing to give me the key, I don’t mind.”

  Annette was willing. So Tim Brooks didn’t mind, either.

  She hung up and began packing.

  Her enthusiasm for this new television undertaking pushed darker thoughts out of her mind. She slept well.

  And as if by osmosis, the night at 17 Cort Street passed quietly.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  The next morning, Tim Brooks drove to Reverend Osaro’s home and found it exactly as he had seen it the previous day. Similarly, the minister had not been seen at his church, either.

  The voice inside him spoke again.

  “Osaro is a dead man, Brooks!” the voice insisted. “He burns in hell,

  Timmy! Your friend is burning in hell.”

  “Go away,” Brooks muttered.

  “He’s a dead man. Can’t you see that?”

  “Tell me what you want or go away, would you!” Brooks demanded.

  “Fraudulent atheistic phony parson! Serves him right! Serves you right, too!

  You half-baked excuse for a cop!!

  For an uneasy moment, Brooks suffered in silence.

  “Could have made something out of yourself. Instead you became a cop!”

  “I said, ‘Tell me what you want or go away,’” said Brooks, louder this time. The voice blithely obeyed, dispersing like a puff of odious smoke.

  Brooks drove to the ferry terminal at Steamboat Wharf. When another check of the names of people holding passenger reservations on the most recently departing ferries failed to turn up Osaro’s name, Brooks went uneasily to his office.

  The person whom Brooks did see that morning was Eddie Lloyd, though not in the flesh. On the television set at the police station, several cops including Lieutenant Agannis stood and watched the noontime news at the courthouse in Hyannis. There Eddie Lloyd was arraigned for the murder of Beth DiMarco. His parents were present. His lawyer, a local mouthpiece who already appeared to be in over his head, made a statement. Eddie entered a plea of not guilty. Brooks watched the television screen in mounting disgust.

  Not guilty. A voice spoke within him again. Didn’t do it. Eddy didn’t do it. Different voice this time. More godly. More benevolent. Same voice, different moods? Or was it all just Brooks’ subconscious. He wondered.

  Brooks picked up a newspaper later in the police station. It was that day’s edition of the Hyannis Eagle. On the lower right half of the front page, Andrea Ward continued her coverage of the Beth DiMarco case.

  Something lightly touched his cheek. He swept a hand at the spot to b
rush it away.

  “Oh, really? Here we go again,” he thought.

  Brooks looked closely at his fingertips and found the crushed body of a gnat that had flown against his cheek. There was a dot of blood where the insect had bitten him. When the television news switched to another story, Lieutenant Agannis appeared by Brooks’ side.

  “Timmy, I’ve lost track. What’s on your plate these days?” Agannis asked casually.

  Brooks mentioned three cases upon which he had ongoing investigations. Two were burglaries in Madaket. One was an assault case that had taken place outside a bar two nights earlier. Then he mentioned Cort Street.

  “What about Cort Street?” Agannis asked.

  “More unexplained events,” said Brooks.

  “What goes on at that place?” Agannis asked.

  “Nothing you’d believe, Lieutenant.”

  “I’ve seen a lot in my life and I’ve forgotten none of it, Timmy. So try me,” Agannis challenged in a low suspicious growl.

  “How about I try you in your office?” Brooks asked.

  “If we must,” Agannis answered.

  Brooks fell back a pace, then followed the lieutenant into the latter’s chamber. Boomer tagged behind them. The license and doggie identification pieces jangled on the Labrador retriever’s collar as he loped in pursuit. Love without a leash. It was a human-canine combo—three distinct individuals, eight legs.

  Agannis entered his office, pushed the door shut and sat down behind his desk. “So?” Agannis asked. “Start talking, will ya?”

  Then, as Boomer settled into the corner on his sad, worn mat, Brooks ran the lieutenant through the sequence of events at 17 Cort Street, from the first apparition to the china cabinet to the battered decapitated doll to Dr. Youmans’ X-rays. Agannis listened patiently. His eyes narrowed. He listened carefully. He said nothing until Brooks finally finished.

  “That’s it?” Agannis asked. “That’s what all this is about?”

  “That’s it.”

  Agannis’ finger tapped impatiently on the top of his desk. “You know, deep down, Timmy,” the lieutenant said, “I always thought you were a little crazy.”