The Ghost and the Femme Fatale

by Alice Kimberley

  "No," I said. "What I am is frustrated."

  "Oh?" the PI arched an eyebrow. Then he gave me a little smile. "That I can take care of." He leaned closer.

  "Jaaack… I'm not frustrated that way!"

  My pathetic push against his rock-solid chest was enough to make him pause. "Then what did you mean, baby?" he asked with a sigh.

  "I don't know… I guess I mean I just need more info, too. Whatever happened to your own case back here? I mean after you caught that private eye tailing you. Was he working for

  Hedda Geist?" "No."

  "Who then? Did you ever find out?"

  Jack sighed again, leaned back a little. "You really want to know?" "Sure."

  "Then close your eyes." "Jaaack… "

  "No funny business. I promise. So close 'em…"

  I did.

  ***

  JACK KEPT HIS promise. There was no funny business next. Just business. When I opened my eyes again, I found myself standing in front of a polished oak apartment door in the hall of a grand Park Avenue building.

  Jack was looking spiffy in his brand-new blue suit, his face freshly shaved. He rang the apartment's bell and waited.

  "Where are we?" I whispered.

  "Nathan Burwell's penthouse."

  "What? You're bracing the district attorney?!"

  Jack smirked. "I can be wild, baby. But I'm not crazy. Nathan's not home at the moment."

  The door opened. A young maid greeted us and showed us inside. "I'll get Mrs. Burwell," she said and disappeared.

  The entryway where we were standing was brightly lit and stacked with trunks and suitcases. I could see a luxurious living room beyond a short hallway. Half of the room appeared to be packed up in boxes.

  "Mr. Shepard, thank you for coming."

  Jack gave a curt nod to the tall, slender woman. She was middle-aged, dressed in a beautifully tailored wool suit with stylishly padded shoulders, but her bobbed black hairdo looked more like it belonged in the 1920s than the late 1940s.

  "I got your message," Jack said.

  "Yes, well, let's not prolong this. Here you are." Mrs. Burwell held out a thick envelope. "This should end our contract."

  Jack hesitated before taking the pay. "If you don't mind, Mrs. Burwell, I'd like to know why?"

  "Why?"

  "Why you suddenly changed your mind about having your husband investigated," Jack said stiffly. "Why you expressed no interest in seeing my report or my photographs or anything in my files."

  "Well, I, just… don't need to…"

  Jack glanced at the trunks and suitcases. "So you're leaving?"

  Mrs. Burwell nodded. "Nathan's letting me go. There's no problem anymore. He won't fight my request for a divorce, won't fight for custody of our daughters, won't even fight me on taking my money with me. So, you see, it's all worked out." "And what changed his mind? Did you tell him you hired me?"

  "No. I didn't."

  "Well, Mrs. Burwell, I've got news for you: A scumbag shamus tried to get the drop on me last night. Only I got the drop on him. The man's name was Egbert P. King. I called around and found out he works for Dibell Investigations. You know who they are?"

  Mrs. Burwell blanched. "Yes," she admitted. "I do."

  "So do I. They do the dirty digging for Marigold and Webster, the law firm where your husband worked before he became a public prosecutor."

  The woman's eyes were wide, her expression clearly distressed. "I never once mentioned you to Nathan, Mr. Shepard. You have to believe me. The reason I'm letting you go has nothing to do with Nathan. I mean… it does, actually, just not in the way you think. Can't that be enough for you? Won't you go now and let things be?"

  Mrs. Burwell stared at Jack. He stared back. His large form seemed to fill the hallway, and it was clear that he had no intention of moving it until the woman told him what he wanted to know. She seemed to figure that out, too, because she finally cleared her throat and admitted-

  "Nathan's being blackmailed."

  "By who?"

  "Someone. He won't tell me; not even whether it's a man or woman. He said his hand is being forced in an official capacity. If he doesn't comply with the demands of this person, then Nathan's… well, his indiscretions will be exposed. It would ruin him. Ruin me, too. The scandal would destroy our standing completely."

  "Why don't you let me uncover this blackmailing rat? You've already paid me an awful lot of dough, Mrs. Burwell. Let me find out who's blackmailing your husband."

  "My husband knows very well who's blackmailing him,

  Mr. Shepard. And apparently Nathan has already decided to give in to this person."

  "So what's the payoff?" Jack asked.

  "No payoff. There's no demand for money."

  "Then what does the blackmailer want?"

  "A reprieve, Mr. Shepard."

  "From what?"

  "Apparently from being accused of murder. This blackmailer planned a murder with an accomplice. The blackmailer demand-ed Nathan let them both off, clearing them of any crime, but Nathan's made the blackmailer see that the public needs a fall guy. So in a few months, he'll put the accomplice on trial-for manslaughter. The blackmailer will betray the accomplice and provide testimony to help with the conviction. Nathan gets a conviction, and the blackmailer goes free."

  Jack's jaw worked for a moment. "If you don't want my help, then why are you telling me this?"

  "So you'll take the money and go. Nathan doesn't know about you, Mr. Shepard, and I want to keep it that way. When he found out he was being blackmailed, he told me everything. I told him I wanted a divorce, and that if he gave it to me I'd go away quietly instead of making things worse for him. He has enough trouble, so he's letting me go. But if he found out I hired a private eye, that you were collecting hard evidence against him to be used in court, well… I don't know what he'd say or do then. So please just take the money and leave."

  Jack rubbed his chin, took the envelope. "All right… if that's what you want."

  "It is. I'm flying to Miami tomorrow with my girls. I hear life's good down there. Sunny. I like the sunlight. Clears out the cobwebs… I've lived enough years in Nathan's shadow."

  WE LEFT THE penthouse and headed outside. It was late afternoon; the sun was going down and the streets were getting dark. Commuters filled the sidewalks, flooding out of office buildings, flowing down to subways, rushing into train stations. Jack flagged a cab and we rode downtown toward his office.

  "It had to be Hedda," I said in the back of the cab. "You know that now, right? The blackmailer was Hedda and her accomplice was Pierce Armstrong."

  "Yeah, baby. It only took me sixty years-and a little snooping redhead-to break the case."

  "Little snooping redhead?" My eyes widened. "You mean me?"

  "Who do you think I mean, baby? Little Red Riding Hood? I was never able to ID Wilma Brody as the chippy at the Hotel Chester and I never came up with any leads connecting her to the starlet Hedda Geist. Now that you've done both, the pieces have fallen into place."

  I stared at Jack, a little stunned. He wasn't the sort to dish out compliments when it came to gumshoeing-yet here he was telling me I'd actually helped him crack one of his own cold cases. I couldn't help grinning.

  "Thanks," I said.

  "Yeah, well… you did good, kid." Jack chucked my chin. "But don't let it go to your head or anything. You're still green as a broken traffic light."

  "I may be green, but I'm far from done." I folded my arms. "And you're not off the hook, either. There's a pretty heavy situation still going on in my time."

  "I know, baby. I haven't forgotten."

  "Good," I said, then admitted something that was still bothering me. "There's still one thing about your case I don't understand."

  "What's that?"

  "Why didn't Mrs. Burwell take you up on your offer to help nail the blackmailer?"

  "The lady just wanted out. And that's what she got."

  "But her husband admitted to her that he w
as going to let a murderer walk free! How can she live with that?"

  "You don't understand these cliff dwellers, baby. The threat of scandal might sound like a punch line to some floozy in the Bowery, but women with Mrs. Burwell's address would never survive the shame of a tabloid blitz. Society's circle would close her out. She'd be shunned by friends, family… ruined. It's a long way down from a Manhattan DA's wife to an object of pity. Alcohol and pills is the typical end for dames in that situation. I've seen it before. They're lucky if they don't get a trip to Bellevue and a nice long stay at a cackle factory."

  "But Jack… she's buying her freedom with a man's life."

  "Mrs. Burwell didn't stab Irving Vreen, sweetheart. Hedda Geist did."

  "With the help of Pierce Armstrong," I pointed out. "And Wilma Brody."

  "Well, Wilma's dead," Jack reminded me. "You told me that yourself. She died in 1966 in a horseback riding accident-the same year some journalist tried to open a can of worms on the Vreen murder."

  "But Pierce is still alive," I noted. "And so is Hedda."

  "And that's why you've got to be careful," Jack warned. "You're in the middle of a kettle that's been boiling for decades. And it just might explode in your face. Keeping watching your back, honey."

  "I will. As long as you keep watching it, too."

  "I always do."

  "Not my backside, Jack. My back." He laughed.

  A few minutes later, our cab pulled over and Jack paid the fare. As we climbed onto the sidewalk, Jack touched my arm.

  "Be a doll, okay?" He took a bill from his pocket and handed it to me. "Take that sweet backside of yours into the drugstore on the corner. Buy me a deck of Luckies and meet me upstairs in my office."

  "What am I? Your secretary?"

  "For the moment? Yeah, you are. My old one quit last week to get hitched. Just be grateful I haven't put you to work yet typing and filing."

  "Ha! From the complete lack of organization in those dusty files of yours that Kenneth Franken sent over, I'd say you needed to hire a new secretary badly."

  "I'll take it under advisement."

  We parted ways on the sidewalk. As Jack took his building's elevator up, I ducked into the corner drugstore. I bought the cigarettes for him, a candy bar for me, and took the same elevator north to his office. The clanging lift may have been new in Jack Shepard's day but to me it felt like an ancient relic. It had a hard-to-close cage and it squealed and squeaked and seemed to take forever to climb the few flights up. Finally, I arrived.

  I pulled back the cage and stepped onto green linoleum. When I found Jack's office, the door was wide open.

  "Jack?"

  No lights were on. I glanced around the dim room. "My god!"

  The place was in chaos! Files were strewn everywhere! Chairs were overturned! I flipped on the light.

  "Jack!"

  I found him slumped on the floor in the corner. His head was bleeding. "Jack, can you hear me? Jack!"

  He groaned, his eyelids fluttered and he slowly sat up. "Oh, my head. Those SOBs… they didn't give me a chance…"

  "What happened?"

  "I got jumped. A couple of goons were in here riffling through my files. I'm pretty sure one of them was our old friend Egbert. They must have heard me coming because they were hiding when I opened the door. Then wham!" He gingerly touched the lump swelling on his forehead.

  "What did they want, Jack?"

  The PI slowly rose from the floor. I helped him get to his feet. Once he was steady, he walked over to his secretary's desk.

  "It's gone," he said with a disgusted exhale. "I figured it would be. Everything was right here and they took it. The reports, the photos…"

  "Nathan Burwell's file?"

  "Yeah, baby. Even if I'd wanted to turn him into the feds or the state bar, I'd have no evidence to back my story. They took it all."

  "So that's why you told me what you did the other day-not to bother looking for the file."

  "Yeah." He patted the breast pocket of his suit jacket. "Mrs. Burwell's envelope's gone, too. The DA's hired goons took it all."

  "All that money? Oh, Jack… "

  "Looks like its back to the salt mines for me. But it's not a total wipe. I still got you as a secretary-"

  "Excuse me? Don't you mean partner?"

  "Partner, huh?" Jack shook his head. "I don't know…"

  "After all we've been through, don't you think I've earned it?"

  The PI's lips lifted ever so slightly. "I'll have to think about it."

  "Fine. You just call me when you're done thinking about it-"

  Jack caught my wrist before I could walk away. "Dames. Why are they so much trouble?" "I'm no trouble!"

  "Oh, yeah? Let's test that theory. C'mere…"

  Jack jerked me close, into his arms. He kissed me and I kissed him right back. Then his lips were on my cheek, my jaw, my neck.

  "Oh, Jack… " I sighed. "That feels like heaven… " I closed my eyes, wanting the feeling to go on forever- Ring-ring! Ring-ring! Ring-ring! Ring-ring!

  I OPENED MY eyes. Sunlight was blasting through my window pane, morning had come without notice, and I was alone in bed. Jack's body was gone. His arms were no longer around me. His kisses had faded on the last wisp of dream.

  Ring- ring! Ring- ring!

  Ring- ring! Ring- ring!

  Ring- ring!-

  I sat up and slapped off my plastic alarm clock with enough force to crack the case.

  CHAPTER 17. Quibbling over Clues

  I sell gasoline, I make a small profit. With that, I buy groceries. The grocer makes a profit. We call it earning a living. You may have heard of that somewhere.

  – Out of the Past, 1947

  BUD NAPP SLAMMED his ball peen hammer on the table. "Motion carried," proclaimed the hardware store owner. "I'll draft a letter of protest to the mayor today, and deliver it in person first thing Monday morning."

  He set the hammer down and lifted his paper cup of coffee. Bud paused, the cup halfway to his lips. "I'll inform 'his honor' that every member of this organization refuses to pay these unfair fines-and I can't wait to see the look on that mealy-mouthed politician's face."

  Getting every last one of the Quibblers-aka, the Quindicott Business Owners Association-to attend a meeting at eight-thirty on a Sunday morning might have seemed insane a week ago. But a second round of two-hundred-dollar littering tickets written to every business on Cranberry Street automatically rendered everyone fit for a straightjacket.

  The previous evening's Film Festival party on the Commons had left a pile of trash on the city streets, and the mayor decided to levy punishing fines on all of the business owners to cover the cost of clean-up.

  As soon as Bud found the ticket plastered to his hardware store's front door, he made a few phone calls. He discovered, after dragging the police chief out of bed, that Ciders had been leaned on by the mayor, who was threatened with political punishment by none other than Councilwoman Marjorie Binder-Smith-and her wealthy Larchmont Avenue backers. So Bud had called this emergency meeting.

  "Enough is enough," said Gerry Kovacks, owner of Cellular Planet. Like everyone else, Gerry had arrived at his business this morning and found the littering ticket taped to his door. "It isn't fair. We pay taxes already. Too damn many taxes, too!"

  "You go get them good, Bud Napp," cried Mr. Koh, owner of the local grocery store. Then he ripped his ticket up and scattered the confetti-sized pieces across my hardwood floor.

  "We've got to fight," Danny Boggs declared. "No way I can afford four hundred bucks worth of fines in a single weekend."

  Seymour, who was sitting between Sadie and me, jumped to his feet. "I found a ticket on my ice-cream truck this morning. I don't control what those little bastards do with the ice cream wrappers after I sell them! This is fascism-and I know governmental persecution when I see it! I'm a federal employee!"

  "What we need is a rebellion," Milner Logan cried. He punctuated his call with a militant power fist in the a
ir. "Power to the self-employed business owners!"

  Although Milner looked the part of an aging radical, the long straight ponytail that flowed down his broad back wasn't part of a political statement. He was one-quarter-blood Narragansett Native American and had worn his hair that way since childhood.

  Milner and his wife, Linda Cooper-Logan, should have been at their bakery now, with Sunday being their busiest morning. But they were both so furious about the tickets, they'd entrusted their business to a pair of part-time workers to make their voices heard.

  Linda ran an agitated hand through her short, spiky Annie Lennox eighties hair. "I can't believe it's come to this!"

  "Well it has," said Glenn Hastings of Hastings Pharmacy. "And it's all because of one woman. Marjorie Binder-Smith!"

  You'd have thought we were in the Movie Town Theater, watching a Boris and Natasha cartoon, the way everyone in the Community Events room booed the municipal-zoning witch. When the curses and catcalls faded, Aunt Sadie spoke up.

  "Why don't you tell them your news, Bud?"

  "News?" Fiona Finch asked, sitting up straighter. "What news?"

  Sadie grinned. "Bud has big news!"

  Standing on the raised platform, Bud nodded and rested the palms of his hands on the table.

  "I don't know about the rest of you, but I've had it with this town's prohibitive business taxes, stifling regulations, and outdated zoning codes. I think it's time somebody stepped up and took the system on-starting with the municipal zoning witch herself. That's why I'm running for Marjorie Binder-Smith's seat on the city council this fall!"

  The Quibblers greeted the news with loud applause and shouts of support.

  "It won't be easy," Bud warned, "since the councilwoman has had the backing of the town's wealthiest residents for years. They're fat, happy property owners who don't want our Cranberry Street business district to expand. But times are changing in Quindicott. We haven't seen better days in decades, and it's because of us! Our hard work! They thumb their nose at capitalists, but we don't have old money accruing oodles of interest in stocks and bonds and Caribbean bank accounts. We have to work for our living! And I promise you that I'll protect our interests and give my best if you see me through to victory!"