“I wasn’t talking to you.”
Maxie, looking even more irritated than usual, put the laptop down on the kitchen counter, across the room from Jeannie. “I’ve been running as many checks as I can think of on the people we know were here,” she said. “I don’t have all the names of the cameramen and the techs and all that.”
“I’ll get them from Trent,” I told her.
“Get what?” Jeannie asked. She pulled a carton of orange juice out of the fridge.
I turned in her direction and pointed at a kitchen chair. “Sit down and be quiet. Don’t keep asking questions.”
Jeannie put up her hands. “I wouldn’t dream of interrupting your imaginary conversation,” she insisted. She sat down to make herself a snack.
“What have you found out so far?” I asked Maxie.
“Most of them are really dull people,” she said. “I mean, some of them don’t even show up on Google. Try looking for Warren Balachik sometime and see what you get. The man sells insurance. Honestly.”
“Well, let’s forget the boring ones and move on to the more interesting bystanders.”
“I forget,” Jeannie said. “Am I boring or interesting?”
I pointed a finger at her. “What did I tell you?”
She mimed zipping her mouth shut, then opened it to bite a bagel.
“Okay,” Maxie went on. “There wasn’t anything special about Warren, but his pal Jim Bridges is another story. He once accepted a grant from one of Arlice Crosby’s charitable foundations.”
I waited. Paul waited. Jeannie licked cream cheese off her thumb.
“And?” Paul asked.
“That’s it,” Maxie said. “That’s the connection. He set up a business selling blank media like CD-ROMs and DVDs and makes a very nice living. Not something I’d want to do, but there’s nothing wrong with it.”
“Tell me there’s something more than that,” I pleaded.
“I’m just getting started. We also have Dolores Santiago, who has lived in New Jersey most of her life as far as I can tell, and must have run into Arlice at some point.”
“I’ve lived in Harbor Haven most of my life, and I never met Arlice before last Thursday,” I told her.
“I haven’t had that much time,” Maxie said, sounding defensive. “It’s a lot of people to search for, and it’s more sophisticated than plugging your name into Google, okay?”
“Sorry,” Paul said before I could respond with a childish retort. “Did you find anything that looks truly suspicious?”
“Two of them are weird,” Maxie said.
“Just two?” I interrupted.
Maxie made a pencil appear behind her ear, so she could pull it out and chew on it. I hadn’t noticed that she was now wearing eyeglasses. “There’s one,” she said. “Very interesting. I looked into the background of your pal Linda Jane Smith.”
Some hairs on the back of my neck stood up. “What did you find?”
“I found some lox on the bottom shelf, but I know that’s not yours,” Jeannie said. “You hate fish. Your mother must have left it.” I gave her a dirty look, and she shrugged and looked down at her bagel, which was almost gone.
“It’s not what I found,” Maxie said. “It’s what I didn’t find. There’s no record of a Linda Jane Smith being an Army medic during the Grenada campaign. In fact, there’s no record that she was in the Army at all.”
A moment passed. “But that doesn’t connect her to Arlice Crosby,” Paul said.
“Well, wait . . .” Maxie said.
But I jumped in. “Maybe not, but I saw Arlice’s will,” I told them. Even Jeannie looked up. “And while two-thirds of her money, a very large sum, was left to the charitable institutions she championed, the other third all goes to a single living relative. Her sister.”
“I didn’t know Arlice had a sister,” Jeannie said. Jeannie knows everybody everywhere, or at least the ones I ask about.
“Neither did anyone else. And this sister is nowhere to be found,” I went on. “Donovan says he’s searched through all sorts of records and hasn’t come up with anyone matching the facts yet, but he’s searching for this woman. And here’s the interesting thing: The sister is named Jane.”
Another moment passed. “Jane Crosby?” Jeannie asked.
Maxie shook her head. “No. Crosby was Arlice’s married name. In fact, she changed her name completely when she got married. Her birth name was Alice, and apparently she added the R to make it sound more exotic.”
“What was her maiden name?” Paul asked.
“That’s the thing.” Maxie gestured with her pencil, pointing to the computer screen. “Her birth name was Alice Smith.”
“So we’re looking for a sister named Jane Smith,” I thought aloud.
Another long moment. “I don’t know where you get this stuff,” Jeannie said. “You sure you don’t want your bagel? It’s an everything.”
Twenty-three
I called Detective Anita McElone and told her everything we’d discovered, leaving Paul and Maxie out of the equation for the sake of sanity. She agreed it was interesting but “not nearly enough to warrant an arrest yet.” And then she gave me a hard time for not finding out more: Who had Tom Donovan e-mailed after she’d questioned him, and why had he thought he could cast suspicion on me? I had tried to force him to tell me those things, but even with the threat of a permanent haunting from Scott, the lawyer wouldn’t talk on those subjects. His eyes widened and beads of sweat shone on his forehead. But not a word was uttered.
Clearly, there was someone Donovan feared more than Scott, the police, or me.
In a rare gesture, McElone actually thanked me for my help, assuming that I would now cease my investigation, given that my client—at least, the living, breathing one who was paying me—was a lying jerk who had tried to frame me for murder.
As for Linda Jane Smith, I wasn’t really sure how to proceed. She currently seemed to be the chief suspect in Arlice Crosby’s murder, and as happy as I was to let the police handle things from here, she was staying in my house. It was inevitable that I would run into her on her way out of the bathroom or reading a book in the library. How should I react? It would be hard not to show my nervousness.
So the logical step was to get out of the house, and the easiest excuse for that was getting into the Volvo with Trent and making at least a superficial attempt at tracking down Tiffney. If I could pick up a little extra money in the process, it was hardly the worst thing that could happen.
And I swear, I was just thinking aloud when I said, somewhere just south of Harbor Haven, “I have people moving in Tuesday, and I have no idea where I’ll put them.” It had just occurred to me again. Now, my favorite solution would have been to eject Linda Jane and Dolores (who was creepier, if not quite as worrisome) in favor of the new guests, a married couple from Connecticut who’d appear on my doorstep at about two the next afternoon. And they were not people looking for ghosts—they were civilians.
It was a little late to call them and say the room was no longer available. Not to mention, I might never see another guest if I did that, and I’d really like to avoid that if possible.
“Well, you can use the room we set up for the cast,” Trent said. It startled me, because I’d forgotten I’d said anything out loud about the housing crunch I was about to experience.
“You sure?” I asked. “We have a deal, and I don’t want to violate the terms of our contract.”
Trent laughed. “You sound so businesslike,” he said.
“This is business.”
“Don’t worry about it. I can shoot around the room for a few days until you get it all sorted out. I can remove the cameras and leave the mounts for them, so we can put them back later. Besides, the cast all sleep in their trailers, anyway. And we’re getting most of our best footage anywhere but in the room. Frankly, I only took the room in case it rained a lot and we had to shoot indoors, but the weather’s been perfect.” He checked the GPS device that was
directing us to the Sandy Side Motor Hotel (Harbor Haven did not have an exclusive copyright on all cheesy beach trade names, after all) in Sea Bright. It would be another thirty-eight minutes at this speed, the know-it-all little box suggested.
“You don’t make sense to me,” I told Trent as I drove. In my side mirror, a white van was keeping a discreet distance, but had been behind us pretty much since we’d left the house. Or was I getting paranoid?
“What doesn’t make sense about me?” he said, looking concerned.
“Sometimes you’re the guy I’m sitting here with now, this reasonable, funny, down-to-earth man I can talk to.”
Now Trent looked downright perplexed. “And the rest of the time?” he asked.
“The rest of the time you’re TV Producer Guy, who calls a bunch of spoiled brats his cast and believes that if something wasn’t actually written down on a piece of paper ahead of time, that makes it spontaneous. That guy doesn’t seem to have a soul and will do whatever necessary to get his show in on time. It’s a hard thing to reconcile.”
Trent sat back and blinked a few times. “Wow. You really don’t hold back when you decide to say something, do you?”
“I don’t believe in letting things fester,” I admitted.
“I’ll say.”
The van wasn’t getting closer, but it wasn’t letting us get too far ahead, either. I couldn’t be sure it was following us, but I wasn’t exactly tearing up the highway, and the van could have passed me a number of times if the driver had chosen to do so. “I’m sorry if I offended you,” I told Trent.
“I don’t think I’m offended,” he answered. “But I’ve never really looked at it that way. To me, that’s part of the job. If I don’t get it done, they’ll find somebody who will, so I get myself into that mode in order to survive.”
“Is Down the Shore what you had in mind when you decided to get into the television business?” I asked.
He chuckled with a hard edge. “Of course not. I wanted to make the next M✲A✲S✲H. The next All in the Family. The next Seinfeld. But this is where the work is at the moment, so this is what I’m doing.”
“You ever think about getting out?”
Trent raised an eyebrow. “I think about it every morning before I get out of bed. And then I think about it every night when I’m trying to get to sleep. I don’t give it a moment’s thought in between. I don’t have the time.”
“Well for what it’s worth, I like you a lot better like this than when you’re TV Producer Guy,” I said. “Maybe you should think about being this guy full-time.”
He smiled, and it seemed genuine. “Maybe I will.”
I took another look in my side mirror, and there was our constant companion. “I don’t want to alarm you,” I told Trent, “but there’s a possibility we’re being followed.”
He didn’t look back, which I thought showed good judgment. “An unmarked white van?” he asked. “New York plates?”
I checked the plates in the mirror; of course I should have done that already. “Yes. How did you know?”
“It’s one of mine,” Trent answered. “If we find Tiffney in the motel, I want a camera crew there. It’ll make a great moment for one of our sweeps episodes.”
TV Producer Guy was back.
Sneaking up on someone while you’re being followed by a boom-mike operator, a camera operator and a “grip”—whatever that is—presents a number of unusual challenges. So it was decided that before we attempted that feat, we’d have a chat with the attendant working behind the desk at the Sandy Side Motor Hotel.
The office of this establishment was a room about six feet by eight feet, into which was crammed a counter, a seat behind the counter, a small television set mounted on the wall over the seat, a floor lamp, a plastic tree in a plastic pot and a couch with vinyl cushions on it, just inside the door in front of the counter.
I was hoping they didn’t expect us to stay long enough to need the couch.
The clerk behind the counter looked like he’d been born there and had a hard life. He had no teeth missing; I’ll give him that. But his hair was thinning and didn’t seem to have been anything to throw a party about when it was there, based on the remnants. His skin was pockmarked and his eyes didn’t seem especially interested in focusing on the same point in space.
I decided to let Trent deal with him.
I checked out the snack machine, which looked to have been installed during the reign of the emperor Hadrian. It was enough to make a girl swear off junk food. Behind me I could hear Trent’s smile, the TV Producer Guy one, even without being able to see it.
“Good afternoon,” he began. “I’m wondering if you can help me.”
The weaselly little guy probably wondered that himself, but kept his opinion to himself. “You guys from COPS?” he asked.
Trent laughed a laugh similar to a chocolate Easter bunny: sweet and delicious on the outside, but hollow inside. “No, no,” he assured his prey. “We’re shooting a show called Down the Shore. Have you ever seen it?”
“Nope, but we only get six channels here,” the little guy answered. “The networks and FOX News. You on any of those channels?”
I turned to look at Trent’s face, and it was hard to see the crack in his smile, but it was there. “No, we’re not, but we have a strong following in the key demographic of . . .” Trent remembered who was hearing his words, and he stopped in mid-sentence and chuckled. “I’m talking in industry jargon. Sorry. Anyway, we’re here shooting this show, and we’re looking for one of our stars.”
The little guy perked up at that. “Yeah? You think a TV star is here?” He looked around at the “lobby” and looked puzzled.
“Absolutely!” Trent said, playing to the guy’s perceived weakness. “We think she’s right here, in hiding, and we want to film her in the motel and bring her back to the set of the show. Can you help us find her?”
“How can I do that?” the little guy asked. “I didn’t see no TV stars walking around here.”
“Well, we know she used her credit card when she paid for the room,” Trent said. “It’s Tiffney Warburton.”
“That’s no TV star,” the guy said. “A TV star is, like, David Caruso or Paula Abdul. That’s a TV star.”
Trent’s voice lost most of its patience. “Could you just please look and see what room Miss Tiffney Warburton is registered in?” he asked.
The little guy banged on the keys of a grimy computer first used by Marconi in nineteen twenty-six, and green copy finally appeared on the foot-thick monitor screen. “The card was used for room eighteen D,” he said. “Do I get a credit when the episode airs?”
The camera operators and sound guys kicked into gear as we headed up the outdoor stairs to the room where Tiffney was staying. And as Trent and I led the charge, something occurred to me that hadn’t before.
“How come the cops haven’t been here yet?” I asked. “The locals would have had a huge head start on us; even McElone should have beaten us here. Why didn’t the guy at the desk say anything about cops, other than the TV show?”
Trent shrugged. “Maybe he just came on duty and missed them,” he said.
“And the previous guy didn’t tell him?”
Trent looked annoyed. “How am I supposed to know why the cops haven’t been here yet?” he asked. “It just makes it that much more important that we get this done quickly.” He gestured to one of the camera operators, who rushed to a room door and set up the camera on his shoulder.
“Hey, I don’t want to be on screen for this,” I told Trent. “I don’t want people to see the crazy ghost lady running up to a sleazy hotel room in pursuit of a girl who doesn’t wear much on a good day.”
“But it’s great publicity for your guesthouse,” he said.
“How?”
“Anything that gets you on national television is a plus,” Trent answered. “It’s like free advertising in every state and a number of foreign countries.”
We stopped a
t the top of the stairs, which annoyed the tech crew. They were in full adrenaline rush and didn’t want to pause for any reason. “I’m already going to be seen on nationwide TV in a white terry cloth bathrobe trying to conjure up spirits of the dead while a lovely old woman in the room with me is murdered,” I told him. “How much more great publicity could I want?”
“You’re sure? You don’t want to be seen at all?” Trent seemed truly stumped by this weird character trait I was exhibiting.
“I’m completely sure.”
He tilted his head to one side and shrugged. “Okay.” He turned to the crew. “No shots of Alison,” he told them. “Keep her off camera at all times.”
They nodded. They got paid the same whether I was on screen or not.
Trent nodded. “Okay, then. Let’s go.”
It wasn’t hard to find room 18D; it was three doors to the left of the stairway, and there was a sign that would have been easy to read if most of the letters hadn’t fallen off during the Reagan Administration. We were in front of Tiffney’s door in roughly fifteen seconds.
Once again Trent turned toward the crew, but this time he spoke in hushed tones. I found myself wishing the female camera operator I’d seen at the séance was along; I liked to think she’d have had some compassion for the ambush Tiffney was about to suffer.
“Keep the camera on Tiff, wherever she is,” Trent said. “If there’s anyone else in there, get shots of them after we’re in the door.” The camera operator nodded. Trent looked at the sound engineer. “Keep the mike on Tiff, no matter what. We’ll add subtitles for anybody else if we have to.”
“I think I’ll wait in the car,” I said in a slightly louder-than-usual tone, hoping to alert Tiffney. “You don’t need me here.”
“You’re the investigator,” Trent answered, motioning me to keep my voice down. “If there’s any . . . evidence we need to see in there, you’re the one I want to see it. You’re the professional. You need to stay.”
I didn’t have time to argue because Trent was banging his fist on the door before I could respond. “Tiff!” he shouted. “Let us in!” But he was already taking the key—a real key, not a swipe card—he’d wrangled from the desk clerk (thirty dollars bought a lot in this neighborhood, apparently) and turning it in the lock. I held my breath. I’m not sure why.
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