An Uninvited Ghost

by E. J. Copperman

  At the landing, we followed the destructive sounds down a hall to one of the three doors, constantly testing the floorboards beneath us for strength before stepping firmly down. There were still doors in each of the frames, but a light touch on the one in question and it swung open easily with an ominous creak. This whole house had an ominous creak to it.

  There still appeared to be a few sticks of furniture in the bedroom we entered. A dresser with one drawer (of a possible four) left in it was swaying as we walked in, and the bed frame, minus any mattress or box spring, was quivering, seemingly in sympathy.

  “Scott,” I said forcefully. “Just stand still a moment, okay?”

  The movement within the room ceased, and the bandana, as ever, nodded in my direction. I was starting to feel like I had a relationship with what once was one of my cloth napkins.

  “Okay,” I breathed. “Let’s take a nice, organized look. Mom . . .” I pointed toward the closet door, because I didn’t want to be the one to open it. I pretended to be fascinated by the one remaining drawer, which was actually the third one down on the piece, and the contents could be clearly seen without pulling it out at all.

  “Is there anything Scott should do?” Mom asked as she walked—a little slowly, I thought—toward the closet. I was developing what I considered to be a completely rational fear of closets.

  “Don’t move, Scott,” I said. “Get yourself up close to the ceiling, and only swoop down if you hear us scream.” The bandana rose up to the ceiling and hovered.

  “What’s in the drawer that’s so fascinating?” Mom asked. I thought she was stalling, but I answered anyway.

  “A deck of cards, a map, a pair of eyeglasses and a paperback copy of Dr. Spock,” I said. I looked at the cards first, and found they were backed with pictures of women in, let’s say, less than complete suits of clothing. “Whoa,” I said reflexively.

  “What?” Mom demanded.

  “Nothing. Someone who lived here had interesting taste in playing cards, that’s all.” Then I added as casually as possible, “What’s in the closet?”

  Mom reached over and opened the folding doors on the closet. She let out a breath. “Nothing,” she said. “Absolutely nothing. Except dust. What about the map? Does it show where treasure is buried or something?”

  “I’m afraid not. It’s a map of Ocean County, and nothing’s circled or anything. It’s got to be twenty years old.”

  There wasn’t anything under the bed (it would have been hard to miss) or anywhere else in the room, so we decided to move on to the next. That was an even smaller bedroom, with no furniture at all, and the “closet” was actually a cabinet that sat on the floor under the window and surrendered only a blue woolen blanket that had nourished many a moth in its time.

  Scott’s bandana followed us back out onto the landing. “That’s it, I guess,” I said. “There’s nowhere else to search where the letters could have been stashed.”

  Mom pointed at the third door. “There’s the bathroom,” she said.

  What the heck; a door’s a door. “Okay,” I said. “I hope there’s a window, or it’s going to be dark.”

  But there wasn’t just a window; there was also a stickup battery-driven lightbulb, clearly installed much more recently than anything else in the house. And sitting in the sink, which bore rust stains but hadn’t seen water in quite some time, was an empty vial. A look at its label confirmed what everyone in a ten-mile radius would have expected.

  “Insulin,” Mom said out loud.

  “There’s a medicine chest,” I noted, and I reached up to open it.

  Inside, perfectly positioned on what appeared to be a newly installed center shelf, was a rubberized plastic aspirator, the kind of device you use on an infant who has a cold, to clear out the nasal passages. I know, because using one on Melissa had been one of my first heart-wrenching experiences in the wonderful pageant that is parenthood.

  Mom reached over to get a better look. “What is that?” she started to ask.

  I grabbed her hand. “Don’t touch it.”

  This one, blue and bulbous, was attached, using medical adhesive tape, to another empty insulin vial.

  “I think someone wanted us to know this was here,” I said. “I’m starting to feel just a little bit like somebody’s playing me.”

  The red bandana, visible outside in the hallway, nodded.

  Twenty-six

  “I think I’m going to just follow you around until this case is solved,” Lieutenant Anita McElone said. “It would save me all that commuting time.”

  She was standing in the upstairs bathroom of what I was mentally calling “Scott’s house,” examining the artifact we’d discovered in the medicine cabinet. Mom and I were outside the bathroom—there just wasn’t enough room for all three of us in there—and Scott, bandana safely tucked away, was around somewhere. From the angle of Mom’s occasional glances, I took it he was still inside the bathroom, in the vicinity of the ceiling.

  “You didn’t touch anything, did you?” McElone asked us.

  “Of course not,” I answered. “Well, we didn’t touch the vial or the aspirator, anyway. Before we found it, I can’t say we didn’t touch anything else in there.”

  “I touched the sink, I’m pretty sure,” Mom added.

  “Every time my phone rings, it’s you,” McElone muttered, or pretended to mutter. We could hear her perfectly clearly.

  “Would you have preferred we not call you when we found this?” I asked.

  “You’ve had quite a couple of days,” the detective responded, not answering my question. “You come to me, you go to see Donovan, you go to the Ocean Wharf Hotel to uncover some Halloween costume, then you’re chasing after some reality television bimbo, stop with me for a doughnut, and now you show up here, hunting down a murder weapon that looks like Gallagher put it together.” Her eyes narrowed. “What were you two doing here, anyway?”

  “My client gave me some information that led me here,” I said, having rehearsed the answer to that one. “I didn’t know if there was anything to it, so I didn’t call you in advance.”

  “Gee, thanks a heap.” McElone, having put on latex gloves, dropped the injecto-matic into an evidence bag. “Wait—I thought Donovan was your client. How’d he lead you here?”

  “Since I went into his office and accused him of trying to frame me, I’m no longer in Mr. Donovan’s employ,” I told McElone. “This is another client, one who prefers not to be mentioned by name.”

  McElone gave me a long, hard look. “I don’t care what your client would ‘prefer.’ It sounds like you’re working for someone with inside knowledge of a murder, and I can start charging you with withholding evidence whenever I feel like it. So how about you tell me what we’re talking about. Who is your client?”

  I sighed. “I could tell you, but there’s no chance you’d believe me. Just accept that there’s no way you can talk to my client.”

  She curled her upper lip and let out a long breath. “Is this one of your crazy ghosty things?” she asked. “A Ouija board told you to come here and look for a vial of insulin with a rubber pump on it?”

  “I said you wouldn’t believe me.”

  McElone took another quick look around the bathroom, which admittedly was small enough that a long look would have been difficult. “The Avon cops let me in here first, but I’m going to send in their fingerprint guy. How much do you want to bet he finds yours and nobody else’s? Everybody watches CSI now; they know to wear gloves.”

  We cleared her way out of the bathroom and started downstairs. “You are looking like an awfully good suspect right at the moment, though,” McElone said casually.

  I almost took a header, and I was only two steps from the landing. “What?” I asked.

  “Well, think about it. You invite Mrs. Crosby over to your house, and she drops dead that night. Nobody else knew she was coming. Then the evidence starts showing up all over your house. And once that’s done, evidence starts show
ing up here, and you’re the only person who knows about it. You want me to believe that Mrs. Crosby came back from the dead specifically to tell you about it, but left out the one detail about who injected her. How am I doing so far?”

  “Lousy,” my mother said before I could. “Alison wasn’t even looking at Mrs. Crosby when she died; check the video. She couldn’t have reached far enough over to inject her. How do you think she did that? And yes, a ghost did tell us to come here today. I can have him show himself to you if that’ll help.” She looked up in Scott’s direction, or what I inferred was Scott’s direction. I saw a snippet of red bandana appear, seemingly out of the air.

  McElone’s eyes widened at Mom’s offer, and she drew in a quick breath. She does not like talk of ghosts being in the room with her. “No,” she said, “that’s okay. I was just kidding.”

  The red bandana vanished again.

  We reached the front door, and I saw a black-and-white police car pull up, presumably with the fingerprint duster and at least one other cop. I turned toward McElone.

  “I’m starting to formulate a plan,” I told her.

  Mom beamed. She’s never quite so proud as when I do something.

  McElone regained her stern expression—the one she uses pretty much whenever she talks to me—and held my gaze. “I’d very strongly urge you not to do anything,” she said. “I realize you have a license, but you’re still really just an amateur. You’re not an experienced investigator, and quite frankly—I’m telling you this for your own protection—nobody would hire you if they really wanted the case to be solved. So please, let me do my job, and don’t try to help me. Can I count on that from you?”

  Mom gasped at what she perceived as McElone’s rudeness. I didn’t.

  The two Avon cops walked into the house, and McElone told them where to search and what to search for. They pounded their way up the stairs looking determined. When they were out of earshot, I drew myself up to my full height, something I learned to do in yoga class years ago, and looked at the detective.

  “Lieutenant,” I said, “I know you don’t see it this way, but I have a lot of respect for you and the job you do. But someone murdered a guest of mine—in my house, as you so clearly pointed out—there at my invitation. I take that personally. And since then, as you also have been kind enough to note, they’ve taken great pains to make me look suspicious. I’m not fond of that tactic, either. I realize I’m not Sherlock Holmes, or even Larry Holmes, but I’m not going to let some cowardly murderer push me around. Do you understand?”

  It took a long moment, but McElone finally nodded slowly. “As a matter of fact, I do,” she said.

  “Did you kill Arlice Crosby?”

  It seemed like a fair question. After all, Linda Jane Smith had a lot of strikes against her: Melissa had seen (or dreamed) her doing something to Arlice—like stick her with a needle—just before Arlice had collapsed. Linda Jane had access to plenty of insulin in her role as a registered nurse. And when Maxie checked into it, Linda Jane’s story about being wounded as an Army medic—in fact, her Army service entirely—had not been corroborated.

  “No,” Linda Jane answered. “But I can see why you’d ask.”

  We sat in the room Linda Jane shared with Dolores Santiago, who thankfully was not present at the time. After Mom and I had gotten back from Scott’s house, and she’d taken Melissa to get a pizza, I’d come up here to start questioning people I considered suspects.

  Luckily, Trent and the Down the Shore crew were on the boardwalk that evening and were not expected back until late. I was saving H-Bomb for last and hoping someone else would confess before I had to talk to her. Tiffney was really the suspect, but to get the good dirt on her, I’d have to talk to Helen DiSpasio.

  “You know, I looked into your background a little bit,” I said, glancing briefly at Paul, who was standing about calf-deep in floor just by the door. “I can’t find any records of your service in the Army.”

  “That’s because you searched for Linda Jane Smith,” she said.

  Uh-huh. “Should I have looked for Napoleon Bonaparte? Because I’m relatively sure he didn’t serve in Grenada, either.”

  She smiled. “Linda Jane Smith is my married name,” she said. “I was born Linda Jane Weatherby, and that’s the name under which I served. If I’d have known it was going to be an issue, I could have brought my dog tags on this trip. I thought this was going to be a nice little beach vacation.”

  I looked at Paul, who nodded and rose through the ceiling. He’d get Maxie to work on checking out Linda Jane’s explanation.

  “I know,” I answered. “I’m sorry. This has become a little trying for everyone. Can you tell me more about the second diabetic? That might help end this sooner.”

  “I couldn’t tell you that if I wanted to,” Linda Jane said, shaking her head. “It’s privileged information, and besides, from what I’ve heard, the amount of insulin that was pumped into Arlice Crosby would have been more than even a diabetic would normally carry around. What I can tell you is that when I got back up here that night, the two vials I had were here, but empty. I still haven’t gotten replacements.”

  That wasn’t helping. “You didn’t marry Arlice’s brother or something, did you?” I asked. “Supposedly, there’s a sister of hers nobody can find. I thought maybe it was actually a sister-in-law.”

  Linda Jane cocked her head to one side. “Sorry,” she said. “My Howie was just a small-town boy from Kansas. No relation I’m aware of.”

  Paul stuck his head in from the attic. “She checks out,” he reported. “She was Linda Jane Weatherby in Grenada.”

  I looked back down at the suspect I was interviewing. “So what do you think?” I asked Linda Jane. “Who killed Arlice Crosby?”

  “I haven’t a clue,” she said.

  “Would you tell me if you did?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “What if I were wrong?”

  “I certainly didn’t kill Mrs. Crosby,” Warren Balachik said. “I had no reason to kill her.”

  That was a good point. Maxie’s research had turned up remarkably little about Warren or Jim. But there was something that was bothering me about both of them, and this was officially the time to start putting cards on the table.

  “You and Jim didn’t want to talk to the police, even after Jim thought he saw Tiffney do something to Arlice when she died,” I said. It wasn’t a question, but Warren, sitting in the library with a book (not a beer) in his hand, and without his constant companion at his side, knew exactly what I was getting at.

  He looked away. “Jim . . . has a record with the police, and he didn’t want to bring it back up when all this happened,” he said. “We were arguing about it this afternoon, and I think he’s coming around. I shouldn’t have told you, but you have to know that he didn’t kill Mrs. Crosby.”

  I leaned forward in my armchair while Warren sat straight in his, holding his copy of Some Like It Hot-Buttered closed around a finger to keep his place. “What kind of police record does Jim have?” I asked.

  “He had a close call with an armed robbery rap a while back,” Warren said, still not making eye contact. “He was out of work and desperate, and he held up a convenience store without any bullets in his gun because he didn’t want to hurt anybody.”

  “Jim didn’t go to jail?” I asked. I don’t know why that mattered in this case, other than to give Paul, once again hovering near the ceiling, something to check with Maxie.

  “No, it was his first offense, and like I say, he didn’t actually harm anyone, so they worked out a plea deal where he got away with time served. But he knows how it looks if the police check up on him and see a violent crime. They’re not going to ask about the circumstances.”

  Paul vanished up to the research room, and I vamped. “This was how long ago, Warren?” I asked.

  “It was nineteen seventy-four,” he said.

  That left me with little to say, even va
mping, for a few long seconds. “That long ago, and he’s still worried?”

  Warren shrugged just as Paul came back down, again nodding that things had checked out. “He’s a sensitive soul,” Warren told me.

  On cue, Jim walked through the open doorway (in fact, I had taken the door off the library during the renovation, to present a much more open space and to convey that the books were always available) and saw us talking. “Sorry to interrupt,” he said.

  Warren and I insisted he was doing no such thing, so Jim sat down. But Warren, getting pink in the face and not knowing where to look (so he looked mostly at the rug), was obviously in distress, so Jim asked about it.

  “I told Alison about your . . . misadventure,” he told Jim.

  Jim, in the process of taking a stick of gum out of his pocket, froze. “You did?” he said. He blinked, then started moving again. “Well, I guess there’s really no harm in that.”

  Warren’s head sprung up as if a rubber band in his neck had been snapped. “You don’t mind?” he asked.

  Jim seemed to think it over, tilted his head from side to side and said, “No, I suppose I don’t. It was a long time ago, and Alison’s not going to hold it against me. Are you, Alison?”

  “Certainly not,” I said. “You paid the price for what you did, and you never did it again. Right?”

  Jim chuckled. “Right.”

  Then I remembered something Maxie had told me about him. “But I’ll bet you didn’t mention that . . . misadventure when you applied for the grant you received from the charitable foundation Arlice Crosby underwrote, did you?”

  Paul’s face became very serious, and he watched Jim carefully for a reaction. Jim looked positively baffled.

  “What grant?” he asked.

  “In nineteen eighty-nine, he received a grant from the Selective Entrepreneurial Experiment Development Fund,” Paul told me. “It helped him set up his business.”