by Leslie Leigh
"Yeah, that part of the story makes no sense, does it? It never did. I made it up and I'm not that good at fiction. But the thing with the lights really did happen."
"So what was it?"
She smiled brightly at him. "Do you really want to know?"
"Yes, of course!"
"It was Tom. He was behind me and he turned on the lights. I never said he wasn't there."
Beauchenne sat back. "Touché."
"So, you know where this is going?"
"I think so. But I held up my end of the bargain."
"Not really. You didn’t solve my mystery."
"Come on, Allie."
"Ok. The answer is this. You have to look at the big picture and ask the right questions. You were taken in by my silly ghost story and that colored your perception of your line of inquiry. What you're not doing in this case, and what your ghostbuster friend isn’t doing, is asking the right questions. And neither one of you is looking at the bigger picture. There are so many steps to go before you assume 'ghost'. Sherlock Holmes's dictum only works when you're asking the right questions. Why, for instance, is the lantern light yellow? Why does the alleged ghost run through the house? Is it all in the same direction? And as far as the scream is concerned, why is it they only hear it when they get out of the car? And why in that area?"
"So am I to assume there are answers to all these questions?"
"Yes, you are. You just don’t know them yet. But I do."
"This I have to hear."
"The house is old, so the windows are warped. Glass succumbs to gravity, especially glass that hasn’t been tempered well, which the panes in old houses never were. Any light reflecting off them is going to be partially refracted. So the yellow end of the spectrum is what is reflected back. The light appears to be running through the house because it is a reflection of the car's headlights passing in that direction, then slowing down once the driver or drivers get a glimpse of the ghostly yellow appearance."
"Ok, then what about the scream?"
"Well, that's easy. The Barred Owl. Indigenous to Canada. Known to migrate into northern parts of the Northeast. Has a screech like that of a woman in pain."
"Interesting."
"Now, you realize I've never been there. I can't say for sure whether this is the case or not, but I can be sure that what I have is a pretty good alternative theory. And as long as there's an alternative theory, there's a possibility that such a theory is true. And that, my friend, is a lot more plausible than some ghost running through a house with a lantern. I mean, why a lantern? Why don’t people ask these questions?"
Beauchenne laughed. "You are one of a kind."
When it was time to say goodbye, Frank Beauchenne leaned in for a kiss.
Allie was a tiny bit tipsy from the wine she'd served. Perhaps a bit more due to the nerve-steeling glass she'd had before he’d arrived. That one had done little to steel the nerves, and the glasses she'd had with dinner were just as effective, which is to say they were not.
Beauchenne leaned in and pressed his lips to hers.
At that moment, the temporary blob of putty that Doctor Tennyson had used to reconstruct part of her tooth dislodged.
Allie drew in a breath. And she made a movement with her mouth that may not have been unpleasant, but was certainly foreign to Frank Beauchenne, for he drew away quickly.
Allie, in her sharp intake of breath, had managed to inhale the putty and began to choke.
Although she would have admitted to anyone that she was grateful that Sgt. Frank Beauchenne was CPR certified, she nevertheless was able to acknowledge that a tiny part of her would’ve rather choked to death at that very moment. Beauchenne maneuvered himself around her, and with a bear's strength, he hefted up her abdomen, causing the offending piece of dental putty to rocket out of her throat and carom off a sugar bowl.
The night ended with very little more spoken between them that had to do with Allie's current state of health, and a peck on the cheek.
And so began a restless night's worth of sleep.
So she stayed up, and she paced the house. And to take her mind off her lovelorn misery, she immersed herself once again into the problem at hand.
And in the dead of night, the time when shadows speak, and when the fog of sleeplessness gives way to oracular visions, her eyes ran along the titles on her bookshelf. One title in particular: The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway.
And that's what made her realize that there was someone out there who just observant enough that he might have an answer or two.
#
The last time she'd come to the hospital cafeteria was to meet with Lucy Wainwright, and that was at around six in the evening. It was around six now.
She entered the cafeteria to the smell of terrible coffee and stale baked goods, and the smell of reheated soup of the day congealing in half-opened pots.
And there he was, in the exact same spot. He was a creature of habit, as Allie suspected him to be, as writers tend to be.
She approached him with a degree of caution, more for his sake than for her own.
"You'll have to pardon me, but do you mind if I sit down here and talk to you for just a moment?"
She must have sounded like a salesperson or a Jehovah's Witness, for the writer had the look one has when one is socially trapped and is too polite to run.
"Sure," he said.
He was in his twenties, which up until recently would have been Allie Griffin's key dating demographic. Her self-consciousness at being recognized as the town cougar, plus a passing reference to the label in one of the recent articles about her, had tempered her habit for dating younger men. She did admire him though, with his sensitive eyes that were wide and dark brown, and his long, straight hair that was the color of Hershey's dark chocolate, pulled back behind his ears, which spilled over in front of his face when he bent over his journal.
"I can't help but notice that you're a writer. I could tell the other day when I was here, the way you looked around and wrote, looked around and wrote. You're probably quite observant."
"I like to think so," he said softly.
"How observant are you?" she asked with a smile.
He returned her smile. "What do you mean?"
"Well," she looked off to the side coyly, "what color are my pumps?"
"You're not wearing pumps. You’re wearing pink Nikes."
She looked back at him. "I think I like you. What's your name?"
"Call me Zak."
"Zachary."
"Short for Isaac."
"Isaac is nice. Why shorten it?"
"You on the hunt for something, Ms. Griffin?"
Allie laughed. "You are observant! Ok, no more beating around the bush. I'm looking into the death of Robert Hawkes and I need to know what you've seen and heard." She leaned in. "I don’t reveal sources."
"It's ok even if you do. I'm a writer and I take sides. Use my name if you have to. I'll tell you what I know, but it's not pretty."
"I have a feeling that 'not pretty' is the kind of info I'm looking for."
"They came in to talk about divorce. Two times when I was here. Hawkes and his wife. She signed a pre-nup and would have gotten nothing if the divorce went through. When I heard about Hawkes's death, I immediately thought it was her. But then the police said they no longer considered her a suspect. I figured killing him in order to prevent divorce was a pretty good reason for murder. Well, not a good reas— you know what I'm saying."
"I know. And this is very interesting. You say they met a couple of times to discuss this?"
"Yeah, the first time they were alone. Just the two of them. The second time there was a third guy. I'm pretty sure he was Hawkes's lawyer."
"Can you describe him?"
"Tall, very dark hair that was slicked back, mustache. Looked very old school. Like someone you'd see in an old forties movie, a typical hardened businessman. Wore great clothes—"
They were interrupted by a buzz from the yo
ung man's pager.
"Something's up. I gotta get back to work."
She tried to thank him, but he'd run off too quickly.
#
The hospital was bustling this Saturday evening, as is normally the case with hospitals everywhere on Saturday evenings. A lot of teenagers come in with alcohol poisoning. There are injuries ranging from broken limbs to strange things lodged in strange places, and each and every one of the cases resulting from the release of energy pent-up during the week. In all her years living with a man who worked in a hospital, she'd never heard of a Saturday night emergency room case that wasn't the direct result of a man or woman going a little too crazy on the weekend just because it was the weekend.
Something was a little different tonight; it was still a bit early for the crazy Saturday night rush. And it happened all of a sudden. The place became brighter, more bustling. And a bunch of people holding boom microphones and cameras entered, walking backwards. Following them was a team of EMTs wheeling in a gurney. And on that gurney was none other than Eli Campbell.
Behind everyone, with a sole camera in his face, and looking as sullen and ruffled as an abandoned puppy, was Dougie the bartender.
"Douglas?" said Allie, walking over to him.
She took him by the arm and turned him away from the camera. The camera followed, and Allie dug into her purse for a sheet of paper and a black magic marker. These she found, and wrote in big block letters the word that she had tried desperately to stop using, unladylike as it was to use it now.
She tucked this note into the back of her collar and faced the camera with it.
The camera went down and the operator said, "Now why'd you have to go and do that?"
He was a young kid, fresh out of high school. And Allie shot him a look that made his face drain of every ounce of color.
"Dougie," she said. "What's going on?"
"Parmesan cheese," he said quietly.
"What? What about parmesan cheese?"
"Our fry cook put it on the meatballs."
"Uh, ok?"
"Yeah, well they were Swedish meatballs."
"Ah. That probably didn’t go over well."
"Well it was no worse than anything else going on. The chef there didn’t even see them."
"Ok. So what happened?"
The gray man took a breath. "When we were married, we didn’t really have any money, right? We used up everything we had on the wedding, cuz in those days you had to have a band and that cost you a pretty penny. Today you hire some kid to come and plug in his computer and hit play. Even I can do that."
"Douglas—"
"I'm getting to it. So we didn’t have any money left to go on a honeymoon. So we said we'd wait. Anyway, on our wedding night, we went back to my apartment. I had this stinky little place in Colchester. You walk into that place, the roaches start spraying you, you know what I'm saying? Anyway, that was my place, and she was happy to be moving in. We didn’t eat nothing the whole day cuz your wedding is your wedding and I can't eat under those circumstances. So we were both starving. So I made us some spaghetti with marinara sauce from a jar and we sat on my couch—I didn’t have a table—and we ate it together. Now she didn’t finish hers. And I think, ain't it cute that she eats like a baby bird and all that. Goes to show you how dumb I am thinking this woman eats like a baby bird, cuz, well you saw her, she ain't exactly a whaddaya call it…nobody's gonna be putting her in any Victoria Secret catalogue."
"Douglas, I still don't—"
"I'm getting to it. So we got married on a Saturday night, see? And every Saturday night since, that's our spaghetti night. And we eat it on the couch. Even after we got our dining room set. You know, it's a whaddaya call it—commemorative gesture—to be eating the same thing every Saturday like that on the couch. It’s our thing, reminds us of that wonderful night. So every Saturday I cook up a batch of spaghetti with marinara sauce from a jar. With parmesan cheese on top. Now today, Chef Campbell is off in the kitchen calling our fry cook a 'two-fingered toad', and it's this rare moment where there aren’t any cameras on us. And she tells me, 'I hope he doesn’t say anything about the parmesan cheese on the Swedish meatballs.' And I say, 'I didn’t know he was putting parmesan cheese on the Swedish meatballs.' She says he's been doing it ever since she hired him. And I say, 'Well maybe, who knows, maybe they taste good.' Then she says, 'I don’t know. I never tried them.' And I say, 'Now why on earth wouldn’t you try them?' And she says, 'Cuz I never liked parmesan cheese.' Then it hits me. Every Saturday night since we were married, I'd been serving her spaghetti with the stuff on it and never really noticing why she don’t want to finish it. And I then I say it to her. I say, 'Why didn’t you ever tell me?' And she says, 'You enjoyed it so much. I didn't want to say nothing.' And then she says, 'It was enough for me just to look over and see you there.' Well, Allie, listen, if this gets around, so help me I'll never forgive you. I mean, I got a reputation to uphold, you know what I'm saying?"
"Ok," said Allie.
"Well, when she said that, I'm telling you, I start to cry. Right there in the restaurant, I'm looking at this woman who I've loved all my life. She drives me crazy and she's like a swarm of black flies, but I couldn’t be without her even for a day. And we could've been eating spaghetti on my couch every night for all I care, because she's right, it was enough to look over and see her there too."
Dougie turned for a moment and wiped at his eyes with his sleeve.
"Anyway," he said with the ghost of a tear in his eye, "all that hit me when she said that. And then Captain Tangerine over there comes over and barks an order at her—something about cleaning up her filthy kitchen or something—well listen, I had no choice but to pop him one right in the jaw. He went down like a bowling pin. Hit his head on my floor. So that's what happened."
"Oh my... Douglas..."
"Don’t say anything. I know it was wrong. Anyway, the producer, that's him over there, he explained it to me in the car on the way here, and had me sign some papers they wrote up saying they won’t press charges, but I'm not allowed to talk about this to anyone. They're not gonna use the footage of me popping the guy, and they’ll edit it to make me look like the villain. I say who cares? I want my quarry rats back in the place. They understand me. And they know I'm not a villain."
Allie fought back tears as she grabbed Dougie the bartender and pulled him in close and gave him the hug to end all hugs.
"Stop that, will you?" He pulled away and turned and wiped his eyes on his sleeve again. "Now why you gotta go and do that?" His voice was rattled.
"You're the sweetest man I've ever known, Douglas. It takes a real man to be able to cry."
"Well then that chef over there must look like Robert Mitchum, cuz he was crying like a two-year-old with diaper rash when he hit the floor."
A laugh burst out of Allie's throat. And Dougie laughed too.
A figure caught the corner of her eye. She turned and saw the imposing figure of Cassandra Hawkes staring at her. She turned back to Dougie.
"What's she doing here on a Saturday night? Awfully strange time for a Board of Directors' meeting."
"Who's that?" said Dougie.
"Woman at three o'clock. Don’t let her see you staring."
He looked over in a manner that no one on earth would describe as the least bit subtle.
"She looks familiar," he said. "I think she's been in my place."
"Get out. Her? Do you know who that is?"
"I don’t know the name. But I think that's her. Came in on the regular with some guy. Never talked to no one."
"Anyway you can find out who she was with?"
"Yeah, some guy who looked like Clark Gable."
Allie drew a breath.
"Actually," said the bartender, "now that I think of it, they were the ones who sent back the fried pickles. We never had anyone send back the fried pickles. It's really the only thing our guy can cook right. I remember it. We comped the bill for them. I think I could probably di
g out the receipt for you. Can I get back to you?"
Allie shook her head. "Douglas, if you weren't already married..."
And that's about when Frank Beauchenne arrived, nearly doubled over in pain.
14
"Are you sure?"
"What else could it be from?" said Frank Beauchenne from his hospital bed. "You said it yourself that Del Collins ate those meatballs too."
"But I ate them and I'm fine!"
And then it struck her that she hadn’t actually eaten them. The first time with Del, she'd passed up the soup in favor of a salad. And dinner with Beauchenne had been a somewhat nervous affair, and she found that the grilled veggie sandwich had filled her up enough and she could only take a couple of slurps of the soup and that was it. And then it struck her that she'd nearly killed two people with nothing but turkey meatballs.
"Oh Frank," she said, "I don’t know what to say. I'm sorry."
"Don’t worry about it."
"No, I owe you."
"Really, don't worry about it."
"I'll come visit you, right now, ok? I'm in the car; I can be there in a half a minute."
"Even though there's no one else I'd rather see, I'm not even sure they’re going to keep me here."
"Well you hang tight, Sergeant. I have a quick errand to run and as soon as I'm done I'll be there."
She hung up the call and entered the lobby of the Tree Top Inn.
#
Behind the front desk was the matronly woman with the cemented bun in her hair.
"Hello again," the woman said cautiously.
Allie was ready. She'd had a fifty-dollar bill in her hand and now she slapped it on the desk in front of the woman.
"It was silly of me to think you were protecting Eddie Ganz. He had no reason to be hiding his whereabouts. His guest, on the other hand, did. That's why you shut the book on me. It was to protect Sarah Sandeswack. She'd been here before, and not with him."
She slid the fifty over the desktop of the counter and watched the woman's eyes follow its course.
"All I need to know is who else she's stayed here with."
The woman stopped the motion of the bill with her fingertips, released it from Allie's grip, and then looked up at her. "His name is DuBarry. He's a lawyer. Anything else you need to know is going to cost you a lot more money than you have in that last season handbag of yours."