The Perfect Ghost

by Linda Barnes

  “You’ve been friends a long time.”

  “Did Brookie talk to Teddy? Before he—you know? Before the accident?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Brookie’s been a true pal. Never high and mighty, just because he’s good at what he does. No great family, no background, just a natural actor. He used to invite me out to his place in Brentwood. God, the parties he threw. He’s been a good friend, to me and to my cousin. Garrett owes Brookie.”

  I kept my face carefully neutral and waited, pen and pad clutched tightly in my hands, wishing I’d brought the recorder, wishing I had your gift for inspiring confidences.

  “Brookie deserves better than he gets from Garrett.”

  The second hand of my wristwatch swept several times around the compass as I waited, reluctant to break the intimate silence. Several times I thought he might speak, take the plunge. He seemed to want to unburden himself, but he kept his mouth shut and concentrated on his cigarette, watching smoke rise from the glowing tip and accumulate in the small room.

  “But then Malcolms don’t forgive or forget, do they?”

  He stubbed out his cigarette and lit another one. The room grew stuffier by the second. I should have agreed when he’d suggested opening the window.

  “What do you mean?” If I had been taping, the counter would have clicked through fifty digits before I finally spoke.

  “Huh?” He did a lovely double take, a reaction that made me remember I was dealing with an actor.

  “‘Malcolms don’t forgive or forget’?” I prompted.

  “Oh, that. It’s like I told Teddy. They never forgave my mother for marrying out of the profession.”

  “I thought you were talking about something else, about Brooklyn Pierce?”

  “I don’t talk about my friends. But hey, it’s your job to ask. Like selling and renting is mine. And I really ought to get back to it, writing keen little snippets about charming cottages on Salt Pond, only eleven K a week to you, ma’am, in high season.”

  “One more thing.” I spoke even though I knew I’d been dismissed.

  “Yeah?”

  “You said Garrett was keeping Jenna out of the country?”

  “You haven’t heard that she’s coming home, have you? To meet with the lawyers?”

  “You mean with the theater board?”

  “She can meet with them till hell freezes over. With the lawyers about the trust, the conservation trust. Garrett’s mentioned that, I suppose.”

  “Yes, he has. And no, I don’t think she’s on her way home.”

  He seemed relieved. “Makes sense, doesn’t it? Take those early pratfalls out of the limelight: a lot of pressure being the last of the Malcolm dynasty. I can’t imagine my cousin wouldn’t do whatever he thought best for her. I mean, he absolutely adores that girl.” He rose as he spoke, ready to usher me out the door.

  “Thanks for talking to me.”

  “No problem, and if you think of anything else, you know where to find me.” He hesitated, biting his lower lip, an actorly moment: man considering whether or not to confide.

  I waited, hoping he’d tell me more about Garrett and Brooklyn Pierce.

  “Things working out all right for you?” His eyes, more gray than blue, were the same shape as Garrett’s.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Garrett’s not giving you any trouble, is he? I mean, he’s going along with it, with you taking over for Teddy?”

  “I’m good at my job.”

  “I’m sure you are, but just a cautionary word, okay? Don’t let him bully you into anything.”

  I couldn’t tell by his tone if he was mocking me or warning me, but I was washed by the same embarrassment and confusion I’d felt when I first entered the cottage, as though the intimacy of my relationship with Garrett was emblazoned on my forehead or written across my chest.

  Determined to display my professionalism, I quickly asked another question. “Do you know anyone with the initials ‘HMB’?”

  He smiled and raised an eyebrow. “Is there a prize?”

  I shrugged.

  He opened the door, putting an end to the interview. “I guess the prize goes to the next contestant.”

  The artist, defeated by the breeze and the darkening clouds, was packing his canvas into the trunk of his pickup as I strolled past. I wondered what it was like to be James Foley, son of the famous Ella Malcolm, grandson of the great Harrison Malcolm, living on the same small peninsula as his cousin, a man who’d succeeded in the field for which they’d both been bred. Did Foley watch his cousin’s movies on late-night TV or change the channel if one appeared onscreen? Had he come to terms with the limits of his own stage career or did he imagine he might be a star someday?

  I was sure Garrett had told me it was Jenna who’d insisted on leaving the country. Foley must have gotten it wrong.

  CHAPTER

  thirty-six

  Since I’d never before spent time as a guest in a big house, I had no way of knowing that as a guest I would wander the hallways, that rooms would call to me, murmur, Come in, come in, look around as I passed their narrow doorways. A strange curiosity possessed me, and I justified and fed it, assuring the nosy cat-pawed beast that we were searching for relevant information, clues that would yield a glimpse into the still and mysterious center of the hyphenate actor-director-producer Garrett Malcolm, who had grown up in this house or a smaller version thereof, who had lived here as a child, a newly married man, a father.

  I should have quizzed James Foley concerning the Big House, its origin, history, and specifically its current worth. Maybe those huge figures on the pad of paper that resided in the Bloomie’s bag, the numbers I’d automatically labeled lira, represented the value of this enormous hunk of rare oceanfront land on the expensive Cape Cod real estate market.

  I wrote for hours at a stretch, head bent to the task, which was not unusual for me. What was unusual was the restless wandering, pacing corridors, climbing staircases, touching vases and lamps, shading my eyes and staring blindly out windows, even venturing up to the narrow rooftop balcony, the traditional ship captain’s widow’s walk, to contemplate the flat and endless sea.

  Whenever I escaped outdoors to plod the sandy shoreline or clamber across the dunes, it generally signaled that I was finished writing for the day, although I kept an index card folded lengthwise and a pen or pencil shoved into my back pocket always, in case a felicitous turn of phrase or an apt revision should spring to mind. I had a firm grasp of the book’s structure now. The entire first section was complete, and most of the second. The third and final meaty portion boasted a finished chapter here and there, with teetering walkways connecting them, transitions that needed fine-tuning.

  Three days after visiting Picarian Realty, I was brooding over one of those creaky walkways, strolling idly down an unfamiliar corridor, fingers caressing a wall sconce here, a tasseled curtain there, when I came upon a room I’d never entered before, a small room, like an afterthought, and heard her voice. Startled, I lifted a hand to my mouth.

  Caroline. Her tone and her piercing, drawling vowels were all but unmistakable. I thought I was having some sort of hallucination because it seemed impossible that she would be nearby, impossible and yet her voice cawed crow-like in my ears.

  What was she doing within these walls? How dare she invade my space, my haven? Answers tumbled forth as quickly as questions. Caroline was a fame junkie, a tracker of the rich and famous. She hounded you if we were writing about an attractive man, someone involved in the arts, a wealthy person who might buy a painting from her precious gallery or attend a gala opening where she could show off her catch. I should have expected she’d find a way to intrude on Garrett and demand his attention, playing the widow card for sympathy.

  God, please, don’t mention me, I willed Garrett, don’t say a word. Because I could hear his voice as well, distinguish it in the burble of sound. I moved into the small room as though propelled and shut the do
or behind me, chasing the sound instead of recoiling from it, which didn’t feel like the wrong thing to do. It was like listening to a recording, a logical extension of my daily work. The voices rose from the floor beneath. As I tiptoed into a corner near a painted bookshelf, I glanced out a window to fix my location by the view of the coastline, and determined that I must be above the great room, which seemed odd, this being such a tiny room. Here, in the very corner, the voices grew louder.

  Garrett’s tone was deep and reassuring, but a bubble of rage swelled in my throat. Why should the impeccable Caroline need reassurance? I imagined her perched on the sofa or in one of the leather chairs, silken legs tucked demurely beneath her, wearing a dress selected to display her lush cleavage, the proud figurehead of a sailing ship. I waited, still as a photograph, and the broadcast got clearer, as though I were fine-tuning a dial, homing in on a faint and distant radio signal.

  The word “police” from Caroline rang crystal clear, followed by another blur of sound and the word “snow.” If Caroline had driven as far as Dennis for an interview with Detective Snow, she might have continued on up the Cape, dropped in unexpectedly at Cranberry Hill. If Garrett’s schedule had included an appointment with Caroline, he would have mentioned it, just as he would surely mention it tonight, maybe at dinner, confiding that she’d appeared out of the blue with some odd and inconvenient request.

  For a while, strain as I might, I could make out only an indistinct word or occasional phrase, disjointed as the titles on the nearby bookshelves, where World War II memoirs mixed with car repair manuals and modern fiction squatted next to Shakespeare. Then either my ears adjusted to the distance or the station started broadcasting at a stronger frequency.

  “You didn’t notice a sudden change in him? Any sadness? Worry?”

  “Nothing like that.” Garrett’s deep voice boomed. “I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, please don’t be. I would have so hated it if he’d been devastated. I mean, it’s not as if we’d never disagreed before.” The word might have been “argued” rather than “disagreed.” Her voice was harder to make out. “The two of us have been married—we were married a very long time. People—lovers—say things they don’t mean.”

  “Often.”

  A Caroline aria followed, an undifferentiated flow of grating sound.

  After a long silence, Garrett’s voice again: “I really don’t know what else to say.”

  I cupped my hands to my ears, closed my eyes, held my breath.

  “Well, if you wouldn’t mind calling, repeating what you told me, that Teddy wasn’t depressed, they can settle this, stop this torture and harassment. Teddy would never do himself intentional harm. If I told him to leave, it wasn’t the first time. Believe me, it wasn’t. They seem to think he was a man without resources, which if you knew Teddy, is utterly unbelievable.”

  Her voice crescendoed on the last two words and I nodded my head in agreement. The entire scene was utterly unbelievable, unless you knew Caroline and took her personal quirks into account. In which case there were two interpretations.

  One: She’d discovered some life insurance policy that contained a clause precluding suicide. If Snow had so much as hinted at the possibility of suicide, she’d instinctively begin assembling a defense.

  Two: She wanted something from Garrett, his attention, his validation, his deference, his admiration. She was a mantrap and always would be a mantrap. Hadn’t she and Garrett met before, Teddy? You’d mentioned something about a dinner during which she’d monopolized the conversation.

  “If there’s any way I can help, you’ll let me know, won’t you, Mal? Have you selected the photos? Teddy always asked my advice because of my background. I’d be delighted to work with you.”

  “No photos in this one. We already agreed on that.”

  “None? But that will be so disappointing to your fans.”

  “Simpering” was the word that described her tone and manner, simpering and seductive. I pictured her in the midnight-blue velvet gown she wore the night you accepted your award. I felt hot and cold at the same time, rooted to the spot while film looped my brain: a continuous image of me racing downstairs, screaming, “Leave him alone, leave him alone, he’s mine.” The room was small, tight, and snug, with walls that pressed too closely. The books, with their yellowed pages and mouse-gnawed covers, reeked of age and mustiness. The air seeped out underneath the door. I needed to escape, to move, to run, but the ill-timed squeak of a floorboard would betray my presence. The room below went silent. What if they were ascending the stairs?

  My feet miraculously freed themselves from the sticky gum that fastened them to the floor, and I took refuge in my bedroom, sitting at the dressing table, peering into my own gray eyes in the mirror, despairing at their drab and colorless shade.

  CHAPTER

  thirty-seven

  Later that week, the weather turned for the worse, wind rising from the northeast, sky darkening to a sheet of dull gray metal. I assured Garrett the change would be good for my work, diminish the temptation to stroll the shoreline, but that proved false. The ocean’s attraction increased with the wind’s velocity; its storm-tossed surface summoned me to watch spellbound as waves smashed and broke against the rocks, rushing beyond the high tide mark to deposit seadrift treasure. Measuring spray against a seawall could absorb entire daydream-filled afternoons.

  I did work: There were moments at the keyboard when power pulsed through my fingers like electric current, when I held the charged reins firmly in my grip. But then the power would sputter and short out. I needed you, Teddy, standing sternly at my side, reviewing, admiring a paragraph, reassuring me that a chapter was sufficiently polished, finished. Alone and unsure, I rewrote passage after passage, fine-tuning, nit-picking, seeking that old enemy, Perfection. I was such a good little girl, wanted to be such a good little girl.

  Or was I such a bad little girl? The bedroom acrobatics Garrett and I got up to every night and most mornings were wrong, outside the code, and unlikely to end in orange blossoms, rice-tossing, and long-term bliss. I held that thought far away and stared instead at the stormy ocean, exulted in the foam-topped waves.

  It seemed to me that buyers would form a line, pay any premium for the died-and-gone-to-heaven views that presented themselves from each promontory, cove, and beach. The property taxes alone must be staggering.

  No wonder Garrett was considering a conservation land trust to lower the property tax. Since most of the land was unspoiled and empty, with only a small portion devoted, one way or another, to the theater, such a trust seemed a good arrangement. With a conservation trust, the estate would be taxed far more leniently on condition that no one would subdivide or develop the property.

  I wondered what the estate had been worth in Ralph Malcolm’s day, whether the old man had been tempted to cash in and sell off a few acres to an eager developer. I wondered where James Foley’s small slice of land was located, whether it possessed an ocean view, a house the size of the tiny beach shack or something larger, more on the order of the Red House or the Old Barn. I wondered whether Foley, the real estate broker, disapproved of prohibiting development on such a large tract of land.

  The rain beat down on my hair and face, but I felt strangely at home, comfortable on the windy beach. Who had the old man’s lawyer been, and how had he convinced Ralph Malcolm to ease his male chauvinism and allow the fortunate Jenna to inherit? Thoughts of Malcolm’s will flowed seamlessly as the tide into thoughts of your will, Teddy. Garrett had said not a single word about Caroline’s visit. I took it for granted that I was your literary executor, but was that true? I checked my cell phone. The service was uneven, but I was considering phoning Marcy to discover what she knew about the business of literary inheritance, when my cell buzzed so violently I almost dropped it in the sand.

  “Em? Is that you? Can you hear me?”

  “Jonathan?” It would be bad news, bad news to counter the good, the lovely book club offer he’d relayed i
n his previous call. Now there would be a delay, some unforeseen obstacle, or worse, a talk show, an appearance you’d scheduled that couldn’t be postponed.

  “Can you hear?” His tone was filled with suppressed excitement.

  “Yes. How are you? What is it?”

  “You know who Amory Russell is, don’t you?” he said. “Can you hear me?”

  “Yes.”

  “God, you’re so young. You probably only know his son, the start-up media guy, Evan Russell?”

  “I’ve heard of him.”

  “But did you know Teddy was after him? Amory Russell? Did you have any idea? No, don’t tell me, because if you knew about this and didn’t tell me, I might get angry and I’m so thrilled, yes, I’d have to say thrilled. This could be incredible. Are you there?”

  “Yes.”

  “The next book. The new book. I mean, you know the Garrett Malcolm book is the last one in this contract. Teddy hinted that he had a big one up his sleeve, but I never thought he’d land a whale like Amory Russell.”

  “The lawyer.”

  “God, yes. Lawyer with a capital L. The Henry-Rothschild divorce? The Jenson thing, that Ponzi scheme that lost billions? Teddy had nerve, I’ll say that. Everybody’s been after Russell’s story, but most of us, myself included, thought the old bastard would go to his grave without spilling a single rotten bean. Look, I can’t promise you’ll handle it, not on your own, but I need to know whether you think you’re up to it. Now that you’ve done some interviewing? Maybe there’s someone else you want to partner with? I’ve never had any trouble with your writing.”

  “Jonathan, I don’t know what to say.”

  Say thank you, a voice roared in my head. Say thank you, and hang up, get off the phone.