The Perfect Ghost

by Linda Barnes

  CHAPTER

  forty

  With the extended deadline looming, the next morning I forced myself back to the text and attacked the twenty-ninth chapter with something approaching gusto. I had the facts, the hard, round beads of information that, correctly strung, would inform the chapter, but the rhythm of Garrett’s thoughts and actions on the occasion of his second Academy Award nomination proved stubbornly elusive and I knew I couldn’t seek guidance or clarification from the source, who’d be a bear all day, dodging between Amphitheater and Old Barn, conferring with the lighting designer, haranguing the carpenters; strictly off limits. I started over, butchered a sentence, mangled a paragraph, and found myself debating between a trip to a Chatham boutique and a return to the Cape Cod Mall. Really, my boudoir apparel was a constant joke: nudity or nothing. I didn’t own so much as a nightgown worthy of the name. I craved silk, something skimpy and erotic like the blue gown I wore our first time, the one currently encased in plastic in my bottom dresser drawer in Boston. I hungered for another brightly colored bra, a racy thong, a trousseau of foamy lingerie.

  God, do you remember, Teddy, how shy I was, how frightened, how many months it took to lure me to your bed? How I hid in the closet to disrobe and ran to the bathroom afterward, carefully closing the door? How tortured I was then, how whipsawed I felt, how ignorant I remained in spite of modern advertising and skimpy clothes and archly knowing TV shows. In and out of schools and institutions, with different families in far-flung towns, I’d missed it all, the lectures on menstruation, the talks on sexuality. Everyone I knew seemed to know everything I didn’t know, and no one shared because I didn’t know to ask.

  How ashamed I was of my scrawny naked body. But I learned how to use it, didn’t I?

  It was more pleasant to contemplate nightgowns than brood over Garrett’s continuing silence about Caroline’s visit and Snow’s queries. A shopping trip wouldn’t take longer than an hour. To assuage any lingering guilt, I grabbed the recorder and plunked it on the passenger seat of the Focus, promised myself I’d listen to Garrett’s voice all the way there and back as well. If I listened with half my mind while letting the rest wander through lacey groves of lingerie, the click might come, the small sideways glimmer that would illuminate Chapter Twenty-nine.

  As I pulled out of the winding driveway and slowed to turn onto the two-lane road that led to the highway, two things happened at once. I spotted the navy blue van parked on the verge and a man stepped directly in front of the car.

  I hadn’t been speeding. The sharpness of the turn dictated caution, but the sudden and unexpected need to halt drove my foot and the brake peddle to the floor. Casually, Glenn McKenna put a hand on the hood.

  In a fit of fury, I lowered the window. “Are you insane? Get out of the way.”

  “Hey, you trying to avoid me?”

  I pressed my lips together to keep them from shaking with the same tremor that possessed my hands on the steering wheel.

  “Where are you heading? Up cape or down?”

  “What does it—?”

  “Wait till I get in the van, then follow me.”

  “I don’t think we have anything to—”

  “I can’t talk here. Your pal, Malcolm, took out a restraining order on me. You have anything to do with that?”

  “I didn’t know he—”

  “We need to talk.”

  Leaning over, he rapped the windshield with his fist. It wasn’t exactly a threatening gesture, but it frightened me. Feeling numb, with relief at not knocking the man down, but with dread as well, I waited obediently while he clambered into the van. When he pulled onto the road, I followed as instructed, and when the van took a left at Route 6, I did the same, telling myself I was headed in that direction anyway, assuring myself that I’d keep going straight after he turned off. I would ignore him. Everything was perfect now and any discussion with McKenna would only mess it up.

  As I drove, a fog stole over my soul, a return to the passive old days, to before, when every action and activity was limited, dictated by a demanding foster mother or a strict stepfather, by some outside voice that controlled, condoled, consoled. It was as though you were leading me on, Teddy, as though you were telling me what to do, and when and how to do it.

  The van veered left and so did I, the steering wheel rotating inexorably. If I slowed, the van slowed; an invisible tow-rope might have linked the two vehicles. We headed briefly southeast on Cable Road, then the pavement curved east toward the Atlantic, threading between dense patches of silvery pines and low thickets of yew.

  Beyond the small parking lot at the end of the road, sea met sky in banded shades of gray. The blue van waited there, but McKenna was already skulking across the road. As I tracked his scarecrow figure through the scattered pines, the lighthouse caught my eye and held it captive.

  It dominated the promontory and diminished the lightkeeper’s house below. Halfway up the tower changed color, from arctic white to deep red. The turret was iron-black so the structure seemed to have three tiers like an absurdly elongated wedding cake. With a cheerful blue sky as backdrop, the effect would have been overly pretty, lifted from a picture postcard. In the dour gray light, the tower looked grim, austere, and powerful as a castle keep.

  McKenna, dwarfed by the lighthouse, lurched uphill, backpack sitting between his shoulders like a hump. His hair was stringy and greasy. Unless he owned multiple pairs of similarly ripped jeans, he hadn’t changed clothes since our sunset meeting at First Encounter Beach. I had no idea whether lighthouses enclosed public rooms, but I was determined not to follow him indoors. The wind snatched my voice and carried it out to sea, but he must have heard my protest because he pivoted on the steep path, paused, and attempted to light a cigarette while I fought the wind on the incline.

  “Totally different view of the ocean, huh?” As I approached, he waved his cigarette in the direction of the waves. “Like a big bathtub, the bay side of the Cape, but this side is wild water, nothing out there but pirate wrecks and sharks all the way to Spain. Closed the Chatham beaches yesterday, you hear about it? Great white shark, cruising for seals. Come summer, it’ll be cruising for tourists.” He paused for a quick drag on the cigarette. I opened my mouth to speak, but he didn’t let me get a word in.

  “Fraternizing with the enemy, huh? Teddy never moved into the house.” He turned and attacked the path, leaving me to scramble behind. At the lighthouse door, he tried the handle, rattling it while I wondered what he meant by “fraternizing,” what he knew, what he surmised.

  “I used to come here when I was a kid,” he shouted over a gust that shook the nearby shrubbery. “Back then, you could walk in, climb up top. Nauset Light used to be part of the double beacon at Chatham, but they disassembled it and moved it here years ago, when the government decommissioned the twin lights. Used to stand over there, across the road. Had to move it again, back from the edge, in ’ninety-eight, so it wouldn’t fall off the cliff. Erosion.”

  “I’m not in the market for another history lesson. It’s too cold.”

  “Okay, so Coast Guard Beach is right down the shore there. You didn’t come meet me. I thought we had an agreement.”

  “There was no reason to—”

  “What did you think of my stuff?”

  “I do my own research.”

  “If we move down this way, the house will shelter us. Or we could sit in the van.”

  “I’m not getting in your van.” The thought of the enclosed space nauseated me. Anger, simmering underneath the passive fog, started to churn and bubble. No matter what agreement the two of you had reached, I hadn’t been part of it. I hadn’t received any benefit. The man wasn’t even good at what he did. If he’d been any good, he’d have known Brooklyn Pierce was hiding at the beach shack, right under his celebrity-sniffing nose.

  “Fine.” He scuttled swiftly to the flattest part of the hill as sun broke through the clouds. Like spokes of a giant fan, the rays lit patches of cream-topped
waves far out at sea, turning them to molten gold. If I’d seen the same thing in a movie, I’d have dismissed the director as a hopeless romantic.

  The wind slapped my face and made it real. “Look, whatever deal you made with Teddy, consider it off. I do my own research and my own writing.”

  “Under a pseudonym.”

  “A combination, Teddy’s name and mine. Blakemore.”

  “You didn’t get it, then?”

  “Get what?”

  “You didn’t understand my notes. Because you don’t have the sources I’ve got.”

  “I don’t need them. Not for the kind of books I write.”

  He scanned the horizon warily. “Do you know about Snow?”

  I considered snow in April. It’s not unheard of in New England. Then “Detective” popped into my head like a tardy translation on the screen of a foreign film.

  “He talked with Malcolm, right? At Cranberry Hill, a few days ago? Did Malcolm call his lawyer? Later, after Snow left?”

  “Why should he?” On film, the view would have been breathtaking. On the windy hill, the sea was immense and terrifying, the line between water and sky blurred and indistinct.

  “Because it’s become a criminal investigation.”

  Suicide, I thought. Suicide must be a criminal act in Massachusetts. What did it matter, anyway, one way or another, because you didn’t commit—

  “Teddy was murdered.”

  Murdered. The word clanged off the shadowy horizon line, echoed and reverberated. Oh, Teddy, time murders us all, in dribs and drabs, slowly, with the inevitability of the waves. Even if no sharks lurk beneath the surface, the waves tumble us, roll over us, and pull us under. The gossipmonger’s lips formed soundless words and the sandy path swam up to meet my eyes. It tilted, revolving and spinning like a roulette wheel, and I remember thinking that some angry father would blast McKenna with a shotgun, murder Glenn McKenna, murder him, not you.

  CHAPTER

  forty-one

  You fainted once. Jonathan’s voice blasted my ears, querulous and accusatory. Until he pointed the words and pulled the trigger, I hadn’t realized you’d told our editor about the night I fainted, Teddy.

  It must have been three years ago. Yes, in the spring, in the McAfee Ballroom at the university, such an austere place in my experience that I hadn’t imagined it housed a ballroom till you proudly displayed the invitation and announced that you would be receiving the Bessemer Award for your essay on teaching. The one I wrote—edited, you said—but truly, I wrote that essay. The image of the ceremony flickered like an old newsreel: You, resplendent in your tuxedo, Caroline, in midnight blue, beaming on your arm, and I was a tiny ant crawling in your wake, wearing a pathetically prim trouser suit, and never in that sprawling acceptance speech did you mention me. My speech again, of course, but I actually believed you might glance over it in advance, augment it with a few of your own stray thoughts, such as gratitude to the one who’d made the award possible. You thanked your department chair and the members of the committee. By the time you acknowledged dear Caroline, I was having trouble breathing. The ballroom was too warm, too moist, too heavily scented with perfume and sweat. Applause sprang up, scattered at first, then a wall of noise as deafening as the roar of a thousand lions and all the air got sucked from the room.

  “You okay?” This voice came from a distance, issued from a far-off void. The buffeting wind had ceased, gusts mysteriously becalmed. I was enclosed, shuttered, and it was darker than it should have been. Windows, I thought, tinted windows.

  “Teddy?” Desolation washed through me like a wave. Turning my head, I caught a glimpse of a tiny plastic tree dangling from a rearview mirror. I was in McKenna’s van and the tree accounted for part of the smell, unwashed laundry and rotted food the remainder. Breath caught in my throat and choked me. “Let me out. Open the door.”

  “Calm down. It’s okay. You passed out or something.”

  “Stop the van. Open the door.”

  “Relax, it’s not moving.”

  “Please, please, I’m going to throw up.”

  The darkness parted with a metallic creak, and I rolled to my feet, lurching toward the light, vaulting through the rear doors as they separated. I stumbled on the rough pavement, but hands caught me before I fell to my knees.

  “Take it easy.”

  “Let go of me.”

  “There’s a bench. Come on; sit down.”

  As soon as the wooden slats pushed against the backs of my legs, as soon as I sat, I felt stronger, just like the last time. Once they’d carried me outdoors, once I was able to sit, I’d been fine, humiliated at my weakness, now as then.

  My lungs did their work, pumping air like a bellows. The bench overlooked the same stretch of shoreline as the lighthouse, but from a lower vantage point. The key factors, rather than sky and waves, were sand and rocks. A wavery green line of seaweed marked the high tide.

  McKenna sat beside me, so close our knees kissed. He must have dragged or carried me across the road to the van. My skin prickled beneath my clothes, and I took a quick inventory; my jacket was still zipped to my chin. The man started rattling on in his mile-a-minute monotone, saying he wasn’t really concerned about a written credit on this book, that it was the next one he was thinking about, the new book, as though the two of you had signed a long-term agreement.

  “Wait, wait; you said police, Snow, about a—” The remembered word caught in my throat. “Teddy’s death was an accident.”

  “Snow doesn’t think so.” McKenna smiled crookedly, excited to be the bearer of bad news, pleased, as well he might be. Now he could slap it across his Web site: “Celebrity Biographer Murdered,” followed by a string of question marks and exclamation points. He could use your death to sell real estate ads.

  “You put Snow up to it,” I said. “You filled his head with—”

  “He found his witness.”

  It was like I’d never heard the word before, could barely recall what message the two syllables of “witness” conveyed. My lungs might be pumping, but my mind was whirling in mist, confused, blinking on and off like a warning beacon.

  “Witness finally came home. Jerk went off on some cruise,” McKenna said. “If Snow hadn’t been stuck in the hospital, they’d have gotten to him before he left, but you’ll see, the circus is really gonna come to town now.”

  “Someone else in the car? Another driver?” I was fixated on the word “witness,” but not so much so that “circus” didn’t register. The bastard was enjoying himself, reveling in a what promised to be a dream-come-true story, tailor-made for his Web site.

  “Somebody saw something, that’s all. Guy in a house on a hill. You know the place it happened? Down by the Harwich border? Tricky piece of road, pond on one side, reservoir on the other, steep embankments? They’ve had smash-ups there before. There’s an old graveyard at the top of the hill?”

  You liked old graveyards, I thought. McKenna peered at me strangely; I might have said it out loud.

  “Guy staying up there, little house behind the graveyard. Visiting his sister, some old coot watching from a window, worried teenagers could be drinking and making out, hooking up, you know the type. Hoping to watch. Saw Blake’s car parked up there. Saw two people, one looking at the gravestones, the other just a shadow, lurking around the car.”

  “Is this a witness you found?” The words burst from my lips as though escaping. Is this a witness you coached and paid? That’s what I wanted to ask, wanted to demand. The police were humoring him, I decided, and I should humor him, too. I would smile and nod, stand up, walk to my car. The wind grabbed his hair and blew it into a frizzled mane.

  “If you think there’s anything Garrett Malcolm wouldn’t do to protect himself,” he said, “you’re nuts.”

  “If you think Garrett killed Teddy, you’re the one who’s crazy,”

  “Garrett, huh?” His eyes lit with satisfaction.

  I forced my teeth together. It had happened be
fore, this post-faint chattiness, this garble of words rising unchecked to the surface. I knew it was better to keep silent; anything was better than charging ahead full steam, assuring this madman that you’d never print anything a subject didn’t want to reveal. If McKenna had seemed rational, I might have asked why Garrett would cooperate with a biographer if he were hiding some diabolical secret.

  “Some people think money buys everything.” McKenna answered the thought as though reading my mind, and once again I wondered if I might have unwittingly spoken out loud. “Who makes out like a bandit if Teddy’s dead? That’s the kind of question cops ask.”

  “Caroline.” Too late, I pressed my lips shut.

  “Teddy’s wife? You figure she tooled all the way up here and gimmicked his brakes? She a mechanic?”

  “Gimmicked his brakes?”

  “He wasn’t drunk or drugged or anything. No heart attack. But the Accident Reconstruction Unit found something funny with the brake line. Snow knows what he’s doing, all right; he just got sideswiped, delayed, getting sick and all. Look, I don’t give this number out, my cell, but you call and I’ll get there twenty-four / seven. Bring a videocam, bring the cops.” Shoving his face too close to mine, he slipped a piece of paper into my trembling hand, all the while warning me to watch myself with Garrett Malcolm, to be careful, on guard.

  “You’re wrong,” I said.

  “Listen, you gotta watch your back. I mean, where’s that tape, the one you thought I had? You find it? You know who it was he interviewed? What do you bet Teddy got the goods on Malcolm, nailed the bastard?”

  A red Mazda pulled into the parking lot and ejected a trio of early tourists. McKenna shot me a sideways glance, the same squirrelly look he’d displayed at First Encounter Beach, the glance that said, I’m a secret agent and my cover just got blown. Quickly, he reached into the frayed pocket of his jeans and yanked out a battered envelope.

  “Here,” he said, lowering his voice. “I’m pretty sure this helped get Teddy killed.”

  I recoiled. “Shouldn’t you give it to the police?”