The Hostess With the Ghostess
Page 23
“That’s very subjective, and it doesn’t make Adrian the murderer,” Paul responded. “It’s not clear she knew that provision was in place, and even if she did, it wouldn’t give her motivation to kill her husband. She was already being given every material comfort she could possibly have desired.”
Obviously that was true. But as I got down off my stepladder, I was less concerned with Paul’s misgivings than I was with the cobwebs I’d seen in the corner of the ceiling. In my guesthouse, this poses a peculiar question: do cobwebs add or detract from the atmosphere? I decided on “add” for this particular evening for reasons aside from my general laziness.
“Paul,” I said, “you were one of the people shouting Adrian’s name when Maxie suggested they knew who killed Johnson. How come you’re backing off now?”
We’d had a lovely barbecue brisket dinner with grilled potato salad (something I’d never thought about before) and discussed the virtues of this case for more than an hour, and here was Paul questioning everything that had been said, including things that were his ideas. I began to wonder why I’d gone searching for him again and then remembered it was because Richard had shown up and insisted on it. Had I missed Paul? I couldn’t remember at this moment and didn’t want to consider it.
Because as soon as the case(s) was/were solved, he might very well decide to be off on his travels again, maybe this time to Europe or Africa. Best not get myself too attached to the globetrotting ghost now that he had the ability to trot.
“I’m not backing off anything,” he said with a hint of defensiveness. “I’m making sure our reasoning is based on facts and not simply our desire to see this case solved. I get the impression that you didn’t care for Adrian much when you met her. That can color your judgment.”
“You were there,” I pointed out.
“I am impartial.”
“Sure you are.” I pulled the drapes shut on one of the windows. It wasn’t quite dark yet as the days were among the longest of the year, but I did like to have a little gloom in the room when we were doing our last show of the week. The shows aren’t exactly supposed to be scary for the guests, of course, because the ghosts in the house aren’t the least bit frightening—unless you are scared of having your life disrupted. But a little traditionally spooky atmosphere adds something to the proceedings, I’ve found. “You want to show off to Richard about how brilliant a detective you are, and I get that. And you don’t want him to be able to say that his research was what finally cracked the case. It’s a very adorable brotherly competition—if you don’t think about the fact that you’re both, you know, no longer alive.”
“I think you are misreading the situation,” Paul attempted.
“And I think you respect your older brother, which is understandable, but you don’t trust your own talents enough to overrule his judgment. That whole thing I just said about how the money in Cassidy’s account was to keep Adrian solvent after Keith was dead? That’s so sketchy even I don’t believe it. Richard has a way of sounding authoritative, but you’re the guy who actually solves the cases.”
“I assure you that any imagined rivalry with Richard is not driving my skepticism,” Paul attempted.
“Uh-huh, and I’m not the least bit intimidated when my mother is around,” I said. And I did so while looking around to be certain my mother was not in the room, but she and Melissa had gone out to the 7-Eleven to get some large bottles of soft drinks. I have a little reception afterward, and while I can serve beer and wine as long as I don’t charge for it, the guests are usually more prone to try the soft stuff. They have to get up in the morning. “But the fact is, it makes sense that Adrian killed Johnson, and it makes sense that she knew Richard was closing in on her and killed him too.”
Mom and Melissa walked in from the hallway, the most direct route to the movie room from the kitchen, where Josh was still cleaning up what little there was from dinner (the great thing about cooking outside is you just need to clean the grill the next day). They were carrying the flash powder and sparklers I had asked for (Mom) and the cooler of sodas for later (Melissa). But they were clearly in the midst of a conversation when they arrived.
“There’s nothing that ties Adrian to Richard or to his hotel room,” Liss was telling my mother. “The closest we have is Mr. Zink saying maybe Erika was the girl he knew as Ashley who came up and probably stole the iron. That’s not much.”
I didn’t even have to say a word. I just got Paul’s attention and gestured with both hands toward my daughter: See?
“That is a valid point,” Paul said to himself. That’s what it’s come to: my thirteen-year-old daughter’s judgment is more valuable than my own. I was expecting this, just not quite so soon.
There was no point in bringing that up to Paul; there were more important things on the agenda. Besides, my mother had yet to weigh in.
“I suppose so,” she told Melissa. “You’re so smart.”
That didn’t help much, but it was sweet. Mom handed me the spook show supplies while Liss headed over to the little fridge I keep in the movie room for just such occasions and unloaded the sodas into it. Paul was pacing, such as he can, back and forth in the air almost above our heads so that we could go about our business and come close to not noticing him at all.
I moved the stepladder to the next window, which would be the last to be decorated. The spook show was set for eight PM, just as the sun would be setting, and that was in roughly an hour. “Let’s assume for the moment that Adrian did kill Johnson, because that seems the most likely explanation,” I said.
“Well . . .” Paul began.
“Just for the sake of argument.” I cut him off. I was going to get at least one point in before everyone else explained to me how I was wrong. Paul nodded and “stood” still for a moment, letting me continue. “If that’s the case, and Richard was just starting to close in on her while he was working on the research for Cassidy’s trial—something Keith had apparently asked for before he died—how did Adrian find out about it?”
“Find out about what?” Liss asked, walking over from the fridge to steady the ladder as I climbed. I taught that girl well, as my father taught me. And as he still taught her despite being dead for years.
“How did Adrian know that Richard had discovered something to tie her to Keith’s murder?” I said as I reached over to hang the last piece of black bunting. “Richard wasn’t in contact with her, and even if he had been, he didn’t make a formal announcement that he suspected she was the killer. Why would she come to his hotel room and iron his head?”
“A very good question,” Paul said. “One that I think might hold the key to Richard’s murder.”
I was startled because I rarely bring up a point that important and Paul even less frequently tells me I did a good investigator thing. So I turned my head abruptly to look at him.
And that might have saved my life.
I heard the whizzing right by my left ear but luckily didn’t turn toward it until it had passed. That wasn’t surprising because it lasted less than a second. But my instinct to turn toward the sound meant I was looking quickly at Paul and even more quickly back in the direction I’d been facing.
There, embedded into the molding around my window, was a very impressive-looking knife. It had been thrown with a great deal of force. And it had been thrown at my head.
“Alison!” my mother shouted. She took a step toward the ladder as Melissa also shouted for me.
“Mom!” Melissa yelled at the same time. She took a step toward me, saw I was all right, and stopped, looking like she didn’t know what to do.
“I’m okay,” I said. “It didn’t hit me.”
Paul, not constrained by gravity or the laws of physics, was immediately inches from my face. “Did anyone see where it came from?” he asked.
From across the room, I heard Josh’s voice. It sounded hoarse. “What happened?” he said, running toward me.
I did the only thing that made sense. I climbe
d down the ladder to stop giving the person with the knife-throwing hobby a better target. I was in Josh’s arms before both my feet were solidly on the floor. “I’m okay,” I repeated. “Really. Not a scratch.”
“Not for lack of trying,” Paul said. Paul is a lovely man, but you don’t want him around when people need to be comforted with encouraging words. I’d make a “Home on the Range” joke here, but I was pretty shook up from having a knife whiz by my head.
“Who was it?” Josh asked. It seemed a reasonable question.
“I saw it fly by,” Liss said. She still looked stunned, but she was in information mode now and knew Paul could benefit from anything she could tell him. “It came from there.” She pointed toward a spot about halfway between the window and the entrance to the movie room. “But there wasn’t anybody there when I looked.”
It seemed unlikely that Abby Lesniak had decided I was messing up her love life after all and taken a shot at killing me for it, so we had to think. Nobody had noticed a person walking in or heard any footsteps. The knife had simply shown up and flown across the room, and when Melissa had looked back a second later, nobody was running for the exit.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” I said. But of course it did. Paul was already stroking his goatee. “But we know he’s got a thing for knives.”
“Keith Johnson,” he said.
Chapter 30
There seemed to be no point in a search for Keith Johnson. The other times we’d tried to find the elusive—and seemingly murderous—ghost, we’d had to wait until he decided to show up again. Only luring him with Maxie’s laptop had proved successful, and it was at best a long shot that such a thing would work again.
Besides, we had a spook show to put on, and I was not about to let a little thing like having a knife thrown at my head threaten that. I’m an innkeeper.
I took the offending blade out of my window molding as carefully as possible, noting that it would take some wood filler and a whole new paint job to hide the damage. On top of trying to end my life, Johnson had now created more home maintenance work for me. He was not going to be greeted warmly when he decided to materialize again.
There had been some talk of calling McElone about the attempt on my life, but she wouldn’t even have been able to see Johnson if he’d decided to pop up right in front of her eyes. And it was a decent bet her handcuffs weren’t going to be especially effective with him.
Paul had been uncharacteristically quiet since the knife had flown by my face. He seemed as deep in thought as I’d seen him, which was pretty deep. He did occasionally stop to confer, out of earshot from the rest of us, with his brother in a corner of the movie room near the ceiling. Richard was visibly agitated, gesturing more broadly than usual, but not speaking loudly enough for anyone else to hear. When Maxie got close enough to eavesdrop, the Harrison brothers stopped talking entirely and assumed identical arms-folded poses, pretending to watch the rest of us from their bird’s-eye view.
Josh was sticking close to me, closer even than Mom and Melissa, which was no small feat. Anywhere I went, I felt like we were a unit, a hive. Presidents have had less personal security than I was getting.
It was starting to grate.
“Okay, everybody,” I said. “I’m all right. Let’s all take two steps back and give me a little room to breathe.”
None of them moved. My father did back up a little bit, but he continued to hover within ten feet of me and carry a very large adjustable wrench, his best idea of a lethal weapon. Which, considering that I was in the room with someone who had been murdered with a steam iron, wasn’t something I could necessarily dispute.
“Seriously,” I said.
“I’m staying as close to you as I can,” Josh said, his voice leaving no room for debate. “Someone tried to kill you, we don’t know why, and I’m not going to be in another room if he tries again. Cope with it.”
“I agree, but I think we know why,” Melissa said. I stared at her. “No, Mom. We were getting close to the idea that Adrian Johnson killed her husband. The last time that happened, someone killed Richard. It’s not just a coincidence that this happened right now.”
As usual, my daughter made more sense than all the adults in the room, transparent or opaque. But I was focusing on the spook show, which was to start in half an hour. I looked around the room. “What am I forgetting?” I asked nobody in particular.
“The light thingy,” Maxie offered from her current position, pretending to be lying on one of the sofas I keep in the room for movie nights and major spook shows. “That’s not running yet.”
I have a random light generator—you can get one at any party store—that sends patterns of dots in various colors around the walls and ceiling of the room. “Thanks, but it’s not time for that yet,” I told Maxie.
Everett, who had joined the party only a couple of minutes earlier once he got a psychic message or something from Maxie (or maybe just heard all the yelling), was in full camo and had a sidearm strapped to his right hip. Everett doesn’t fool around.
“We should consider security measures for the gathering tonight, ghost lady,” he said.
“We are all considering that, Everett,” my mother told him. “Trust me.”
Toward the back of the room, there was the sound of footsteps, and everyone in the area froze and turned to look.
Eduardo DiSica, the guest I had seen the least during the week, was standing at the entrance to the movie room and stopped abruptly when he saw Mom, Melissa, and me staring at him. I can only assume his startled expression would have been multiplied had he been able to see the other five people in the room gaping at him.
“Can I help you with something, Eduardo?” I asked.
“I thought the ghost show was going on tonight instead of this afternoon,” he said meekly.
“It is,” I assured him. “But not until eight.”
“I wanted to get a good seat.”
I smiled my best innkeeper smile at him. “Every seat is a good seat, Eduardo,” I told my guest. “The show will take place all over the room.”
“Oh. Okay. I’ll tell Vanessa.” He shuffled back out and into the front room, no doubt looking for his wife.
“See?” I said to my Secret Service detachment as soon as Eduardo was out of sight. “This is going to be a normal evening. For here. So let’s focus on what we’re doing for the guests and worry about the other stuff later.”
My phone buzzed, and I saw Phyllis Coates’s number in the caller ID. I picked up and didn’t even have time to say hello. Phyllis wastes no time.
“I haven’t heard from you since you started with this Johnson guy,” she said. “What’s the deal? You don’t love me anymore?”
“I haven’t found out anything worth telling you,” I exaggerated. “You didn’t want me to waste your time, did you?”
“You’re a rotten liar, kid,” Phyllis answered. “But I’m going to be nice to you anyway. I heard something about this story.” This was news to me, as I had no idea Phyllis was digging into the murders other than my own faith that she’d pick up on what I’d told her. Phyllis is a bulldog.
Wasn’t anybody going to let me just put on a spook show? “Okay, let’s hear it,” I said.
“Hey, listen, I don’t have to burden you with this,” Phyllis said. “I can call any one of a hundred hotel owners who also do some investigating and tell them all I’ve found out about this guy who drowned in a bathtub in Cranbury, a town I don’t even cover.”
“So how did you hear anything if you’re not writing a story?” I could ask. Phyllis is a friend.
I stashed the stepladder in the closet at the far end of the movie room. “You got me thinking about it when you called, which I figured meant you wanted me to nose around, and I decided to ask a few questions. You want to know what I found out or not?”
“Sure. I’m sorry. It’s been a rough week.” I was having trouble remembering the last easy week, but that was a topic for another day.
“Adrian was cheating on her husband?” I said.
Josh froze while straightening a sofa. Melissa turned and stared at me, finger to her lips. Mom’s eyes got big.
“Don’t say that aloud,” Paul admonished me. “We don’t know where Keith Johnson is at this moment.”
It was kind of late for that particular warning, but since Phyllis couldn’t have seen or heard any of that and didn’t know about the knife attack, she didn’t pause. “Sounds like it. Talk is she was involved with Johnson’s business partner.”
“Adrian was sleeping with Hunter Evans?” I gasped. It just sneaked out, I swear.
Josh grabbed me, gently, by the arm and squinted his eyes as if in pain. “Please. Just think it,” he said. “Don’t say it.”
Now they were getting me paranoid. I scanned the room for signs of Keith Johnson, but there were, as far as I could tell, none.
“That’s the scuttlebutt around the police headquarters in Rumson,” Phyllis said. “I know a few people there. I think you ought to look pretty carefully at this Evans guy for the murder. He gets to own the whole business instead of half, and he gets the wife. What’s not to like?”