Ghost in the Polka Dot Bikini: A Ghost of Granny Apples Mystery

by Sue Ann Jaffarian

  Emma dawdled over her pudding, but Denise never stopped by her table again. Finally, deciding she’d struck out with Denise Dowd, Emma slid out of the booth and headed for the front area to pay her check. She was almost out the door when she heard someone call her name. It was Denise Dowd. Turning back into the restaurant, Emma ran smack into a man just leaving.

  “I’m so sorry,” Emma said to the man, a short, balding, non-descript sort.

  The man looked down at the ground and mumbled, “No problem.” He scooted out past her and disappeared into the dark parking lot just as Denise reached Emma.

  The waitress handed her a slip of folded paper. “I believe you dropped this.” Giving Emma a professional smile, Denise said, “You come back real soon.”

  Once outside, Emma opened the folded note and read it under the entry light. On it was printed an address in Culver City and the words: Tomorrow—10 am sharp. Only chance you’ll get.

  Emma was glad she’d left a nice tip.

  Once she returned home, Emma called Milo and caught him up on all the latest developments in her investigation. He hadn’t had any more insights on Curtis or information on the spirit that had visited them. They agreed to meet at his house following her visit with Denise the next day.

  After the call with Milo, Emma settled onto the leather sofa in the den with her laptop and a glass of wine and started going through her e-mails from her TV show’s account. There were notes from fans of the series, along with the usual crackpots, as well as a couple from religious zealots warning her she was on the path to hell. There were also suggestions from both fans and experts for topics for new shows. Emma deleted those that deserved deletion and wrote short thank-you notes to those who’d written to say how much they enjoyed the show. Those e-mails offering topic suggestions were put in a special folder that she and Jackie would review together to see if there were any good possibilities to pass along to the show’s producers. Jackie had offered to respond to the show’s fan mail, but Emma felt it important that she do it personally. She was almost done when a chill wafted through the room.

  “Where have you been, Granny?” Emma asked without looking up from the computer screen. She received no answer.

  The chilly current moved past her again at quick speed. Emma looked up but saw nothing. She looked down at Archie, who was curled next to her on the sofa. He was alert, his intelligent dark eyes following the cool draft, but his tail was not wagging.

  “That’s not me,” said Granny, who materialized on the sofa next to Archie. The dog glanced at his pal and thumped his tail a few times at the familiar spirit. Just as quickly, he went back on alert, worried about the one that wasn’t known.

  Emma looked at Granny, then at the hazy puff circling the room. “Who are you?” Emma asked the visiting spirit. She closed her laptop and placed it on the coffee table in front of the sofa. She got to her feet, ready to face the spirit. “Please show yourself.”

  The spirit was still not defined, appearing only as a filmy column of steam.

  Without taking her eyes off the unknown ghost, Emma asked Granny, “Do you know that spirit?”

  “Can’t say that I do.”

  “Can you describe it to me? Is it male or female?”

  “I can’t see her fully either, Emma.”

  “Her? So it’s a woman.”

  “I’m not sure, but that’s the sense I get. And I don’t think she’s happy.”

  Emma didn’t think so either. Though she knew that ghosts couldn’t physically harm her, it was still unnerving to come across those who were angry or disturbed.

  “Have you come here for help?” she asked the strange ghost. “I’m willing to help you, but I must know who you are first.”

  The column circulated around the room, faster and faster, until it came to a halt directly in front of Emma. She felt the apparition nose to nose with her, as if trying to breathe in her warm breath. Archie gave off a short whine.

  “Hush,” Granny told the dog.

  “Who are you?” Emma whispered. The front of her body was much colder than her back, and the hair on her neck and arms stood stiff like tines on a fork, but she didn’t move or back down.

  Granny left the sofa and faced the visitor, spirit to spirit. “Stop this nonsense and tell us what you want or leave,” she demanded. “You can come back when you’re ready to be civil.”

  After a short pause, the cold spout of air started circulating the room faster and faster, often brushing up against and around Emma. Archie whined again. This time, Granny didn’t shush him. Then, suddenly, the air in the room went still, and Emma knew the spirit had gone.

  Emma dropped to the sofa, mentally exhausted. “We need to find out who that is, Granny. And what she wants.”

  “Oh, so now you want this old mule’s help, do you?”

  “Come on, Granny. You know you’re stubborn. It’s not like it’s news to you.”

  Granny drifted across the room and leaned against the fireplace, her arms crossed in defiance. “Seems to me it’s a family trait.”

  Emma hung her head, knowing she should have been more sensitive and thought her words through before speaking. Granny was definitely stubborn and cantankerous, but she was also loyal as the day is long, and had very delicate feelings. Emma wasn’t sure who was more tiring at the moment, Granny or the unknown ghost. Ever since Catalina, Granny had been ornerier than ever. “I’m sorry, Granny, if the mule remark hurt your feelings. You know I love you. Sometimes family members forget to be nice to each other.”

  The diminutive ghost sniffed, her nose out of joint. “Well, I reckon so.” The spirit moved slowly around the room until she circled back toward the sofa. “And it’s not like I haven’t been called a mule before.”

  Denise Dowd lived in an older, well-maintained apartment building on a quiet street just a few blocks from Sony Studios. The pale green building had two stories, six apartments in all. Originally built with the apartments accessible to the public, in recent years it had been gated and a security call box installed. Just before ten o’clock, Emma located Denise’s button on the call box and pressed it. She was immediately buzzed in. The apartment was on the second floor at the end located over the carports in the rear of the building.

  When Denise Dowd opened the door, she looked like a different person. She was dressed in an exquisite flowing African print caftan. Her auburn-tinted hair had been brushed out and softly framed her face, which was scrubbed and makeup free. And while the lines on her face appeared more prominent, her overall appearance was softer and more becoming than how she’d looked the night before. Denise the waitress was ordinary-looking; Denise the actress was quite attractive.

  Emma was ushered into a very spacious apartment stuffed full of furniture, photos, and knickknacks. The floor plan was the standard open style, with the kitchen and dining area exposed to the living room. Down the hallway, directly across from the front door, Emma caught sight of three open doors—a bathroom and two bedrooms. The furnishings were old-fashioned, overstuffed, and exploding with floral prints.

  Before disappearing into the kitchen, Denise told Emma to make herself comfortable. The morning had arrived with a cool drizzle, forcing Emma to slip a jacket over her jeans and baby blue sweater. She pulled the jacket off and hung it on a nearby coat tree before taking a seat on the sofa. Soon Denise returned with a tray laden with china teacups and a matching teapot, which she placed on the coffee table before taking her own seat on the sofa.

  “I hope you like tea, Emma. I find it the civilized thing to serve guests, especially early callers. Later in the day, I like to bring out the booze.” She winked. “You look to me like a lemon kind of gal. Me, I prefer it like the English, with milk.”

  “Yes, lemon, please.”

  After slipping a thin lemon slice into a delicate rose-patterned cup, she handed it to Emma, along with its matching saucer. “And please help yourself to the biscuits—also English.”

  Denise prepared her own cup of t
ea, then leaned back against the high back of the sofa, waiting for Emma to explain herself.

  After taking a sip of tea, Emma cleared her throat and began. “Thank you for seeing me, Denise. I wasn’t sure you would.”

  “Neither was I at first. But while you were eating your pudding, I gave Fran Hyland a quick call. She told me to avoid you at all costs.” Denise gave off a short snort of laughter. “That’s when I knew I had to hear what you had to say. If Fran found you objectionable, then I’d probably find you fascinating.”

  “I thought you two were close friends.”

  Denise laughed again. “Fran and I have known each other since before Noah built his ark, but I wouldn’t call her a close friend. She knows the Denise from the restaurant. She thinks I’m a loser with a dead-end job, living just above the poverty line.”

  “I did notice quite a difference in you from last night.”

  “One of the benefits of being an actress is that you can easily slip in and out of character. I keep my public and my private lives very separate. Thanks to my job at the restaurant, the commercials I’ve done over the years, and sound investments, I’ve managed to buy this building. Fran doesn’t know that, and I’d prefer she not.”

  “Is there something wrong with Fran Hyland?”

  “Something you didn’t already notice yourself?”

  “She did seem pretty uptight.”

  “Uptight? I’ve worn girdles with more give.”

  This time it was Emma’s turn to laugh. “Actually, the conversation with Ms. Hyland was going along smoothly until she got it into her head that I was writing some sort of tell-all book. Before then, she told me how many of the young actresses hung out together, even lived together. She mentioned that she and Tessa North often auditioned for a lot of the same parts because of their similar looks.”

  “Very true. Back then we banded together for both economic and safety reasons.”

  “And you shared an apartment with Tessa?”

  “Yes, with Tessa and two other girls. Shelly Campbell was a dancer who did a lot of musicals before heading to Vegas, where the work was more plentiful and the pay better. Heard she married some rich stage Johnny. Colleen was the funny one of the bunch. She wasn’t movie-star pretty like the rest of us, but I think Colleen worked more because of it. Less competition, I guess. She always landed a lot of character parts like the plain-Jane friend or the quirky co-ed. In fact, of all of us, she had the longest and most successful career. She was on a long-running Western drama for years, right up until last year, when she died suddenly from a stroke.”

  “Are you talking about Colleen Miles?”

  “That’s her.”

  “She played the wisecracking cook on Wildfire, didn’t she? My family watches that show every week. I loved that character.”

  “Believe me, Colleen was a wiseass in real life, too, right up until the end. Being on that show wasn’t exactly a stretch for her. Unlike Fran and I, Colleen and I were close friends.”

  Denise was quiet for a moment, then got up and retrieved a large photo album from a nearby table. “Since you’re interested in Tessa, I got this old thing out for you.”

  She returned to the sofa and flipped through the album until she came upon several old photographs of young women cavorting in bathing suits.

  “There we are,” she said, pointing to a particular group shot with nearly a dozen girls, “the original Wild Bunch.” She chuckled. “That’s me and Fran in the first row.” The two women she indicated were stunning in both figure and face. “And that’s Shelly, the dancer.”

  Emma pointed to a girl almost in the middle of the group. She wore her blond hair in a flip. “That Tessa?”

  “That’s her.”

  Denise flipped a few pages until she came to more girls in bathing suits. They were lounging around in directors’ chairs, some of them reading, a few smoking. “This was taken on the set of Beach Party Prom. There’s me with Colleen.”

  As Denise had said, Colleen was not a great beauty like the others, but she had a pleasant, impish appeal about her and a lovely figure. Again, Emma spotted Tessa right away.

  “Did you ever see Beach Party Prom?” Denise kept her eyes on Emma. “It was a real stinker, but it made a nice chunk of change for the studio.”

  “No. I didn’t even know it existed until I checked IMDB for Tessa’s information.”

  Denise closed the book carefully and let it rest on her lap. “Tell me, Emma, how do you know what Tessa North looked like? She didn’t have that much of a career before she took off.” Before Emma could hem and haw her way to an answer, Denise added, “In fact, let’s get down to why you’re here. You said you were doing research for your TV show. Considering your show is about the paranormal, the natural question here is, have you seen a ghost you believe is Tessa?”

  The question wasn’t posed with either sarcasm or skepticism, nor was it delivered with awe. It was simply a question with a head-on delivery—like Denise herself. Emma decided it deserved a head-on response, the same as she’d given Celeste when she’d asked the question.

  Putting down her teacup, Emma turned to face Denise. “Yes, Denise, I have, flakey as it sounds.”

  “I see.” Denise put the album on the coffee table and picked up the teapot. “More tea?”

  Emma nodded, and Denise refilled her cup. This time, Emma picked up just the cup, leaving the saucer behind. She held the warm porcelain in her hands for comfort as she weighed what and how much to say. In the end, she finally decided to tell Denise everything, including her belief that Tessa died on Catalina and her body was never found. She even told Denise about Sandy Sechrest.

  When she was done with the story, Denise got up and went to a sideboard in the dining area. When she returned, she held two small snifters in one hand and a bottle of Rémy Martin in the other.

  “Who gives a damn if it’s still before noon,” Denise said, pouring cognac into each snifter. “After a story like that, I need a drink.”

  After Emma took the offered glass, Denise raised her own snifter. “To Tessa North, whatever and wherever she may be.” They both took a drink: Emma, a small sip; Denise, a large gulp.

  “So what can you tell me, Denise?” Emma asked, setting her drink on the table. The last thing she needed was to drive to Milo’s half in the bag, and after everything she was learning, she could easily drain the glass as Denise was doing. “Do you know who Curtis is? Or anyone Tessa might have been involved with romantically other than George Whitecastle?”

  “No matter what your mother-in-law believes, Tessa was never involved with George like that. And she certainly wasn’t pregnant or had a baby that I knew of.” She took another drink. “George hit on all the girls and usually won them over. After all, he was a player and quite handsome. If he got into Tessa’s panties at all, it was only a couple of times before he moved on. That was his M.O.” Denise furrowed her brows in thought. “But honestly, I don’t even recall a passing fancy between them.”

  “Did George ever make a pass at you?”

  “Sure.” Denise radiated another inward smile. “Old George found his way into my bed on several occasions over the years. He was a good time, as long as you understood that’s all it was. Remember, Emma, it was the sixties. Free love. No fear of AIDS. Drugs at every party. Everyone was letting loose—especially us girls raised strict Catholic and away from home for the first time.”

  “Even Fran Hyland? She hardly seemed like a party-girl type to me.”

  Denise laughed again. Emma liked her laugh. It was hearty and unselfconscious.

  “Don’t let that proper, suit-wearing exterior fool you. When we were young, Fran hopped in and out of more beds than a bed bug and could drink her weight in booze.”

  Emma thought of the prim and indignant woman she’d met the day before and had difficulty picturing her as a wild child of the sixties.

  The two women sipped their drinks companionably—Denise cognac and Emma tea—before Emma continued on
with her questions.

  “Celeste Whitecastle told me that several of her friends told her they saw George out with Tessa.”

  In response, Denise picked the album back up. She leafed through it until she found what she was seeking, then turned the album toward Emma. “Look at some of these photos, Emma, and tell me what—or, more specifically, who—you see.”

  Emma studied several of the photos spread over the two open pages. Several of them were group shots around a table in a club or restaurant. Scattered over the table were various cocktail glasses and even a champagne bottle and a few flutes. She pointed at one of the men in the photos. “I’m pretty sure that’s George.”

  “That it is.”

  Emma pointed to a woman a few places down. “That’s Colleen.” She moved her finger over. “And that’s Fran and Tessa on either side of George.” There were three other men in the photo and a woman she didn’t recognize. “Where were you and Shelly?”

  “I took the photo. Shelly had already moved to Vegas. This other woman was one of Fran’s roommates. I think her name was Cindy or Candy, something with a C.”

  “Cynthia Small?” Emma prompted.

  “Yes, that’s the name. Did Fran tell you that, or are you seeing Cindy’s ghost, too?”

  Emma shook her head and laughed. Everyone was now assuming that she was seeing ghosts at every turn. “Fran told me.”

  Denise indicated another photo, but in this one Denise was wedged between Fran and one of the men. “See, I’m in this one. It was taken by a waiter. As I recall, we were celebrating Tessa’s birthday. Usually, we went out in groups like this. I’m not saying there wasn’t any pairing off or people meeting up other times, but generally we partied in groups. So Mrs. Whitecastle’s friends might have thought Tessa and George were an item if they saw us all out, but, like I said, I’m pretty sure they weren’t.”

  Emma studied the photos closer. “Any chance either of these two men are named Curtis?” Before Denise could answer, Emma poked a finger at the man sitting next to Denise. “Wait a minute, isn’t that Worth Manning?”