Ghost Wanted

by Carolyn Hart

  “Hold still, Ben. We’ll get you to the hospital as fast as we can.”

  Still his words came. “I thought I’d catch the thief.”

  “Stay still.” She spoke softly.

  He looked up. “Miz Lorraine . . . I tried . . .”

  “Don’t worry, Ben. You did your best. I hear the siren. Help is coming.”

  I heard the siren, too. Doors slammed, heavy footsteps thudded, coming up the stairs and down the hall.

  I rushed to the table and the open box. There was a gap at the end of the line of books. The last diary—this year’s volume—was missing.

  The ICU alcove was small, room enough for a bed and IV pole. No one was in attendance at the moment, except for us. Ben hadn’t moved since they wheeled him in after surgery, but his breathing, though a little shallow, was regular and even.

  “I’ll stay here.” Lorraine spoke firmly. “I’m concerned about his heart rate. They’ll come, of course, if the machine alerts them.”

  “Do you think he can talk tomorrow? Give a description of his attacker?”

  She was silent for a moment. “An officer rode with him in the ambulance. Ben said the person who shot him was dressed all in black: cap, sweater, slacks, shoes. He said maybe five foot seven or eight inches tall, thin. That’s all he saw. After the surgery”—her voice was authoritative—“he may have very little recollection of the moment. Why?”

  “The police will talk to him again. You don’t think he will be able to tell anything else?”

  “It’s unlikely. You were there. Did you see the person who shot Ben?”

  “I glimpsed someone all in black, but I was trying to help Ben. Now I feel dreadful. I was there and I don’t know anything at all.”

  Lorraine asked quickly, “Tall or short? Man or woman? Young or old?”

  I closed my eyes, tried to re-create that short abrupt moment with the crack of the gun loud in my mind and Ben stumbling forward and a peripheral view of a dark figure in motion. “Not tall. Not short. Perhaps five foot seven. Trim. Moved fast, so not an old person. I think it was a woman. Though some men are slender. It could have been a man. And, even if Ben does remember, I doubt he saw well either when he turned on the light. Everything happened quickly—the door opened, someone came in with a small pocket flash, went directly to the table, and opened the box. Ben burst in and turned on the overhead light. I looked toward the door. Ben shouted, the intruder shot him. I feel terrible. I was there and Ben got hurt.”

  Lorraine was quick to speak. “There was nothing you could have done to keep Ben safe.”

  “Thank Heaven you were there.” Ben would not have survived except for Lorraine. “You saved his life by putting pressure on the wound. I didn’t know you were a nurse.”

  “So long ago.” Her gentle face was sad. “Ben’s injury took me back. Some days we did twenty-five operations, working from dawn until dark and still they carried in the men, some with dreadful wounds, some we weren’t able to help. The Marne Valley. I was at a field hospital. We worked with the most seriously wounded when the ambulances came. That’s how I met Paul. He was fearless. Word got around about Paul, how he’d go into the trenches even during a bombardment and help carry out the soldiers, how he’d venture out into no-man’s-land and bring them back. He was older. He was from Ohio. Cleveland. He used to talk about visiting his family there and how he wanted to take me to Wade Park after the war and we’d go out on the pond in a rowboat. He came to France as a volunteer because his younger brother was in the Army. Joseph was killed at Verdun. Paul and I . . . sometimes we’d eat together, carry our tin plates out to the edge of the camp. There was an old oak tree that had fallen. We’d sit there and have beans and dark bread and coffee in enamel mugs. I suppose it’s funny to fall in love over beans and brown bread. Then December came . . . but I can’t bear to remember.” She spoke with finality.

  I knew she’d said all she would say about war and death and Wiggins.

  A cloth on the bedside table rose in the air. Water poured from a plastic jug. The cloth gently touched Ben’s face.

  Ben was in good hands. Expert hands, in fact. As he grew stronger, Lorraine could discover if he remembered anything to help us find his attacker, but it was up to me to start the police off on the right trail.

  I know my way around the Adelaide police station. In Wiggins’s opinion, I am much too familiar with the office of Chief Sam Cobb. But I believe in going to the source. When crime is afoot, Adelaide’s stalwart chief is the man in the know. I was a little surprised the office was dark when I arrived although it was quite early on Saturday morning, not quite half past six. Yet in my experience (which is more than Wiggins would have preferred), Chief Cobb worked early and late during a crime investigation.

  I looked forward to seeing the chief, a big man with a thatch of curly, grizzled black hair and a broad face seamed by experience. One look and you knew he was a good man: tough, experienced, determined, nobody’s fool, but aware that goodness existed despite all the cruelty and ugliness he had seen.

  He and I had an understanding of sorts, not that we often came face-to-face. After all, I had to honor the Precepts. Sort of. Chief Cobb wisely didn’t insist upon delving deeply into sources of information. He was willing to accept some Heavenly pointers. Perhaps it was Providential that I had the office to myself for a bit.

  I turned on the light. The chief’s office was a good-sized room on the second floor of City Hall. His battered oak desk, marred by moisture rings, appeared uncommonly neat, no files strewn about. I went directly to the old-fashioned blackboard on one wall. Several stubs of white chalk lay in the tray.

  Chief Cobb disdained the newer fashion of dry-erase whiteboards, saying chalk had been good enough for him when he taught high school math and chalk was good enough for him now. In the past, I’d left important information for the chief on the blackboard. Wiggins might consider such communication not quite in line with the Precepts, but it was a means of being helpful without actually appearing. I gave a little sniff and picked up a hint of coal smoke, so I needed to complete this mission as quickly as possible. If I blazed a trail for Sam Cobb, all would be well. I picked up a piece of chalk and wrote:

  1. Events at Goddard Library, including theft of a rare book Wednesday night, are part of conspiracy to frame Goddard senior Michelle Hoyt.

  2. Friday night Security Officer Ben Douglas was shot when he confronted an intruder stealing a diary from the Susannah Fairlee papers in room 211.

  3. Michelle Hoyt was last seen Wednesday evening. She will turn up, likely this morning—

  I was making a leap, but as my mama always told me, “Bailey Ruth, honey, when milk smells sour, don’t drink it.” Michelle Hoyt would have to be incredibly stupid to have committed a crime in such a clumsy way. Moreover, she certainly didn’t call the police to announce the presence of the journal in her apartment. That proved someone else was involved, and I was confident that someone was the figure in black who shot Ben Douglas.

  —reporting she was decoyed somewhere Wednesday evening and held against her will.

  4. Intruder entered room 211 of Goddard Library at shortly after one a.m. this morning.

  5. Security Officer Ben Douglas turned on the overhead light, accosted intruder.

  6. Intruder, dressed entirely in black, shot Douglas, escaped with Susannah Fairlee diary.

  7. Earlier episodes at Goddard Library intended—

  The hall door opened.

  I turned with a smile, which slowly slipped away.

  Sam Cobb didn’t enter.

  Two strangers stepped into the office.

  “. . . clear as the nose on your face.” The speaker was a shade over five six with thinning blond hair over a round face. He looked cocky in a baggy polo and Bermuda shorts that exposed knobby knees. “That student went on the lam and then she thought better of it. Mayb
e somebody tipped her that we found the goods in her place.” His slightly high voice was strident. “So now she shows up claiming she was kidnapped. Kidnapped, my ass. Smith’s going to take her statement. Give her plenty of rope.” A snort. “Kidnapped—that’s a stupid way to try and cover up she was back in the library last night and shot that guy. Nothing Smith and Weitz can’t handle. I don’t know why Colleen thinks I got to be here. We got an eight o’clock tee time.” He went to the desk. “I can’t believe Colleen called me at six a.m. What’s she doing here on Saturday? I guess she sleeps with a scanner by her bed and thinks the station can’t handle anything without her on board. She should get a life.” He pushed a button on the intercom. “Colleen, pick up two Big Mama breakfasts from Lulu’s for me and Willard. ASAP.”

  Colleen was Chief Cobb’s exceedingly competent secretary, a matronly woman with bluish gray hair drawn back into a bun. What had happened to the chief?

  Her voice over the intercom seemed carefully devoid of expression. “Detectives Smith and Weitz have just—”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Smith texted me. Like a fly walking into our web. They’ve got it under control, right?”

  “Chief Cobb always—”

  “Spare me, Colleen. Chief Hands-On Cobb. Well, out of sight, out of mind. While he’s honeymooning in Galveston—”

  I made a soft cooing noise. How lovely. I had hoped that he and Claire Arnold, whose ramshackle old house was the center of intrigue when I was last in Adelaide, might make a match. Perfect for both of them.

  “—and Hal’s figuring out why grown men don’t do wheelies on skateboards, I’m acting chief. Me, Howie Warren. I delegate. Besides, it’s Saturday and Willard and me got a date with our sticks. And I didn’t sign up to work on Sundays. Smith and Weitz—hey, maybe we should start calling her Wesson”—a pause for a guffaw—“so Smith and Wesson can wrap it up and bring it to me Monday morning on a platter. Now, speaking of platters, be a good girl and trot over to Lulu’s.” He clicked off the intercom.

  Impulse overcomes me occasionally.

  Oh, all right—often.

  I snapped, “Don’t be a sexist pig.”

  He swung around and glared at Willard. “What’d you say?”

  His companion looked startled. “I didn’t say anything.”

  The smaller man snarled, “Stop the funny stuff. I heard that.”

  Willard was bigger with a fleshy red face and a bulbous nose. At the moment his eyes were shifting around the room. “I did, too. Where’s the dame?”

  I resisted humming “Ring Around the Rosie” while they prowled around the room. Finally, Howie went to the door, poked his head into the hall. He closed the door and shrugged. “Maybe something came through the air vent.” His small pig eyes tightened. “Some broad in the hall being cute.”

  “Yeah.” Willard was hugely relieved. “Making a joke. Nothing to do with us. Anyway, you’re on a roll today, Howie. You’ve solved the Goddard caper in record time. That’ll put Price’s nose out of joint.” A hearty laugh. “Kind of like his leg. Hear he’s in traction and will be out for a couple of weeks.”

  Howie swung around the desk, plopped in Chief Cobb’s chair, leaned back looking satisfied. “Poor old Hal. Wonder if he’s told Sam I’m the man of the hour? Anyway, soon as we finish breakfast, we’re out of here. Bet you fifty I beat you by five.” He pulled out a drawer, propped his legs on it. “Neva’s gonna be pleased that I wrapped this up ASAP.”

  Heaven encourages tolerance, but I loathe clichés. At the blackboard, I picked up a chalk stub, wrote: A SAP.

  “Howie, you’re coming out of this smelling like a rose.” Willard’s smile was just this side of fawning. “You know Neva wants to muscle Cobb out. This may be your chance.”

  If I’d had more time, I would have added to the blackboard Tallulah Bankhead’s classic observation: “There is less here than meets the eye.” However, I now had a more pressing duty. Michelle Hoyt needed help.

  I was familiar with the interrogation room at the police station from my previous visit to Adelaide. The windowless room was unchanged: dingy tan walls, scuffed linoleum floor, a desk with a goosenecked lamp that could be twisted to focus on a wooden chair about five feet away.

  Michelle Hoyt sat in the chair. She was dressed in the blue blouse and white slacks she’d worn when the apartment manager last saw her on Wednesday. She looked disheveled and exhausted. Her dark hair needed a brush. She wore no makeup. Her face was tired and strained, her blouse and slacks wrinkled. On the floor next to her feet was a black leather shoulder bag.

  Behind the table sat a uniformed officer, a stocky woman with a smooth round face beneath a fringe of black bangs. Her hair was cut short. Her fingers rested near a keypad attached to a laptop computer. Lounging next to her, feet stuck out straight in front of him, was Detective Don Smith, his handsome face sardonic. Standing at the end of the table, arms folded, was a trim woman in a gray polyester jacket and gray short skirt. Her broad face was expressionless beneath an untidy mop of billowy brown hair. Oh my, how I yearned to take her to a makeover. That hair, tamed a bit, could be flattering. Dowdiness was not a requisite for officialdom. Perhaps a pleated patterned long silk jacket, a vivid marine blue blouse, and black trousers.

  The woman adjusted the cone of light until it struck Michelle full in the face.

  Michelle lifted a hand to shade her eyes. She looked upset and exhausted. “I don’t understand why you brought me in here. Why are you beaming that light at me? Who are you?”

  Smith answered. “I’m Detective Don Smith.” He inclined his head. “Detective Judy Weitz. You want to report a crime?” He spoke in a flat tone.

  Michelle sat straighter. She lifted a shaky hand to brush back a strand of hair. “Yes.” Her voice was shaky. “I got a phone call—”

  “How?” The stocky woman’s voice was sharp.

  Michelle squinted against the bright light. “On my cell. I was driving to my apartment. It was about a quarter to five Wednesday. The call came from the History Department. A woman—”

  “Name?”

  Michelle gave a tired head shake. “I don’t remember. Simpson, maybe. I don’t know. You can ask at the department. She told me Dr. Gordon wanted me to pick up an important folder that he needed for a talk that night. The address was 928 Montague Street. She told me how to get there. I just had time to take my groceries home and then I drove there. It took me a while to find the house. Montague is out near the country club, and there are lots of woods and this house was tucked behind a whole lot of trees. I pulled into the drive, and it curved around. The house is a two-story brick. She’d told me to come to the kitchen door and come in. I parked in front of the garage, a double garage separate from the house. I was in a hurry, so when I got out of the car, I left my purse on the seat and my keys in the ignition. I was just going to be there a couple of minutes. I went up the back steps and there was a note on the door. It said, Come in. Go to the right and down steps to basement, folder on desk. I stepped into the kitchen and saw a light coming from an open door, and I thought that must be the way down to the basement. I walked across the room and saw the steps leading down. I hurried down the stairs. I was almost to the bottom when the door slammed behind me. I thought maybe somebody’d come into the kitchen and there was a draft. Anyway, I went on down the stairs. That’s when I thought something was odd. It was a basement room with a pool table and a sofa and I didn’t see a desk. I went around the room, but there wasn’t a folder anywhere. I went back up the stairs and the door to the kitchen was locked. I knocked and banged and yelled. No one came.” For an instant her voice was uneven. “I couldn’t imagine what had happened. I thought there’d been some kind of mistake, but nobody ever came. Not then or that night or the next day. Or the next. I tried to get out. I looked for something to break down the door but there wasn’t anything. I looked everywhere in that room for some kind of tool. T
here wasn’t anything. There’s a padlocked door that goes somewhere and a little half bath, but there wasn’t anything in there but soap. I got really scared. You see”—she swallowed and again pushed back a strand of dark hair and stared at them with hollow eyes—“I thought some crazy person had caught me and was keeping me for some reason, because when I looked around there was a microwave and a little refrigerator and it had food, sandwich stuff and bread and frozen meals, enough for two days. And the cot”—she shuddered—“was made up into a bed. At night, when I couldn’t stay awake any longer, I put some of the balls from the pool table on the top step, and I thought if somebody came in, they would fall and I’d have a chance to get out. But nobody came. The balls were always there the next morning. Last night I ate the last frozen dinner. I decided either somebody was coming to get me today or something was going to happen.” She took a shaky breath. “I got up early this morning. I went up the stairs, moved the balls to one side. I had one of the pool cues and I thought I could jab it at somebody. I didn’t have any hope I could get out. I’d checked the door lots of times. I turned the knob, and this time the door was unlocked.” There was a memory of fear in the sharp planes of her face. “I eased the door open a little bit at a time. I didn’t hear anything in the kitchen. Nothing. The kitchen was dark. It wasn’t light outside yet. I tiptoed across the kitchen to the back door and opened it, and I was outside. And there was my car in the driveway. I couldn’t believe it. I ran and got in and locked the doors, and there was my purse and my keys were in it and I came straight here.”

  Detective Smith cleared his throat. “That’s quite a story.”

  “It isn’t a story. That’s what happened to me, and I want you to find out who kept me a prisoner. It was awful.” Her voice was ragged.

  Smith picked up his cell. “Check out 928 Montague Street. ASAP.”

  When I was an English teacher, I stressed the poverty of mind indicated by constant use of clichés. Chief Cobb’s exchanges with Detective Sergeant Hal Price, who was the only man I’d ever thought as handsome as my own Bobby Mac, were intelligent even if sometimes profane. Sam was on his honeymoon and Hal was in the hospital and somebody named Howie indicated he didn’t intend to be in the office until Monday and expected these detectives to wrap everything up. Howie had already made up his mind that Michelle Hoyt was a thief, and likely he would be delighted to finger her for the shooting of Ben Douglas.