Ghost on the Case

by Carolyn Hart

  A muffled peal.

  Susan yanked out her own cell phone, swiped, lifted it to listen. “I haven’t left yet. . . . I’ll go now.” She looked down at the phone, its screen now dark. She used a thumbnail to turn off the ringer, shoved the phone in her pocket as she rushed across the room, into the hall, turned to another door.

  As she flipped the light switch, I took an instant to look at her. Her narrow face was devoid of color, her brown eyes pools of desperation, a woman laboring under intense emotion.

  I popped into the living room, gazed about. I hurried to a side table and picked up a shoulder bag. It took only an instant to open the purse and fish out a brown leather billfold. I flipped it open and there was a driver’s license, Susan Mary Gilbert. The photo showed a much happier face, but instantly familiar with the striking dark brows and narrow nose and decided chin. She was smiling. I glanced at the birth date. She was twenty-four. When the shutter clicked to record her image, she’d been twenty-four and confident, not crushed by fear. I wouldn’t forget her stricken plea, Please, you won’t hurt her?

  I joined Susan in a very different bedroom. I never doubted the room was hers, a simple maple bed and dresser and chest, pale blue walls, white dimity curtains at the windows. A serene room. No clutter. Susan pulled off her pretty wool sweater and yanked a black sweater from the chest. Atop the chest were two studio photographs in silver frames. I found both faces intriguing. One was a woman in her late forties or early fifties, a mass of blonde hair, huge blue eyes, crimson lips, almost a smile, not quite. The heart-shaped face had a haunting quality, as if there could be laughter but tears were not far behind. The second was young, perhaps not more than seventeen. Blonde curls framed the same heart-shaped face, but this one was bright and eager and the wide blue eyes brimmed with delight.

  Susan tugged at the neck of the sweater, slid her cell phone into a pocket. She moved jerkily, hurrying, hurrying.

  Wiggins had feared I might be too late to help Susan. I was in a quandary. What would a wise emissary do? Clearly, she was distraught, but I knew too little to be of help now, though I yearned to slip a comforting arm around her taut shoulders. But I must be patient. I had to know more. What was the content of the call she’d received? Obviously she feared for someone’s safety. She’d hurried to a bedroom, said raggedly, “Sylvie. Oh, Silly, Silly.” The love was clear in her stricken voice when she called out, “Silly, Silly.” I was sure this was a big sister’s nickname for the girl who had the happy bedroom, the girl she begged the caller not to harm.

  Susan was dressed now in dark clothing, dark sneakers as well. She wound a black scarf around her head. At the dresser, she opened the top drawer, pulled out supple black leather gloves, shoved them in a pocket. She hurried out of the bedroom, up the hallway, into the small living room. She paused only long enough to take the billfold from her purse and slide it into a pocket. She plucked car keys from a ceramic bowl and ran into an old-fashioned kitchen, think 1950s, skirted a white wooden table. At the back door, she turned the knob, looked out into the night.

  A huge moon silvered a separate frame garage. A small sedan was parked in the drive. The air was chilly. I gauged the temperature in the high fifties. I rather felt that it was late October or early November. Even in darkness, the trees looked as if the branches were mostly bare. I changed into a gray cashmere pullover, navy wool slacks, and ankle boots.

  Susan took a moment on the back steps to gaze about. Did she perhaps have a nosy neighbor? After that quick check, she slipped quietly down the stairs. Leaves crunched beneath her feet as she crossed the yard to the car.

  I was settled in the front passenger seat when she slid behind the wheel. The car was immaculately kept though obviously an older model. I missed the days when I was a gadabout in Adelaide. Cars were simple to recognize. You drove a Ford or a Chevy or a Dodge. If you rubbed shoulders with the upper crust, you glided in a Lincoln or Cadillac. In my recent forays to Adelaide, I’d gained some familiarity with the plethora of modern cars. All I could say with certainty about Susan’s car was that it was modest, in keeping with her home, and likely ten or twelve years old. How did I know? She put an actual key in the ignition and there wasn’t a little screen set above the radio. I knew I was distracting myself from the panic that emanated from the rigid figure beside me. She gripped the steering wheel tightly with gloved hands.

  I didn’t like the gloves. It might be early November and chilly, but no one needed gloves. I didn’t like her dark garb. I had a feeling of foreboding right up there with ravens wheeling in the sky or the scrape of a dungeon door. I especially didn’t like the car backing from the drive without headlights. The car eased into the street. Susan hunched forward. Peering out into the moonlit street, she drove without lights.

  I almost put out a hand then steeled myself. No doubt her progress would end in a jamming of brakes if an unseen hand gripped her arm. Perhaps her stealth was caused by fear for the safety of Sylvie, whom she called Silly. Sylvie was in danger, and Susan was setting out to do something that might assure her safety. This was not the time for me to intervene. I hoped her actions saved Sylvie, but I remembered Wiggins’s somber Impossible Situation.

  I leaned forward in the passenger seat, still unseen. Yes, I can appear, but the Precepts for Earthly Visitation are clear on the subject: “Become visible only when absolutely necessary.” That instruction was rather a sore point between Wiggins and me. It isn’t that I am eager to appear. Oh. Honesty requires full disclosure. I will admit I like being visible. I like being on earth, a twenty-seven-year-old redhead eager to help. I will also admit I often appeared on past missions, but in those instances I’d not felt I had a choice. Oh. Was that always true? Not exactly. Perhaps Wiggins was hovering near. I’ve never been certain whether Wiggins actually knows my thoughts at any given moment or not. Just in case, I repeated the Precepts silently to myself as the car turned a corner.

  PRECEPTS FOR EARTHLY VISITATION

  1. Avoid public notice.

  2. Do not consort with other departed spirits.

  3. Work behind the scenes without making your presence known.

  4. Become visible only when absolutely necessary.

  5. Do not succumb to the temptation to confound those who appear to oppose you.

  6. Make every effort not to alarm earthly creatures.

  7. Information about Heaven is not yours to impart. Simply smile and say, “Time will tell.”

  8. Remember always that you are on the earth, not of the earth.

  Susan turned on the headlights and pressed the accelerator. As the car picked up speed, we passed modest bungalows and small frame houses. I recognized the one-story frame home where my beautician had lived. A few houses down was the home of the gawky, pimply faced paperboy who faithfully delivered the Gazette and the Oklahoman promptly at five every morning. He grew up to be a lawyer and went on to a distinguished career as a federal judge. That stucco home with a tiled roof was the home of soft-spoken, kind Maisie Whistler, who worked in my dad’s drugstore.

  Susan swung onto a wide street and started up a hill. I don’t know how it is in most small towns, but the best homes in Adelaide are on high ground. We drove around a clump of willows, and I spotted some familiar homes. The car continued up the hill, curved to the right. Susan slowed, perhaps because cars were parked on both sides of the street. Lights blazed from a Mediterranean mansion set far up on the hillside. The circular drive was filled with cars. Susan drove perhaps a quarter mile past the drive. She flicked off the headlights as she turned the car into a narrow road.

  In the pale wash of light from the dashboard, her face was set. There was no mistaking the tight urgency that propelled her or the barely lashed panic rigidly held in abeyance.

  I knew where we were. The mansion blazing with light and the drive filled with cars had once been the home of an Adelaide oil baron, Luke Torman, and later of his ebullient wi
dow, Celine, who had a taste for younger men and loved to rhumba. The house was indeed high on the hill and separated from neighbors by a thick wood. The road we now traveled led to a private lake behind the house.

  The dark was so intense in the wooded area that Susan turned on the fog lights, which provided enough illumination to follow the blacktop road past a cabin to a deserted parking area near some picnic tables. Susan nudged the car into the shadow of a pavilion. When she turned off the motor, she tucked the keys into a pocket, pulled out the leather gloves, slipped them on. She opened the glove compartment, grabbed a pencil flashlight.

  I was right beside her as she slid from the driver’s seat. She gently clicked the car door shut and turned on the flashlight long enough to spot a blacktop path. She knew the way, walked swiftly. The path curved along the shore of the lake. The water looked dark and motionless. The sound of music grew louder. We came around a curve, and the mansion rose to the left. Two wings extended from the broad center portion. The third floor was ablaze with lights shining out in wide swaths from ceiling-tall windows. Guests in formal attire, some dancing, some in convivial clumps, were visible. I left Susan long enough to rise in the air for a quick peek into an elegant ballroom that overlooked the terrace. I admired enormous chandeliers that likely had once graced a grand British country home. Drums thrummed, trumpets blared. The music sounded like a mixture of banshee wails and a buzz saw needing grease. I turned to see Susan picking her way from dark shadow to dark shadow, moving toward the wing where only an occasional light shone. I joined her as she reached the far side of the house.

  Susan puffed out a sigh of relief and hurried up a paved walk. The music was now muffled, though the heavy boom of the drums was audible as thumps. Occasional windows were lighted in this wing, two on the second floor, one on the ground floor. A soft glow rimmed drawn curtains in a room near the back of the house. A few feet from the rectangle of light, she stopped so abruptly I bumped into her. She gave a startled gasp.

  “Sor—” I broke off the instinctive apology as she stiffened into a hunted posture. Her head jerked back and forth as she sought the source of the voice.

  I scarcely breathed and cautiously eased away from her.

  The thin sharp beam of the flashlight flared. She twisted and turned the beam all around her, but the light revealed nothing more than drifting leaves on the flagstones and dense shadows beneath the evergreens that bordered the walk. The hand holding the flashlight trembled. She remained in that strained, tight posture for a moment longer, then with a sharply drawn breath turned and walked toward a door next to the rectangle of light. She stopped, slowly reached out. She took a deep breath, used her gloved right hand to grip the handle. She turned it and gave a little puff of relief when the door opened.

  I was already inside when she stepped over the sill. A Tiffany lamp on a side table glowed, providing some light.

  The large room was masculine, oak-paneled walls, heavy leather furniture, a desk as large as a pool table, wooden filing cabinets, thick floor-length red velvet curtains. One wall was covered by a glass case. Rows of bright fishing lures glittered on pale pine. A stuffed marlin mounted on more pinewood hung above the mantel of a fireplace. The opposite wall of bookcases was filled with knickknacks, likely souvenirs from travels. In a quick glance, I saw a bronze gong on a teak base, a porcelain elephant, a diorama of the Great Wall of China, a mud-stained polo stick, a lariat, a Cubs baseball cap, a miniature wooden sailboat with a plastic sail, a worn small teddy bear with a bow tie.

  My nose wrinkled. I like the smell of coal smoke, but this room held the memory of smoldering cigars. An oversize brass ashtray was on one corner of the mahogany desk.

  Susan closed the door gently. Her gaze flickered around the room, but there was no movement, no sound beyond the muffled thump from the faraway music. She took a quick breath, hurried across the room to the hall door, punched in the lock. Some of the tension eased from her body. Whirling, she looked across the room at an oil painting that hung behind the desk. An eighteenth-century highwayman looked masterful astride a rearing black stallion. He was attired in a red coat and black breeches, a musket in one hand. He gazed across the years, his lips curved in a cruel smile.

  Susan took slow steps across the Oriental rug, skirted the desk, came up between the red leather desk chair and the painting. She gave a quick glance over her shoulder at the hall door, now securely locked.

  Fumbling a little, she ran her left hand behind the frame of the painting.

  I heard a click.

  She gripped the beveled frame and pulled. The painting swung away from the wall to reveal a large safe inset in the wall. Quickly she tapped a keypad in the center of the safe door. There was not the slightest sound as she pulled the safe door open.

  To say I was disturbed can scarcely attest to the turmoil in my mind. Clearly, this was not Susan’s house. Even more clearly, this was not her safe. She was dressed in black. She’d slipped into this room, and now with gloved hands she was reaching into a safe. If I appeared, asked her what she was doing, I could easily thwart what was obviously a robbery. Was that the course I should take?

  If I’d ever wished for Wiggins it was now.

  It was almost as if he whispered in my ear. Precept Three: “Work behind the scenes without making your presence known.”

  Wiggins clearly had been concerned for Susan. Moreover, his expression was dismal when he concluded she was in an Impossible Situation. She received a phone call that made her fear for her little sister’s safety, and now, dressed in the modern equivalent of the eighteenth-century highwayman’s garb, she was reaching with both gloved hands into a safe hidden behind a painting in a grand mansion. I hardly had to jump to any conclusions to understand that Susan must have access to this safe because she worked for its owner and that she was willing to commit a crime to do what she must to protect her sister.

  Her hands came out of the safe holding a shoe box, a bright red, white, and blue Reebok running shoe box. She tucked the box beneath one arm, closed the safe, pushed the painting back against the wall. A soft click.

  I was quite sure that it wasn’t Heaven’s intent to facilitate crime. Perhaps that was the reason for my presence. I could at any time arrange the return of the shoe box. I felt a whoosh of relief. Of course I would protect the interests of the safe’s owner. Reassured, I watched as Susan returned to the hall door, turned the knob to pop the lock. In a flash she crossed the room to the exterior door. I was right behind her as she slipped into the night. I didn’t intend to let that shoe box out of my sight.

  Chapter 2

  Susan stood in the middle of her small living room, clutching the shoe box in a tight grip. Her memorable face with its high cheekbones and bold chin looked intense, obdurate. She’d removed—perhaps stolen was the correct verb—a cardboard container from a safe that clearly was not hers. I expected her to look for a hiding place, though there are few spots that can conceal a shoe box if a searcher is diligent. Would she go out into the night again, find a trowel in her garage, dig in the ground? She’d left her home in darkness and returned the same way, dousing the headlights when she turned onto her street. If she was concerned about a watchful neighbor, digging a hole—I glanced at a clock on a side table—at a quarter to midnight was not an option.

  Her next move surprised me.

  She walked swiftly to a card table in one corner. She moved aside a chess set, placed the box in the open space. Her entire body tensed as she lifted the lid. She held an indrawn breath.

  I hovered above her right shoulder. My eyes widened.

  She lifted out stacks of bills, each stack held by a rubber band. The top bill on each stack was a fifty. She fluffed the ends of one stack. All fifties.

  I counted the stacks. The box held at least a hundred thousand dollars, perhaps closer to a hundred and fifty thousand. I gazed at her, trying to reconcile the reality of a thief with a
woman whose face was generous, kind, serious.

  The gloved hands moved swiftly, returning the bundled bills to the box, slapping the lid back in place. She glanced at the grandfather clock. Twelve minutes to midnight. She pressed fingers to her temples, then seemed to realize she still wore gloves. She stripped them off, flung them on the table.

  An inexpensive chess set with plastic pieces, limp black leather gloves, and a shoe box crammed with bundles of fifty-dollar bills made an incongruous tableau. The chess set, if used, suggested intelligence. The cheapness of the set indicated a lack of money for extravagance, no ivory or brass here. The gloves were not needed for the weather, were chosen to aid in a crime. The shoe box held thousands of dollars that should not be on the table in this small house.

  Susan stood by the table, arms tightly crossed. She stared at the clock. Nine minutes to midnight. She began to pace, six steps, turn, six steps back, six steps, turn, six steps back. The minute hand edged nearer and nearer twelve.

  Two minutes to go.

  Susan yanked the cell phone from her pocket, held it in her hand.

  One minute to go.

  Midnight.

  She lifted the phone, one hand poised to swipe.

  One minute after the hour.

  Two minutes after the hour.

  Her face quivered as she stared at the silent cell phone.

  Three minutes after the hour.

  With a shaking hand she swiped, touched Recent Calls, tapped. She held the phone to her ear. A minute passed. Another. She began to tremble. She looked wildly toward the table with the shoe box. She hunched her shoulders. With stiff fingers she tried the call again. Finally, the hand with the cell phone dropped to her side. Stumbling a little, she walked to the sofa, blindly sank down. Tears slid down her cheeks. “Oh God, what am I going to do?”

  “There’s always something to do.” I spoke firmly.