Ghost on the Case

by Carolyn Hart

  Susan leaned forward. “Ask me anything.”

  “Who could arrange to open the outer door to the study tonight?”

  For an instant she looked eager, then she shook her head. “On a regular night it would be a very short list. But tonight? Everybody who’s anybody in Adelaide is at the dance in the grand ballroom. Plus there’s catering staff. Someone could slip downstairs and go into that wing. The study door to the hall isn’t locked. It would be easy.”

  My hope was dashed. I thought perhaps the kidnapper might easily be singled out. I asked swiftly, “How many people know you can open Wilbur Fitch’s safe?”

  Her face was suddenly still. Her eyes widened. “Everyone in town probably knows about the box of money. Wilbur loves to say offhandedly, You need five thousand for the Thanksgiving dinner for the homeless? I’ll go home and get it.”

  “I doubt a casual bystander is aware Wilbur’s secretary could open the safe and bring the money. I doubt a casual bystander even knows you work for Wilbur Fitch.”

  Realization transformed her face. “You mean someone I know took Sylvie?”

  “Yes.”

  There was a feeling of coldness in the small kitchen as Susan realized Sylvie’s captor must be someone she knew, not a nameless faceless stranger. The kidnapper was knowledgeable about her little sister and knew as well that Susan had access to the shoe box full of money.

  “When did Wilbur reveal that you can open the safe?”

  Susan stared as if I’d suddenly perched a crystal ball in my lap. “How did you know?”

  “Sylvie is a very unlikely kidnap victim to be held for ransom.”

  Susan scarcely breathed. “Only Wilbur knew I could open the safe. Until last week.”

  “Did Sylvie know?”

  That almost brought a smile. “Sylvie loves me and she wants to know about my day, but she asks whether I saw a deer in the park on my way to work or if I’ve heard the new marimba album or would I like for her to make a lemon meringue pie or, and this is really important to her, what is a better color for a unicorn, sea green or sunrise vermilion. I ask her if she’s learned the lines for a play she’s going to be in or whether the new professor really understands Faulkner. She knows I work for Wilbur, but she only has a dim idea what he does, and she assumes that being a secretary is a lot of keyboarding. She lives in a world of color and emotion. The neat thing is, Wilbur does, too. It’s just a different world. He’s considering a plan now to start up a new company to manufacture no-frill cars. Alan Douglas—he’s the vice president of projects and designs—came up with the idea that loads of people don’t want to pay for cars with TV screens and audio systems and so much electronic capacity a customer needs a three-hour tutorial before driving off the lot. Alan’s different. You never know what he’ll think of next. He’s tall and lanky and diffident. And nice. I was surprised Wilbur was interested because he’s made his fortune from computer parts. Everything in our office is the latest, but he says Alan’s onto something, that marketers get it wrong sometimes. Sure, people with money want to be cool and have the latest gadgets, but there are plenty of people who like to eat in diners and shop at Stein Mart and get their books from the library. Like Sylvie and me. I’ll buy one of those cars if it happens, and if Wilbur decides it’s going to happen, it will. You’ll roll the windows up and down with a handle, click a knob to turn on the radio. Ditto the heater. You’ll use a key to unlock the door and start the car. Alan wants to squeeze out every unneeded computer part. Wilbur says computerizing the world is a big damn risk, that computers can be hacked, jammed. They glitch. Alan brought him a proposal entitled ‘Keep it SIMPLE.’ The name of the new company will be SIMPLE Cars. Alan has a slogan ready: Save money for your dreams. Drive SIMPLE and keep the extra cash. Wilbur had a big luncheon last week in Alan’s honor. That doesn’t mean he’ll agree to the project, but he likes for his employees to be innovative. And, of course, Wilbur likes having people for luncheons. He enjoys holding court in the dining room. It’s pretty spectacular, very similar to the dining room at Hearst Castle. High ceiling. Banners hang from the walls. A long oak table seats twenty. There are huge paintings and a stone fireplace and tall silver candlesticks on the table. I love the banners. There’s a checkerboard flag from NASCAR, the Oklahoma flag, a Dodgers pennant, the racing colors from a stable he owns. The biggest one is white silk with FITCH in big red letters. He often entertains at lunch. Sometimes it’s business, sometimes family, sometimes both. That’s how it was last Monday.”

  “You were there?”

  She shook her head. “Sometimes I run errands over my lunch hour. Sometimes I have to eat at my desk. When I do that, he insists I leave an hour early in the afternoon. That day I had lunch out on the terrace. It was a beautiful fall day. The kitchen brings lunch to me if I ask. I was just finishing a bowl of soup when he called me on my cell. My ringtone for him is a bugle blast so I knew it was Wilbur. I always hold the phone a bit away from my ear because he has a deep voice and he booms. I heard him clearly. Everyone at the table heard him. He said, Susan, I need for you to open the safe. Look next to the money box. There’s a velvet bag. Red velvet. Perfect for a king’s ransom. Guess it would have been an emperor’s ransom back then. I want to show off those Roman coins. They came out of an old shipwreck they found off Malta. I got the best coins of the lot. Bring the bag to me ASAP. He clicked off. I went straight to the study, opened the safe, got the velvet bag. I took the bag to the dining room. Everybody looked at me as I walked in.”

  A secretary opened a safe and carried the requested item to her employer and someone watched and remembered.

  “Who was there?”

  • • •

  I shooed Susan from the kitchen. “I’ll take care of the dishes. You go to bed.”

  “I can’t sleep.” Her lips quivered. While we talked, she’d held tight to the thought that tomorrow a call would come and she could deliver the money and Sylvie would be safe. Now fatigue plucked behind her eyes, fatigue and the possible horrors of a night she could not control.

  I was firm. “You have to go to work in the morning.”

  Her hands clenched. “I can’t.”

  “You have to act as if it’s an ordinary day and keep your usual routine. Find out everything you can about Wilbur Fitch’s recent contacts with those on our list.” Because we had a list. The guests at the luncheon knew Susan could open the safe. One of them was almost certainly Sylvie’s kidnapper. I dismissed the possibility that Wilbur Fitch gratuitously informed an unknown person that his secretary knew the combination to his safe. Why would he? The tidbit My secretary can open my safe was unlikely in casual conversation. That information came about incidentally because he wanted to show off a new acquisition to his coin collections.

  With the list of names, I was tempted to immediately pop to the location of each person, but at a quarter after one in the morning it was unlikely they would be engaged in revealing activity. I doubted the kidnapper was anywhere near Sylvie. If Sylvie was to return safely, it was essential that she not know the identity of her kidnapper.

  I declined the offer of Sylvie’s room. “I’ll sleep on the sofa.” Susan provided sheets and a quilt and pillow. I finished the dishes and made certain Susan was settled in her bedroom. I spread the sheet and quilt on the sofa, arranged the pillow at one end, turned off the light, and disappeared.

  Chapter 3

  The luminous glow of the moon through the windows provided enough light to find the desk and turn on a droopy gooseneck lamp with a green metal shade. I immediately felt at home. I was quite familiar with Sam Cobb’s office, the battered oak desk stained by coffee rings and long-ago cigarette burn scars, the wall with the detailed city map of Adelaide and assorted Impressionist prints, an old-fashioned green blackboard with white chalk in the tray—Sam once taught high school math and disdained modern grease boards—and a worn leather couch near the windows that
looked out over Main Street.

  I settled into his desk chair, opened the center drawer. I found a sheet of paper with a list of scratched-out words except for the most recent addition. Sam loathed passwords, often demanded aloud in his deep voice, If a computer’s not secure in the police station, where the hell is it secure? But Mayor Neva Lumpkin demanded that city employees change passwords each week. This week’s password was Curlicue. I wondered if Sam was hungry when he came up with that one. I pictured him at Lulu’s, dipping a clump of the cafe’s signature curly french fries in heavily peppered ketchup.

  I turned the chair, tapped the mouse, entered the password. I wished he was here and I could tell him about the missing girl, but that would entail revealing the theft of more than a hundred thousand dollars. Sam was an understanding police chief, willing to listen, but a stolen box of money would certainly propel him to action, which very likely would see Susan jailed, the money returned to Wilbur Fitch. I had every intention of making sure the mass of cash ended up in the safe. Susan could pay the ransom, Sylvie would come home, and I, unseen, would have easy access to the money. As soon as Sylvie was free, I would hijack the ransom and a kidnapper would be outwitted.

  I imagined the kidnapper’s call to Susan. Come alone. You will be watched. If you want to see Sylvie again, do precisely as instructed. Put the box inside the Prichard mausoleum next to the greyhound.

  Every Adelaidean is familiar with the mausoleum that houses the stone tombs of Maurice and his wife, Hannah. His resting place is graced by a statue of his faithful greyhound, hers by a statue of her Abyssinian cat. The instructions would allow Susan only minutes to arrive to preclude a police trap. The cemetery offered many vantage points where Susan could be observed.

  If not the cemetery, there were other possibilities around town. There was open space near the merry-go-round in the park. Or possibly a country road could be used: Leave the box at mile marker 7.

  Whatever the venue, I would be there, Susan’s unseen companion. I pictured her hurried placement of the box, Susan getting into her car, driving away, the cell phone in her lap. Perhaps she would be told to drive downtown, park at the library or near the cement plant, anywhere far from the location of the ransom. She would drive away, park, await the call signaling Sylvie’s release, but I would remain with the box and I would discover the identity of the kidnapper.

  However, I like to hedge my bets. Now that I had a specific list of suspects, I intended to discover every scrap of information possible just in case . . . I pushed away the thought that the call might never come, that it might be too late for Sylvie. I would hold to the hope that such a meticulously planned enterprise would run according to schedule. The objective was a box full of money and that depended upon contacting Susan.

  The temperature was chilly in Sam’s office. Buildings do love to lower the thermostat at night. I swirled present in a rose-marled crewneck sweater, gray heather wool trousers, rose leather ankle-top boots, and warm argyle socks. As a pepper upper I added a ceramic necklace, five colorful oblongs on a beaded chain. I stifled a yawn. My eyes felt grainy with fatigue. Yes, a ghost—excuse me, Wiggins—emissary needs slumber, too. Wiggins dislikes the use of ghost to describe his emissaries. But as Mama always told us, “Calling a spade an excavation implement doesn’t change what it is.” As for appearing, I needed any boost I could manage, and the sweater—I smoothed one sleeve—was elegant. For a burst of energy, I opened Sam’s lower left desk drawer, found his big sack of M&M’S, poured myself a handful.

  Buoyed by sugar, I pulled a sheet of paper from my pocket. Susan had given me her insights about the luncheon guests. I wanted to refresh my memory of each of the seven before I utilized Sam’s computer to do a more extensive search. I placed the sheet with Susan’s information on Sam’s desk.

  Present at Luncheon

  George Kelly—Wilbur’s lawyer. Flamboyant. As tall as Wilbur, but lanky. Wears Tony Lama cowboy boots. As loud as Wilbur, too. An all-purpose lawyer. He won a couple of big oil and gas cases for Wilbur. The company doesn’t have in-house counsel, so George pretty much oversees everything. He bills Wilbur at least a hundred thousand a year, sometimes more. He thinks he’s God’s gift to women, looks at me a little too closely, calls me hon. He and his wife divorced a couple years ago, and he asked me out a few times. I told him I had a steady boyfriend. I don’t think he believed me.

  Todd Garrett—Chief operating officer of Fitch Enterprises. Thinning brown hair, pudgy face, thousand-watt smile. Knows everybody in the company from the guy who fixes the toilets to the shop foreman to the personnel director. Divorced. Spends his weekends at his cabin down at Lake Texoma. Loves to hunt and fish.

  Alan Douglas, twenty-seven. Vice president in charge of projects and designs. He has short-cut brown hair and a long face. He stoops when he comes through doorways, so I guess he’s a little taller than Wilbur. He joined the company just over two years ago. MBA from OU. He carved a model of the SIMPLE Car out of wood that he carries around with him. Wilbur said it looks like a Studebaker.

  Harry Hubbard, twenty-four. Wilbur’s stepson by his second wife, Hayley. Wilbur’s been married twice. No wife presently. Neither ex lives in town. I guess they both ended up with plenty of money. Hayley’s apartment overlooks Central Park. Linda lives on her yacht, and I think it’s in the Mediterranean right now. Harry’s tall, blond, handsome, smiles a lot, flatters Wilbur, a good golfer, but, funny thing, Wilbur always wins.

  Minerva Lloyd. Mid-thirties. Wilbur calls her a good companion. For that you can read mistress. Blonde by choice. Definitely not skinny. Maybe that’s why he has a Rubens nude in his bedroom, and before you ask, I only visited it last year when he had the flu and needed to dictate some letters.

  Juliet Rodriguez. Hired to inventory his library. Teaches psychology at Goddard. Drop-dead gorgeous, tawny hair, olive complexion, dark chocolate eyes, an enigmatic smile.

  Ben Fitch—Wilbur’s son. He doesn’t look anything like Wilbur. Dark hair. Handsome. Regular features. Blue eyes that are really bright and really look at you. He’s about six feet tall. Not nearly as big as Wilbur. There’s something about him that makes you tense. Like when a storm’s coming and you can feel electricity in the air. He came in a week ago from Hawaii. I’d never met him. I don’t think they were in close contact. Wilbur never mentioned him.

  Feeling well briefed by Susan, I turned to Google. I found Gazette stories, checked addresses on Zillow for value, looked at Facebook pages. In my day private was private and you didn’t put your undies out to dry on the backyard clothesline. I suppose these days Mike Shayne would do his first search online. I made notes, filling in some blanks.

  George Kelly, forty-seven, a partner in Kelly and Wallis law firm, president of the Rotary Club, a golf champion at the country club, a bulldog rodeo champion. Divorced two years ago. No children. Decree awarded six-hundred-thousand-dollar house to ex-wife and substantial monthly alimony. Pictured in society pages with several different women.

  Todd Garrett, forty-eight, was active in a half dozen service groups and chief pancake flipper for the annual Kiwanis supper, owned a collection of antique cars, was divorced, no children. His FB page sported a half dozen photos of him waterskiing. Lived in a condo but owned a cabin at Lake Texoma and a spiffy Bayliner 285 Cruiser.

  Alan Douglas. Math major. Won science competitions in school. Received an MBA from OU. Joined Fitch Enterprises two years ago. Single. No civic clubs. Belongs to a chess club. Likes to ski. Lives in an apartment house near downtown. If he had a significant other, there was no mention. An interior shot of a small windowless room—a rented storage space?—featured a SIMPLE Car made from plywood. The model was painted bright orange. I remembered Studebakers and nodded in recognition. I wondered if he chose that similar design as a tribute to the simplicity of the past.

  Harry Hubbard. No service organizations, no church, but he sported a photo album on FB: Harry bowli
ng. Harry at Playa del Mar. Harry snorkeling. Harry on Maui. Harry in Munich, beer stein hoisted. Harry playing poker with some cool-eyed dudes who didn’t look like frat boys. Harry’s tousled hair and boyish face exuded charm except in the poker pic.

  Minerva Lloyd modeled in charity fashion shows. One outfit in particular appealed to me, a sweater beaded with sparkling fleur-de-lis, a pencil-thin camel hair skirt, and scalloped oatmeal textured flats. But there was something lacking. . . . Of course. I would set the sweater off with a multi-chain necklace and a teardrop crystal pendant. Interspersed with fashion shots were pictures of the interior of her store, Dare to Dress. Likely she modeled clothes available at her store. Running a small business takes hours of effort, care, and diligence. The income might be nice but not spectacular. Susan made the point that Minerva was Wilbur’s mistress. He might be generous, but she wouldn’t have access to the money available to a wife.

  Juliet Rodriguez. Her FB entries featured a very serious photograph, hair drawn in a bun, horn-rimmed glasses, and a high-neck blouse, and a series of essays on what in my day might be called pep talks. They explored in a very bright manner: How to Deal with Adversity, The Beginning of a New You, Applying Psychology to Everyday Dilemmas, Leaving the Past Behind, Knowing Your Limits, The Magic of Smiles. I read several. Oh my, she meant so well. She not only saw the world through rose-colored glasses, she added spangles of gold and silver. I never doubted Sylvie adored her class.

  Ben Fitch, twenty-eight. BBA from OU. His FB page was heavy on sports. Ben playing tennis. Ben rock climbing. Ben skiing. Ben on a boogie board as a breaker curled and foamed. Ben with a bikini-clad blonde on a catamaran. Ben with a gorgeous brunette in a gondola. Ben standing by a stack of deck chairs with Diamond Head in the background.