Laying Ghosts (Dolly Games)

by Derek Murphy

  Stepping carefully over and around the strewn bits of glass, he pressed the ‘call’ button for the elevator and was glad when it showed up. He didn’t want to take the stairs to their floor. It wasn’t so very high up, only the third floor, but he was tired from sleeping in the chair at Julie’s place.

  As the door opened on his floor, he heard the sound of a raised voice coming from the direction of their office and hurried toward the sound. If it was that bunch he had surprised at Julie’s place, they were going to be in for a world of hurt.

  Pushing the door open fully, he saw a large, grey-haired man standing in the outer office, one hand extended toward Julie who stood with a concerned expression on her face. After only a second, he was sure this was a client and not anyone connected to the bunch from last night.

  “I tell you, it was her! It had to be! I don’t know who else it could have been!”

  Julie said, “Please sit down, Mr. Webster. Maybe if you start from the beginning, we can make some sense of this.”

  The man made for the chair sitting in front of the receptionist’s desk and spied Carl from the corner of his eye. Turning, he displayed a pair of bloodshot eyes and a grey face that seemed to have been inflated like a balloon and then deflated, leaving only sagging, pouchy eyes and wrinkles.

  Carl extended his hand. “I’m Carl Tanner, one of the partners. How can we help you, Mr. …?”

  The man suddenly became aware that he had never met the other partner in the business and extended his own hand, taking Carl’s in a flaccid grip.

  “I’m Martin Webster. Something happened last night that I’ve got to tell you about. I’ve been working mostly with Mr. Decker and Julie here.”

  Carl led him on to the chair and settled himself on the edge of the desk as Julie moved to sit behind it. She rummaged in the file drawer and removed a folder, handing it to Carl. He opened the file to see that it was the case file she and Ike had been working from. He read quickly the things that had been reported to have happened at Webster’s house while Webster spoke.

  “I was home last night.” His eyes went to Julie. “I know you told me to stay in the hotel, but I just couldn’t let someone run me out of my own home. I admit that I was drinking heavily, but I wasn’t drunk.”

  Finished reading for now, Carl looked at the man and asked, “What happened, Mr. Webster? It must have been something momentous for you to come here this morning with all the storm-wrack in the streets.”

  Webster rubbed his eyes and looked back up at Carl. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell Julie! I’m not even sure if it was a dream or not! I was in the library; a morbid place for me to be, I know. But I was drinking and leaned back in the chair to go to sleep when a woman, a naked woman, walked into the room. I couldn’t see her face, she had a piece of silk covering her face, but I’m sure she was Sophie! We made love right there in the chair! I know it wasn’t a wet-dream, too! Her scent was all over me! The same perfume I bought for her in Paris on our honeymoon! I know it was her!”

  Frowning, Carl said, “Mr. Webster, we already know that someone is behind this. Someone that isn’t a ghost. They’ve been using some pretty sophisticated technology to do the things that have been upsetting you. I’m pretty sure that whoever you encountered last night had to be just a real, live person; not a ghost.”

  Webster was still shaken. Even if the woman he had made love to the previous night hadn’t been a ghost, then it was someone who had snuck into his house. He suddenly didn’t feel at all safe in his own home.

  “What should I do?”

  “Go back to the Breyerton Hotel, Mr. Webster. Their security is top-notch and no one will bother you there. The only hotel in town with better security is Merton’s Pacific Trader Hotel. They contracted with a competing agency to provide security for them and I have to admit that their people are very good at what they do. The security at the Breyerton is nearly as good, so you don’t have to worry about a thing while you’re there.”

  He looked at Julie. “Do you still have the keys to Mr. Webster’s home? Or, does Ike have them?”

  For answer, she held up a ring with a single key on it.

  “Mr. Webster, go to the Breyerton. Don’t tell anybody where you are. We’re going to get to the bottom of this but it may take us longer than just a few days. Don’t go back home for anything. Buy more clothes and toiletries at the hotel boutique. If whoever is doing this doesn’t know where you are, then they can’t get to you. Instead, they’ll find us at your house.”

  Feeling more secure, but still shaken, Webster rose and extended his hand, shaking Carl’s again.

  “If you can get to the bottom of this, I’ll double your fees.”

  Leading Webster to the door, Carl said, “That’s not really necessary, Mr. Webster. If you still feel that way after the case is resolved, we can talk about it. But I don’t think that will be necessary.”

  Closing the door behind the client as he ushered him out, Carl leaned his back against it and raised his eyebrows as he looked at Julie.

  “That was unexpected. Whoever this is must be very good. Not to mention persistent.”

  “They’ve got the run of the house, Carl. How do we shut them down?”

  “We stake out the house. I don’t think it’s a matter of watching the outside to keep them out, either. I think we have to be inside the house. How do you like the idea of chasing ghosts?”

  Pensively, she replied, “Rather, the question is; how did Webster like laying a ghost? Did you notice he never said if it was any good or not?”

  “Who knows better how good a man’s wife is in bed than the husband? He must have noticed similarities for it to shake him up so much.”

  Sourly, she said, “The wife’s ‘guy-on-the-side’ would know how good she was.”

  Carl frowned as he asked, “Did you and Ike look into the wife’s past? I mean, did they have a happy marriage? Was she seeing someone when Webster was away? As I recall, he was off on a business trip when she killed herself.”

  She shook her head. “No, since she was dead, there didn’t seem to be much point. I guess we slipped up on that. If she killed herself. If she had a boyfriend, mightn’t he have killed her during an argument? Made it look like a suicide? I mean, she was raped. I read the report from the Coroner’s Office; some of the things that were done to her were the kinds of things that someone only does if they’re really pissed off. Or, a sadist. Things that are calculated to take away a woman’s self-respect.”

  Removing the receiver from his pocket, Carl walked into his office and laid it on his desk as she followed him. Turning, he said, “Have a look at Sophie Webster’s life today. I’ll put the Nelson case on the back burner and go out to Webster’s house and have a look around. Maybe you and Ike missed something. I doubt it, but you never know.”

  As she turned to go to her office, Julie stopped in the door and turned her head so that she was in profile to him. Without looking directly at him, she said, “Thanks, Carl. For last night, I mean.”

  He looked after her, mindful of how hard it had been for her to say ‘thank you’. Julie was a hard person to know. She indulged in self-destructive pursuits and behaved in a prickly manner when braced about it. To admit, even in a roundabout way, that she had made a mistake last night had been like ‘eating crow’ for her.

  With a lingering look at the receiver he had placed on his desk, he opened the drawer of his desk and removed his ‘back-up piece’. You never knew when you might need more than one gun.

  * * *

  Quiet. Quiet and the sense that terrible things had happened in this room. Carl had wandered through all eighteen rooms of the mansion, poking into this and that, searching for hidden openings and found…nothing. Retrofitted with two secure cores and two panic rooms, the house looked like a masterpiece of a Victorian builder’s art. He had hoped that since it was an old house, dating back nearly to the founding of the city by old, Captain Silas Morgan, that it would have a few hidden rooms and
passageways.

  Only one more place to go over; the pantry in the kitchen. It was nearly dark and Julie would be there soon with dinner. A good thing, too. Carl was beginning to get hungry. The quick stop he had made at the little, taco stand on the way out here for an early lunch had been a long time ago. His stomach growled as he made his way back to the kitchen. Just as he reached for the doorknob to open the pantry, the doorbell rang. He trotted out into the foyer under the grand staircase and opened the door just as the bell rang again.

  Julie stood there with another pair of covered, Styrofoam plates and held yet another quart container of cherry limeade. Holding the container out to him, she smiled.

  “Dinner, Mr. Tanner, is served!”

  He looked at the plates with an arched eyebrow, thinking of his waistline.

  “Burgers again?”

  “Nope! This is Saturday! Catchwell’s has brisket and pork tenderloin on special on Saturdays! There’s salad for you and fries for me. And Jack’s own, special barbecue sauce!”

  Carl’s mouth began to water at the thought of the treat he was in for and he threw the door open wide.

  “Since you’re bearing the best of culinary gifts, come right in!”

  She entered and headed directly for the kitchen as he closed the door and locked it. As she placed the plates on the kitchen table, she saw the measuring tape he had left there with other odds and ends of equipment he had used today.

  She said, “If you were measuring the thickness of the walls, Ike and I already did that. It was in the file.”

  Searching the cupboards for glasses to pour the drinks into, he replied, “Yeah, I know. I was coming up dry, though. It was a last resort type of thing. I can’t figure how in the hell someone is getting in. Webster had the locks changed and there are only two keys. He has one and we’ve got the other.”

  She popped the seal on one of the plates and breathed in the scent of smoked meat and barbecue sauce.

  “Did you finish measuring?”

  “All but the pantry.”

  “Ike did the pantry.”

  Frowning, Carl stopped pouring the drinks from the quart carton and picked up the file he had left on the table with the equipment. Thumbing the pages till he reached the one with the results of their measurements, his frown deepened.

  “It’s not on the list.”

  Julie shrugged. “I guess we get to do that then. I was pretty sure he was more thorough than that though.”

  Shrugging, Carl continued pouring the drinks while Julie placed a plate in front of him with its load of smoked meats and salad. As she opened her own plate, he saw that she had been true to her word about the fries she had ordered for herself; the volume of fries was nearly equal to that of the meats. She opened one of the packets of spicy ketchup and squirted it out on her fries, dipping one in it before sitting down.

  Reaching her drink across the table to her, Carl picked up the little package of plastic-ware, napkin and salt and pepper packets. Ripping the plastic, he began eating the meat even before he had put the accompanying salad dressing on the greens. The little container of barbecue sauce in the plate had a cover over it and he slipped it off, dipping a bite of meat into it. Closing his eyes, he began chewing.

  His appreciation of the taste of the meat was interrupted when Julie said, “I’m getting nowhere interviewing the staff. They don’t know anything, or, they weren’t here, or, they clam up because they think we’re trying to pin all this on one of them.”

  “It’s what I expected. They may be loyal to Webster, but they have jobs to protect, too. Self-interest trumps loyalty to an employer every time.”

  As she began savagely cutting into her meat, she said, “I suppose so.”

  After a few minutes spent eating silently, she asked, “Buckley-Craven get anything for you about those phone calls?”

  With a bite of food nearly to his mouth, Carl asked, “How did you know I contacted him?”

  “I know you, Carl. You were probably either on the phone or the computer getting the info to him as soon as I was out of the door.”

  Grudgingly, he admitted, “Well, yeah. If it’s her, I want to know it. If it’s her family screwing around with me; I want to know that, too.”

  Dipping another fry into the ketchup, she said, “My money’s on the family.”

  He sighed and said, “Let’s not talk about it, Julie. We don’t agree and that’s never going to change.”

  She knew she had caused him to slam a door in her face, figuratively, and finished up her food in silence. As he also finished, she gathered up the containers and put them into the trash container hidden inside its own little cabinet.

  Rising, Carl took the measuring tape and moved to the pantry. He slipped the tape out and began measuring the walls, floor and the cabinets inside it. The job only took a few minutes with Julie writing down the dimensions as he called them out and after a few minutes, he was staring at one cabinet as she perused the drawing she had made.

  She said, “Carl…”

  “Yeah. That cabinet is too small to fill the space its occupying.”

  Chapter Eight

  From the other side of the pantry wall, Carl and Julie studied the little breakfast nook that filled the space nearest the pantry. The pry-bar in Carl’s hand was cool and smooth as he moved to fit the end inside the crevice that ran along the left side.

  He said, “According to the file, Webster didn’t have the kitchen, pantry or breakfast nook remodeled when he took possession of the house.”

  She asked, “Who owned it before him?”

  “Some management company.”

  Just before he began applying pressure to the end of the bar, Julie said, “Wait a minute, Carl.”

  Removing the bar, he leaned back on his haunches and watched as she slid under the table and began running her fingers along the bottom edge of the seat. As her fingers reached the end of the seat, they stopped and she hooked one finger into a small hole, tentatively pulling out as a lever was revealed. With a slight pop, the entire bottom case below the seat moved forward and she grasped it, pulling it outward into the space under the table.

  The dark hole thus revealed was large enough for an adult to crawl into and taking her little, tactical light from her pocket, she flicked it on and began crawling into it.

  Carl said, “Once you’re inside, I’ll follow.”

  As she crawled, she noted that the sides, top and bottom of the little crawlspace were smoothly finished; as though the builders intended this passage to be used in relative comfort. She saw marks in the thin coating of dust on the floor that made her think of brush strokes. It was evident that someone had made a recent effort to sweep the dust from the floor to avoid getting it all over them. Still, there were scuffmarks where the toes of someone’s shoes had scraped along the floor. Though short, the passage slanted down beneath the seemingly solid floor and led in the direction of the sitting room with its relatively large fireplace on the other side of the breakfast nook.

  Wary of spiders and snakes, Julie kept a close eye on the floor and corners of the passage until she reached the end in which the passage became a darkened well leading down. The light she carried showed that the ceiling of the passage rose a couple of feet, making it possible for even a large man to turn himself to get his feet into the well and onto a series of rungs, like a ladder, solidly affixed to the wall of the well. Turning to get her feet into the well, she turned her head and called to Carl.

  “I think I found something, Carl. Come on.”

  As she descended into the space thus opened to her, she suddenly became uneasy and stopped to twist her body on the ladder to shine her light on the space about her. A small pile of clothing on what appeared to be a card table filled her with a seldom felt sense of foreboding and she found herself standing on the ladder until she heard Carl maneuvering his much larger body at the top of the well. Once his feet were on the rungs, she descended the rest of the way and backed against the wall as she p
layed her light around the room she had found. As Carl’s feet found the floor, he turned and began surveying the room with his own light.

  The table and one chair sat in the middle of the room which appeared to be about fifteen or so feet square; a relatively large room to be hidden so well, and against one wall, another card table and chair held a large, sample case, about twice the size of a briefcase. A large, plastic storage box with its lid askew sat beside the table and it was overflowing with what appeared to be soiled rags or towels. Still almost frightened, Julie’s tentative steps led her to the table in the middle of the room. Reaching out, she picked up a piece of the clothing and held it up.

  Carl’s voice seemed almost too loud in the enclosed space with nothing on the concrete walls to muffle it. “Why would anyone leave a piece of lingerie down here?”

  A silk scarf lay under the gown and she quickly pushed it aside to reveal a bloody pair of slacks and a similarly soiled sweatshirt, both black, and a ski-mask. There were also a pair of socks, a pair of bloody athletic shoes and a stun gun. Her mind leapt with an epiphany; these had to be the clothes worn by Sophie Webster’s rapist. The stun gun also explained the small burns on Sophie’s back that she had read about in the coroner’s report.

  Across the room, Carl opened the sample case and his breath hissed through his teeth as he saw what it held. A variety of sexual devices lay jumbled up in the case, nearly all of them bloody and he suddenly knew that Sophie Webster’s rape had been accomplished without the use of male genitalia. Most of the things were massive in size, and held many protrusions so as to make an invasion with any of them as intrusively painful as possible.

  His mind went back to the coroner’s report and he remembered the mention of the possible use of restraints indicated by abrasions and contusions on the body. Carefully pushing some of the stuff aside, he found Velcro straps, a ball-gag and several devices that consisted of screw-type clamps. He was willing to bet that they would fit the impressions left on the joints and soft tissue of the body.