The Ex Who Wouldn't Die (Charley's Ghost)

by Sally Berneathy

  "It's no good ignoring me, Amanda," he said. "I'm not going anywhere. I can't."

  Amanda tossed the last of the items into the box and closed it. But she couldn't put it back into the closet. Charley now stood between her and the closet door.

  "Damn it!" In frustration, she dumped the contents of the box back onto the floor, then stood and confronted her hallucination. "Go away! Get out of my head! You're dead, and my mother's making plans to bury you!"

  Charley's lips quirked in a grin she once found appealing. "That's just like your mother. I'll bet she wants to put me in one of those nice navy blue suits she's always going on about."

  "Don't worry. I told her you wanted to be cremated, so I'm going to have you shoved, buck naked, into a blast furnace and reduced to ashes." In shock, Amanda lifted her hands to her face. "Omigawd! I'm talking to my hallucination!"

  "Hallucination?" Charley looked shocked. "I'm not a hallucination. I'm your husband."

  "No, you're not! You're dead! That ended the marriage deal!"

  "I might be dead, but I'm still right here, and you're still my wife."

  She'd heard those last words way too many times. Suddenly everything seemed all too real. Somehow Charley had managed to cheat death. Not surprising. He'd cheated everybody else.

  "Damn you, Charley Randolph!" she exploded. "What kind of scam are you running now? Do you realize I'm being accused of killing you? And right now, that sounds like a pretty good idea! Did you break in here? Did you take my gun? You did, didn't you? I wouldn't bring it to you, so you stole it. This time you've gone too far!" She reached for his collar, intending to choke him…just until he turned blue.

  Her fingers closed on air.

  She looked at her hand, then at Charley and frowned. "How did you do that? What kind of con are you up to now?"

  "Okay, it's true. I'm dead. Sort of." He shrugged, his grin widening. "Depends on your definition of dead."

  Amanda backed away. "Stop that! This is not the time for your tricks, and I'm the wrong person to try them on. I know you way too well!"

  "No tricks. Check this out." Charley disappeared into the wall, then appeared again, smiling and spreading his arms. "Ta da!"

  Furious at his continued clowning, Amanda swung at his shoulder. Her fist slammed hard against the wall.

  "Ouch! Damn you, damn you, damn you!" She rubbed her bruised knuckles and glared at him. Slight-of-hand magic was one of Charley's specialties, but never anything fancy. Pick a card. Look at this quarter I found behind your ear. Watch me get out of these handcuffs. Nothing of the David Copperfield variety…until now. What was he up to? And how was he doing it?

  A tiny wisp of a suspicion niggled at the edges of her mind, a suspicion too absurd to be considered.

  "Sweetheart, you need to sit down so we can talk," he said in his I can explain the perfectly innocent reason I was kissing that woman voice.

  "Don't call me sweetheart, and I don't want to talk to you." She turned her back on him, trying to shut him out. She'd barely adjusted to his being dead, and now he was alive again. Typical Charley chaos.

  She sighed as she realized she'd have to go through with the divorce after all, figure out some way to get Charley to sign those papers.

  "I know you don't want to talk to me," he said, sounding either a little abashed or a lot the con-artist. Amanda would put her money on the latter. "But you have to. I'm almost as confused about this thing as you are. Not having a body takes some getting used to. I could use your help."

  Amanda spun back around to face him, ignoring everything he said except the last sentence, the only one that made sense, that sounded normal, sounded like Charley. "You want my help? Why should I help you?"

  "Because you're a good person."

  Amanda snorted, irritated, but a part of her was relieved. This was the Charley she knew, always working the angles. Simple con job. No fancy tricks. She didn't like this Charley, but she was comfortable with him, understood him.

  Walking around the boxes on the floor, she plopped into the wooden rocking chair in the corner of the room, leaned back and tented her fingers under her chin. "Start talking, creep, and if you say the right thing fast enough, maybe I won't call the cops and have you hauled in for stealing my gun and…and impersonating a dead person!" She wasn't certain the latter was illegal, but it sounded like it might be, certainly ought to be.

  Charley grinned. "I'd like to see them put me in handcuffs."

  "Get to the point. What do you want to talk about and how did you convince the police you're dead? Whose body was in your apartment?"

  "Mine. It was my body. I'm dead."

  Amanda threw up her hands. "Fine. You're dead. What is it you want my help with? Getting rid of the body?" She sat bolt upright. "You didn't kill somebody, did you?"

  "No! Of course not! But I know who did. The man who killed me is the same man who tried to kill you then broke into your apartment and stole your gun."

  Amanda rocked back in the chair and narrowed her gaze. "Let me see if I understand. You called me and told me if I'd bring you this gun in question that you'd sign the divorce papers. You didn't sign the papers, so I refused to give it to you. Now I come home to find that same object missing and you in my apartment with some crazy story about a man who killed you, tried to kill me and stole my gun because, of course, you had nothing to do with my gun going missing."

  Charley looked uncomfortable. "That's about the size of it. He took the gun because he thought it was his, but it wasn't."

  Amanda glared at him. "It belonged to somebody else? You stole the gun you gave me? I've had a stolen weapon in my possession all this time? So that's why you took it. You couldn't have me turning it over the police if it was stolen." She slapped her hands on the chair arms. "I should have known!"

  "No!" Charley protested. "I bought your gun! Totally legal. I can't believe you think I'd give you a stolen gift."

  "Yeah, you're so morally upright, you'd never do anything like that. So why would this burglar think my gun was his?"

  Charley looked down, refusing to meet her gaze. "I told him it was. Then I tried to tell him the truth, that I never had it in the first place, but he didn't believe me." He shrugged. "So I told him you had it. I thought if I could get you to bring your gun to him, since it's the same kind as his, he'd take it and go away and not kill me."

  Amanda shook her head. "Charley, Charley, Charley. With your talent for making up stories, you should have been a writer instead of a con-artist."

  Charley looked up, his expression wounded. "I'm telling the truth."

  "Okay, fine, you're telling the truth." There was no point in wasting her breath arguing with him. "So why did this mysterious burglar think you had his gun in the first place?"

  "He's not a burglar, he's a murderer. Well, I guess he is a burglar now that he's stolen your property. But mostly he's a murderer. He killed a woman with the gun he thought I had."

  "That's enough of your lies." She pointed a finger at him. "I am a murder suspect, and now you're somehow involved in the theft of the item that can prove my innocence. You need to tell me what's going on, and I don't want any of your evasions and bullshit."

  "The guy…Kimball…he thought I had his gun, the one he used to murder a woman, and he wanted it back. But I didn't have it." Charley smiled and spread his hands, palms-up, as if that statement should clear up the whole matter.

  "Kimball. So you gave this burglar a name," Amanda said. "Nice touch. Why did this Kimball, this murderer and burglar, think you had his gun?"

  Charley's gaze locked on hers, and she recalled that she'd once found that blue gaze riveting. But now she knew him too well. That intense expression just meant he was formulating a lie. "No! Do not lie to me, Charley Randolph!"

  "Yeah, about that." He sighed and grinned ruefully. "I can't."

  "You can't what?"

  "Lie."

  Amanda threw her hands into the air. "Really? You can't lie? That's pretty amazing. We won't e
ven discuss the times you lied to me about women and money. Let's just talk about your family, about the stories you told me about being an orphan. Your father was murdered. Your mother died in your arms from a drug overdose. Little brother murdered by his foster family. Poor orphan Charley. No family." She folded her arms and glared at him. "Funniest damn thing, half the town of Silver Creek thinks you're family."

  Charley shrugged and gave her his big-blue-eyes innocent look. "That leaves a whole half of a town that's not my family."

  Amanda glared. "This is serious. I almost died in that motorcycle crash, and there's a dead man in your apartment, and the police think I killed you…him…somebody! I'm in trouble, and the evidence that could clear me is gone, and you say you know who stole it, and this whole thing is just insane, and you need to tell me the truth for once in your worthless life."

  "About your motorcycle accident—"

  "Don't change the subject!"

  She knew he would anyway.

  "I was worried about you. You took a really bad tumble, and I was afraid you wouldn't be able to make it back to the highway. I helped you. I saved your life. Doesn't that count for something?"

  Amanda frowned. "So you were there. They told me you couldn't have been because you were dead."

  "Of course I was there. You needed me, and I was there." He looked quite pleased with himself.

  "Oh, yeah, you're always there when I need you."

  "Maybe I haven't been, but I will be now. I think maybe that's what this is all about, this hanging around after Kimball shot me. I'm here to take care of you."

  Amanda closed her eyes and gritted her teeth. Getting something out of Charley when he didn't want to tell it was always painful and frequently futile.

  She gave him her sternest gaze. Probably not as effective as his riveting gaze, but it was the best she could do. "Charley, either you tell me something that makes sense about this…this whole thing…the gun your friend stole, why you aren't dead, what kind of scam you're up to this time…or I'm calling the cops right this minute to report a break-in and a stolen gun."

  She rose, crossed the room, picked up her phone and punched in 9-1.

  "Last chance." When she looked up, Charley had left the room. Well, he couldn't have gone far. She hadn't heard the front door close. With a sigh, she punched the last 1.

  When two uniformed police officers arrived fifteen minutes later, she still could not locate her almost-ex, almost-deceased husband. He must have somehow slipped out without making any noise. It wouldn't be the first time.

  "Come in," she said, stepping back. "The box where the missing gun was stored is in the bedroom."

  The tall, lanky officer stepped into her living room and pulled a small notepad from his pocket while the other man studied her front door frame.

  "Are you Amanda Randolph?"

  "I am."

  "You called 911?"

  "I did."

  "Can you tell us what happened, Ms. Randolph?"

  "Someone broke in while I was gone and stole my gun," she said.

  "No sign of forced entry." The second officer looked up from the door frame.

  "It was unlocked," Amanda said.

  "You left the door unlocked?"

  "No, of course not." She glanced at the man's name badge. "Officer Penske, I've been away from home. In the hospital. When I came home this evening, the door was unlocked."

  "Who has a key to your apartment?" the tall policeman asked. His badge identified him as Robbins.

  "My assistant in the shop downstairs. That's the only person besides me. I changed my lock recently."

  Robbins made a note. "Your assistant. What's his name?"

  "Dawson Page."

  "Do you have an address for this Dawson Page?"

  "Yes. Why? I'm sure he didn't mean to leave my door unlocked. He's usually very conscientious."

  "He left the door unlocked?"

  "No. I don't know. Maybe. But I don't think so since my gun's missing."

  "Did he know you owned this gun?"

  "No! Are you implying Dawson would steal from me? No way! The thief's name was Kimball."

  Both officers looked at her. "You know the thief's name?" Penske asked.

  "My ex-husband…well, he's not my ex yet, but he will be. He's the one who told me someone named Kimball stole my gun."

  "Is that the same ex-husband who was shot and killed?"

  Amanda whirled to see Jake Daggett standing in the open doorway. His hair was still a mess and he still needed a shave. Tonight he wore faded blue jeans and a Pink Floyd tee-shirt and looked even less professional than he had at her interrogation.

  "What are you doing here? I thought you were a homicide detective."

  He shrugged. "You're a homicide suspect."

  "At the moment, I'm the victim of a burglary."

  "In which a suspected murder weapon was purportedly stolen."

  Charley's words came back to her. He killed a woman with the gun he thought I had, the one he thinks he stole from you. "How do you know that?"

  "You told the dispatcher when you called 911."

  "Oh! You mean my gun. The one you think I used to kill Charley. Except he isn't dead, so that pretty much shoots down your theory."

  "Hey, Jake," Officer Robbins said. "You got this case?"

  "Yeah," he said. "Ongoing murder investigation."

  Robbins nodded. "No sign of forced entry," he said. "Ms. Randolph claims the only person besides her with a key is her assistant…" he consulted his notes…"Dawson Page. We don't have an address yet."

  "Thanks. I'll take it from here."

  The two officers left, closing the door behind them.

  Jake folded his arms and looked at her, his gaze intense. She did not, however, think Detective Daggett, like Charley when he did that, was buying time to make up a lie. More like he was trying to determine if she was telling a lie.

  "So," he said, "your husband's not dead."

  Daggett was taller by several inches, but Amanda stretched to her full height, meeting his gaze head-on. "My estranged husband is very much alive."

  Daggett raised one eyebrow. "Would this be the same estranged husband whose dead body we found in his apartment?"

  "I don't know whose body that is, but it's not Charley's. He was just here, alive."

  Daggett stared at her in silence for a long moment, searching her face as if trying to determine whether she was lying or just nuts. "The dead man was Charley Randolph," he said, his voice quieter. "We matched the fingerprints."

  She folded her arms, mirroring his obstinate stance. "Maybe, maybe not. You don't know Charley very well if you seriously think he couldn't have somehow switched fingerprints in your system."

  Daggett lifted both eyebrows this time. "Yeah, I seriously think Charley could not have switched fingerprints in our system. Trust me on this one. But even if you think he could have, Charley Randolph's mother identified his body."

  "Some woman suddenly appears and claims to be his mother, and you believe her. Charley told me his parents are dead. Maybe they are. Maybe this woman isn't really his mother but somebody who has a hidden agenda. Maybe…" A sudden idea stopped Amanda in mid-sentence.

  "Maybe…?" Daggett encouraged.

  Amanda swallowed. "Maybe my estranged husband's not Charley Randolph. Maybe he changed his name, stole someone's identity, the identity of that man who was killed in his apartment, the real Charley Randolph." Maybe this was worse than not knowing she had a houseful of in-laws. Maybe she didn't even know who she was married to.

  Daggett dropped his arms to his sides, his dark eyes losing some of their sharpness, becoming almost soft. When he spoke again, his voice was less harsh. "Your father also identified the dead man as your husband, known to him as Charley Randolph. Your husband is dead."

  Amanda frowned. Her father would not, could not mistakenly identify Charley.

  But her father had kept Charley's family a secret from her. Could her staunchly upright father
somehow be involved in one of Charley's scams?

  Not possible. He might lie by the sin of omission, but he'd never be involved with Charley.

  She moved across the room and sank onto her brightly-patterned sofa.

  So Charley was dead?

  Charley was dead.

  Charley had not just been in her apartment.