“Then you’re going to go through with it?” Donatucci asked.
“Why not?”
THREE
I’ve known Nina Truhler for four years, three months, and eleven days—yes, I’ve kept track. We had talked seriously about marriage, although not since year three. I thought that might change when Nina’s daughter, Erica, went off to Tulane University in New Orleans, but it hadn’t. I also thought we might move in together, she with me or me with her, at least until Erica came back for the summer or holidays, yet that didn’t happen, either. I loved her desperately and told her so many times; she said the same to me, and I believed her. “So what’s the problem?” our friend Shelby Dunston asked often and with increasing frustration—like many married people she didn’t think it was possible for us to be truly happy unless we were also married. The truth was we were both very contented in our relationship and both very afraid of somehow screwing it up. Nina had been married before, and the experience soured her on the institution. As for me, my mother died when I was in the sixth grade, and although I was well raised by my father, I was pretty much left to my own devices. After so many years living a solitary if not downright selfish life, I didn’t know if it was possible to live hand in hand with someone else. So we just kept living the way we always had, her on one side of the city, me on the other, together yet apart. It wasn’t perfect. On the other hand, I always knew where I could get a free meal.
Rickie’s, the jazz-club-slash-restaurant-slash-neighborhood-tavern that Nina had built and named after her daughter, was crowded. It was pushing six, and the quick-drink-after-work crowd was overlapping the early-dinner-before-the-movie/theater/ballet gang. It was Monday night, so the upstairs performance and dining area was closed, a red sash fixed across the staircase. That meant all of Nina’s customers were gathered downstairs. Nearly all of the tables, booths, and comfy chairs and sofas were filled, as I knew they would be. What I didn’t expect was the lights and cameras. A film crew had set up in the far corner near the staircase, and a young man dressed in a black sweater with a white ghost stitched over his breast was interviewing—Erica?
“What’s going on?” I asked no one in particular. I received an answer just the same.
“It’s a cable TV show,” a young voice said.
I turned to find Victoria, Bobby and Shelby Dunston’s fourteen-year-old daughter, sitting alone in a booth and nursing an IBC root beer.
“Vic?” I said.
“Hi, McKenzie.”
I slid into the booth across from her. “What are you doing here?” I said.
“I was interviewed, too.”
“For what?”
“The ghost show.”
“You have to help me out here, sweetie.”
“There’s this cable TV show that goes around investigating paranormal activities in, I don’t know, haunted houses, I guess.”
“What are they doing here?”
“Rickie called them. Said the club was haunted. Which it is, by the way.”
“I can’t believe Nina went along with this.”
“I guess she didn’t know until Rickie told her this morning.”
I started laughing. “I would love to have heard that conversation,” I said.
“It was tense,” Victoria said.
I laughed some more.
“Rickie said the publicity would be good for business,” she added.
“What did Nina say to that?”
“You know how sometimes her face gets really kinda hard and her hands just kinda quiver like this?” Victoria held her hands out, fingers spread like she was about to claw something savagely. “And then she turns around and walks away without saying anything?”
I did know—it was not a pretty sight.
“Scared me more than the ghosts,” Victoria said.
“What ghosts? There aren’t any ghosts.”
“Sure there are.”
“Vic, please.”
“I’m just saying.”
“Where are your parents?”
“Dad’s working—when isn’t he?”
“Cops,” I said.
“Mom left a few minutes ago. She had to take Katie to her piano lesson.”
“They left you alone?”
“I’m with friends,” she insisted. “Rickie is going to take me home. Besides, I’m not a little girl anymore.”
“You’ll always be a little girl to me.”
“Are you going to buy me a car when I get my driver’s license?”
“Hell no.”
“Why not?”
“Because your father carries a gun and he’s a good shot. Besides, what part of ‘you’ll always be a little girl to me’ did you miss?”
“You’re my godfather.”
“So?”
“So you’ve been doing a pretty good job of spoiling me up till now. If you stop, I might suffer emotional trauma.”
“Not as much trauma as your parents will make me suffer if I buy you a car.”
“You can just say that since I’m your heir I’m going to inherit your money anyway.”
“Your sister is also my heir. You’ll have to split it.”
“So buy her a car, too. I don’t mind.”
“Ahh, no.”
A moment later, Jenness Crawford, Nina’s assistant manager, appeared and asked if I wanted the usual—that would be a Summit Ale. I said I did.
“Where’s Nina?” I asked.
“She’s hiding in her office,” Jenness said.
“Wow.”
“Want another root beer, hon?” she asked Victoria.
“That depends. Are you buying, McKenzie?”
“Yes, I’m buying.”
Victoria ordered another bottle of root beer.
“I am so getting a car,” she said when Jenness left.
“Don’t hold your breath,” I said.
A few moments later, Jenness returned with my Summit and the root beer and then went back to the bar. Erica suddenly appeared. I gave her a hug.
Nearly everyone called her Rickie, yet I vowed when I started spending time with her mother that I wouldn’t use her nickname unless she gave me permission. She never did. Later, I learned she was grateful that I called her Erica, that she had dismissed Rickie as a child’s name, and since she was no longer a child, only those people who knew her as a child would be allowed to call her that. Apparently everyone she knew in New Orleans called her Erica.
“How come you’re not at Tulane?” I asked.
“I changed my flight to tomorrow morning,” she said. “I wanted to be here for this.”
She sat next to Victoria on the other side of the booth, giving the younger girl a playful push to make room. Victoria immediately wrapped her arm around Erica’s. Erica had become Victoria’s big sister at about the same time she got her driver’s license.
“Ghosts, Erica,” I said. “Really?”
“There are ghosts here.”
“No, there aren’t.”
“Sure there are. Last year, after closing, I was helping out, trying to make some spending money for college. I was cleaning the shelves below the bar. I took all the glasses out and set them on top of the bar and cleaned the shelf. When I looked up”—she paused dramatically—“all of the glasses were stacked like a pyramid. Explain that, huh? Then, later, I was vacuuming. Suddenly I felt this hand and it was brushing up and down my arm like this.” Erica leaned across the table and started moving her hand across my arm from my shoulder to my elbow. “McKenzie, there was no one there. This happened three times while I was vacuuming and there was no one there.”
The skepticism must have shown in my face, because Erica quickly turned to the girl next to her.
“Vicky, Vicky,” she said. “Tell him what happened to you.”
“It was the same thing with me,” Victoria said. “I was broke because some people aren’t as generous as they could be and Nina gave me a job cleaning up the basement. Last summer, remember? I was in the basemen
t, moving stuff around, and the lights went off. You know how dark it is in the basement? Scary. I mean, it was really scary. I felt along the wall till I reached the door. Once I found the door, I was able to find the light switch. It was in the off position. No fuse blew, no light burned out. Someone turned off the lights? How was that possible? I turned the lights back on. This time I propped the basement door open with a chair, okay, so I had the hall lights working for me. I went back to work, and the lights, the overhead lights, went off a second time. I went back to the switch; it was in the off position again. I turned the light back on, and then whoosh—the chair went flying across the basement like someone threw it and the door slammed shut. I pushed the door open—and it was hard, it was like someone was leaning against it—and the lights went off again. That was enough for me.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Okay?” Erica repeated. “Did you hear what happened to the singer?”
“What singer?”
“The jazz singer that you like so much. She’s onstage with her trio doing a sound check, and all of a sudden she hears glass like people are mixing drinks and the sound of laughter and she doesn’t know where it’s coming from because the upstairs performance area is closed. There’s no one there, right; it’s not open yet. But the noise is getting louder and louder, and she asked her guys if they could hear it and they couldn’t. They couldn’t hear a thing? Huh? Huh?”
“What happened?”
“What do you mean what happened?”
“Did she do the show?”
“Of course she did,” Erica said. “The show always goes on.”
“Did she keep hearing the noise?”
“I don’t think so. I think it went away.”
I looked at Victoria. “What happened to the basement?”
“After a little while, I went back down and cleaned it up.”
“Did the lights go off again? Did the door slam?”
“No.”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” Erica said.
“Ladies, have you ever read Sherlock Holmes?”
Victoria’s hand went up as if she were answering a question in class. “I have,” she said.
“There’s a line in one of the stories, maybe more than one: After you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth—something like that. You can’t explain what happened to you, so you assume it was ghosts, but you can’t do that unless you eliminate all the other possibilities first. That’s how I look at it.”
“That’s how we look at it as well,” a voice said. I looked up to see the young man who had been interviewing Erica earlier. “We don’t believe in ghosts, either—until there is no other possibility.”
I gave him room to sit, and he began talking about his work as a paranormal investigator. He was an earnest young man and made a rapt audience of Erica and Victoria. He explained how he and his crew would spend the evening in Rickie’s armed with equipment that measured electrostatic fields, cameras, sound equipment, and a K2 meter, whatever that was. Both Erica and Victoria wanted to hang out with him, but he refused the offer. After all, he and his crew were the stars of the show, I thought but didn’t say.
“What do you know about curses?” I asked.
“I don’t believe in them,” he said.
“No?”
“How can a nonliving, non-energy-producing object affect the world around it?”
“Good question.”
“I do believe, however, that sometimes spirits will attach themselves to an object,” he said. “It could be a favorite chair, a photograph—something the spirit cherished in life.” He gestured at his surroundings. “It could be a house or a jazz club.”
“How ’bout a centuries-old art object?”
“Yes. Certainly. Why do you ask?”
“Just curious,” I said.
The ghost hunter excused himself and returned to his crew. Perhaps he saw Nina approaching out of the corner of his eye and wanted to avoid her for now.
Nina’s movements were smooth and effortless—a trained dancer who knew all the steps. She had cut her jet black hair short again, and the style seemed to set off her eyes even more than usual—the most startling silver-blue eyes I had ever seen. She spoke with a clear, unaffected voice in a way that suggested she was in the habit of speaking up for herself. She possessed high cheekbones, a narrow nose, and a generous mouth that required little makeup; her figure was well set off by a rose-colored sweater dress; her athletic legs—look, I know I’m being fanciful when I describe her. But then, I love Nina. I love everything about her.
When she reached the booth I gave her a hug and a short kiss.
“Do you believe this?” she said. She was looking directly at Erica when she spoke. “I’d throw them out except apparently I’m contractually obligated.”
“This is fun,” I said. “It probably will increase business, too. Why not?”
Nina sat next to me in the booth. “So you’re taking Erica’s side.”
I leaned away. I had learned long ago, never takes sides between mother and daughter.
“Ghosts,” Nina said. “I don’t have ghosts.”
She could have substituted the word “rats” and it would have sounded the same.
“Speaking of ghosts, guess who I met today,” I said. “Heavenly Petryk.”
“That slut?”
“Whoa, Mom,” Erica said. “You don’t usually use language like that unless you’re talking about my father.” She tilted her head toward Victoria. “Exes.”
“Mmmm,” Victoria intoned.
“The two of you, out of here. Victoria, your mother is going to kill me as it is. And, Rickie, don’t forget you have a plane to catch at six fifteen tomorrow morning.”
“I won’t.”
Erica and Victoria slid out of the booth, grabbed their coats, and bundled up for the cold. As they moved to the door, Nina called to them. “Hey.”
Erica turned to look at her mother.
“I miss you already,” Nina said.
Erica smiled and said she would see her later.
“So what are you up to now?” Nina asked. “If Heavenly’s involved, it can’t be good.”
I explained about the Jade Lily. I didn’t tell her I was speaking in strict confidentiality and needed her to keep my secrets. Why insult the woman? When I finished, she shook her head and smiled ruefully the way she does whenever I embark on one of my adventures—that’s the word she uses, not me.
“You do get involved in the weirdest stuff,” she said.
“Me?” I waved at the ghost hunters.
“They’re going to stay here all night, too,” Nina said. “I can’t believe Rickie set this up.”
“Maybe they’ll find some real ghosts. You could become a tourist attraction.”
“Stop it.”
“Well, I’m out of here.”
“What? No, no, no, no, McKenzie, c’mon. Stay with me.”
“I’m going to get some takeout and watch the hockey game.”
“You said this could be fun. What if they really do find a ghost?”
“That’s why I’m leaving.”
“Scaredy cat.”
* * *
The Minnesota Wild had just taken a 3–1 lead over the Detroit Red Wings deep in the third period when my front doorbell rang. I opened the door. I half expected to see Nina—she had a key yet never used it. Instead, I found a Minneapolis police officer standing there and looking as if he wished he were somewhere else. It was the worst job there was for a cop, knocking on a door at night. I had done it many times when I was in harness. Not once did I have good news to report.
“Mr. McKenzie?” the cop asked.
I nodded. My mouth was too dry to speak, although I could hear my inner voice screaming tell me quickly.
“I need you to come with me,” the officer said.
“Why?”
“Lieutenant Rask wants to speak with you immediately.”
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“What about?”
“I wasn’t informed, sir, but since Lieutenant Rask is head of the Homicide Unit, I expect it has to do with someone’s murder.”
* * *
We drove west through Minneapolis until we found the winding parkway that cut through Theodore Wirth Park. The officer slowed his vehicle as if he were a sightseer afraid of missing something. Cars backed up behind him; no doubt they would have given him the horn if not for the light bar and the words MINNEAPOLIS POLICE TO PROTECT WITH COURAGE TO SERVE WITH COMPASSION printed on the side of the vehicle.
Theodore Wirth was the largest regional park in the Minneapolis Park System, even though it was actually located in the City of Golden Valley, go figure. I had no idea what we were doing there. The officer wouldn’t answer any of my questions, so after a while I stopped asking. Eventually we came to what a sign called Quaking Bog Parking Lot and pulled in, nestling among a dozen other assorted City of Minneapolis vehicles. Directly across the parkway was an area known as Wedding Hill. The hill overlooked Birch Pond, and a lot of nature lovers thought it was an idyllic spot to take their marriage vows—a couple of friends of mine married there fifteen years ago, and I knew it to be green and gorgeous in the summer. In the dead of winter with cops and medical personnel milling about under a dozen or so bright lights, not so much.
The area was surprisingly undisturbed despite the number of crime scene professionals who were present, including a couple of park patrol officers who looked as if they were seriously considering a different line of work. The investigators were trying to keep the scene intact for a more thorough search in the daylight. I followed the officer along a short, narrow path of packed snow to a small clearing. Lieutenant Clayton Rask was standing more or less in the center of it, directing traffic. There was something crisp and efficient about the way he barked out instructions, and I wondered if it was something some people were born to do or if it required practice. The officer led me to his side.
“Here he is, LT,” the officer said.
Rask nodded without looking. A tech holding a small digital camera turned it on me. It was his job to film the crime scene as well as articles of evidence as they were discovered, record the observations of the investigators, and generally keep a time-sensitive log of the proceedings. In the old days they called him the “master note taker.” Nowadays he’s the “photographic log recorder,” not to be confused with the “crime scene photographer,” who was busy taking photos with a 35 mm camera mounted on a tripod. Film might seem old-fashioned, but digital photographs are easy to alter—can you say “Photoshop”?—and rarely are used as evidence in court.
Curse of the Jade Lily: A McKenzie Novel Page 4