It's a Ghost's Life

by Erin McCarthy

  It had been easy enough to find out about Margaret. There were a couple of news articles dated two years prior that she had gone missing after failing to pick her son up from daycare. She was an accountant and had left for a lunch meeting.

  The ex was remarried already but I wasn’t sure if he still lived here or not. It had the look of a rental house with inadequate lawn service. The bushes were massive, straining under the heavy snow.

  “Bailey, Alyssa is right, this is stupid.” Besides, it was cold, and what was I going to do, wander around the backyard with a shovel? That was about as probable a solution as ringing the doorbell and asking the guy if he killed his wife.

  Neither was a solid plan. They weren’t a plan at all, actually.

  So I called Crimestoppers and gave an anonymous tip that Margaret’s body was buried underneath the concrete patio and gave an address.

  It occurred to me they could see what number I was calling from but what choice did I have? I wasn’t going to buy a burner phone just to give a tip.

  “And how do you know this?” the responder asked, probably reading a script.

  I hung up.

  Knowing what I knew about crime solving, they weren’t going to jump right all over this. It would be filed and given attention when there was time permitting.

  Most likely it would be months before anyone on the department got around to seeing if my tip had any merit.

  But by then it would be spring and the ground would no longer be frozen.

  It was a start, though in the meantime I would do more digging for Margaret’s sake. Ugh. I shouldn’t think in terms of words like “digging.”

  Between Vera and Margaret, my view of backyard living was rapidly being tarnished.

  There was a tap on my window and I almost jumped out of my skin.

  “You okay?” a man in a thick coat and knit cap asked.

  “Fine, yep, all good.” I gave him a wave and put my car into drive and got the hell out of there.

  Twelve

  “Mom, I don’t know about this place… it seems a little too something for you.” Young. It seemed too young for her. The entire building was designed for the needs of hipsters from the bike rack to the sustainable living (meaning no elevator) to the rooftop communal garden and cocktail lounge. I could not picture my mother discussing reducing her carbon footprint with a twenty-eight-year-old rock climber.

  “I like it,” she said, though her expression indicated she was lying.

  “I think you’re going to find you’ll be happier in a building that is condo, not rental apartments.” Everything was very bland. Very temporary. Then again, maybe that was what she wanted.

  My mother didn’t say anything. She just thanked the rental agent and gestured for me to follow her.

  In the elevator, she said, “Next. I want more amenities.”

  “I agree. An indoor pool would be fantastic.”

  “So did you get a call from Tim?”

  “Who’s Tim?” I asked, drawing a blank.

  She looked at me like I was nuts. “The prosecutor on the Nick Pitrello case. They should set a trial date this week, probably for July or August.”

  Ugh. Just what I wanted to think about. Not.

  Let’s recap. I found body parts in a field and a guy who was watching from his balcony came down to see why I was screaming. He asked me out. I went. He kidnapped me and confessed to killing three other people. But there was zero evidence to connect him to the murders, though they are still investigating and trying to build a case. He was being tried solely for kidnapping me so that would be a fun trial for me.

  “Awesome. How long of a sentence do you think he’ll get?”

  “You’re assuming he’ll be found guilty.”

  “Well, he is guilty.”

  My mother gave me a withering look as we crossed the lobby. “Don’t be naïve. If convicted I would guess five years, plus time served. Out in three.”

  Wonderful. “Thanks for the heads-up.” I shivered as we stepped outside and it wasn’t just from the cold. “Are you sure you’re okay to do all this walking? That doesn’t seem okay to me.”

  “I’m fine. I’m off work for another week still. They won’t let me come back.”

  At least someone had sense. “Good. You need the rest.”

  “I’m bored out of my mind and I don’t like any of these places we’ve looked at.”

  This was the sixth place and I was exhausted. Mom looked fine, but I was worn out from her disgust over carpet and oak cabinets. We still had four more places before we got to Devin Whittaker’s condo. “Maybe you need to take a week off from searching and think about what you really want.” I wasn’t convinced she knew what she was looking for, exactly.

  “No.” She tugged her hat down over her ears and charged down the sidewalk. “I can’t stand living in that house. Everywhere I look I see your father.”

  Which was quite a feat given Dad was in Florida and my mother would put Marie Kondo to shame with her decluttering. There had never been evidence of my father in the house for more than five minutes before my mom either tossed it or put it away. As a child, I’d been stunned to go to friends’ houses and discover they were actually allowed to have toys in the living room. Mine were sequestered in my bedroom. As for Dad’s whiskey glasses and toothpicks? They never stood a chance.

  “Why don’t you go to an Airbnb or a hotel for a few weeks instead of trying to rush this process? This is a big decision.”

  My mother waited for me to unlocked my car as we approached it. Once we were inside with the heat running, she crossed her arms over her chest. “That’s not a bad idea. But we might as well see the rest scheduled today.”

  An idea popped into my head and I wasn’t sure why it hadn’t occurred to me sooner. “Why don’t you move into Vera’s condo? It belongs to Grandma, or will whenever Vera’s estate is processed, but you know she won’t care. She doesn’t want it.”

  I pulled out of the spot, handing my phone to my mother so she could plug the next address into the GPS.

  “I don’t know. I never thought about going east.”

  “It’s very close to your office. You won’t have to buy it either. That might be a good thing at least for six months or so until everything is, you know, sorted out.” Until her divorce from my father, is what I meant. Her thirty-year marriage that she was dissolving with the speed of light.

  “I’d have to see it. How many bedrooms, how many bathrooms?”

  “It’s a three/two. I still have the key. I can take you over there after our last appointment.”

  “Why are you pushing this?” she asked, sniffing in suspicion.

  Because I couldn’t take months of house hunting with her. “I’m not. I’m just offering a solution. Or at least a temporary one. It’s better than having to settle.” You couldn’t say “be impulsive” with my mother, she would hate being accused of that.

  “It’s not a bad idea,” she said, begrudgingly. “So, are you really letting Grandma move in with you?”

  “Yes. You know Dad. I don’t think he can handle it.” I really did. It was terrifying to think about him attempting to grocery shop to feed his mother. She would be living on cinnamon buns and whiskey if it were up to him.

  “You’ve got that right.” My mother sniffed.

  I did feel bad for her. She was not exactly easy to live with, but it still had to be hard to realize your marriage was over. “And you need a break, Mom.”

  She made a noncommittal sound. “Then Jake is moving in with you? I don’t know, Bailey. That’s a lot of change all at once. That is a lot of people whose needs have to be met.”

  She had hit on my deepest fear and I didn’t like that. “I like taking care of people,” I said defensively. I was more nurturing than my mother. I wasn’t like my sister of the four kids and fifth on the way, but I wasn’t stone-cold like she could be. On the other hand, it was a lot of needs and I wasn’t entirely sure if this arrangement would be meeting any
of mine, but I kind of sort of didn’t really have a choice. I mean, there’s always a choice. I could look into assisted living for Grandma, but that wasn’t the choice that was right for her, and how many more years before that was inevitable? I wanted her, and me, to enjoy time together while we could.

  Living with Jake was scarier than living with Grandma. “Besides, it’s not like I didn’t talk to Jake about it first. Him moving in with me was actually his idea.”

  “What’s the hurry?” she asked. “Get to know each other better. Make absolute certain you want to be with this man.”

  So this was about her, not me. “Hence the living together. This isn’t marriage.”

  “Marriage isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

  “Why is it that you were thrilled that Jen was getting married but you’re all negative about me moving in with Jake.” That bugged me. “I’ve known Jake for eight years. It’s not like he just appeared in my life the day we started dating.”

  “Don’t be so sensitive,” was her only response.

  That was a total non-answer. Did she not like Jake? Or she just didn’t trust me not to be an idiot? Ugh. Mothers. This was not what I should be stressing about when I felt convinced I was this close to solving Vera’s murder. I felt it in my gut.

  On TV they solved murders in forty-five minutes. Apparently, none of those detectives had mothers.

  I pulled up in front of a condo building. “This is it. It looks like it’s the end unit.”

  “No. Forget it. This is horrible,” she said. “That house next door is completely run-down.”

  There was no point in arguing with her. “Okay,” I said, pulling away. “Next.”

  We tore through the other places in record time and got back to Winton Place to view Devin Whittaker’s condo.

  “We were at this building three hours ago,” she complained.

  Trust me, I knew that. “Different unit.”

  “For crying out loud, why didn’t we just see it then?”

  “I don’t know. The agent said seven.”

  “Christ,” was her opinion on that.

  Grateful my grandmother wasn’t with us to be horrified at my mother’s language, I just made a noncommittal sound.

  The agent let us in and gave the usual speech. Then she started following us, which was counterproductive to my intention to snoop. But rest assured, my mother could handle that.

  “Do you mind?” she asked. “I’d really just like to go through the condo on my own. You can wait right here by the door.”

  The agent looked floored. But really, who wants the agent trailing behind pointing out features? No one. Or at least not most someones. “Oh, I see. Of course.” She sounded like she’d eaten a huge hunk of lemon. Sour.

  The living room was staged, and I had to admit, I admired the stager’s work. It was a good, clean design that respected the boxy shape of the condo. Everything was very modern. Sleek lines, pops of color with modern art. No personal photos or anything like that.

  I opened the cabinets in the kitchen expecting to see what, I had no idea. I was starting to realize this, like much of my investigative attempts, was ill-fated. It wasn’t like he was going to have something with Vera’s name on it lying on the counter.

  “This kitchen is nice,” I said to my mother.

  “It is,” she said begrudgingly. “But I don’t think I like being this high up.”

  “But at the other place you said it was too low.”

  The look she gave me could have sliced through steel. Instead of replying she went down the hall to the bedrooms.

  I went into the bathroom and admired the finishes. Floating walnut vanity. Nice.

  There was no medicine cabinet to peek into so I settled for sliding out a drawer. There were half a dozen pill bottles rolling around in there. As the label rolled into focus something caught my eye.

  Vera Rosenbaum.

  Hot damn.

  Devin Whittaker had stolen pills from Vera. It didn’t prove murder but it did prove that he had been in contact with her. Gingerly I picked one up using my fuzzy scarf and the cap and bottom so as not to interfere with fingerprints, or leave my own. The prescription had been filled in early December and it was for a well-known pain pill that happens to be highly addictive.

  Interesting.

  “Bailey?” my mother called. “Come look at this.”

  I shut the drawer and followed the sound of her voice, assuming she was going to criticize the view or the blinds or the lack of closet space.

  Instead, she was pointing to the one and only personal photo in the whole condo. It was in a simple frame, resting on the chest of drawers.

  “Who owns this place, Vera’s love child?” she asked. “Look, she’s in this picture.”

  Sure as shooting she was. I gasped. It was Tight Sweater Guy, aka Devin Whittaker, with Vera outside under the giant chandelier in the theater district.

  And on the other side of Tight Sweater Guy was none other than Stanley Robertson.

  Which made me almost certain one or both of them had killed Vera.

  Suddenly nervous, I glanced around the bedroom like Stanley or Devin might pop up from under the bed. Which was possible because it was pretty damn clear Stanley wasn’t at the Ritz or back in L.A.

  “That’s a crazy coincidence,” I said, failing to mention that I already knew who this condo belonged to and that he was in Vera’s will. “That’s her former stepson,” I said, pointing to Stanley. “He lives in L.A.”

  “That makes it even stranger.”

  It did. And Vera had been flat-out MIA lately. I could ask her who the heck Devin was to her if she would ever show her face.

  Office hours. I mentally eye-rolled. That book was way off base.

  “It does. So what do you think of this condo?”

  Mom shrugged. “I’m not feeling it. Maybe we should look at Vera’s place.” Mom was clearly disgusted with her options and had decided maybe I wasn’t a complete moron and the idea had merit. I felt almost flattered. “Maybe this photo of her is a sign.”

  Okay, that was weird. The only signs my mother normally made note of was the tell that criminals had. She did not believe in the universe guiding her to do anything so her comment caught me off guard.

  “Okay. Let’s go.”

  Thirty minutes later we were pulling into Vera’s condo. I wasn’t sure how soon she would be able to move in given the circumstances of the estate, but I wasn’t about to bring that up.

  “Private, attached two-car garage,” I said as we pulled up.

  “I hate when the façade is all garage,” she said.

  Lord help me. “You wouldn’t be buying it though, remember? Just a pit stop.”

  That was going to be my mantra.

  We stepped inside, going through the front door, into the hushed stillness of the condo. I didn’t think my mother would have any issues with Vera having passed away in the backyard. She’d seen far too much in her twenty years as a prosecutor to be unnerved or sentimental. “It has good light.”

  I jumped all over that. “Absolutely. For being a townhome and mid-January? Imagine what it would be like in the summer.”

  “Don’t fuss over me, Bailey,” she said. “You’re giving me a migraine. Can you just go sit down somewhere and let me look by myself?”

  She’d done me like the real estate agent. Fine by me. “Sure. I’ll be in the kitchen.”

  I tugged my boots off, not wanting to ruin the carpet with snow slush. When I padded into the kitchen in my socks, I noticed immediately the medications were gone from the table. Who had taken those? Pam? It had been implied she loved herself some prescription drugs. But Eva presumably had had access as well. Stanley didn’t strike me as a pill thief, but then again, I wasn’t sure what a pill thief looked like. There could be any reason someone would take a handful of anxiety pills, from hard-core addiction to someone just seeing an opportunity to have a recreational zen day.

  Taking pills for any numbe
r of reasons probably had absolutely nothing to do with Vera’s death. I was seeking clues where there weren’t any.

  The pain killers Devin had was not a bottle I had noted the day after Vera’s death. So if he had taken them and killed her, why wouldn’t he have taken them all? And why were they gone now?

  I sat down and looked around, wishing I could puzzle together what had happened. I had this idea forming that Stanley had popped over to Vera’s unannounced, then had caught her off guard in the kitchen. Would it really be that hard for a large man to shove a tiny ancient woman out an open door? She didn’t even have to open the door herself. He could have opened it and grabbed her and tossed her out.

  What would he gain though?

  I stood up and paced back and forth, gritting my teeth as I thought hard. I needed to figure this out. I wished I could talk to Vera but she didn’t know anything about her death, so I suppose it didn’t really matter.

  Something caught my eye. In the sink there was a tea cup. Not a mug, but an actual tea cup and saucer in a floral pattern. Had that been there before? I tried to visualize what the kitchen had looked like that first night I’d gone to Vera’s but I couldn’t remember. I felt like I would have noticed it though.

  Weird. But not unexplainable. People had been in and out of the condo.

  Damn it.

  I went back to the back door and threw it open, propping it open with a chair, so I didn’t get caught outside the way Vera had. I checked the knob and the button wasn’t pushed in, but I wasn’t taking any chances. We’d had a heatwave of almost forty degrees and some sun in the past few days so the snow was deflated a little. That nice wet bottom snow with a crusty top. A portion of the patio pavers was visible, which wasn’t the case before.

  The snow pattern was no longer discernible but I did have photos of it. I was about to pull my phone out and look at them again when something on the patio glinted in the sun. Vera’s earring? I bent over and picked it up. It was a cuff link.

  Engraved with the initials SAR.

  I stood straight up, heart racing. Stanley Richardson. I had no idea what his middle name was, but this has to be his cuff link. I recalled sitting at the cocktail lounge with him and Alyssa and him complaining that he hadn’t realized his cuff link was missing. That had been Monday night. Vera was killed Saturday.