Rita scoffed. “He started dating me two weeks before my first wedding. Six months into married life, I called it quits and shacked up with the lover. Married him. The problem is, when you have an affair with a man, they assume you’ll have another affair and leave them too.”
“That’s exactly what you did, isn’t it?”
“Not at all,” Rita seemed remarkably at ease discussing her love life. She yawned. “He was so dull, and paranoid, I changed the locks when he was on a golf weekend. That was the end of him. I was single for a good few weeks.” She noticed the surprise on my face. “I get bored. I only plan on living once and I want to make it count. I’m not sitting around in some boring marriage. No way.”
“You’re married now?” Sage asked.
“For the moment,” Rita said. “Daddy says I need to get rid of Sundance. He’s been saying that since the moment he first met him.”
“Sundance?”
“He’s a hippie,” Rita explained. “Raised in a commune. I thought he might be more laid-back than the others, but I’m thinking now that all men are the same. They find a beautiful woman and want to put her in a cage. I wasn’t meant for a cage.”
“Your dad plays a big role in your love life, then? Did he know about Alberto?”
Her face darkened. “My daddy likes to believe I’m a one-man-at-a-time kind of girl. I let him.”
“Your dad’s Ian MacKenzie, right?” Sage asked.
Rita gave a smile so big it spread across her face and cracked her foundation. “Sure is. You know him?”
“Not really,” Sage said.
“Everyone knows daddy. His research is changing the world.”
“What does he do?” I asked.
“He’s a pharma scientist,” Rita said. “The best there is. You’ve never met a better man than my daddy. In fact. Maybe that’s why I have men issues. Maybe I just want to marry my daddy and be done with it.”
Sage and I glanced at each other, unsure how to respond.
The door burst open then and Derek handed hot dogs out. Sage eyed mine jealously. As a ghost, she couldn’t eat, but she’d look at tasty food and experience ghostly hunger pangs.
“This is really good of you,” I said.
Derek flushed and grinned. “I can’t believe I’m here with a real life amateur sleuth! It’s so exciting. Are you ready to get us all together into one room and reveal who the killer was?”
“Erm, not quite,” I said.
Derek reached down into his man bag and pulled out a huge can of soda. He cracked the can open and took a guzzle. “No panic. I brought energy drinks. We can stay up all night if we need to!”
“Great,” I said, warily. I stifled a yawn. I hadn’t stayed up all night in many years and I didn’t plan on doing it any time soon. Nope. The murder needed solving. And fast.
10
There comes a point every Halloween where the atmosphere changes; where the little kids have been tucked into bed and the only spooks still out are looking for a different kind of fun. As the sky grew darker and the streets outside the dilapidated house fell quiet, I felt the switch as keenly as if someone had turned on a light.
“The witching hour,” Sage murmured beside me.
I frowned towards her. Sometimes I thought she could read my mind. “You felt it too?”
She shuddered and reached towards her shoulders as if she was trying to pull a cardigan tighter.
“We need to get this sorted,” I said. I pushed myself off the chair and handed my energy drink to Derek. I’d managed one sip and felt like I’d had enough of the horrid stuff to last me a lifetime. I’d tried to ask Derek how much sugar was jammed in the can but he’d insisted there was none at all. Zero sugar in a drink that tasted sweeter than honey! I didn’t dare ask what chemical replacements they’d stuffed in it instead. In fact, I’d dropped the whole conversation because it made me feel old… and dull. Not dull enough to ask for a second sip though.
Bob had returned to the room after a brief rest, and he had sat in the far corner of the room, on his own, scrawling furiously in a notebook.
“That must have taken some practice,” I said.
He startled a little, as if my interruption had pulled him out of one world and back into this one. “I beg your pardon?”
“Holding the pen,” I said. “I know Sage struggled for a long time with holding things. It still takes it out of her pretty quick.”
“Oh, right,” he said. He tilted his head a little to get a stray sweep of hair out of his face, then closed the notebook. “I can go about thirty minutes.”
“Have you considered dictation?” I asked.
“No,” he said quickly. “I don’t let anyone see or hear a word until it’s complete.”
“That makes sense after what Alberto did,” I said.
He shook his head. “I’ve always been the same. Jessica says I’m too precious.”
“But I thought Alberto stole one of your ideas?”
Bob considered my question as if it was the first time he’d been asked it. “I’m not sure that ideas can be stolen.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, let’s say I have this great idea about a young man and a young woman who want to be together. They fall madly in love. But he’s a Democrat and she’s a Republican.”
I snickered.
“Do you see where I’m going?”
“Not really,” I said. I knew that some people would choose a life partner based on their politics. I’d decided long ago that staying clear of the whole conversation was the best thing for me to do.
“Well, it’s Romeo and Juliet. But could Shakespeare accuse me of stealing his idea if I wrote that book?”
“Probably not,” I said, although since they were both dead I guessed it couldn’t be ruled out. I had no idea what kind of legal system there was in the afterlife.
“There aren’t that many ideas, Connie, that’s the truth of it. We could both take the same idea right now and each write a story, and yours would be completely different to mine. Yours might be a mystery and mine might be a romance. Someone would write a comedy and someone a thriller. All from the same idea.”
“So Alberto did take your idea, but he made it his own?”
Bob gave a sad smile. “He made it better. He gave the readers what they wanted.”
“You must have been angry? Or jealous?”
“I guess I was a little envious. It’s a hard industry to be in, seeing your contemporaries rise and fall, wondering if you’ll ever get your own big success. But Alberto was a colleague. He wasn’t a friend, so I can’t pretend I was betrayed or abandoned by him.”
“Still…” I pushed. Surely he must have had a stronger reaction to Alberto heading off for the big time without him.
“I felt for the people who he owed an explanation to. There were people he should have spoken to, said goodbye to. I don’t count myself as one of those people.”
I followed his gaze. Jessica was asleep and Rita was reapplying lipstick. She noticed us watching, flushed and returned self-consciously to what she was doing.
“She was angry with him?”
“She was devastated,” Bob said. “I’ve had that woman in my life for so many years and I’ve never seen her so torn up about anything.”
“And Jessica?” I asked.
Bob laughed. “I’m talking about Jessica! You thought I meant Rita? Oh, she’s cool as a cucumber. I think she’d forgotten his name before he’d been gone a week.”
“Really?”
“Her daddy turned up at the publishers a few days after Alberto left, and he took her out for lunch. She came back with this handbag that must have cost more than I ever earned in a year. And a new dog! One of those tiny barking ones, you know? She wanted to keep it in the office but Jessica said no to that.”
“So, she didn’t seem upset?”
“That’s my point,” Bob said. “Life went on as normal for Rita. And those were hard days. Jessica just sat w
ailing in her office. She was upset about the money, of course she was, but it was more than that. She’d been the only agent Alberto had ever had. She’d shaped so much of his career, just like she has mine. I guess she thought she deserved a bit more respect after all that.”
“And what did you think?”
“I think you need to be careful how you treat people when you’re climbing the ladder. Because you just might pass them again on your way back down,” he said. Then his right hand began to twitch and he opened the notebook almost without realising he was doing it. “Now, if you’ll excuse me. I want to finish this chapter.”
11
There was a bang at the door.
The kind of heavy fist that made it clear the cute toddlers had gone to sleep and the older kids were out. I glanced at Jessica. She shrugged.
“You told me not to keep answering,” she said.
“When it was babies out there with their parents!” I exclaimed. Ignoring the teenagers wasn’t such a good idea, especially since the lights were on and it was clear someone was home.
“I’m quite comfortable here,” Jessica slurred. I had no idea how many glasses she’d drank, but it was clear they’d taken their toll on her.
“I’ll go!” Sage offered.
“No!”
“Why not?” She asked.
“You know how it tires you out to open doors, and it tires you even more to walk through them!”
She rolled her eyes. It was like dealing with a teenager sometimes. She’d probably fit in out there with the modern youths.
“Fine,” I held my hands up and rose from my chair. “I’ll just come and see if you need help.”
Sage floated down the corridor with me close behind and, as I’d predicted, the old, stiff door was too much for her ghostly grip. I reached across and turned the knob, pulled the door open so we were both revealed.
“Wow!” A group of three teenage boys, all pimple-faced and very obviously not in costume, grinned at us. “Awesome costume!”
Sage laughed. “Thanks boys. Let’s shake hands.”
She held out her hand and the boys became a mass of shrugged shoulders and confusion. One of them, the tallest by almost a millimetre and therefore the self-declared leader of the gang, reached his hand and watched as it pushed through Sage’s skin.
“Ohemgee,” he muttered.
“Neat trick!”
“How’d you do that?”
“Maybe it’s not a trick,” Sage said with a wink. “Now are you boys here to trick or treat?”
The colour drained from their faces and they each instinctively took a few steps backwards down the path.
Sage floated out towards them and reached her hand across to one of the boys who hadn’t tried to shake already. “Your turn?”
“Stay away from us!” The leader shouted, but then he turned and sprinted away, his friends not far behind.
I stifled a laugh. “I thought they made them tough these days, with all that gangster music and trousers hanging low.”
“Oh Connie,” Sage teased. “You sound ancient when you talk like that.”
“I feel ancient sometimes.”
“Oh, come on. You’ll get this case solved. You always do. Any main suspects yet?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Bob’s the obvious suspect, of course he is. But he seems so calm about it all.”
“You think it’s an act?”
“Maybe,” I said. “Jessica’s the only one openly glad he was killed. Does that make it more or less likely that she did it?”
“Could be a double bluff,” Sage said. I raised an eyebrow, impressed that she’d picked up terms like that. She must have been listening to me after all when I’d talked other cases though with her. “She’s guilty but she looks less guilty if she sounds it.”
“It’s a possibility,” I said. “But then there’s Derek, hanging around at the time and still hanging around now.”
“I don’t think it’s him,” Sage said.
I let out a long breath. “I don’t either. And Rita seems like the kind of woman who was bored of Alberto before he left. I can’t see her caring enough to hurt him.”
“Could it be someone else?”
“No, nobody else had access to the book.”
“It’s just odd,” Sage said. I looked across at her. “It’s odd that it happened when it did.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“The timing of it,” she explained. “They say timing is everything, right? I got Derek to show me Alberto’s Wikipedia page and he died like six months after he left these guys.”
“A long time to hold a murderous rage against someone,” I said.
“Exactly,” Sage said with a nod. “Murder takes time to plan, I guess.”
“Sometimes,” I agreed. “But tempers cool. I wonder how many planned murders never happen because the emotions have died down.”
“Maybe we should speak to Derek? If we both agree he’s not the killer, it might be time for him to speak more openly to us.”
I considered her suggestion and nodded. Whatever had happened in those six months might be a complete distraction, another way of pushing my bedtime even later, but it might just hold the nugget of information we needed.
“Let’s do it.” I said. “But there’s something else to do first.”
12
“We need to talk,” I used my best stern voice but Jessica only leered at me though her false spider lashes.
“Sure, lovie,” she slurred.
“You didn’t tell me that Alberto died six months after he abandoned you all!”
She gazed at me and said nothing.
“I’ve checked online. Why didn’t you say anything?”
“He didn’t die then,” she said.
I shook my head a little. There was nothing less fun than dealing with a drunk person when you were sober. “You were all acting as if he’d left you guys and then been killed, but months passed!”
She leaned in and grinned. “No, they didn’t.”
I tapped away on my phone and pulled up the Internet page that displayed his date of death. Jessica struggled to get her eyes to focus, then cocked back her head and cackled.
“What’s so funny?” I asked. I glanced behind me. Derek was watching the scene with a hungry interest he wasn’t attempting to hide. I shooed him away with my hand and he grabbed his phone and pretended to scroll.
“Well,” Jessica said. “It tickles me how much these powerful men can get away with.”
“He didn’t get away with anything,” I said. “He was killed.”
“Not him!”
“Then who? You’re talking in riddles.”
“I’m not talking at all,” she said. “You’ve heard nothing from me.”
I furrowed my brow. “Just tell me what you mean. You’re not making sense.”
“Good,” she said, and she poured herself a refill. “Weren’t you taught not to listen to drunks? This is my second glass!”
I rolled my eyes. Second glass? And the rest.
“Fine,” I said. I left her and stomped across to Bob Ballinger. He was still writing; his hand flying furiously across the page, and I had to wait a good ten minutes before he looked up at me. I mean, sure, I could have interrupted him, but I wanted him to keep writing so I could read his next book.
“You again?” He asked with a smile. “Have you cracked the case yet?”
“I’m getting close,” I said. I wasn’t too proud to use an old school bluffing technique. As soon as word spread that I was getting close - even if it was a lie - the murderer might start panicking and do something that would reveal themselves. “I just wanted to fact check something with you.”
His eyes lit up at that. He was meticulous with his research, I’d read in interviews, and I could see that he approved of my thorough approach.
“When did Alberto actually die?” I asked.
Bob frowned a little, his lips pursed. A crease appeared
along his forehead. Somehow he looked even more handsome. “You want the exact date?”
“As close as you remember,” I said.
“Well, it was within a week of him leaving. I can say that for sure. The actual date, I don’t recall, sorry.”
“Within a week? You’re absolutely sure of that?”
“Certainly,” he said. “Has someone suggested otherwise?”
“No,” I said. “Nobody here, anyway. But the memorial page online says he died months after he did.”
“That’s odd,” Bob said. Then he offered a wry smile. “Although the internet isn’t known for its reliability. Fake news and all that.”
“True,” I said. “Okay, thanks.”
I left him to his work and pulled my phone out. On the internet browser, I did a general search for Alberto Duncan-Smythe’s death and scrolled through the results. The pages were staggering.
“What’s wrong?” Sage asked. She had floated to my side and was peering down at my phone screen. “I still can’t understand how these things fascinate you modern people so much.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You can take photos on this thing and then choose from dozens of filters to make yourself look thinner, prettier and younger. It’s like every angle is your best angle.”
“Every angle is my best angle,” Sage said, but she looked back at the phone with more interest.
“Something isn’t making sense. Everyone here says Alberto died a few days after he abandoned them all. But the whole internet says it was six months later.”
“That is strange,” she agreed. “Could the first article have got the date wrong and all the others copied it?”
“Perhaps,” I said. “But there just aren’t any articles about it until the six month mark. It’s like he was alive and well for six months and then he died and the world reported it.”
“So these people are lying. Tell me more about the filters.”
“Concentrate!” I exclaimed with a laugh. “It’s so odd. Why would they want to pretend the murder happened before it did? The closer it is to him leaving, the more likely it is they’ll be suspects.”
“Maybe they’ve just forgotten. It is a cold case, after all. Time has passed,” Sage offered. It was a straightforward answer, and often those were the ones that turned out to be true.
Cold Cases and Haunted Places Page 33