The Ghost and the Dead Deb

by KIMBERLY, ALICE

  Angel dodged the woman’s eyes, suddenly busy brushing the dirt off her filmy skirt. “What difference does it make?”

  After a long silence, I spoke to Dana. “Maybe you should report the incident to the police? Ms. Stark is a celebrity, and this could be a stalker incident, and we all know stalkers can be dangerous. At the very least Angel should file a police report in case it happens again.”

  It was an intelligent and logical response—and exactly the wrong thing to say.

  “No way!” Angel blasted. “Don’t you get it? I’m the one exposing the incompetence of how their brothers in blue over the next hill completely botched Bethany’s murder investigation.” Angel vehemently shook her head. “No police. No way.”

  To my surprise, Dana Wu agreed.

  “Angel’s right. This is too close to where it all happened. In my opinion, Angel’s got no friends among the local authorities. And nobody wants this story to turn up in the newspapers.”

  Something in me expected to hear Jack’s voice at that moment saying, Hmm, apparently not all publicity is good publicity, all of a sudden. I reached out with my thoughts anyway. “Jack?”

  But the ghost was nowhere near me now, because I had stepped beyond the fieldstone walls of my bookstore. Why had Jack’s spirit been imprisoned inside the store since his death? I had my theories, but I still didn’t have any real clues.

  Suddenly, to everyone’s surprise, Angel Stark did not return to the store. Instead, she slumped down on the curb next to a battered rust-red pickup truck with “Bud Napp’s Hardware” emblazoned in black on the side panels.

  “I still need that smoke,” Angel announced. “Then I’m going back to that lace-doily inn up the street and shutting down for the night.”

  As she spoke, Angel produced a thin brown cigarette from a hidden pocket, then fumbled for something to light it with. There was an embarrassing pause, for none of us smoked.

  A sudden toot from the car alarm sounded as Johnny unlocked the cab of his uncle’s Napp Hardware pickup truck and reached into the glove compartment to retrieve a Ronson lighter, which he opened with a snap.

  “Thanks,” Angel said as she took a drag.

  Johnny looked ready to walk away when Angel smiled from the curb and touched his hand. “Hey, I want to talk to you . . . Thank you for what you did out there.”

  Standing in the shadows, Mina watched as Johnny hesitated for a moment, then crouched down in front of Angel.

  Aunt Sadie saw the hurt look on Mina’s face and nudged the girl’s shoulder. “Shouldn’t you take care of your boyfriend?”

  Frowning, Mina called, “Hey, Johnny. Are you coming?”

  Johnny turned. “It’s okay, Mina. Go on back in and finish your shift. I’ll hook up with you later, like we planned.”

  Her eyes narrowing, her hurt turning to anger, Mina spun and marched back inside.

  Dana took my arm. “I think the show is finally over for tonight.” Politely but firmly, Dana pushed Aunt Sadie and me back into the store, too.

  Sadie moved behind the counter, while Mina headed back to the events room. After that, the rest of the evening was a blur. Dana gave me the heads up about some of the hot author tours she knew would be barreling down the tracks, but had not yet been announced.

  Meanwhile, my aunt tallied up the day’s receipts and counted out the cash in the registers, and from the Community Events space I could hear metal chairs banging and clanging loudly. I assumed that Mina was using the task of breaking down the room to vent her angry frustration with Johnny’s playing along with Angel’s flirtations.

  I considered talking to the girl, but I knew it was something that had to work itself out. Young love is nothing if it isn’t volatile—which has got to be the oldest story in any bookstore.

  Near the end of my conversation with Dana, we realized we had a few mutual acquaintances in publishing, holdovers from my days in New York. Dana was happy to fill me in on the latest gossip. Time slipped by and I didn’t notice that Mina had left for the night, or that Aunt Sadie had retired to the apartment above the store—the home we both shared with my son, Spencer, since my husband’s suicide a little over one year before.

  “Oh, wow, it’s after midnight,” Dana cried. “I really have to run.”

  I rose and escorted her to the front door, which my aunt had locked after Mina left. Dana and I said good night, and she promised to drop by again before she returned to New York City the next afternoon.

  Then, dead on my feet, I yawned and locked the door. My eyes dry and red from wearing contact lenses for hours, and the start of a headache throbbing at my temples, I turned out all but the security lights and activated the burglar alarm.

  Just then, a tapping on the front door startled me. I peered through the window and saw my slight, young employee standing on the dark sidewalk. I deactivated the alarm, unlocked the door, and Mina Griffith stepped inside.

  Mina’s freckled face appeared flushed. “Sorry to bother you, Mrs. McClure, but I need to use the phone. My cell battery died and the pay phone in front of Koh’s isn’t working.”

  I ushered her inside. “Who do you need to call? Are you stranded?”

  Mina nodded. “I can call Rebecca, my roommate. She drove me to work today, and she can pick me up. Johnny was supposed to meet me at Frenzetti’s Pizza and give me a ride, but he’s an hour late and they’re closing up . . .”

  Her voice faded, and I felt a stab of pity for the girl.

  “Look, maybe there was a plumbing emergency or something and his uncle needed him,” I said. “Maybe he’s trying to call you and your cell is dead.”

  Mina nodded listlessly.

  “Why don’t I drive you home myself?” I offered.

  “No,” Mina replied resolutely. “Rebecca can get me.”

  I could see how upset Mina was, and I suspected she needed to pour her heart out to her roommate as soon as humanly possible. Twenty-five minutes later, Rebecca was pulling up, honking lightly in her Toyota, then Mina was gone.

  AS I LOCKED up, set the alarm, trudged upstairs, and fed our little orange striped cat, Bookmark, I sincerely hoped Johnny Napp would turn up in the morning on Mina’s doorstep with a fistful of daisies and a good excuse—one that didn’t involve Angel Stark.

  I checked on Spencer, and found him asleep. I gently kissed his tow-headed bangs, untangled his legs from the sheets and pulled them over his torso, then slipped back out the door.

  I was sorry that I hadn’t spent much time with Spencer today. I had been busy getting ready for the author appearance, and he had day camp, so he’d been gone all morning until late in the afternoon. Then came Angel Stark’s appearance and I had to manage that.

  Usually Spencer enjoyed the author appearances, but this time I felt that the R-rated nature of Angel Stark’s true crime book precluded a nine-year-old attending. Fortunately, Spencer willingly agreed to remain upstairs, most likely because Friday night was Cop Show night on the Intrigue Channel, and Aunt Sadie and I had stocked the freezer with all his favorite treats. (Thank heaven for cable and Hot Pockets.)

  In my small bedroom, I stripped off my linen pantsuit, kicked off my slingback heels, and undid the French braid from my shoulder-length reddish-brown hair. Then I took out my contact lenses (worn for special occasions like author appearances), placed them next to my black, rectangular-framed glasses on the small wooden nightstand, crawled into bed, and clicked off the lamp.

  For some reason, I couldn’t stop thinking about Dana Wu’s assertion that Angel Stark was careless. It was that damn Jag, I guess, dragging her through the street then peeling off without a backward glance.

  I thought about that big yellow car in The Great Gatsby. How the rich and careless Daisy on a carefree lark of a drive from the Plaza Hotel to a Long Island mansion had run down that poor Queens woman on the wrong side of the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge—and never even slowed her pace. Just ran her down and kept right on going. How Gatsby had covered up for her, took care of her mes
s . . . which led to more than a few bullets through his brain.

  I might have dismissed Fitzgerald’s novel as pure fiction except my late father had been a Quindicott police officer, and I’d grown up hearing plenty of stories of the wealthy kids around the region getting into trouble—from prankish vandalism to drunk driving and date rape—only to have charges dropped when things were “taken care of ” through payoffs to victims or connections with authorities.

  I myself had struggled to get a half-scholarship into a top university, paying for room and board through work-study and the auctioned sale of my late father’s old Black Mask magazines—at the time, through Sadie’s store. I remembered my own earnest approach to classes and grades, remembered the shock of seeing a certain segment of the “smart” set looking down on my seriousness, taking pretty much nothing seriously themselves, blowing off classes without a thought.

  Of course, to be honest, back then, I’d had stars in my eyes about the moneyed class, fancied the dream-life of being a part of their afternoons on the yacht and evenings at the country club. As a part of that world, Calvin immediately appeared polished and aloof and intellectual and desirable. My reality check came after I’d gotten accidentally pregnant with Spencer. My late husband and I had married right out of college, and I was instantly thrown under the thumb of his new family. A family with money—lots of it. And used to always getting their way.

  And because Calvin’s wealth had made life perpetually easy for him, I found out too late that yes, he may have been intelligent and introspective and had all of those sensitive qualities an impressionable college girl wants in a romantic college boy, but he had a limited capacity for the things that actually mattered in a real-world marriage: patience, tolerance, strength, the capacity to compromise and make hard decisions, or even the discipline to make a consistent, continuous effort.

  The ease with which he’d been able to breeze through the years of his life had done nothing to build his character. His father’s early heart attack and his mother’s incessant coddling—accompanied by pulling strings attached to his money when it suited her—left the man a moral weakling.

  Of course, that’s my perspective now. Then, I’d been too caught up in it all to understand what was happening in my marriage and why.

  It’s been said that anything coming close to accomplishment, achievement, invention, or discovery emerges from an ability to overcome obstacles and roadblocks . . . from a willingness to endure pain. Too late, I deduced that Calivn didn’t actually ascribe to this philosophy.

  After years of making excuses for my husband in my own mind, I was forced to admit the bald truth. Calvin had grown so accustomed to letting his family sweep in and solve any childhood difficulty, that the first sign of any roadblock in his adult life sent him off every path he’d begun to travel.

  He dropped out of law school, quit job after job with which his mother’s friends had hooked him up. He’d started writing probably two dozen novels and plays, but never wrote past page forty on any one of them. He took to smoking cigarettes and staring out windows. He wasn’t a man who could even muster the requisite vigor to enjoy partying, clubbing, or any other vice, for that matter—having had his fill of them all through his high-society teen years.

  The most interest Calvin showed in anything was his own analysis. For five solid years, he sought daily appointments with therapists, but he never kept the same one more than six months. Each, eventually, would be labeled a “quack.” Then, during one stretch, while ostensibly “searching” for a new one, my late husband stopped taking his medications.

  And where was I during all of this?

  Right there with him, trying to raise a young son whom Calvin took little interest in. Trying to deal with in-laws who refused to see Calvin as deeply troubled. Yes, right there with him . . . to absorb his verbal abuse and mood swings, to take it all because I told myself that my husband was ill and in need of help, right up to the day my hand turned the door knob to our bedroom, just in time to witness his attempt to fly—

  Hey, baby. Wanna talk?

  “Jack,” I whispered into the dark. “You there?”

  I’m always here, sweetheart. Cosmic joke, remember? City slicker forced to spend eternity in cornpone alley.

  I smiled. A year ago, I’d forbidden Jack to hang around in the upstairs ether. He told me I couldn’t lay down house rules to a man with no body. An uneasy truce followed. For the most part, he gave me my privacy upstairs, but occasionally, on nights like this one, he’d make his presence known.

  Just remember this, Jack added. In the scheme of things, nobody’s got it as bad as yours truly. For me, this isn’t a bunch of gag lines.

  “Well . . . look at the bright side,” I told him, fluffing the pillow behind me, “a Rhode Island bookstore in July really isn’t that bad. There are much hotter places you might have been sent.”

  Hit me below the belt, why don’t ya?

  A long minute of silence followed.

  The room had cooled off with Jack’s arrival, but now I felt the summer’s cloying warmth seeping back into the bedroom air.

  “Jack?” I silently called, sitting up. “I was just teasing.”

  The silence was getting to me. “Jack, please answer. Don’t go.”

  Has it ever occurred to you—because it has to me—that this is my eternal punishment?

  “No,” I said falling back against the pillow again, “and do you know why? Because it’s beyond insulting.”

  What?

  “You’re suggesting the fire and brimstone of Satan’s inferno is less of a punishment than running an independent bookstore?”

  Lead pipe cinch.

  “You really can be infuriating, you know?”

  Okay, so we’re back in Miss Prissland, are we?

  “Can it, Jack.”

  That’s better.

  “I don’t want to fight.”

  For once we agree.

  I sighed.

  So what’s eatin’ you?

  “What Johnny did to Mina was pretty hard to witness,” I told him. “The kid obviously ran off with Angel tonight and left Mina high and dry. I always liked Johnny, but what he did tonight was pretty rotten. It makes me angry at Angel, too . . . but I’m also sorry for the girl. And furious about that Jag dragging her through the street and then taking off without a backward glance, and all because she dared tell the truth about her privileged circle of friends—one of whom likely committed murder during a party then tried to frame a member of the catering staff.

  Yeah, like I told you earlier, the Banks girl knew her killer, all right. I don’t agree with your author on much—but I agree on that.

  “Maybe you should read her book.”

  You’re just determined to doom me to some sort of punishment while I’m here, aren’t you, dollface?

  “I could tell you weren’t impressed with her reading.”

  Theatrics do not impress me. Real detective work does. You want some true crime stories, try reading through some of my case files.

  “I have, after a fashion. I’ve read all the Jack Shield novels, and Tim Brennan based all of them on your cases.”

  That bloated barstool raconteur stole my files after I was shot to death in this damn store, but he barely touched the cases with the most juice. I noticed his son-in-law finally sent over my files for you to look at, but you haven’t gone through them yet.

  “I will . . . I just haven’t had time . . .”

  Sure, honey, sure . . .

  “What’s that tone? You don’t believe me?”

  No.

  “Why?”

  You don’t want to make the time—because you’re afraid.

  “Of what?”

  Of what you’ll find in those files. Things you’ll find out about me . . .

  “Ridiculous.”

  You’re a smart dame, sweetheart, but when it comes to people you care about, seems to me you’re more comfortable with your glasses off . . . and keeping thos
e edges as blurry as possible for as long as possible . . .

  “Don’t be insulting.”

  Don’t be naïve. You did it with that worthless late husband of yours—

  “Don’t, Jack.”

  A long silence followed.

  “What is it you think I should know?”

  Your little Angel’s act with Johnny Napp tonight reminds me of a case I took back in ’46, after the war. I couldn’t go back to being a cop—leg wound left me with a slight limp on bad days—so I set out a shingle as a licensed P.I.

  “What was the case?”

  Vassar grad in her mid-twenties comes in on a Friday at six, looking to hire me to save her life from a blackmailer she claimed already gave her sis the big chill. Class clash. He was an indoor aviator—

  “A what?”

  Elevator operator. And she was the well-heeled uptown type. There’s a special kind of velvet-lined skirt gets bored with the expensive fabrics, likes to look for something a little rougher against the skin. Not for long, but for a while. That’s my guess on your Angel going after the Johnny kid.

  The trouble comes when the little lady’s ready to toss away the rough goods. Not always easy. Cheap goods too often leave a stain when you rub them the wrong way.

  “Johnny’s usually a nice kid. I don’t think he’d actually hurt anyone.”

  “You hardly know him, doll. And from what you’ve told me, he’s already hurt that tall, freckled thing, Mina—”

  “He hurt her emotionally, I’ll grant you, but not physically. That’s what I meant.”

  Baby, trust me when I say, you like to keep the edges soft and blurry on people. . . . Can’t say as I blame you. Seeing nothing but the hard angles is no picnic, either, but don’t worry, for this little flashback, you won’t need your glasses to see clearly.

  I felt the cool breeze in the hot room, the icy chill of Jack’s presence whispering across my cheek. The sleepiness overcame me, and I immediately began to dream.

  “Jack, what are these images I’m seeing?” I asked through a restless haze. “Are they your memories?”

  Well, they’re not Winston Churchill’s.