The Ghost and the Dead Deb

by KIMBERLY, ALICE

  “The corpse was missing any ID.” Chief Ciders admitted with a frustrated sight, “but we did find something in her pocket.”

  So it’s a her, I thought, relieved for Bud and Mina’s sake that it wasn’t Johnny Napp.

  Ciders reached into his jacket and drew out a small clear plastic evidence bag. Inside was an old-fashioned long-stem brass key attached to a small wooden placard. Burned into the wooden tab were the words “Finch Inn” and the number nine.

  “Can you identify this, Mrs. Finch?” said the chief, almost mechanically, since it was obvious that anyone who lived within twenty miles of Quindicott could.

  “That’s one of our keys,” Fiona cried. “Room nine . . . The room where Angel Stark was staying.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Fall Guy or Felon?

  Thanks to you and yore meddlin’, we finally got us a clue.

  —Merle Constiner, “The Turkey Buzzard Blues,” Black Mask magazine, 1943

  I’D BARELY DIGESTED the surprise of seeing the key before I was rocked by another shock. Bud Napp rushed through the Inn’s open doors, looking nearly as pale as Barney Finch.

  Chief Ciders hitched his fingers in his belt and faced him. “Thanks for coming in, Bud.”

  “You said it was urgent,” Bud replied. Then he noticed the rest of us standing around with funereal faces. “What the hell is going on here, Chief ?”

  “Bud . . . are you still selling that bright yellow lawn rope?”

  “You hustled me over here for an inventory report?”

  “Just answer the question.”

  “No,” Bud replied. “I told you last week when you came to buy some to tie up your tomatoes, the company stopped making it. Some issue with the dye. They’re switching to neon orange.”

  “Have you sold any yellow rope in the past week?”

  Bud shook his head. “I have a few bolts in my truck, that’s all. And I’m using them for my building business.”

  “Let’s go on out into the parking lot, Bud. I need to get a look inside of your truck.”

  “Are you looking for something in particular?” Bud asked suspiciously. “Maybe I should ask to see some kind of warrant?”

  “You can give me permission to search your truck now, or wait until the State Police get a warrant issued,” Ciders replied wearily. “Getting that warrant should take all of about five minutes—and then the Staties might want to do more than search your truck. If they have to go to all that trouble for the paper, they’ll probably include your garage, your business, your home.”

  Bud swallowed. “I didn’t bring the truck. I drove over in my Explorer.”

  Now it was Ciders who was suddenly suspicious. “Where is your truck, then?”

  “Johnny has it,” Bud replied uneasily. “He had a date last night, I told him he could borrow my truck.”

  “And where is Johnny right now?”

  When I saw the look in Ciders’s eye, I knew this was the question he’d been itching to ask all along. I still didn’t figure out how a yellow rope was involved, though I’d seen some of it strung around the restaurant’s construction site—no surprise since Budd was supplying the crew.

  “Johnny . . . He hasn’t come home yet.”

  “What about his date? Who was she? Was she staying at this inn?”

  “Hell, no. Johnny was dating a local girl. Mina Griffith. Works at Pen’s bookstore.”

  Now Ciders turned to me. “And is Mina at work today?”

  I nodded. “But she doesn’t know where Johnny is either.”

  “And why is that?”

  I snapped my mouth shut and kept it that way. Ciders was grilling me, and I didn’t like it. He studied me—and obviously didn’t care for my attempt to remain uncooperative. “Okay, don’t answer,” he told me. “I’ll just have to track down Mina and ask her.”

  My eyes narrowed on the Chief. Mina was in an emotional state as it was. I couldn’t let him upset her even more.

  “Mina doesn’t know anything because he never kept his date with her last night,” I reluctantly admitted. “I know because she came back to the store late. They were supposed to meet for pizza, but he never showed up, so I waited with her while her roommate drove over to pick her up and take her home. I’ve already spoken to her about it.”

  “Was Johnny at your bookstore at any time last night?”

  “Johnny came to the store, stayed awhile. But he left before we closed and, as I said, never came back to pick up Mina.”

  “He left alone?”

  I felt cornered. But I couldn’t lie about something that had been witnessed by people other than just me. “No,” I said in a soft voice. “He was on the sidewalk outside the store . . .” I looked down, hating Ciders for making me admit it. “He was talking to Angel Stark the last time I saw him.”

  I heard Bud release a disgusted breath. I couldn’t meet his eyes.

  Ciders cleared his throat. “Bud, maybe you and I should finish this conversation somewhere in private.”

  Bud exhaled again, but this time in defeat. He shook his head. “There are no secrets in this town, and Pen and Sadie already know some of what’s going on, as you just figured out.”

  Then some of the old fire rekindled behind Bud’s eyes. “We’ve leveled with you, Ciders. Now it’s time for you to level with us. What is going on? Why did you want to search my truck?”

  “Bud, we just found a body floating in the pond. The body of a young woman. From the condition of the corpse, the State forensics people say she hasn’t been in the water more than ten or twelve hours, maximum, which means she died late last night or, more likely, very early this morning.”

  “What does this have to do with me? With Johnny?”

  “We found a length of yellow rope around the dead woman’s neck. The same stuff you sold at your hardware store,” Ciders replied. “It appears the killer used that rope to strangle her.”

  Bud pointed in the direction of the pond. “That construction site out there has a length of that same damn rope. Anyone could have gotten it from there.”

  “I checked the rope at the site,” the Chief said evenly. “There’s only one bolt securing the area. Both ends of that bolt of rope still have the plastic tabs attached—which means that length of rope has never been cut. So the killer probably got that yellow rope from somewhere else.”

  “Okay, so maybe it wasn’t that rope. But anyone could have bought yellow rope like that,” insisted Bud. “Maybe the killer bought it last season when yellow rope was everywhere, or in another town that still sold it . . .”

  “Bud,” Ciders began. “I know all about your nephew—the conviction, the parole, and about the suspicion of murder charges that were leveled at Johnny in that big Newport heiress death last year. The Bethany Banks case.”

  I was surprised. So was Bud Napp.

  “We’re not all Keystone Kops,” said the Chief, “despite what our local letter carrying Jeopardy! genius here thinks.”

  Seymour harrumphed, and Chief Ciders continued, “Bud, when your nephew moved here, his parole officer notified me of Johnny’s criminal record and his place of lodging and employment. I never bothered the kid out of respect for you . . .”

  “You and I both know that those murder charges were dismissed,” Bud pointed out.

  “That’s right, Bud,” Ciders replied. “But they were dismissed on a legal technicality, not for lack of evidence.”

  Bud’s face reddened. “There was no real evidence or they would have tried Johnny anyway!”

  Chief Ciders nodded. “I know, and I understand how you feel. But the woman in the pond . . . she was strangled. Just like Bethany Banks. And until we locate Johnny, and have a long talk with him, he’s the main suspect now, which means I have no choice but to issue an All Points Bulletin for the arrest of your nephew on suspicion of murder.”

  “Wait a minute!” Bud cried. “Murder of who?”

  Angel Stark, of course, I thought to myself. She had to be the lady in th
e lake—unless, of course, some other woman had been carrying around Angel’s room key, which was technically within the realm of possibility. So I wasn’t surprised when the Chief said . . .

  “Angel Stark, of course. Technically she’s not yet identified. But since Mrs. McClure volunteered to help ID the body, we can settle the matter of the woman’s name right here and now.”

  Then Chief Ciders faced me. “Penelope, you and I are going to take a little walk . . .”

  CHAPTER 13

  Lady in the Lake

  “I still ain’t heard who killed Muriel . . .”

  “Somebody who thought she needed killing, somebody who had loved her and hated her . . .”

  —Raymond Chandler, The Lady in the Lake, 1943

  THE LESS SAID about the next half hour, the better. Suffice it to say that a corpse that has been strangled in summer and submerged in water for “only about ten or twelve hours” has pretty much lost all resemblance to anything human.

  Black swollen tongue, blue-gray skin mottled with angry red-black patches, stringy, mud-soaked clothes and hair, and the incongruity of a bright sunflower-yellow rope embedded deep into the puffy flesh at the throat—the victim was not a pretty sight. And I’m not even bringing up the insects.

  Through features like hair (long and copper), eye color (brown), and items like clothes the woman was wearing (that one-of-a-kind Betsy Johnson pink and green sundress with the lace-up corset and gauzy skirt), I became convinced the corpse belonged to Angel Stark, and told Chief Ciders and two officers from the Rhode Island State Police crime scene unit exactly that.

  “From her fingerprints and dental records, the crime lab people should be able to positively confirm her identity within a few hours,” Ciders told me as we walked back to the Inn together.

  “Sadie and I really have to get back to the bookstore,” I told the Chief. “We left poor Mina on her own for the last two and a half hours.”

  A few minutes later, Ciders released us all, saying he’d be over to the bookstore soon to get a corroborating statement from Mina. Bud offered Sadie and me a lift back to the store. Seymour decided to tag along as far as the post office. Fiona returned to nurse her stricken husband, whom she’d “put to bed for a long nap.” It was a solemn, quiet group who trudged out to the Inn’s parking lot and piled into Bud’s Ford Explorer.

  After we dropped Seymour at the local post office, Bud pulled up in front of Buy the Book. I was surprised when he cut the engine and followed Sadie and me into the store.

  For a summertime Saturday afternoon, the place was fairly busy, and I breathed a sigh of relief when I spied a familiar face at the register alongside Mina. After bagging a bundle of paperbacks and passing them to the customer, Linda Cooper-Logan gave us one of her big, open smiles. In her late thirties, Linda still wore her short platinum hair in the spiky, punkish style she’d first worn in the eighties. These days, she usually favored long flowered skirts and a copious amount of silver bracelets, but on this warm afternoon she wore cut-off denim shorts and a chocolate-brown “Bakers Do It Early” T-shirt, which was dusted with flour.

  “Boy am I glad to see you,” I gushed.

  “Not half as glad as I was,” said Mina.

  Linda dismissed my thanks with a wave of her hand. “I brought the pastry over for tonight’s meeting and saw a line of customers, so I volunteered to fill in until you guys got back.”

  Linda and her husband, Milner Logan, operated the Cooper Family Bakery, a small but profitable bread and sweet shop down the street from Buy the Book. Linda handled the comfort foods, and Milner the fancy French stuff. (He and Linda had met when Milner was teaching a cooking school class in Boston on the art of French pastry.)

  “Honestly, I can’t thank you enough,” I told her.

  “So what’s going on? I’ve got to know,” Linda asked.

  Yeah, said Jack Shepard. I’m with the blonde porcupine—What in hell happened at Bird-Woman’s lace-doily nest?

  I was about to reply when I looked beyond Linda’s shoulder, to see the look of worry and apprehension on Mina Griffith’s face. Mina, in turn, was watching Bud Napp and Sadie head toward a set of comfortable chairs near the back of the store, speaking in hushed tones as they went.

  I took a deep breath and broke the news to Linda and Mina about the discovery of Angel Stark’s body along the wildlife trail near Finch Inn. I also told them that Victoria Banks, Bethany’s sister, was also missing. Linda was intrigued, but as I expected, Mina took the news hard. Harder still was the next bombshell I dropped on the poor girl.

  “Chief Ciders believes Angel was strangled, murdered—and he thinks Bud’s nephew Johnny had something to do with it.”

  “My God,” Mina choked. The shock was too much and she broke down. Linda took over the register, and I brought Mina upstairs to privately comfort her with a cup of tea and a shoulder to cry on. I hated having to tell Mina the truth, but I knew it would be better for her to hear it from me than Chief Ciders, when he sought her statement.

  Mina didn’t say much, just sipped her tea and said that she couldn’t believe this was happening—that Angel was dead and Johnny was being sought as a likely suspect.

  “I admit he was really stupid to go off with Angel like that,” said Mina after blowing her nose, “and I was really angry with him . . . but, Mrs. McClure, I really like Johnny. Up until last night, he’s been the kindest, sweetest guy I’ve ever gone out with.”

  I nodded. “I’m glad,” I said, “but I really don’t know Johnny.”

  “He spent hours last weekend helping my little brother and his friends build a treehouse, which he knows how to do because for years he’s volunteered his time to Habitat for Humanity to help build low-income houses. He loves his uncle, and I know he cares about me . . . he told me so . . . he’s a good guy, Mrs. McClure, he . . .”

  Mina began to cry again. Then she shook her head. “One minute with that stupid Stark girl would tell anyone she’s trouble,” murmured Mina, wiping her nose. “I don’t know why he went off with her like that.”

  As I poured the last of the tea for Mina, I felt the slightest whisper of a cool breeze on my cheek. You know this is a frame job, don’t you? said Jack in my head.

  “I want it to be,” I silently told the ghost. “But is it really? How can you be so sure Johnny isn’t guilty? Jack, I’m afraid Johnny just isn’t as ‘nice’ a guy as he wants Mina and his uncle to believe.”

  You could be right. But there are an awful lot of notes in play here . . . and it’s a kind of tune I’ve heard before.

  After Mina dried her eyes and insisted on continuing her shift—she said it would help keep her mind off her worries for Johnny—we went back downstairs to the store.

  Bud and Sadie were still deep in conversation, and things seemed fairly quiet. I thanked Linda for her help. She went on her way, and Mina took over the register.

  “I think we need fresh stock on the new release table,” I told her. “If you cover the counter, I’ll take care of it.”

  “No problem,” said Mina, blowing her nose one last time as I headed toward the archway leading to the Community Events space. I crossed the empty room, then strode quickly down the short corridor, past the restrooms. When I got to the storage area, I called to Jack, hoping to continue my communication with the gumshoe from beyond.

  “You were saying that someone might be trying to frame Johnny . . . ?”

  Like an original van Gogh, doll.

  The storage room was nothing fancy: a plain white box with stacked cartons of books waiting their turn to be placed on the selling floor and an old wooden desk from the store’s early days against one wall—which we now used to hold office supplies. The room felt warm and a little bit stuffy when I’d walked into it, but Jack’s presence had dropped the temperature and the air around me felt comfortably cool. Too bad his ghostly presence couldn’t be constant and in every room, I mused to myself; the store would save a fortune in air-conditioning.

  Ver
y funny, said Jack, overhearing.

  “Come on, Jack, don’t get testy.”

  The cool air suddenly got decidedly colder. I shivered as a mini whirlwind swirled around my thin sleeveless cotton blouse and bare shoulders, seemed to whisper at my ear. You remember that dream I gave you last night? There’s a case file in those boxes that’ll finish the story. Look for the file marked “Stendall.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t have the time for that right now.”

  Make the time, baby. The files are five feet away.

  Jack was right, of course. After his still-unsolved murder here in 1949, one of Jack’s acquaintances, a young reporter named Timothy Brennan, took possession of his files—and created an internationally best-selling series of books featuring the hard-boiled private detective Jack Shield. On every dust jacket, Brennan boasted that the Shield stories were based on Jack Shepard’s case files (a boast Jack wasn’t exactly keen to learn about).

  After Brennan was also murdered here a year ago, his son-in-law, who subsequently took over the writing of the still-popular series—and owed me the favor of a lifetime—agreed to let me keep the original files here for him in storage. His only condition was that he first review them himself so he could Xerox “selected files” that interested him. I assumed the ones selected would be precisely the ones his late father-in-law hadn’t yet gotten around to exploiting for his fictional Jack Shield book series.

  A week ago, the promised boxes finally arrived, and I had been hoping for the time to go through them—a part of me even fancying the idea that I myself might be able to puzzle out some theories about who might have killed Jack and why. But finalizing the Angel Stark appearance had left me with very little free time to peruse the files. And now that she was dead and Bud’s nephew the prime suspect, I really didn’t have the time.

  “Couldn’t you just give me the shorthand on that case?” I asked Jack as I gathered and stacked on a handcart an array of hardcovers and paperbacks that made up the most recent releases by various publishers.