A Ghost in the Window

by Betty R. Wright

  Meg picked up the wad and began to unfold it. “There’s something inside.” She flattened the brown paper on the glass, revealing a small rectangle of white paper and a tiny tissue-wrapped package.

  Caleb snatched up the paper and held the flashlight close to it.

  “‘Butler and Olsen, Fine Jewelers, Chicago, Illinois,’” he read aloud. “It’s a sales slip. My dad’s name is on it, and it’s dated October 17, 1983.” He scowled. “That was the week before he was killed.”

  “What did he buy?” Meg asked breathlessly. Her eyes were on the little tissue package.

  “A ring, according to the sales slip. He bought a diamond ring for twenty-five thousand dollars.” Caleb shifted the light to the package. “Go ahead. We might as well open it.” Suddenly he sounded tired almost disinterested.

  Meg unfolded the tissue paper. The ring was a wide gold band set with one enormous diamond that was surrounded by several smaller ones. The stones glittered in the flashlight’s beam.

  “It’s beautiful,” Meg whispered.

  “Sure it is,” Caleb agreed. “And it cost twenty-five thousand dollars. That’s about twenty-four thousand more than my dad ever had at one time in his whole life.” He took the ring from Meg and stared at it. Then he wrapped it up and dropped it, with the sales slip, into his shirt pocket.

  “Come on,” he said gruffly. “Let’s put the fish back where it was and get out of here.”

  Meg’s mind shrank from the meaning of the diamond ring. She held the stool for Caleb to mount and return the fish to its place on the wall, then followed him wordlessly back to the entrance hall.

  He pushed the stool under the stairs. “Where else did the kids go this afternoon?” he asked, his voice strangely flat. “Upstairs?”

  “I guess so. And I’m pretty sure they went into the room across the hall. That’s where all the animals are.”

  “You can wait on the porch if you want.” Caleb made it sound like an order. “I’ll check around and be right back.”

  Meg opened the front door and slipped outside, grateful for the chance to be alone. The night air cooled her hot cheeks and raised goose bumps on the back of her neck. Somewhere, not far away, a door slammed, and a whistle cut through the silvery night. “Come, Brownie!” a man’s voice called. “Here, Brownie! Get in here, you crazy old dog.”

  Lucky person, Meg thought. Nothing to worry about except getting Brownie to come home and go to bed.

  She slumped down on a step and rested her chin on her hands. A ring that cost twenty-five thousand dollars. A ring where no ring should be, bought by a man who didn’t have much money.

  It just proved, she thought, that a bad day could always get much worse.

  15

  They were halfway home before Caleb started talking.

  “He went to Milwaukee on business the week before he was killed. That’s what he told my mom, anyway. And that’s what she told the police when they came around. I suppose what he really did was take his half of the stolen money and go to Chicago to buy the ring.”

  Caleb looked old in the moonlight, twenty-five, at least.

  “You don’t know that,” Meg protested. “Maybe—maybe he inherited a lot of money and was going to surprise you with it. Maybe—”

  “Maybe you have a great imagination,” Caleb interrupted with a bitter laugh. “Let’s not bother with fairy tales, okay? Do you know how much money was missing from the bank? Just about fifty thousand. Do you know how much money the police found in my dad’s buddy’s bank accounts? Just about twenty-five thou. Probably my dad didn’t want to keep that much cash around, so he took his share to the big city to find a safe way to hide it. What’s easier to hide than a ring? He must have thought that musky’s mouth was the safest hiding place in the world.” His face crumpled for a moment as he accepted the logic of his own explanation. “Let’s walk another block or so before we go home, okay? I hate to tell my mom all this stuff.”

  They crossed Emerson Avenue and walked on, with only a quick glance down the block at the Larsen house. Someone was standing on the front porch; Meg thought it must be her father. He was probably thinking about Grandma Korshak, wanting to know how sick she really was and not wanting to know, at the same time.

  Not knowing is the worst thing in the world.

  The words rang in her ears, and for a moment she didn’t know where they’d come from. Then she remembered. She and Caleb had talked about his problems the day they went to the bait shop together. Meg had said, having people say bad things about your father must be about the worst thing in the world. Caleb had disagreed. Not knowing is the worst thing. If I knew for sure what happened, I’d know what to do about it.

  “Well,” she said aloud, “now you know.”

  Caleb looked down at her, startled.

  “I mean,” Meg hurried on, “you told me once that the worst thing was not knowing the truth about your dad. I know you wanted the truth to be something else, but at least you don’t have to wonder anymore.”

  “Terrific,” Caleb said sarcastically. “My dad was a thief. Every bad thing people have been saying is true. That really makes me feel a lot better.” He glared at her, but she noticed that his angry stride slowed a little.

  Farther down the block, a tall, thin figure came from between two houses and crossed the street, whistling softly into the dark. Someone else looking for his dog. The tall silhouette made Meg think of the gray-haired man in her dreams.

  “It’s so strange,” she said, “the way your dad showed up twice in my dreams. I wonder why.”

  Caleb shrugged. “I wondered, too. Now I don’t care.”

  “But you have to care,” Meg protested. “Your dad wanted us to find that ring, Caleb. He did everything he could to help us. He even—well, I think he made me point the flashlight at the musky. I thought you were moving the light, but you weren’t even close to me. We have to figure out why he did that. After all, he knew your mom was a totally honest person who’d never keep something that didn’t belong to her. And he must have known she’d raise you to be the same kind of person. So why did he want you to find the ring?”

  Caleb didn’t answer. The tall man came back across the street with a sheepdog bumbling at his side. Meg watched them go up the steps of a house and disappear inside. Downstairs, lights flicked off, one by one.

  Her mind raced, trying to find the answer to her question. “You know what I think?” she said at last. “I think he must have been really sorry he took that money. For one thing, he didn’t rush to put it in secret bank accounts the way his friend did, where he could have spent it whenever he felt like it. Instead he bought the ring—something he could hide easily while he thought over what to do next. And then he was killed in that accident before he had a chance to return the money.” She took a deep breath. “I think he came back in my dreams because he wanted to make things right. He wanted us—you—to-help him.”

  Caleb’s silence continued until Meg thought she’d burst. They reached the corner and stood for a moment just outside the circle of light cast by the street lamp in the middle of the intersection. Impulsively, Meg darted to the center of the circle and posed on her toes, arms curved above her head.

  “And now we have Meg Korshak of the United States,” she intoned, “Olympic gold medal winner, in her famous ice-skating routine.…” She began swooping and gliding around in the light, leaping wildly, twirling, and pausing occasionally to bow in Caleb’s direction. At last, following a particularly frenzied jump, she heard him chuckle.

  “You’re a strange kid,” he said. “Really strange.”

  Meg “skated” back to his side and, after a final breathless bow, examined him closely. The tight, frozen look was gone.

  “Well, what do you think?” she demanded.

  “I just told you. You’re one very weird kid.”

  “I mean about the dreams—and about why your father showed up in them.”

  His face was somber. “You could be right, I guess.
It’s as good an explanation as any other. I just wish—”

  “So do I.”

  They stood at the edge of the pool of light, looking at each other. “You know what I really wish?” Caleb asked. “I wish it didn’t matter why he came back, or whether he was guilty. I wish I could just say, ‘The important thing is, we have the ring. From now on it’s our decision—my mom’s and mine—what we do with it.’”

  “You can say that,” Meg encouraged him. “You can take the ring to the bank tomorrow, and they can get their money back. And you can stop thinking about who did what years ago. It’ll be over—sort of.”

  “Yeah, sort of.”

  Meg knew he was thinking about Les Machen and the other gossips who would be happy to be proved right.

  “The thing is,” Meg said slowly, hardly knowing how the sentence would end, “the thing is, you’re separate from your father. I know you love him and you’re disappointed and all that but”—for just a moment she felt again the unseen presence that had been beside her in the Lakes Room—“your father was then and you’re now,” she finished, surprising herself. “You really are separate, Caleb.”

  The words sounded cold in the summer night. It was a chilling thought, being separate from your parents. Meg wondered where the idea had come from; she’d never considered it before.

  “That’s true, isn’t it?” She tried to sound more certain than she was.

  “Maybe,” Caleb replied. “I have to think about it.” He sighed, and then to Meg’s astonishment he took her hand and held it tight as they started back toward Emerson Avenue. “Let’s go home. We’ve been gone so long, my mom probably thinks Steffi made a mess of every display in the museum.”

  Separate from your parents. Walking hand in hand with Caleb made the suggestion seem a little more reasonable. She could be separate from her father, who said writing was the most important thing in the world to him, and who was starting a whole new life here in Trevor. And separate from her mother, who loved Bill more than Meg (although she tried not to), and who didn’t mind using Meg to make her former husband’s life more complicated. Meg knew these things were true, and the truth hurt. Yet she loved both her parents very much.

  “I love them, but we’re separate,” she whispered, trying on the idea for size. “I’m me, no matter what they do.”

  Caleb smiled. It was a small, kind of sad smile, but a smile nevertheless. “Talking to yourself?” he teased.

  “Maybe.” Her thoughts crowded in on her—new thoughts and new feelings she’d have to get used to slowly.

  Right now she wanted to change the subject.

  “You know,” she said solemnly, “I have this problem. I can’t decide whether to try for another gold medal in ice skating or work on something new. Like downhill skipping.”

  It wasn’t very funny, but that didn’t matter. They both began to laugh, filling up the night with hoots and giggles. Then they started to skate, two Olympic ice-dancers gliding gracefully along the sidewalk together.

  Across the street, a porch light flared. “What’s going on out there?” a woman’s voice demanded.

  Caleb cleared his throat. “We’ll be okay,” he called across the darkness, “as long as we don’t hit thin ice.”

  And that started them laughing all over again.

  16

  “When you talk to the police, don’t tell them anything about, my dreams,” Meg advised. “They won’t believe you. Take my word for it.”

  “So what should I say?” Caleb looked perplexed. “If I don’t explain how we found the ring, they might think I knew it was there all the time.”

  “Tell them the same thing you told your mom last night—that you were showing me your father’s big musky, and we noticed something stuck in the mouth. It’s the truth—most of the truth, anyway.”

  They were sitting on the porch swing, waiting for Mrs. Larsen to change from her uniform to street clothes. She had, according to Caleb, stayed remarkably calm the night before, when he’d shown her what they’d discovered at the museum. She had just hugged him, and wiped her eyes a few times, and then she’d called Mr. Crayhill, one of Trevor’s three attorneys.

  After that she’d phoned the hospital to request a half day off, and at two this afternoon Mr. Crayhill was coming to pick her up, with Caleb, and take them and the ring to the police station.

  In the bright morning sunlight, Caleb seemed like a different person. In spite of the seriousness of the errand ahead, he seemed relaxed. Meg felt as if she hardly knew this almost light-hearted boy.

  “It’s a funny thing,” he mused, propping his foot against the porch railing to give the swing a mighty shove. “My mom and I didn’t talk much about it last night, but I could tell she feels the same way I do about that ring. She hates finding it, and yet she’s relieved that it’s turned up. Crazy, huh?” He sounded pleased, as if it was easier to accept his own mix of feelings if his mother shared them.

  The screen door opened, and Mrs. Larsen came out on the porch. “This shouldn’t take very long, Meg,” she said. “But if we’re not home by five, Mrs. Tate will start dinner. Maybe you can keep an eye on Steffi while she’s busy.”

  At the sound of her name, Steffi appeared in the doorway. “I don’t need anybody,” she said, glowering at Meg.

  “You do need someone, as long as you wander away from the house without permission. And as long as you break into places,” Mrs. Larsen said mildly. “Remember that.”

  Steffi made a face. “I won’t do it again.”

  “You’d better not.” Mrs. Larsen looked ready to say more, but just then a gray sedan slid to a stop in front of the house. Instead of continuing the scolding, she gave Steffi a hug and started down the steps.

  Caleb tapped Meg lightly on the wrist, then catapulted out of the swing. “Wish us luck,” he muttered and hurried after his mother.

  When they were gone, Meg patted the cushion next to her. “Come on and sit down, Steffi,” she invited. “Let’s not be mad anymore.”

  “I’m supposed to stay with Granny Tate,” Steffi replied stiffly. “Every single minute.”

  “Well, okay, then. I just wanted to say I’m sorry I yelled at you and Astrid yesterday. I did it because I like you so much and I was worried when I couldn’t find you.” And because I was scared out of my wits.

  Steffi’s pout faded. “That’s all right. I’m sorry I threw Teddy at you.” She crossed the porch and laid a small hand on Meg’s knee. “Do you know where they went?” she whispered, nodding toward the corner where Mr. Crayhill’s car had turned toward Lakeview.

  “They had an errand to do.”

  Steffi frowned. “It’s special,” she said. “Mama’s acting funny, and so is Caleb. Do you know why?”

  Meg was still searching for a safe answer when Mrs. Tate called to Steffi. The little girl hurried off, obviously not wanting to get into any more trouble. “I’ll ask Granny Tate,” she said. “She knows everything.” She darted off, leaving Meg feeling lonely and not quite forgiven.

  If only Rhoda were here, or Bill! She needed someone to talk to. Now.

  The telephone rang, and Meg dashed to answer it. Bill had said he’d call this evening, but maybe he already had some news to report.

  “Hi, kiddo. Want to go fishing?” It was Meg’s father, sounding unexpectedly jubilant.

  “Fishing?” Meg stared at the mouthpiece, wondering if she’d heard right. “Aren’t you at work?”

  “Slow day here,” her father replied. “The boss says I can take off if I want to. And I want to. I feel like celebrating.”

  “Celebrating—why?”

  “Because,” her father said triumphantly, “I decided not to wait for Bill to call. I telephoned the hospital in Milwaukee myself, thinking I could talk to a doctor or a nurse, and the next thing I knew I was speaking to Grandma.”

  “You talked to Grandma!” Meg’s heart thudded.

  “I did. And she gave me the news—straight from the patient’s mouth, you might s
ay. She has a gallbladder problem, but it isn’t critical, and they’re going to treat it with medicine and diet for a while. If she isn’t a lot better in six months, they’ll think about an operation. But she says she’s feeling good, and she’s going home tomorrow!”

  Meg felt as if a boulder had tumbled off her shoulders. “Oh, Dad, that’s terrific! She’s going to be okay!”

  “Sure, she is. So how about it?”

  “How about what?”

  “About going fishing, Meggie! Do you want to?”

  Meg glanced up and discovered Mrs. Tate and Steffi standing in the doorway, smiling broadly. Happy because she was happy.

  “I’ll be ready when you get here,” she promised. She hung up the phone and ran across the room to wrap Steffi and Granny Tate in one big hug. “My grandma’s going to be okay!” she shouted. “She’s going home tomorrow.”

  “That’s wonderful, dear.” Mrs. Tate returned the hug. “We could tell it was good news, couldn’t we, Steffi?”

  Suddenly the loneliness was gone. Hearing that Grandma Korshak was better had the same effect as turning on a light. It made the rest of the world look different.

  “I have to get my tanning lotion.” Meg started toward the stairs and then stopped. “I promised to look after Steffi later on,” she remembered. “Maybe—Steffi, do you want to go fishing with us?”

  Before Steffi could reply, Mrs. Tate broke in with unaccustomed firmness. “Not this time, Meg. It’s sweet of you to invite her, but I think your daddy wants you to himself. Steffi will stay home and help me, won’t you, dear?”

  The little girl looked rebellious, then resigned. “Okay,” she said. “I’m really a good potato peeler, but nobody ever lets me do it.”

  “I’ll let you do it.”

  “But next time I’m going fishing with Meg.”

  “Next time will be fine.” Mrs. Tate looked at Meg thoughtfully. The look seemed to mean something special, and Meg wondered what it could be. She wondered even more when Mrs. Tate came to the front door as she was leaving.