Ghost in the Wind

by E. J. Copperman

  I was proud of the way that room had turned out and was anxious to see it in full bloom. Dad was in there now, checking over every finishing nail and every hidden wire in the electronic connections. The man was a perfectionist when he was alive and now he literally had all the time he’d ever need to make sure things were just so.

  With only a couple of hours before the movie showing, I went back out for some extra ice and found the ghost with the wagon standing directly outside my house. “Have you found Lester?” she asked. It was like her mantra or something.

  “Not yet, but I haven’t given up,” I said. The guy across the street walking to his car waved, perhaps thinking I was talking to him.

  “Don’t,” the ghost said, and started pulling the wagon away. I don’t know why she’d reached me so deeply, given her sullen attitude, but every time she showed up I really wanted to find Lester. Instead, I went and found six more bags of ice at the Rite Aid.

  When I got back, Paul was anxious to discuss the case.

  “He hasn’t been in touch with his mother in two years?” Paul said after listening to Jeremy Bensinger say precisely that on my voice recorder. The goatee stroking had made a comeback. “That seems odd. And it was because they had a disagreement over his career?”

  “You heard it. Why are you asking me what he said?”

  “Alison,” my mother said. She has an odd concept of when I’m being rude.

  Paul was pacing, something he likes to do when he’s thinking. It doesn’t even rate a notice anymore that he’s generally doing so in midair. I’m so jaded.

  Melissa, whose room we were using for this impromptu meeting, was lying on her bed above the blanket. “He’s mulling,” she told me.

  “I am reviewing the information to better organize it,” Paul said, not looking at either of us. Maxie, who was suspended from the rafters like a bat (strictly for her own amusement), sniffed a little.

  “It’s a way to stall because he doesn’t have any ideas,” she said.

  “Maxine,” my mother said. She has an equal opportunity stance on rudeness.

  “Where’s Everett?” I asked Maxie. “You’re so much more pleasant when he’s around.” Mom didn’t say anything but I knew what she was thinking.

  “He’s guarding the Fuel Pit. He’ll be here for the movie tonight.” Everett is very protective of the local gas station and his military training is perhaps a bit more effective than even the Army might have desired it to be. He’s a lovely man, but a little gung ho.

  “The interesting thing is the album of music,” Paul mused. “If Vanessa really was gaining interest in the industry, there could be a motive there.”

  “Look,” I said. “There isn’t much to plan for the showing tonight, but I want it to be special, so I’m going to be taking a break from any more investigating today. You guys figure out all you need to figure out but I’ll be downstairs obsessing over details with Dad, okay?”

  “What’s the guest list for tonight?” Everyone turned to look toward the door, where floating there was Vance McTiernan. I wasn’t looking at Paul but I was willing to bet he was scowling.

  “What are you doing up?” I asked Vance. “It’s isn’t even one in the afternoon yet.”

  “I wanted to be sure to talk to you before Morrie Chrichton returned to sully my name some more,” Vance responded. “That man filled you with lies about me and I could see the whole room start to doubt my good intentions.”

  “Your good intentions?” Paul asked. Vance was definitely scowling when Paul spoke. “Your intentions seem to change from minute to minute. What are your intentions today?”

  Vance gave a smile I recognized from all the publicity photos for the Jingles. It was warm, trustworthy, understanding . . . and, I could now tell, completely insincere. He didn’t like Paul and he wasn’t especially good at hiding it.

  “My intentions are the same as they’ve always been,” he answered. “I want to find the person who did in my little girl and see to it that justice is done. Is that so hard to understand?”

  This was becoming very investigation-y, and that was the very thing I’d just announced I would not be doing today. “Yesterday you said you didn’t want me to look into Vanessa’s death anymore,” I reminded Vance, for different reasons than I might have had the day before. Now I wanted him to tell me to stop, just so I could do so for today. By tomorrow, he’d have changed his mind and I’d do what I planned to do anyway.

  “That was a mistake,” Vance said, and I could see my relaxing day of worrying about the movie room vanish before my eyes, which was more than I could say for Vance. “I need to see this thing through for my little girl.” There was a slight catch in his voice as he said that last part, which I completely would have bought only two days ago. Now it was an irritant. Like the pollen making my eyes water, even with the antihistamine I’d finally bought on the way home. It was worse up here than it had been downstairs.

  “I talked to Vanessa’s brother, Jeremy,” I told him. “He said you were almost never in touch with Vanessa at all.”

  Vance’s face changed expression three times in less than a second. Surprise to anger and then concern. The last one seemed the least believable.

  “I wouldn’t put much stock in what that little git says,” Vance told me. “He’s trouble, that one. Poisoned my relationship with my little Vanessa. Told her I wasn’t a loving dad, but it wasn’t true, love, none of it. He had an agenda and that was making my daughter see him as her whole family.”

  Paul coughed, which was clearly an attention-getting device, since he had stopped using his bronchial system a few years earlier. “What possible reason could Jeremy Bensinger have to alienate you from your daughter?” he asked Vance.

  Vance’s hands went to his hips in a gesture of exasperation. “Why, because he wasn’t my son! Couldn’t let Vanessa be different from him, so he tried to erase me, that’s what it was. The less there was of me, the more he had to bond with her. It was a little unnatural, if you’re asking me.”

  Before I could answer that I was not, in fact, asking him, Mom stepped in, no doubt aware that I was thinking of saying something she would consider rude. “Mr. McTiernan,” she said, “this isn’t about whether you were a good father. I’m sure you would have liked to have been closer to your daughter when you were alive. This is about your behavior for the past couple of days. You’ve been telling my daughter that you wanted her to find out what happened to Vanessa, and then you said you were over it and didn’t want the investigation to go on. Now you’re back here saying it’s important she do some more asking around. Can you tell us why you’ve changed your mind so many times?”

  That’s Mom. She’ll find a way to make everything positive even when she knows for a fact that it’s not. And she’ll do it in a way that you won’t see coming, so you feel good about answering her.

  And it worked again; Vance smiled warmly at Mom, this time genuinely, from what I could tell. “I’ve been conflicted,” he said to Mom. “At first I was just angry. I knew that this someone killed my girl, and I wanted to do them harm, I’ll admit it. But then I thought Vanessa wouldn’t want that. She wouldn’t want someone to suffer for her. So I told Alison here to stop. But Morrie Chrichton being here reminds me of the responsibility to my daughter I never accepted, and I’m ashamed. I know I should have explained better, but I’m not used to trusting people.”

  “You should trust Alison,” Mom said. “She’ll always tell you the truth.”

  Maxie stifled a laugh. Maxie is not the person you want when tact is called for. In case you were wondering.

  “I don’t understand,” Melissa piped up. She had her smart girl face on and was no doubt about to bring up a point none of us had yet considered. “What does Mr. Chrichton have to do with your daughter dying? I thought he was angry at you about who wrote the songs and things.”

  It was a good q
uestion. That had gone by a little too fast for me to notice.

  This time Vance’s expression only changed once. His face hardened and his eyes showed an old, deep anger. But he didn’t address Melissa; he looked at me.

  “I don’t know if I should get into this right now,” he said, his eyes darting back and forth toward Melissa and then to me.

  “He means it’s something that’s too adult for me,” my daughter said with no particular inflection. Just statement of fact, as if she were translating from another language. But she just wanted him to know he wasn’t fooling anybody.

  “How adult?” I asked Vance. I noticed Maxie leaning down a little more, anxious not to miss anything especially juicy. “Melissa’s input is usually pretty valuable if it’s not something especially outrageous.”

  Vance laughed lightly. “Well, I’m clearly up against someone much smarter than I am,” he said, nodding to Liss. “Very well, then, let me see if I can say this delicately. The real reason the Jingles broke up was that Morrie Chrichton and I got into a pretty serious row.”

  “About the authorship of your songs?” Paul asked.

  Vance didn’t look at him; he held my gaze. “No. Over Vanessa.” He glanced at Melissa. “See?”

  According to Vance’s somewhat carefully worded explanation, he and Morrie Chrichton had been bandmates and friends for years without the least bit of friction (which, having met both men, I found a little hard to believe). Then one summer Vance convinced Claudia Rabinowitz to allow Vanessa to go on tour with the band so he could better get to know his daughter, who was in college at the time and showing an interest in music. It had taken a good deal of cajoling, but Claudia had finally given her consent, and Vanessa joined the Jingles in London after school had let out for a four-week sojourn through Europe with her dad, the rock star.

  And his band. And that was the problem.

  Vance said Morrie had shown “an unhealthy interest” in Vanessa from the start and that he and Morrie had started to argue about it even before the tour had left England. Vanessa, whom Vance described as “star struck and young, a disease cured by time but not soon enough,” had shown some attraction to Morrie, who was twenty-five years her senior and was, after all, “as old as her dad, yeah?”

  Vance had shown what he considered to be reasonable concern and Morrie had laughed in his face, he said. He’d continued flirting with Vance’s daughter until they reached Hamburg, where Morrie suddenly told Vanessa that he was no longer interested.

  At that point, Vance said, the two men had confronted each other in a hotel room because “that’s where rock bands go to bust stuff up.” Vance, relieved that his daughter was no longer involved with his bandmate, was nonetheless incensed with the way Morrie had broken it off with Vanessa, who had immediately flown home. Claudia, Vance said, had then reported to him that their daughter had not left her bedroom for four days.

  “We came to blows in Hamburg,” Vance said. “Actually beating on each other. That’s when Morrie started taking credit for everything the band had ever done. Every shake of the maracas had been his idea all of a sudden. And he wanted money for it. There. On the spot. After he’d booted my daughter and broken her heart. I went for him and he didn’t run away. We both ended up in the hospital. I don’t know who ended up paying for the hotel room. The band was over for all intents and purposes then, and I never saw Morrie alive again. My luck he finds me here in New Jersey when we’re both dead.”

  I looked over at Paul, hoping for some guidance in how to respond. I got nothing. He was in mid goatee stroke and frozen in that position (albeit tilted a little to the left). Maxie seemed less struck by the moment, doing a few slow somersaults through the air.

  My mother instinctively tried to pat Vance on the arm, and her hand went straight through.

  Melissa looked thoughtful.

  “I’m sorry, Vance,” I said.

  He looked up from his thoughts, seemingly startled, but gave me a smile. “Water under the bridge, love. We’re all gone now. But now you know why I’m especially keen on finding out what happened to my Vanessa if Morrie’s around, eh?”

  It was Liss who caught on first. “You think Mr. Chrichton killed Vanessa?” she asked.

  “No,” Vance said. “He’s crazy, but he’s not that crazy. He’s the one who started her on a path all those years ago. Maybe she really did end up doing herself in, and it started with Morrie.”

  Paul started stroking his goatee again.

  Sixteen

  “It’s perfect,” Dad told me.

  I had a little trouble hearing him, but once he repeated it, I smiled broadly. Dad gestured around the movie room, which was filled close to capacity. And its capacity was not small.

  Running the length of the house of the north side, the movie room was now the center of activity in the guesthouse, with our screening of Ghost only a few minutes away. It was a warm night, and the bodies gathered in the room were making it warmer.

  Those were just the living ones, too.

  Besides me, my mother and Melissa (the alliteration trio), my best friends, Jeannie and Tony, had shown up early for pizza with their son Oliver, who was now a full-fledged toddler based on his newfound ability to walk around and cause trouble. Ollie was a little overwhelmed with all the faces to look at right now.

  Jeannie, who is just a tad overprotective of her son, had considered leaving Oliver with his babysitter for the evening because she thought the movie “might be too violent for his sensibility.” I’d be amazed if he even understood that there were people on the screen, but Jeannie had finally relented when her babysitter had mentioned tickets to see a Broadway show on Sunday with her boyfriend and had politely declined.

  Tony had also given the seal of approval to the movie room. He’s a professional contractor, and next to Dad, my most trusted home-improvement guru, so that meant quite a bit to me.

  Oliver had not commented on the room, but was probably distracted by Melissa playing with his toes for a good long while, which he found hilarious.

  Josh had come by himself a couple hours before showtime, and A.J. and Liz arrived a while later. I was warming to A.J., and as for Liz . . . I was warming to A.J.

  All six of my current guests were in attendance, and I’d given them the best seats in the house, right up front and center, something Liz had commented on. She’d tried to pretend she was kidding, but . . . I was warming to A.J.

  Actually, only five of my guests had seats front and center. Maureen Beckman had insisted on taking a back-row chair because she had to leave her walker in the aisle and didn’t want to be a bother to anyone. I’d told her I would be happy to store it for her while the movie was showing, but Maureen planted herself in the back row as soon as she entered the room and refused the help.

  Among the less-living crowd, of course Paul and Maxie were in attendance, Maxie wearing her best “I’ll Bet You Do” T-shirt, Paul in his traditional jeans and dark shirt, this time paired with a somewhat worn sports jacket. Everett had shown up in fatigues because Maxie had told him it was a “casual premiere.” Which it was, particularly if few of the guests could see what you were wearing anyway.

  Vance was not in the room, yet, and I wasn’t sure if he’d be coming. I had told him he was welcome but he wouldn’t be asked to perform or make his presence known at all if he didn’t want to.

  He’d been philosophical this afternoon after telling us the story of his and Morrie’s falling out. The ways of two old rockers, he’d said. Yeah, it was possible his bandmate had done him some damage and possibly ruined his daughter’s life decades before, but what could be done about it at this late date, with all three of them dead? He’d hit all the right notes and said all the right words.

  I hadn’t believed a word of it.

  Paul had agreed that we needed to redouble our efforts to find Claudia Rabinowitz, and I agreed but had no immedia
te suggestions other than asking McElone for help. I’d sighed and said I’d do so tomorrow.

  “I’m not so sure about perfect,” I told Dad now, “but I am pretty proud of the way it turned out.”

  “Don’t sell yourself short,” he said. “I’ve looked at every inch of the room and I didn’t see anything wrong.”

  He was right that it looked impressive. The overhead lighting was not too bright, never in your face, but warm and inviting. The re-stained paneling looked like real wood with a light grain, not at all artificial. The chairs were covered in nappy blue fabric, which didn’t match but complemented the area rug. (I’d added some folding chairs for the overflow crowd tonight.) And the big-screen TV at the far end was about to make everyone’s eyes pop.

  Although not as much as they would if Lawrence of Arabia were showing. Just sayin’.

  “I love you,” I said to Dad. Josh looked over, saw I was talking to no one from his perspective and smiled. Then he went back to talking to A.J. and Liz.

  Jeannie walked over smiling, for once without her son, whose diaper was being changed by his father in the downstairs bathroom at the moment. “You sure know how to draw a crowd,” she said.

  “Are you kidding? I practically had to bribe a couple of the guests to stay in tonight, but the free pizza helped.”

  “You sell yourself short,” Jeannie said. Her happy face was hiding something.

  “Are you having another baby?” I asked.

  “What? Where’d that come from?” But Jeannie would not look me in the eye (this was becoming endemic), and she had gone on a romantic cruise with her husband recently. I know, because I took care of Oliver while they were away.

  “You are,” I said accusingly.

  Her voice dropped an octave. “Nobody knows yet. Our parents don’t know yet. Tony doesn’t even know yet.” My best friend and my contractor mentor have an interesting marriage. It’s based on the kind of trust where you can trust one isn’t telling the other something at any given moment.