Ghost in the Wind

by E. J. Copperman

  I leaned back in my chair and Josh’s arm found its way around my shoulders. “It’s incredibly late and I passed ‘tired’ about an hour-and-a-half ago,” I said. “I need to go to sleep.”

  Josh, clearly thinking I was talking to him, nodded. “Me too. I have to open the store in about four hours.”

  “I wasn’t trying to get you to leave,” I said. “I still have more apologizing to do.”

  “Tomorrow. If you tried now it might kill me.” He stood up and so did I. He kissed me quite pleasantly, right there with the ghosts looking on, and left, promising to call the next day.

  Dad was right. Josh was a keeper.

  Once I was the only living person in the room, I looked over at the two ghosts. Paul was standing, hand on his chin but not stroking. Maybe he was tired, too. Ghosts don’t sleep, but that doesn’t mean they don’t get at least mentally worn out.

  He was watching Vance, who looked the exact opposite—he seemed like he was on amphetamines. He was moving around the room, not exactly floating but propelling himself in unpredictable patterns around the room, just navigating the space without a conscious effort. Or maybe this was what he was like when he was tired.

  Except Vance was a former rock star. This was the shank of the evening to him.

  “Fellas,” I said, “if you two want to rehash the whole subject some more, feel free, but I have to get at least twenty minutes of sleep a night or I’m completely useless the next day.”

  “Is that it?” Vance said, staccato delivery and with an expression that cried out for sweat. “You’re just going to sleep when I told you a murderer is here under your roof?”

  It wouldn’t be the first time, but I didn’t feel like telling him that. “I’ll deal with it in the morning.” I turned to head for the hallway, the first move to the staircase. My bed was getting closer.

  “I think Claudia killed Vanessa, too,” he called out.

  “Good night, Vance,” I said back.

  I don’t remember if I even brushed my teeth; I was in bed within seconds. And then at about two in the morning, I was awakened by what I would swear was the sound of a dog howling, briefly, somewhere nearby. Just the sound of it made me sneeze.

  I began to form a theory.

  * * *

  The next morning, I got up to a house with two fewer guests than the night before, one hallway completely off-limits until such time as I could get professional cleaners into it and a somewhat pessimistic view of life.

  Ignoring the more complicated concerns, I spent the first twenty minutes looking online for an urn cart. I found one after some doing but decided first to see if the independent furniture store in town, Sit On It, might have something I could use. The itch in my throat and my eyes was a reminder that antihistamines were also in order. I’d given up wondering what I could possibly be reacting to at this time of year and simply decided I must’ve developed an allergy because I was older than I used to be.

  Berthe Englund was already up when I got downstairs, which was something of a surprise. I apologized to her for sleeping in—it was six a.m., after all—but Berthe waved a hand and said I shouldn’t feel guilty.

  “After last night, I couldn’t sleep very well,” she said. “I figured I’d go out and try to catch some waves early, work out the cobwebs a little.”

  “I feel awful that the special night I’d planned for all of you turned out to be such a terrible experience,” I said.

  She smiled a little crookedly. “It’s okay,” she said. “I’ve already seen Ghost.”

  “Anything I can do for you today?”

  Berthe thought a moment. “Treat yourself well,” she said. Without another word or look, she turned and walked to the glass doors, no doubt about to pick up her rented surfboard from the shed in back, where I’d told her she could store it.

  That was it. She was too nice to be Claudia Rabinowitz and a murderer. That left me with Tessa, Jesse, Maureen and the Levines (because let’s face it, they had hightailed it out of here awfully fast last night) as candidates. Assuming Vance was correct and not lying.

  Two very large assumptions.

  It would be another four hours before the morning spook show, if we decided to go ahead with one. I hadn’t gotten a strong read on the remaining guests the night before. If they were too upset after what had happened—and who could blame them?—I might curtail some of the more ghost-oriented events for the next two days.

  The only thing to do was ask the guests when they came down for the morning. If the consensus was that they wanted a hiatus, we’d stop, but if they preferred to keep the spook shows going, we’d do that.

  Paul rose up through the floor as I was moving the coffee urn, sans cart, and grunting like an Olympic weightlifter during the clean and jerk. “Why don’t you just let the guests into the kitchen for coffee in the morning?” he asked.

  “Shut up.”

  I finished with my Andre the Giant impression and saw Paul, tea urn in his arms, moving into the den and setting it on the side table next to the coffee. “Well, thank you,” I said. “Where have you been all my life?”

  He looked stymied. “I believe you know where I’ve been,” he said.

  Go teach Jersey sarcasm to a British Canadian ghost.

  “So what do you think?” I asked Paul when my breath was coming in regular intervals again. “Should we believe Vance this time?”

  Paul tilted his head. “It’s a difficult question. He’s been inconsistent with his story for the few days we’ve known him, but he did seem particularly sincere after Bill was killed. I have been thinking about this all night, and there is one issue I have been unable to reconcile.”

  We were back in the kitchen, where I was making myself a toasted bagel, having defrosted one in the microwave and cut it in half. It pays to plan ahead. “Just one?” I asked.

  Paul chose to be focused. “What possible motivation would Vance have to claim his ex-lover Claudia Rabinowitz was here in the house, posing as one of your guests?”

  The bagel had not yet popped—I like them nicely toasted if they’re not fresh that day—so all I had to do for the moment was sit and think about what Paul had said. “You make a good point,” I said. “But I can throw one back at you.”

  He cocked an eyebrow. “Really.”

  “Yeah.” The toaster popped, so I got up and picked a plate off a shelf in the cabinet above the toaster. “Why would Claudia be here at the guesthouse? She would have had to book the trip well in advance, and I had never even heard of Bill Mastrovy before Friday night, so there was no reason to think she could find Bill here if her goal was to knife him.”

  Paul grinned, which I did not expect. “You know, you really are progressing at this,” he said. “You wouldn’t have thought of that a year ago.”

  “Don’t butter me up. You’re only saying that because I was mad at you a couple of days ago.”

  “No, I mean it. I think you’re doing quite well. I hadn’t considered that position. Claudia, assuming she was the one who killed Bill, would had to have presumably lured him here somehow for the showing of Ghost last night. If she’d booked her trip three months ago, how would she have known such an event would take place? Why would she choose to murder him here? Why not go to where he was living and do him in at home?”

  “Great. So we have tons of questions. How do we answer them?”

  Paul pursed his lips. “The first thing to do would be to try and reconnect with Jeremy Bensinger,” he said. “He might have some idea about his mother’s whereabouts.”

  “He said he didn’t. He said that once they had their fight, she pretty much disowned him.” Having now spread the bagel with cream cheese (something not especially easy to do with a very hot bagel), I sat down to eat.

  “Well, that might also mean he has no strong reason to protect her. Tell him you have some reason to belie
ve she might have been involved with the murder here last night. See if that changes his position.”

  “After I finish this,” I said, chewing vigorously.

  “There are times I don’t mind not being able to eat anymore,” he said.

  “What do I do if Jeremy doesn’t immediately cave in and hand over a print out of his mother’s address, phone number and Social Security information?” I used a napkin to wipe a little cream cheese off the corner of my mouth. Daintily, of course.

  “I’d say get in touch with Sammi Fine,” Paul said. “According to the voice recording you gave me of your interview with Bill Mastrovy, Sammi didn’t know he was still involved with Vanessa McTiernan at the time Vanessa died. But if she found out, she might have been angry enough to do something about it.”

  The second half of the bagel was calling to me, and I was responding. “How come I always get the good jobs?” I asked.

  “Because you’re the one who’s still breathing,” Paul reminded me so drily I think some dust might have escaped from his mouth.

  “For the time being.”

  “I’m so sorry. Is there something I can be doing for you?” He thought he was kidding.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Get Maxie and her dancing keyboard fingers on the case of Claudia Rabinowitz, and while we’re at it, find out who else was in the room when Vanessa died. And you can do one other thing for me.”

  “What’s that?” Paul asked.

  “Get on the Ghosternet and see if you can find a short blond guy named Lester from Topeka, Kansas.”

  Nineteen

  Finding Sammi Fine was not hard, but strange nonetheless. The only Samantha T. Fine I’d seen listed in the tristate area was at an investment firm called Plantiere and Associates in Red Bank, which seemed unlikely (incredibly unlikely, to be honest), but it was all I had to go on. So I went on it.

  If you’re wondering why I didn’t start with a follow-up interview of Jeremy Bensinger instead of searching for Sammi, it was because Jeremy hadn’t responded to my text messages or voice mail, and wasn’t home at his apartment when I’d dropped by this morning. Jeremy, after having met me once, was apparently ducking any further contact. Imagine such a thing. I decided I’d have to drop by his place of business later.

  There’d been a general consensus from the guests that we could continue the spook shows in the afternoon—“especially if there’ll be that wonderful music,” as Tessa had suggested—but this morning had fallen into the too-soon category. I’d agreed with that sentiment, took Melissa to school (despite her protests that having a murder in the house exempted her for the day) and headed out to invade Samantha T. Fine’s professional venue.

  I drove to Red Bank and sat in my Volvo across the street from the investment firm’s offices, pondering possible courses of action. Stomping into the investment firm and asking for Sammi Fine seemed somehow unwise, like I’d be doing damage to this poor woman’s reputation just by showing up. The PI license in my wallet probably wouldn’t do her a ton of good, either.

  The idea of this Samantha Fine and the one I’d seen drumming for Once Again two nights before being the same person was laughable. Plantiere’s website had not offered a photograph of Ms. Fine, so I couldn’t be sure she wasn’t Once Again’s drummer, but I just had a hard time imagining that people would actually hand over their savings for investment to a woman who had dated Bill Mastrovy and played at a club called the Last Resort. Or if they did, I wanted to call each one and warn them personally. The woman behind the drum kit had three nose rings, tattoos on both upper arms, a very healthy streak of orange in her hair and a very serious chewing gum habit. I worried about gum being a gateway drug to, I don’t know, Twizzlers or something. Stay in school, kids.

  It was only nine thirty in the morning, so waiting out here in the hopes that Samantha would wander out for her lunch break was a bad plan. Not to mention that if she wasn’t the Sammi Fine I’d seen, I’d be sitting out there all day waiting and never actually know whether I’d come to the right place or not.

  So, following Paul’s sage investigator’s advice, I was about to be sneaky. Paul called it “creative,” but we both knew what that meant.

  I’d forgone my usual sort of outfit—fine for an innkeeper, especially one often working on home repairs—and worn something more businesslike, with a skirt and everything.

  I figured having dressed up, I might as well show myself off, so I got out of the car, smoothed myself out, pretended my hair looked the way I wanted it to and crossed the street to the three-story office building.

  It wasn’t quite as fancy or off-putting as I’d expected. Not every place is a Wall Street firm, and the sad fact was that I’d never had enough money to consider investing except for the time I was foolish enough to sink every last dime I had into a charming but somewhat rickety Victorian on Seafront Avenue. So perhaps I wasn’t the savvy investor this sort of place usually attracted.

  A very pleasant-looking receptionist inquired if she could help me, which was something I was wondering myself. I asked if I could see Ms. Fine and she asked if I had an appointment.

  Of course, I did not. And I couldn’t rely on the old movie trick of looking at the handwritten list of appointments in front of her and claiming to be one of those people because this was the twenty-first century and computers had been invented in the interim. The one on the receptionist’s desk had a screen that faced away from me.

  “I’m afraid I don’t have an appointment,” I said. “But I have one quick question that will only take a minute of her time.”

  The difference between, say, a lawyer’s office and an investment firm, I knew (from being married to The Swine, who was in that business), was that the investment firm doesn’t gain anything from turning a potential client away. The law firm might not want to deal with your kind of case and probably deals with a lot of people who are, how shall I put this delicately, crazy. Walk-ins are not encouraged.

  An investment firm, on the other hand, is happy when someone they don’t actually seek out comes to talk business. Since so much of the business is generated by word-of-mouth, getting a “free” client is a boon. So I was betting that Samantha T. Fine, whoever she was, would be glad to talk to a wayward investor for a few minutes.

  “I’m afraid she doesn’t have anything available today,” the receptionist said.

  Another in a long list of ways my ex-husband has failed me. I should have known.

  “Not even for a minute?” I pleaded.

  “I’m sorry.”

  It was time to play hardball. “Could you please just mention the name William Mastrovy?”

  The pleasant-looking receptionist looked up from her screen. Her face didn’t read worried or astonished, just confused. “I’m sorry?” It was her favorite phrase because it was so versatile.

  “William Mastrovy.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Is that you?”

  “No. Please just call her extension and say someone is here about William Mastrovy. If she doesn’t want to see me, I’ll leave. How’s that?”

  Probably more out of curiosity than anything, the receptionist punched a button on the console in front of her. She spoke into the earpiece she was wearing in a professional, unobtrusive tone. “Ms. Fine? There’s a woman here to see you. No, I have your schedule. She said to mention the name William Mastrovy.” Impressive that she didn’t have to ask me for the name again. This girl was earning her money.

  She listened for a moment, betraying nothing with her expression. Then she said, “I will. Thank you.” And she punched the button on her console again. She immediately pulled a pad out from under her desk. “Name, please?” she asked.

  Ms. Fine’s office, I was told, was one floor up and three doors down on the left. So I followed the directions and ended up in front of a plain wooden door, not especially fancy (in keeping with the rest of the décor in the
office), but bearing the nameplate “Samantha T. Fine.” I knocked.

  “Come in.”

  Sure enough, seated behind the standard-issue desk was the drummer from Once Again. It took me a moment to recognize her because she was wearing a very sensible power suit (I thought those had gone out of style, but maybe they were making a comeback), her hair up in a bun. The tattoos were covered with a white blouse and a gray jacket was draped over the back of her chair. The nose rings were nowhere to be seen.

  “You,” she said.

  “I could say the same.” I didn’t wait to be asked; I just sat down in front of her desk. Luckily, there was a chair there for just that purpose. “I figured I had the wrong Samantha T. Fine.”

  “Hey. It’s the day job. I have to make a living until the music starts to pay off.”

  “I guess so.” Every bar-band member has a dream. One in a half million realizes it.

  “How did you find me?”

  I produced the PI license from my tote bag and said, “I’m looking into Bill’s murder.” Technically that didn’t answer her question, but I didn’t see how that was a big deal at this point.

  But Samantha’s (she just didn’t look like Sammi now) eyes widened to maximum density and she gasped. “Bill was murdered?”

  “Oh, come on. The cops must have called you by now. I gave them your name when they questioned me.”

  She shook her head. “I swear. This is the first I’m hearing about it. I was so mad at him, I haven’t spoken to him since that night at the Last Resort.” Her eyes were tearing up, and unless she was a graduate of the Actor’s Studio, the tears were real. “What happened?”

  I told her about the previous night at the guesthouse and how it had ended, permanently, for Bill. Samantha sat back deeper and deeper into her leather chair until her head seemed almost encased, but she kept shaking it back and forth.

  “Why?” she finally said. “Why?”