Chance of a Ghost

by E. J. Copperman

  “Alison!” he shouted. “Put on a robe or something!”

  I’d forgotten that I’d just stepped out of the shower. I grabbed the terry-cloth robe I’d had hanging on a towel rack and threw it on. “It’s okay,” I reassured my proper Canadian dead friend. “I’m dressed.” Sort of. It’s amazing how someone else’s panic can make you forget your own sometimes.

  Paul unclasped his hand from his eyes. “What were you screaming about?” he said. “You scared me half…” He did not finish the sentence.

  “That,” I told him, pointing to the mirror. The words were still clearly visible, as Paul had not opened the door to come in, so the air was not losing its humidity very quickly. He hovered over to look at it more closely.

  Then there was banging on my bedroom door. “Alison?” Nan called in quietly. “Are you all right?”

  They were going to go back to thinking I was nuts. Swell. “I’m okay, Nan,” I answered. “Sorry to scare you.”

  “Are you sure?” Morgan said, clearly after Nan had told him what she’d heard. “Can we come in and check?”

  I beg your pardon? “Come in and check?” I said more to myself than anyone else.

  “Of course,” Paul said. “You said he’s an ex-cop. He wants to come in and see that no one is holding you hostage and making you say everything’s all right.”

  That made sense. “Just a second,” I said, and stopped, once Paul had discreetly turned away, to at least throw on the pajamas I’d taken out and then got back into the robe. I walked to the bathroom door, then the bedroom door, unlatched it and let the Hendersons inside. “Sorry again. I didn’t mean to worry you.”

  “Did something frighten you?” Nan asked. “You sounded terrified.”

  Paul, looking at the note on the mirror in the bathroom and stroking his goatee, seemed mesmerized. “Who could have gotten in?” I heard him ask himself. “Or what?”

  “I found something in my bathroom that is…Well, I can’t explain it.” Maybe the time had come to tap Morgan’s police expertise. “All the doors in the house are locked.” I couldn’t let them know I was perfectly capable of imagining something flying in and leaving a message. We were just getting past the point where my guests thought I was crazy.

  Nan passed this along to Morgan, who had been cupping his ear standing behind her but clearly hadn’t caught much of what was being said. And that’s when I noticed he had only one hearing aid, in his right ear; he must have rushed to get here when Nan heard me shout. “Show me what it was you found,” he said. Cops are cops. No niceties, just let’s see the problem.

  I led them into the bathroom, and for once, thanked fate that the words had not yet vanished off the mirror, which would have once again led my guests to the conclusion that they were giving their hard-earned vacation money to a madwoman. Morgan’s eyebrows rose when he saw the message, and he examined the mirror very closely, opening the medicine cabinet door carefully with two fingers and touching as little of the surface as possible.

  “Nan,” he said, addressing his wife like he was directing another officer under his command, “go downstairs and get about a paper cup worth of ash from the fireplace. And some tape.” Without so much as a blink, she was gone and headed downstairs.

  I shot a glance at Paul, who was watching Morgan work, clearly with approval. Nan soon reappeared with one of the bathroom cups from the room she and Morgan were renting, filled about a third of the way with fireplace ash. Morgan reached out his hand and took it from her with a nod. Officer Nan was clearly acknowledged and took her place a few feet away to let the detective work.

  Morgan looked at the sink where some of my makeup supplies were laid out and picked up a cosmetics brush. He held it out so I could see it. “Can I use this?” he asked. I had no idea what he was going to do, but I nodded.

  He took the brush and very gently placed it into the cup, to get some ash in the bristles. Then he more or less painted the mirror with the ash, very lightly and just on the areas where the message had been scrawled.

  “Hmmm…” Morgan sort of growled, a low sound in the back of his throat. It was almost like humming. I didn’t dare say a word.

  “He’s looking for fingerprints,” Paul explained. I nodded just enough for him to see I’d understood. We both knew he would find none.

  Morgan repeated the procedure, smearing the fireplace ash on three separate areas of the mirror, each time looking very carefully at his work, then standing back to see it from another angle, all the while making that very low humming sound in his throat. I got caught up watching the procedure and actually forgot to be terrified for a few minutes.

  When he was finished, Morgan put down the cup and the brush, moving his pursed lips back and forth, almost literally chewing over what he’d learned, which didn’t seem to be much. “I don’t see any prints,” he said after a moment. “No need for the tape; I can’t lift anything. My best guess is that whoever did this wore gloves, but not leather ones or anything with a seam. Maybe something knitted or cloth, but I didn’t see any fibers or residue of any kind. Very careful work, probably with gloves.”

  I glanced at Paul, who was clearly thinking what I was thinking: Ghosts wouldn’t leave fingerprints.

  “Where does that leave us?” I asked Morgan.

  “Without anything I can send to any of my friends to check,” he responded. “Now. Why don’t I get my other hearing aid and we sit down with something hot to drink, and you can tell us what, exactly, is going on? Maybe I can help.”

  Filling Nan and Morgan Henderson in on the situation with Dad and Lawrence Laurentz was, to put it mildly, tricky. With no mention of ghosts, the story had holes in it through which you could drive the Starship Enterprise. But if I’d mentioned ghosts, they clearly would have been calling various emergency numbers to have me sent somewhere I couldn’t do any further damage to my impressionable daughter. So I went with the shakier no-ghost version of the scenario.

  That one consisted of my fledgling private-investigator’s license, the idea that Lawrence’s sister had contacted me through Mom, some odd messages left for me when I was sure there was no one else in the house, and myriad suspects, a lot of whom had motive and one of whom could be placed at the scene of Lawrence’s death. I said I had questions about my father’s death, too, and believed there to be a connection.

  I noticed that Morgan seemed to get happier with each minute I was explaining myself, to the point that he was almost giddy by the time he asked me to explain that last part. He didn’t actually let out a satisfied laugh when he asked it, but he was wide-eyed and engaged in a way I’d never seen before.

  His question, however, was spiked with difficulty for me. In the sans ghost version of the story, connecting the dots between Lawrence and Dad took some extra creativity. But I could rely on the one actual connection I had in real life, ghosts and all. I went back up to my bedroom and found my tote bag, where the business card Lawrence had given me after his disappearing act had drifted to the bottom, requiring a fairly serious spelunking expedition that took a few minutes after I got back downstairs with the bag.

  I handed Morgan Dad’s business card. “I found this at”—I had to decide which venue to implicate—“the Count Basie Theatre. It’s my father’s. I can’t explain how it might have gotten there.” That last part was true—I absolutely couldn’t explain it.

  Morgan took the card and examined it. Nan, watching him closely, seemed almost relieved, as if this unexpected turn in their vacation plans had brought her back the husband she remembered. Near the ceiling, Paul and Maxie were watching almost as intently; Paul seemed to be taking mental notes while Maxie, who had expressed disappointment at missing all the fun in the upstairs bathroom, was clearly hoping that something else deeply embarrassing to me might still happen and salvage her evening.

  Morgan’s bushy eyebrows were doing the merengue all over his forehead; he was clearly deep in thought. “What would a handyman’s business card be doing in a theater in Red
Bank five years after he died?” he asked, and then before anyone could answer (which admittedly would have been a while, since I had no idea), he added, “Did your father ever do any work in the Basie theater?”

  Realizing this wouldn’t do any good since I hadn’t found the card at the Basie, I said, “I’m sure he didn’t. I’d remember. Besides, Penny, the box office manager, gave me a quick tour and told me the theater had been remodeled and upgraded just in the past year or two. It would have been too late.”

  “Interesting,” Morgan said. “We have two situations that seem unrelated, but seems much too big a coincidence to be, you know, coincidental.”

  I needed to steer this back in the direction of the truth if it was going to be any help. “What do you think I should do, Morgan?”

  He still needed a little help from Nan but finally answered, “I think this woman at the theater is the one I’d like the most for the murder. But the first thing you have to do is determine that there was a murder. Can you find the officer who reported Laurentz’s death?”

  I admitted I hadn’t tried to do that yet.

  “That would be first. See if he’s on duty tomorrow. It’s Sunday, but cops don’t care,” Morgan said. His speech was faster and more to the point in this conversation than it had been in the five days he’d stayed in my house. Some men love their work; others need it. Clearly Morgan was one of the latter. “I’ll see if I can drum up some information about what a body looks like when it’s been electrocuted, and we’ll talk after you get back tomorrow.”

  “Back?” I asked. “Back from where?”

  Morgan looked at me with a combination of wonder and pity. “From the Count Basie Theatre. You need to find out from this Penny woman exactly how she explains her presence at Laurentz’s house the night he died.”

  Nineteen

  Paul Harrison is a very complicated being—he’s sensitive, but masculine. He’s funny while remaining serious. He is dead without actually being gone. But one thing he is definitely not is vindictive, so when he heard my bloodcurdling scream, he arrived in the bathroom in the blink of an eye. And then just as quickly covered his own.

  “Alison!” he shouted. “Put on a robe or something!”

  I’d forgotten that I’d just stepped out of the shower. I grabbed the terry-cloth robe I’d had hanging on a towel rack and threw it on. “It’s okay,” I reassured my proper Canadian dead friend. “I’m dressed.” Sort of. It’s amazing how someone else’s panic can make you forget your own sometimes.

  Paul unclasped his hand from his eyes. “What were you screaming about?” he said. “You scared me half…” He did not finish the sentence.

  “That,” I told him, pointing to the mirror. The words were still clearly visible, as Paul had not opened the door to come in, so the air was not losing its humidity very quickly. He hovered over to look at it more closely.

  Then there was banging on my bedroom door. “Alison?” Nan called in quietly. “Are you all right?”

  They were going to go back to thinking I was nuts. Swell. “I’m okay, Nan,” I answered. “Sorry to scare you.”

  “Are you sure?” Morgan said, clearly after Nan had told him what she’d heard. “Can we come in and check?”

  I beg your pardon? “Come in and check?” I said more to myself than anyone else.

  “Of course,” Paul said. “You said he’s an ex-cop. He wants to come in and see that no one is holding you hostage and making you say everything’s all right.”

  That made sense. “Just a second,” I said, and stopped, once Paul had discreetly turned away, to at least throw on the pajamas I’d taken out and then got back into the robe. I walked to the bathroom door, then the bedroom door, unlatched it and let the Hendersons inside. “Sorry again. I didn’t mean to worry you.”

  “Did something frighten you?” Nan asked. “You sounded terrified.”

  Paul, looking at the note on the mirror in the bathroom and stroking his goatee, seemed mesmerized. “Who could have gotten in?” I heard him ask himself. “Or what?”

  “I found something in my bathroom that is…Well, I can’t explain it.” Maybe the time had come to tap Morgan’s police expertise. “All the doors in the house are locked.” I couldn’t let them know I was perfectly capable of imagining something flying in and leaving a message. We were just getting past the point where my guests thought I was crazy.

  Nan passed this along to Morgan, who had been cupping his ear standing behind her but clearly hadn’t caught much of what was being said. And that’s when I noticed he had only one hearing aid, in his right ear; he must have rushed to get here when Nan heard me shout. “Show me what it was you found,” he said. Cops are cops. No niceties, just let’s see the problem.

  I led them into the bathroom, and for once, thanked fate that the words had not yet vanished off the mirror, which would have once again led my guests to the conclusion that they were giving their hard-earned vacation money to a madwoman. Morgan’s eyebrows rose when he saw the message, and he examined the mirror very closely, opening the medicine cabinet door carefully with two fingers and touching as little of the surface as possible.

  “Nan,” he said, addressing his wife like he was directing another officer under his command, “go downstairs and get about a paper cup worth of ash from the fireplace. And some tape.” Without so much as a blink, she was gone and headed downstairs.

  I shot a glance at Paul, who was watching Morgan work, clearly with approval. Nan soon reappeared with one of the bathroom cups from the room she and Morgan were renting, filled about a third of the way with fireplace ash. Morgan reached out his hand and took it from her with a nod. Officer Nan was clearly acknowledged and took her place a few feet away to let the detective work.

  Morgan looked at the sink where some of my makeup supplies were laid out and picked up a cosmetics brush. He held it out so I could see it. “Can I use this?” he asked. I had no idea what he was going to do, but I nodded.

  He took the brush and very gently placed it into the cup, to get some ash in the bristles. Then he more or less painted the mirror with the ash, very lightly and just on the areas where the message had been scrawled.

  “Hmmm…” Morgan sort of growled, a low sound in the back of his throat. It was almost like humming. I didn’t dare say a word.

  “He’s looking for fingerprints,” Paul explained. I nodded just enough for him to see I’d understood. We both knew he would find none.

  Morgan repeated the procedure, smearing the fireplace ash on three separate areas of the mirror, each time looking very carefully at his work, then standing back to see it from another angle, all the while making that very low humming sound in his throat. I got caught up watching the procedure and actually forgot to be terrified for a few minutes.

  When he was finished, Morgan put down the cup and the brush, moving his pursed lips back and forth, almost literally chewing over what he’d learned, which didn’t seem to be much. “I don’t see any prints,” he said after a moment. “No need for the tape; I can’t lift anything. My best guess is that whoever did this wore gloves, but not leather ones or anything with a seam. Maybe something knitted or cloth, but I didn’t see any fibers or residue of any kind. Very careful work, probably with gloves.”

  I glanced at Paul, who was clearly thinking what I was thinking: Ghosts wouldn’t leave fingerprints.

  “Where does that leave us?” I asked Morgan.

  “Without anything I can send to any of my friends to check,” he responded. “Now. Why don’t I get my other hearing aid and we sit down with something hot to drink, and you can tell us what, exactly, is going on? Maybe I can help.”

  Filling Nan and Morgan Henderson in on the situation with Dad and Lawrence Laurentz was, to put it mildly, tricky. With no mention of ghosts, the story had holes in it through which you could drive the Starship Enterprise. But if I’d mentioned ghosts, they clearly would have been calling various emergency numbers to have me sent somewhere I couldn’t do any furth
er damage to my impressionable daughter. So I went with the shakier no-ghost version of the scenario.

  That one consisted of my fledgling private-investigator’s license, the idea that Lawrence’s sister had contacted me through Mom, some odd messages left for me when I was sure there was no one else in the house, and myriad suspects, a lot of whom had motive and one of whom could be placed at the scene of Lawrence’s death. I said I had questions about my father’s death, too, and believed there to be a connection.

  I noticed that Morgan seemed to get happier with each minute I was explaining myself, to the point that he was almost giddy by the time he asked me to explain that last part. He didn’t actually let out a satisfied laugh when he asked it, but he was wide-eyed and engaged in a way I’d never seen before.

  His question, however, was spiked with difficulty for me. In the sans ghost version of the story, connecting the dots between Lawrence and Dad took some extra creativity. But I could rely on the one actual connection I had in real life, ghosts and all. I went back up to my bedroom and found my tote bag, where the business card Lawrence had given me after his disappearing act had drifted to the bottom, requiring a fairly serious spelunking expedition that took a few minutes after I got back downstairs with the bag.

  I handed Morgan Dad’s business card. “I found this at”—I had to decide which venue to implicate—“the Count Basie Theatre. It’s my father’s. I can’t explain how it might have gotten there.” That last part was true—I absolutely couldn’t explain it.

  Morgan took the card and examined it. Nan, watching him closely, seemed almost relieved, as if this unexpected turn in their vacation plans had brought her back the husband she remembered. Near the ceiling, Paul and Maxie were watching almost as intently; Paul seemed to be taking mental notes while Maxie, who had expressed disappointment at missing all the fun in the upstairs bathroom, was clearly hoping that something else deeply embarrassing to me might still happen and salvage her evening.