Chance of a Ghost

by E. J. Copperman

  It was, I’ll admit, a little unnerving. I found myself tapping my right foot in what appeared to be impatience but was really anxiety.

  Roberta, the middle-aged woman standing behind the counter and in front of the workstations, who was indeed alive, misread my unease. “It’s been a busy morning,” she said as an excuse even before I asked for anything.

  I smiled to show camaraderie. “I’m sure,” I said. “I’m wondering if you can help me find the records from a few years ago. My father passed away here, and I need to see some of the paperwork.”

  Without changing facial expression, she said, “I’m sorry for your loss.” It was probably something she would say if the phone rang at three in the morning. “What do you need?”

  “I’d like to see the records of his stay here and the death certificate,” I answered. I gave her the date Dad died, and his name. “Would you still have those?”

  “Oh, we have them, all right,” Roberta said. “But I’d have to pull them up and make copies. And you’ll have to pay for the copies, a dollar a page.” That seemed pretty pricey for something run off on an office copier, but the hospital, as they often do, had me over a barrel.

  “Not a problem,” I said. “How long will it take?”

  “Give me a half hour,” Roberta said. “Busy morning.” I didn’t tell her that was quicker than I’d expected. Somehow it seemed she would have been disappointed if I was actually impressed by the hospital’s efficiency. Since I didn’t want to damage her worldview, I nodded grudgingly and headed through the maze that is the modern palace of healing to the food court, which is an odd concept for a hospital. It was next to the gift shop, which is an even odder one.

  Once there, I texted Mom. After my consultation with Lawrence, I’d alerted her that he was in a more reasonable mood and might venture by. But I’d also asked if she would go to the guesthouse and find Paul, so she could text back his replies. Ghosts can’t be heard over the phone. Hey, I don’t make up the rules. Frankly, I’m not clear on who does, but whoever it is has an odd sense of order. At times I think the afterlife is run by an eight-year-old with ADHD.

  After ordering a hot chocolate and a small salad, I texted Mom, “Ask Paul if Maxie’s found anything about the Viagra ring yet.”

  Lawrence Laurentz had been oddly reluctant to tell stories out of school, but after insisting that he’d never even looked into the possibility of a pipeline to Viagra pills because he had suffered a heart attack ten years earlier and was not a candidate for the drug, he admitted he’d heard rumors that they were obtainable through people in the New Old Thespians.

  “I wasn’t asking about it because I couldn’t use it, but I heard about it from Jerry and from Barney Lester at the Thespians,” he’d told me.

  “Was Jerry asking like he had some prescriptions and was offering them to you?” I’d asked. That was the implication I’d gotten from Officer Warrell.

  Lawrence shook his head. “No, it was more like he knew about this great thing and he wanted to show off how in-the-know he was,” he said. “The man is a moronic boor.”

  Barney Lester, I recalled, had passed away before Lawrence, of natural causes, his wife had said. “Did something happen with the Viagra that caused his heart problem?” I’d asked Lawrence.

  He shrugged. “I was out of the group when he died.”

  “But not when he got sick,” I’d reminded him.

  “He was one of the ones not talking to me. But I don’t remember anyone who was talking to me saying it was anything but his heart.”

  That hadn’t been much help. Sitting now at a table with my salad and warm chocolate (“hot” would have been an overstatement), I was considering my options when my phone buzzed, and I read the text from Mom: “nthng n vgr bt pl wnts rprt.”

  Of course.

  Muttering to myself about reintroducing my mother to vowels, I texted back a very clear “WHAT?” and waited.

  I recalled a time when people could simply talk to each other over items we called “telephones” and get our answers almost immediately. It took me a moment to ponder this, after which the phone buzzed again, and I got Mom’s latest missive: “Nothing on Viagra, but Paul wants a report.”

  Now, was that so hard, really?

  I really would have given in and called Mom myself, but the idea of the interminable delays during which Paul would relay a message to Mom, then me to Mom, then Mom to Paul, then Paul to Mom…was more than my brain could handle this afternoon, and the room was noisy, which would have necessitated my shouting questions about Viagra and murder into my phone. I sighed and texted back as much as I’d learned from Lawrence. By the time I’d deciphered four or five more of Mom’s texts, which appeared to be in Estonian even when she deigned to throw in the occasional vowel, I’d eaten half the salad, finished all the tepid chocolate and was heading back to the records department, where my buddy Roberta was plying her trade with a gentleman ahead of me and the leering gunshot victim had apparently left the room.

  Roberta’s client moved on, and she waved me over. “I got the records,” she said. She handed me an envelope on which had been printed, “NO CHARGE” in block letters. I looked at her. She pursed her lips a little and chewed on her gum a bit. “You shouldn’t have to pay for that,” she said, and turned back toward her computer screen.

  You can’t ever figure people.

  I took the envelope and walked into the corridor. There was a waiting room a few doors down, so I ducked inside to sit and examine the records. An older woman, transparent and dressed from the 1970s, was hovering over the only available seat in the room. I walked over to her and waited, but she didn’t move.

  Putting my hand over my mouth as if to stifle a cough, I said quietly, “May I?” The ghost looked displeased but rose up out of the way and through the ceiling. Two other ghosts in the room, noticing, glanced disapprovingly in my direction. Apparently I was being rude. Ghost etiquette. I suppose I could have sat down in the middle of the older lady, but that did not seem a considerably more polite alternative.

  The envelope contained many documents I vaguely recalled having seen before. Much of it was medical mumbo jumbo I couldn’t possibly decode, but there were a few things that came from Dr. Peter Wells, which was what I was looking for right now. There were orders for various tests and medications, MRI and CAT scans, which told me nothing, and the certificate of death itself. I’d probably gotten a copy five years before, or Mom had, but I’d never had the strength to really look at it.

  Knowing that Dad was potentially at the other end of this search, I took in a deep breath and steeled myself. It wasn’t like I wasn’t aware he was dead; it was more the idea of mentally bringing back those last days that I dreaded. But this was necessary.

  I promise I’ll try as hard as I can, but you have to promise to take care of Mom. Okay?

  The document, really the copy of the document, was not nearly as official and final a piece of paper as you’d expect. It looked very much like an innkeeper’s license (my own point of reference) or a certificate of divorce (see above). At the bottom was the signature of the attending physician, Dr. P. Wells. The cause of death was listed as cancer. That plain and that simple.

  I could have saved myself the trouble; there wasn’t anything especially helpful here. I searched through the envelope again, saw nothing else, then got up and walked back to the records department and to Roberta’s station. She glanced up, looking puzzled.

  “I really appreciate your help,” I said. “Just one thing: There’s no autopsy report in the folder.”

  She looked at me for a moment, trying to assess exactly how stupid this woman in front of her might be. “That’s right,” she said. “There was no autopsy.”

  “No?”

  Roberta shook her head. “Of course not. The attending physician was present in the hospital room at the time of death. There was no sign of foul play. The police weren’t called. The cause of death was known. Unless you or another family member had r
equested it, there was no reason for an autopsy.”

  I thanked Roberta again, mentally rejecting the idea of trying to give her a tip, and left the hospital, once again wrapping myself up in the nineteen layers of clothing that felt like they added a half ton to my overall weight. I walked to the parking lot and got into the Volvo, which was probably thrilled with the weather, a reminder of its childhood in Sweden.

  But before I drove away, I texted Mom, “Get Maxie to check up on Dr. Wells.”

  Twenty-six

  I picked Melissa up at school and drove home, a place I felt like I hadn’t been in a very long time. We found Mom there with Paul and Maxie in the kitchen. My mother was already cooking, despite my having said I’d make dinner tonight for the large contingency coming to the show. Mom had seen me struggle with cooking before and was making a preemptive strike.

  I had spent the drive home on the phone with Murray Feldner, who once again seemed not to understand why he shouldn’t be paid for something he hadn’t done. When I suggested I would be happy to pay him for not plowing my sidewalk if he would agree not to charge me when he did, he did not find the humor in my suggestion.

  “I don’t get it, Alison. We agreed on the rate when you called me the first time.”

  “That’s for plowing, Murray. You’re charging me for not plowing.”

  “Look,” he said, clearly on the road himself because there was a police siren in my phone and not in my vicinity, “if you don’t want to honor our agreement, I don’t see how we can honor your contract.”

  Melissa saw the look on my face and become very engrossed in her science notebook. It was the wonders of the Milky Way galaxy all the way home.

  Once there, Melissa stood by the stove and observed my mother closely. She loved watching Mom cook, probably because it was such a novel sight for her. Again, I hoped for Melissa’s sake that she’d inherit some of Mom’s skills in that area.

  Mom asked if there had been any further progress since we’d spoken. I didn’t want to mention my suspicion that Dr. Wells had had more to do with Dad’s death than simply signing the paperwork. The fact that Dr. Wells had been the only one in the room when Dad died, and that neither Mom nor I had requested an autopsy, would have made Mom feel guilty, and that wasn’t necessary. Whatever had happened to Dad, it certainly hadn’t been her fault.

  “Nothing we didn’t already know,” I said, which was technically true. Paul gave me a look that indicated he didn’t believe me, but he inclined his head toward Mom, who was concentrating on the stove, and I nodded back. We’d talk later.

  “Did you find anything on Dr. Wells?” I asked Maxie. Mom’s brow wrinkled a little, but I couldn’t completely hide my questions. She seemed to understand; she said nothing.

  “Haven’t had much time to look,” Maxie answered, a green visor appearing on her head, her hair moving back to form a bun. “But he wasn’t ever sued for malpractice or anything like that. What is it you want me to find?”

  I was saved from having to tell her I didn’t know the answer to the question because Nan and Morgan Henderson arrived, and from the canary-eating grin on Morgan’s face, had clearly unearthed some new information. As always when there was a police officer (or former police officer) around, Paul paid extra attention and Maxie looked bored.

  “Okay, out with it,” I told Morgan. “I take it you had a good day?”

  “Better than good,” Morgan said. “I think we have some stuff that will help. You’ll probably be able to make an arrest in a day or two.”

  “I’m private, Morgan. I couldn’t make an arrest if the killer showed up in my living room and confessed.” (Not that it had never happened…) “But I get what you mean.”

  Nan and Morgan took stools by the center island. I put out a plate of celery, carrots and slices of apple with a savory dip (it said it was savory on the package I’d picked up at the convenience store on the way home) and gave them drinks. Nan nibbled, but Morgan was too excited to eat, it seemed.

  “I spoke to Chief Daniels in Monroe,” he began. “He was more open with me than Officer Warrell was with you. The fact is, this group of actors has something of a reputation. It seems all the active adult communities like to book them, and it’s not because they put on such a great show.”

  “It’s because someone in the New Old Thespians has a connection to illegal blue pills,” I said. “The question was who snitched about the Viagra.”

  Morgan pointed at me and nodded his head, acknowledging my guess. Mom turned and gave Melissa a worried glance. Mom sometimes thinks I let Liss sit in on conversations I shouldn’t, but since Mom’s code of never thinking I do anything wrong is ingrained in her cerebral cortex, she can’t admit that, so she never says anything.

  “Not just Viagra,” Morgan said. “A number of different prescriptions. The word is that someone can acquire a number of drugs, not necessarily prescribed for the seniors in the communities, and when the actors come to put on their show, whoever it is can deliver the goods. So to speak.”

  “Did the Monroe cops find out who the connection is?” I asked. Paul nodded approvingly at the question; it was what he wanted to know, too. We both figured it was Frances or Jerry, but you had to be able to prove such things.

  But Morgan frowned and he shook his head. “They’d gotten this tip it was either Frances Walters or Jerry Rasmussen”—bingo!—“but they didn’t find any pills on them or anything else on any of the company members.”

  “Ask him if they searched the residents who attended the show,” Paul suggested, so I passed it along.

  Morgan looked impressed with my—that is, Paul’s—question. “No, and that was interesting,” he said. “I asked Chief Daniels about that, and he seemed embarrassed. They couldn’t arrest someone for possession of Viagra without finding the stash, so it’s possible the cops looking for a bust didn’t bother because they didn’t think it would do them any good.”

  “If they were looking for a bust, they were in the right place,” Maxie grinned. Everyone (who could see her) glared at her, and she put a hand to her mouth. “I mean, hey, they were all naked,” she added. We all went back to looking at Morgan, who didn’t appear to have noticed.

  “I also did some checking on some of the other people you mentioned, through the state police databases,” Morgan said. “Penny—not Penelope, mind you—Fields has never been arrested but was fingerprinted once when she was teaching a class at a public school in Westfield, which requires it. She didn’t appear to have a record of any kind.”

  “Wait,” I said, and told him that I’d discovered (through my diligent detective work, of course, and not from a ghost) that Penny and Lawrence had been involved romantically but that Lawrence was not a candidate for Viagra use because of his previous heart condition.

  “I’m not blaming anybody for the investigation,” I said. “I’m looking for someone to blame for Lawrence Laurentz’s death.”

  “Then you might want to take a look at this Tyra Carter,” Morgan suggested. And then he told me everything I already knew about Tyra, which he’d managed to get through use of the police computers in Monroe, and added, “When he was a guy, he was a pretty bad guy. Six arrests, no jail time, but he did break a guy’s jaw once.”

  “What about Jerry Rasmussen and Frances Walters?” I asked.

  “Rasmussen worked for thirty years for Johnson & Johnson in New Brunswick,” Morgan said, referring to a notepad he took out of his back pocket. “Something to do with marketing for the consumer products division. They don’t make Viagra, by the way. Married once, divorced after three years, has a son, no arrest records on him and no fingerprints before the arrest for public nudity. Joined this theater group six years ago, became its manager and”—here he mimed quotes— ‘artistic director’ two years ago. Not really a guy you like for the crime, if there was a crime. Same with Ms. Walters. Born Frances Nussbaum, married Philip Walters, who died a few years back, and Frances moved where she is now. Two sons: Barry, a pharmacist and
Mark, an accountant. Barry lives in Livingston, Mark in Flagstaff, Arizona. Again, no prints on Frances; no record, and she never worked in a public school or other profession that would require it.

  “They’ve both been as close to off the radar as you can get, just by not misbehaving.”

  Mom checked her pot roast one last time and walked to the island, wiping her hands on a dish towel. “So there’s really no evidence that anyone killed Larry.” Mom apparently had now appointed herself a member of the detective agency I had been striving not to create.

  “That’s right,” Morgan agreed. “We might have some suspects, but we have no proof at all.”

  That was hardly encouraging.

  Jeannie and Tony arrived a few minutes later, carrying Oliver in the requisite car seat, just as Melissa was helping me set the kitchen table, the only one in the house large enough to accommodate all of us. We got them up to speed on the Laurentz investigation, leaving out the odd messages left in my house. Once Oliver was happily ensconced in a baby swing I’d discovered in my basement among the toys I’d never gotten rid of (although Jeannie seemed slightly less happy, presumably counting ways this contraption could somehow be harmful to her son), Tony went back to contemplate the library doorway, looking for inspiration.

  The kitchen was quiet for a while, everyone was in one way or another lost in thought. Okay, Maxie was changing her toenail color every few seconds, but each of us has his or her unique method of thinking.

  Tony walked back in, shaking his head. “I just don’t see any way around those beams in your doorway,” he said. “I mean, it could be done, but not within your budget.”

  “You’re just trying to get out of our deal,” I teased him.

  He raised an eyebrow. “Never.”

  Just then the doorbell rang. It was the moment I’d been anticipating and in some ways dreading—Josh’s arrival and introduction to my motley crew—and my stomach turned around a couple of times as I walked to the door, having let Melissa know I’d handle this one myself (kids love to open the front door and will let absolutely anyone in).