Chance of a Ghost

by E. J. Copperman

  Melissa finished her doughnut and hot chocolate, and I immediately sent her to bed—with a sugar high that potent, suffice it to say the argument was short and to the point, but after her grandmother offered a bribe in the form of another home-cooked dinner the following night, she finally was convinced. I felt properly chastised and resolved to ask my mother for cooking lessons.

  Putting my maternal shame aside, I came back down from Melissa’s room after giving her a good-night hug and looked at Paul, which was convenient because he was hovering just over Morgan’s head, and this way I could get the opinion of both professionals. “So, we have all the conflicting words everybody said and we think we know how somebody killed Lawrence Laurentz,” I said. “Now how do we figure out which one did it?”

  “It’s not the figuring out,” Morgan mused. “It’s the proving it.”

  Paul nodded. “We have a lot of testimony and some good guesswork but absolutely no evidence at all. Even if the ME had done a really thorough autopsy, he would’ve only had a small chance of finding any evidence of electrocution.”

  Morgan hadn’t heard that, hearing aids or no, but he added, “The fact is, Laurentz really did die of a heart issue. The only question is whether it was caused by someone tossing an electric toaster into his bathtub.”

  “So?” I reiterated. “What’s next?”

  There was a long pause. Morgan looked me directly in the face and said, “I honestly don’t know. There’s nothing else to look into. Penny Fields was a witness, but there’s no proof she was actually there when he died. Nobody was reported as acting suspicious near the building at the time, according to Chief Daniels in Monroe, who checked with Manalapan. There was no sign that any drug deals were going on while we were there tonight or that anyone was even interested in doing some. I’ve got nothing left to suggest. I wish I could help more, but Nan and I need to go home tomorrow. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” I said. “I appreciate all you’ve done for me when you were supposed to be on vacation. I’m sorry you didn’t get to enjoy yourself more.”

  Morgan brightened. “Are you kidding? Best vacation of my life.”

  Nan chuckled and nodded. “I’m going to tell all the cop wives I know that if you keep your private-investigator’s license, there’s always going to be something for their husbands to do here.”

  I suppose I could have taken that in a negative way, but I chose not to. I gave her a hug. “I’ll be sorry to see you go,” I said honestly.

  Nan sniffed a little. “You’ll have to let us know how it all works out.”

  I shook my head. “I think you’re seeing that now. I’m out of ideas.” I looked up at Paul, but he was gone, which was odd. This was the moment he’d usually give me a pep talk about how you can’t give up. Maybe even he thought we were beaten.

  Nan and Morgan said their good-nights and went up to their room to pack. I looked over at Mom and Josh and shrugged. “I guess that’s it,” I said.

  “I guess,” Mom agreed. “I’m sorry, Alison. If Larry”—she looked at Josh—“were able to hear me, I’d tell him I’m sorry, too.”

  “I’m sure he knows, Mrs. Kerby,” Josh volunteered.

  Or will, once you get home, I thought.

  She shot me a look that said, “Don’t let this one get away,” and patted him on the hand. “You call me, Loretta,” she said. Then she pulled on her coat and her backpack and walked to the door, saying she was tired. Josh stayed back, letting Mom and me have our moment. Then Mom added casually that, Jerry Rasmussen was coming to her house for brunch the next morning.

  “Mom!” I exploded. “How could you not mention that until now? He’s a suspect in what might be a murder! He almost strangled me tonight!”

  “I know,” Mom assured me, “but I don’t think he’s actually violent, just crazy like an artist.” She threw me a look. “Not a good artist.”

  “Mom, Lawrence hasn’t come back to your house yet; he won’t even be there to protect you. What are you thinking?” I demanded.

  Mom looked into my eyes. “I’m thinking I can help. Look. Maybe I can do a little detecting myself,” she said. “Don’t worry. I’ll text if there’s trouble.”

  You can’t argue with Mom when she decides something. “Call,” I said. “By the time I figure out what your text means, Jerry could be out on parole.”

  Mom laughed, as if I was kidding, bid Josh and me good-bye, and went out without so much as a look back. My head was clogged with thoughts, none of them good.

  “She’s crazy,” I said, mostly to myself.

  “Alone at last,” Josh said when Mom closed the door behind her, and I chuckled a little. Okay, maybe one of those thoughts was good.

  “I really know how to show a guy a good time, huh?” I said.

  He walked over to me and smiled. “Maybe not as great as Color Quiz, but you’ve still got it,” he said. And he leaned down and kissed me very nicely for a good long moment. I felt his arms closing around me, too, something I did not attempt to stop at all.

  Until we heard the crash.

  It was clear the sound, a good loud one, had come from the area of the hallway near where the “STOP GO OUT” message was scrawled near the ceiling. Without exchanging a word, we ran to the spot, and sure enough, a huge chunk of the plaster above the door to the library had been knocked out. The mallet that had been used to do it lay on the floor, along with a bunch of smashed plaster and some insulation.

  Paul and Maxie appeared from somewhere upstairs just as we reached the hallway. I could hear footsteps on the stairs, too, meaning Nan and Morgan were on their way.

  “Not again,” I said without thinking.

  “Again?” Josh asked. “This has happened before?”

  “It wasn’t me!” Maxie insisted. “I have an alibi this time!” I looked up, and Paul nodded—this wasn’t Maxie’s handiwork.

  “This is a really interesting house,” Josh said.

  It took a while to convince everyone it was okay to quit for the evening, especially Melissa, who rushed down but was sent immediately back to bed. Nan and Morgan checked through the house looking for the intruder they assumed had broken in, and Josh had stayed by my side throughout, which was more than I probably would have done for some crazy person who’d just ambled back into my life for the first time since middle school.

  I knew that there was no intruder, at least not a living, breathing one, so I must have seemed unnaturally calm to the others. In truth, I was hoping everyone would clear out so I could plot strategy with my two nonbreathing squatters.

  Satisfied that there was no further danger in the house, and stocked with yet another great story to tell the gang at home, Nan and Morgan went back upstairs, assuming again that this was it for the night. And Josh, who was improbably not rushing for the nearest exit, had to be reassured that I would be all right, so he kissed me a few more times to be sure. Which would have been lovely but for the ghoulish Greek chorus I had in the room. Paul stuck his head up through the ceiling so he wouldn’t see anything, but Maxie’s sarcastic cries of “You go, girl!” and “Hubba hubba” somehow killed the mood for me.

  Josh must have felt me holding back, because he stepped away. “Too soon?” he asked.

  “No!” I stressed. Maxie laughed. “How could it be too soon? I’ve known you since I was eleven.”

  “Still.”

  “I’m tired,” I said. “Believe me, that’s all it is.”

  He studied me for a moment, then nodded once. “Okay. I’m going to go so you can stop being tired. Thanks for dinner.”

  “Thank my mother.”

  “I’ll thank you for the rest of the evening, then. It’s been completely unexpected.”

  I didn’t ask what that meant, which I consider a sign of maturity.

  Josh scuffled out into the night, which was somehow not as cold as before. And I looked up for my two ghostly sidekicks, who were now drifting back down to eye level.

  Maxie tried to get the first
word in, but I knew what it would be, so I blazed past her and talked directly to Paul. “Are we really done with this investigation?” I asked him.

  His eyebrows rose and he made a sheepish face. “I honestly don’t know,” he said.

  I walked into the den and lay down on the sofa. I threw my left arm across my eyes. It all seemed so exhausting. “I think I’m done,” I said. “I can’t help Lawrence Laurentz. I can’t find my father. I can’t even stop some crazy ghost from punching holes in my walls.”

  The voice that came back to me wasn’t the one I expected. “I think I can help.” That couldn’t be Maxie, could it?

  I took my arm off my eyes, and there she was, hovering almost directly over me, wearing a black T-shirt with the slogan “Rhymes with Rich” emblazoned on the front and a blue denim miniskirt—it was sort of like what a skirt would be, anyway, if it had been left in the dryer for a week—and holding my prehistoric MacBook in one hand.

  “What?” I asked. I was confused by what she’d said; those words just sounded so incongruous coming from her.

  “I can help you. I found some stuff out about your Dr. Wells, and maybe that can help you find your dad.” She said this with a straight face and not the least inflection of irony.

  “Who are you, and what have you done with Maxie Malone?” I asked this impostor.

  Maxie’s lip curled. She let out a sound similar to a whoopee cushion and said, “Do you want to hear it, or not?” I nodded my assent. “Well, Wells’s…that sounds funny: ‘well, Wells’s.’ I like that.”

  “Maxie,” I said.

  “Yeah. See, he had pretty much a spotless record both as a doctor and as a guy. No hint of any problems with the family, no divorce, two kids, five grandchildren, blah, blah, blah. Never sued for malpractice. Never reprimanded by the hospital or any medical board. Never called in question for a diagnosis or a treatment. The guy was just about as good as you could get.”

  “I don’t see how this is helping.”

  “I’m getting to that,” she said. “Here’s the thing: One time, out of the blue, he decides to take a break from being a doctor. Just takes six months off, doesn’t go anywhere, doesn’t travel, doesn’t write a book, just stops.” She waited.

  “And?” I asked.

  “And nothing. After the six months are over, he goes back to what he was doing and never has a hiccup again. Weird, huh?” Maxie grinned broadly and gave an emphatic nod like Stan Laurel proving a point.

  “Yeah. A revelation,” I told her. “I’ll be sure to act on that first thing.” I put my arm back across my eyes. Maybe I’d just sleep here on the sofa tonight. It seemed so much easier than actually standing up and walking up all those stairs to my bedroom.

  “You want to hear when this happened?” Maxie’s voice asked.

  “You mean what day of the week? I’m betting it was a Wednesday. I hate Wednesdays.” But I needed to take off my makeup and brush my teeth, and all that stuff was upstairs. Life was so hard.

  “I mean the date.” Maxie read off the date that Wells had taken his sudden sabbatical from the medical profession.

  Suddenly, I didn’t need to sleep anymore. I sat straight up and stared at her, no doubt giving her exactly the response she’d been hoping for. But the information had flooded over me like cold water, and now I was wide awake.

  “That’s the day after my father died,” I said.

  “Interesting,” Paul said.

  “Do you have a picture of Dr. Wells?” I asked her. It had been five years since I’d seen him, and I had to wonder…

  Maxie clicked some keys and a photograph of Dr. Peter Wells appeared, attached to a recent obituary. I shook my head.

  “He’s not the grumpy ghost,” I said, although I’d always pretty much known that to be true.

  We debated the significance of Maxie’s finding for over an hour. I suggested it was simply the doctor reacting to losing a bout with an awful disease, but Paul pointed out that such things happen to doctors on a regular basis, and that it could hardly have been the first time Wells had lost a patient. Paul can be annoyingly logical.

  I said that it had been a particularly grueling and difficult case, and Paul said pretty much the same thing he did to shoot down my previous argument. So I advocated the theory that Wells had liked my father and the loss had especially devastated him, and Paul didn’t even have to point out what a stupid argument that was.

  Maxie, throughout, fought valiantly for her point, which was that she had done a really awesome job of research and should be given lots of credit.

  The initial rush of adrenaline finally wore off, and I admitted that I had no reasonable explanation for what Dr. Wells had done, and that it was now past midnight and I was exhausted. So I bid the two ghosts good night, mumbled thanks to Maxie for her help—which she seemed to think was sarcastic—and went upstairs, past the hole in my plaster wall that would need repairing, to go to bed.

  At three in the morning I woke up straight out of the recurring dream about finding a tool and sat up in bed. You see people do that in the movies for dramatic effect, but this was, I’m pretty sure, the first time I’d ever done it in real life. Because sometimes when your mind isn’t actively attacking a problem, it will come around to the solution that you’ve been searching for all along.

  “Frances killed Lawrence Laurentz,” I said aloud to no one. I could have explained how I knew, but no one was there, and I didn’t have a plan of action yet. That could wait until morning.

  For fear of forgetting, I wrote a note on the back of a bank receipt I’d left on the bed stand, rolled over and went back to sleep. I knew exactly what to do in the morning.

  But I wasn’t counting on the two and a half feet of snow outside my door.

  Thirty

  Tuesday

  “This was not in the forecast at all,” I told Morgan Henderson the next morning at seven.

  “I heard the governor’s declared a state of emergency,” Morgan said. “All the major highways are closed. I’m afraid we’re going to be here with you at least another day.”

  I’d risen that morning to a wall of snow accumulated up and over my front porch—which meant it was more than covering the four steps up and then some—and nobody in sight of my front windows was even attempting to shovel out from under yet.

  Not even Murray, who wasn’t answering my calls.

  Morgan and I were the only ones awake in the house. You can’t really count the ghosts, who were loitering about the room, Paul more attentively than Maxie. In fact, Maxie was playing a harmonica, which she concealed from Morgan by wearing gloves on her hands, which had the same effect as if she’d kept it in her pocket. She could be really clever when she wanted to irritate me, which was about ninety percent of the time.

  It was working like a charm.

  “I’m happy to have you,” I told Morgan, “but I’m sorry to keep you here after you meant to leave.”

  He waved a hand dismissively. “Now. Tell me what you figured out about Frances Walters.” I’d told him about my revelation in the middle of the night.

  I’d been waiting to tell him and Paul, but Maxie’s tooting on the harmonica was making a racket that drove me nuts and was inaudible to Morgan. I glanced at Paul, who said, “Maxie, please.”

  She took that to mean she should play louder. I wasn’t sure what I’d done to annoy her, but she was clearly taking her revenge.

  I turned toward Morgan so he could read my lips if necessary (although his hearing aids appeared to be working perfectly) and did my best to ignore the cacophony from above while Paul tried unsuccessfully to wrest the harmonica from Maxie’s hands. “It’s simple,” I said. “It was one thing that she said to me when we first met.”

  I let that sink in. Maxie stopped playing the harmonica to ask Paul, “Which one is Frances Walters?” He refused to answer her but took the opportunity to yank the harmonica from her and put it in the pocket of his jeans.

  “When I first went to interview
Frances, she made a remark that didn’t seem like a big deal. She said it was a shame that Lawrence had died upstairs in his bathroom like that.”

  Morgan’s eyes narrowed. “Well, that is how he died. I’m trying to follow you.”

  Paul snapped his fingers, which made a sound only I could hear. Yeah, it’s weird. “Of course!” he said.

  “Of course what?” Maxie demanded. “And give me back my harmonica.” Paul turned away from her.

  I had to explain to Morgan. “She said ‘upstairs’ in his bathroom. But last night at the show, when I asked Frances if she’d ever been to Larry’s place, she said she’d never been there and didn’t even know where it was located in the complex. One side, where Mom and Frances live, has units that are all one floor. The other side, where Lawrence had his place, is all town houses with two stories. They’re a little less expensive in communities like that because a lot of people don’t want to have to climb stairs.”

  Morgan nodded slowly. “So if Frances didn’t know where Lawrence’s house was, she would assume it was like hers and wouldn’t know he was upstairs when he died, because she wouldn’t have known he had an upstairs.”

  “Exactly,” I said.

  “I see what you’re saying,” Morgan acknowledged. “But in the police business, that’s what we call ‘really skimpy stuff we know that won’t hold up in court.’”

  “Frances was also one of only three people who knew how to operate the special effects apparatus that could have been used to drop the toaster into Lawrence’s tub,” I said, eschewing the impulse to add “ha!” to my sentence.

  “It’s a fishing rod,” Morgan said. “Millions of people know how to use them.”

  Probably best I’d left the “ha!” off, I realized now. I thought of the “bird” Lawrence said he’d seen in his last living second that could have been the prop Wendy and Peter attached to the fishing line, but that didn’t eliminate Tyra or Jerry from the mix, either.