Chance of a Ghost

by E. J. Copperman

  “Rough,” Murray said.

  Frances and Jerry looked up at the sound. “Alison!” Frances crowed. “What are you doing here?” She stood up.

  I was about to comment on the gall she had to sip a hot beverage in her victim’s home when Maxie floated in from the kitchen, smiling. And then Mom ambled in from the same direction.

  Mom!

  She was carrying a tray of muffins and humming. “Alison!” she said. “How did you get here? You’re so silly.”

  I was starting to subscribe to that opinion myself.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Nothing happened,” Mom told me. “What are you doing here?”

  “You…I couldn’t talk to you…your phone…” Even I didn’t think I sounded coherent. What was going on?

  “My phone died and I couldn’t charge it because the power’s out,” she explained. “That’s hardly an emergency.” She looked behind me. “Oh, hello, Murray,” she said. “How did she talk you into this?”

  “Hello, Mrs. Kerby,” Murray answered. “Alison said it was an emergency.”

  Mom waved her hand after she put the tray of muffins on the coffee table. “That’s ridiculous. Jerry and Frances were here. There was no danger. It’s just some snow.”

  She avoided looking at Maxie, who said, “Yeah, well. You had to be there.”

  Murray shot me a disdainful look. “Well, I guess there’s no emergency. I have places to plow. Do you want a ride back, Alison?”

  And worry about my mother in a room with these two? Hell, no! “I think I’ll stick around for a while, Murray. Thanks again.” Mom looked puzzled; how would I get home?

  He scowled a little and walked to the door, which he opened. Then he turned back and nodded at the assembled group. “Well, I’m glad it turned out there wasn’t a killer here, after all,” he said. The door closed behind him.

  Jerry looked stunned and confused. “A killer?” he repeated.

  But Frances Walters’s face didn’t look all that surprised and not a bit confused. She looked furious.

  No, I wasn’t at all happy to be right.

  Thirty-one

  I put on as much outerwear as would fit inside Maxie’s Harpo Marx trench coat but insisted on facing out. I wasn’t going to fly to Manalapan with my eyes closed. Not all the way, anyhow.

  “If someone sees a flash of eyes flying around, they’ll think they had the sun in their face or something,” I said by way of justification. Maxie didn’t care which way I faced as long as we left immediately.

  Paul gave me a few last-minute instructions on what to do once we arrived at Mom’s and told me he’d stay with Melissa and her cell phone if texting was necessary. I told Liss for the millionth time about 911, like she hadn’t known that since she was four. Then I told her to stay in her room until she heard from me and to tell Nan and Morgan that I’d decided to brave the drive in the Volvo. I didn’t tell her how to explain to them that I’d managed to get to the car without going past them, which wasn’t technically possible. It wasn’t much, but it was all I had.

  I knelt down to talk to her, although that’s not really necessary anymore. “Don’t you worry about your grandma,” I told her. “She’s one resilient lady.”

  “What’s resilient?”

  “Tough,” I said. Then I gave my daughter a very tight hug, sucked on my teeth to force back any tears that might have the audacity to try and appear in my eye and stood. I nodded to Maxie. Paul opened the window and the storm window on the rear side of the house, where I was less likely to be spotted from the ground.

  Maxie wrapped her arms around me. As I held the trench coat tight, I felt my feet leave the floor. I no longer had control over the direction in which my body was traveling, because out the window surely wouldn’t have been my first choice.

  But that’s the way we went.

  For those who have never flown thirty feet in the air over central New Jersey while being held by a ghost, let me try to describe the experience for you: The first thing that struck me was COLD! That lasted a full minute, and I realized that under the trench coat, Maxie was still in a T-shirt and short denim skirt.

  “Aren’t you freezing?” I shouted at her. The wind was brutal up there. Maxie laughed.

  “One of the advantages of being dead,” she said.

  We traveled toward Route 33, which was the way I would normally go to Mom’s. It would be about twenty miles as the ghost flies. It didn’t look like the real central Jersey I knew, anyway. Everything was covered in unexpected snow and a lot of it, and only the most hearty of homeowners was already out and shoveling or snow blowing. The rest were probably sitting at their breakfast tables, stunned and trying to shift into action mode. The empty streets were better for me, so I was glad for the laziness of my fellow shore denizens. We were up high enough to be above regular houses and power wires but not office buildings and the like. So far this was not a problem, but Maxie would have to dodge some buildings when we got as far as Red Bank or so.

  After I got over my initial vertigo, the trip was sort of enjoyable in a touristy sort of way, but I was anxious about Mom, frustrated by our snail-like pace and also freezing off various parts of my body. Our progress was very slow. “I’ve never tried it without a car before,” Maxie said. “This is the best I can do.” We were traveling about as fast as if we were running to Mom’s, which would take hours.

  But then the otherwise-empty streets offered up something that was as welcome a sight as I’ve ever seen: a plow. I pointed down, and Maxie saw the plow pushing its way through the streets, covering people’s parked cars with even more snow to shovel off later.

  “I have an idea,” I told her.

  Maxie started to descend, and as we got lower, I could see the plow more clearly and started to laugh. “What the hell is so funny?” Maxie asked.

  “It’s too perfect,” I told her.

  We set down about twenty yards from the plow, and I waved my arms as it approached. Sure enough, it stopped, and Murray got out of the driver’s seat.

  “I’ve got to plow all these streets, Alison,” he said. “Don’t have time for nonpaying customers.” Murray was really good at being single-minded, but then he couldn’t possibly have handled more.

  “Murray, my mom is in danger. Drive me to Manalapan and I’ll pay you double for my plowing.”

  He didn’t skip a beat. “Won’t matter. You don’t pay, anyway.”

  I didn’t have time for this. “Look. I don’t have my wallet with me. But this is a matter of life and death. I’m telling you straight out that I’ll pay you twice what you usually get, and you can have the money as soon as we get back.”

  “I have to get all these streets done, and the parking lot at the Foodtown.” This wasn’t a bargaining tactic; Murray was trying to avoid doing something he was being asked. It was a reflex with him.

  “You can put my house off until tomorrow. Just please, Murray, I have no other way to get there, and she’s really in trouble.” I told him the whole story—well, a condensed version of it, anyway—and it seemed to work. Murray looked determined as he pulled on his Phillies cap. “Climb in,” he said. Indiana Jones and the Snowplow of Doom.

  Before Murray could rethink his decision, I was in the warm cab of the plow and Maxie was standing—yes, standing—in front of me. “That’s easier,” she said. “You could stand to drop a couple of pounds, you know.” I couldn’t even answer.

  As we drove away, Murray asked, “Hey, Alison, how’d you get here, anyway?”

  “I flew,” I told him.

  He nodded. That’s Murray.

  Even with the plow attached to the front of his truck, Murray had to stop occasionally to get through especially heavy drifts. “We’re lucky,” he said. “It’s a dry snow. Powdery. If it was slushy, it’d be harder to move.”

  Not that this wasn’t fascinating, but I was anxious about Mom. “Just keep going, Murray,” I said. “Don’t stop.” He looked determined and plowed on th
rough.

  I pretended I was talking to Murray but looked directly into Maxie’s eyes. “I don’t understand why you were upset with me,” I said.

  Murray droned on again about how unreasonable I was for not wanting to pay him for doing nothing, but I was really listening for Maxie’s explanation: “I did all this great work to find out about Dr. Wells and your dad and everything, and you were getting all the credit,” she said. “I want people to notice.”

  “Credit isn’t the issue,” I said, and Murray began talking about how he was a cash business, but he’d take a check if he had to.

  “I know,” Maxie answered. “But I don’t have that much I can do these days. When I help, I want to get recognized for it.”

  I mulled that over. Sometimes I act like Maxie doesn’t have feelings because she acts like mine are unreasonable. I could make an effort. “That’s fair,” I said.

  “Good,” Murray agreed. “I’ll bill you when I get back to my office tonight.” That didn’t sound good, but I was in no position to argue now.

  Maxie, meanwhile, smiled and held out a hand, which I touched when I was pretending to brace myself on the dashboard. My hand went through hers, of course, but it was the gesture that counted.

  Then we both went back to staring worriedly through the windshield, waiting for the entrance to Whispering Lakes to show up.

  It did, finally, and I guided Murray and his plow—which was helpful, since indeed, the community’s service clearly hadn’t arrived yet—to the front of Mom’s unit. We passed a utility truck along the way and saw two technicians working on a power distributor. In front of Mom’s house, I thanked Murray again and got out of the truck, leaving behind Maxie, who didn’t have to worry about trifles like solid objects in her travels.

  “I’ll come with you,” Murray said. “I’ve got a gun in the glove compartment.”

  A gun? Would it come to that? My mind went through about fifty scenarios in a second, and some of them were pretty grim. I nodded. “We’d appreciate it,” I said. Maxie nodded her agreement.

  “Who’s ‘we’?” Murray said.

  “My mom and me,” I answered. “Thanks.” Murray and I trudged through the heavy snow and made it to Mom’s front door. There were two other sets of boot prints leading to the threshold and two pairs of cross-country skis leaning against the outside wall.

  Frances and Jerry.

  I took a breath but not a long one because I was in a hurry. Murray stuck the pistol into his coat pocket and grunted. Manhood at its finest.

  “Let’s brace ourselves for what we might see,” I told Maxie. But she was gone. Again, doors and such things don’t stand in her way. I didn’t hear anything from inside when she got there and chose to take that as a good sign.

  “I’ll be fine,” Murray said.

  I worked the lock quietly in case someone was inside and tried hard to open the door with very little sound. It swung into the living room, and I looked inside. There were no lights on, which made sense given the power outage.

  Sitting on the couch were Frances and Jerry, drinking coffee. The rats! How could they just sit there and smile at each other after what they must have done? And where was Maxie? I had expected to see her taking the place apart in her fury.

  “Rough,” Murray said.

  Frances and Jerry looked up at the sound. “Alison!” Frances crowed. “What are you doing here?” She stood up.

  I was about to comment on the gall she had to sip a hot beverage in her victim’s home when Maxie floated in from the kitchen, smiling. And then Mom ambled in from the same direction.

  Mom!

  She was carrying a tray of muffins and humming. “Alison!” she said. “How did you get here? You’re so silly.”

  I was starting to subscribe to that opinion myself.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Nothing happened,” Mom told me. “What are you doing here?”

  “You…I couldn’t talk to you…your phone…” Even I didn’t think I sounded coherent. What was going on?

  “My phone died and I couldn’t charge it because the power’s out,” she explained. “That’s hardly an emergency.” She looked behind me. “Oh, hello, Murray,” she said. “How did she talk you into this?”

  “Hello, Mrs. Kerby,” Murray answered. “Alison said it was an emergency.”

  Mom waved her hand after she put the tray of muffins on the coffee table. “That’s ridiculous. Jerry and Frances were here. There was no danger. It’s just some snow.”

  She avoided looking at Maxie, who said, “Yeah, well. You had to be there.”

  Murray shot me a disdainful look. “Well, I guess there’s no emergency. I have places to plow. Do you want a ride back, Alison?”

  And worry about my mother in a room with these two? Hell, no! “I think I’ll stick around for a while, Murray. Thanks again.” Mom looked puzzled; how would I get home?

  He scowled a little and walked to the door, which he opened. Then he turned back and nodded at the assembled group. “Well, I’m glad it turned out there wasn’t a killer here, after all,” he said. The door closed behind him.

  Jerry looked stunned and confused. “A killer?” he repeated.

  But Frances Walters’s face didn’t look all that surprised and not a bit confused. She looked furious.

  No, I wasn’t at all happy to be right.

  Thirty-two

  I tried to come up with something I could say that would placate Frances, but by an hour later the only thing I’d thought of was, “What’s he talking about, a killer? That Murray!” In all honesty, though, that probably wouldn’t have helped even in the moment.

  In any event, there wasn’t enough time. Frances reached into the pocket of her jacket and pulled out a handgun. And for the first time in my life, I was sorry Murray wasn’t in the room.

  Mom gasped. You have to love that woman. Here I had all but faxed her a “Wanted” poster with Frances’s picture on it, yet she was still astonished that such a nice woman could be violent.

  Maxie started looking around the room, no doubt for a decent weapon that could be used against Frances. I tried to get her attention and push my glance toward the wall connecting the house to the garage, where some of Dad’s old tools and other useful paraphernalia might be found.

  Maxie, out of sync with me as ever, first avoided my glance, then looked at me and said, “What?”

  “Frances, what are you doing?” Jerry demanded. “What is this all about?”

  Frances did a perfect high-school-junior eye roll and heaved a sigh of exasperation. “Oh, seriously, Jerry,” she said. “They know I killed Larry Laurentz.”

  Jerry’s mouth opened and closed. Five times. But no sound came out. Maybe he was trying to figure out what rhymed with toaster for his musical on the subject. Wait. He didn’t know Lawrence had died of toaster-inflicted electrocution. Frances did.

  Mom gritted her teeth. It was one thing to kill a man in his bathtub. It was another to ruin her brunch.

  I reached into my tote bag, drawing a quick turn with the gun from Frances, but all I held when I dropped the tote on the floor was my voice recorder, not a weapon. I held it out toward Frances.

  “Would you mind repeating that?” I asked.

  Frances clearly found that amusing; she smiled broadly, leaned in toward the recorder and said, enunciating perfectly, “I killed Larry Laurentz. Dropped an electric toaster into his bathtub and gave him a heart attack.”

  “Arrhythmia,” I corrected out of reflex. “So let me get it straight. You were just passing by Larry’s house with your fishing rod and a toaster and decided to see what happened if you cast it into his tub? Why? Just because he snitched to the cops that you guys were going to get naked in a production of Hair after you kicked him out of the group?” A confession is better if you don’t get the subject just to say yes, so I was deliberately professing the wrong theory. I was pretty sure.

  Jerry’s hand went to his mouth, which was still flapping s
oundlessly.

  Frances scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous. The nude scene is a perfect depiction of the innocence of idealism.” She turned toward Jerry, still holding the gun but seeming to forget that. “You really did a fine job on that adaptation, Jerry.”

  Jerry puffed up. “Why, thank you.” Theatrical ego knows no bounds at any level.

  Frances looked annoyed again as she turned back to me. “It was really the fact that the stupid informant had drawn attention to my prescription business. I would have been indicted if they’d found evidence, and that would have meant real jail time.”

  Okay, Frances had some serious crazy going on here.

  “That’s right,” I recalled. “You had a son who’s a pharmacist. A connection when you needed one. But Jerry”—I felt that Jerry needed to be spoken of kindly at this moment—“was also kept overnight on suspicion over the prescription thing, too.”

  Jerry looked sheepish. He coughed a couple of times and said, “I thought it would deflect suspicion from me if I implicated myself. I didn’t have anything to do with the drug business.”

  That took a moment to sink in. Maxie flew out of the room but in the wrong direction, toward the kitchen. Yeah, she’d find rolling pins and frying pans in there, but Frances had a gun. We needed something a little more…immediate.

  “I don’t understand,” Mom said. “Jerry, you were the informant?”

  “Well…um…yes. I thought it would generate some publicity for the New Old Thespians if we were involved in a controversy. So I called in about the nude scene. But the police weren’t interested in the nudity. So I told them about the prescriptions.”

  I looked at Frances, who was trying to process that information. “You killed Larry, and he hadn’t even informed on you.”

  She heaved a breath and frowned. “It doesn’t matter now.” She gestured toward the bedroom with the gun. “Move. The bunch of you.”

  “Why?” Jerry asked.

  “Because I’m going to shoot you all in there and then leave the gun in your hand, Jerry. Go.”

  Just as I was wondering why it mattered which room Frances shot us in, Maxie came back holding a kitchen knife in her trench coat, which she showed me as she passed. It was better than nothing, but knives are not the most accurate weapon, especially when the opponent is more efficiently armed. It occurred to me in that moment, however, that there was no reason to conceal Maxie’s presence anymore.