Nearly Departed

by Max Patrick Schlienger

  Chapter Fourteen

  “What is it, mate?”

  Dennis turned to face Bobo, but his eyes stayed fixed on the photograph in his hand. “I think we’re in trouble,” he said quietly, his words reaching his own ears as if from the back of a deep cave. Bobo tilted his head to look at the picture, gently pulling it from between Dennis’ fingertips.

  “Who’s that, then?”

  “It’s Sam,” Dennis answered, his voice barely audible. “Sam Harding.”

  “What, your shrink buddy?”

  Dennis nodded dumbly. “He did set me up. The whole thing was a goddamned con!” The rest of the pictures started slipping in his hand. He must have moved to set them down, because he found himself standing across the room, near the entrance to the kitchen. He was dimly aware that Bobo was watching him, and that Spinner was craning his neck to see over the back of his chair.

  “Boss?” Bobo prompted. “Are you alright?”

  “Don’t you get it?” Dennis snapped. “Sam was Eric Palin’s partner! He must have known that Elspeth was hiring paranormal investigators, and he sent me in here as one.”

  Bobo shook his head with confusion. “Hang on. I thought the lady found your advert in the paper?”

  That was what Elspeth had said, Dennis thought. “Yeah, but you said it yourself, almost nobody reads the paper anymore. If he knew that Elspeth did, then it was only a matter of time before she saw my ad.”

  “Patient bloke, is he?”

  “Well, he has waited fifty years!” Dennis stormed back to Bobo’s side and glared down at Spinner. “And he hired this psychopath to stalk me!”

  “Hey, wait a second!” protested Spinner. “I told you to leave Elspeth alone, remember? I was trying to keep you away from her.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure you were just looking out for your precious niece,” Dennis sneered.

  “I don’t have a niece!” The look on Spinner’s face was both pleading and enraged. “Elspeth is my friend! I live up the street from here!” The chair shuddered as he shook beneath his restraints. “We play Backgammon on Sundays!”

  “She’s bloody brutal, ain’t she?” Bobo asked. Dennis shoved through the conversation.

  “What were you doing at Sam’s office then, huh?” He took an angry step forward. “Why did you ask Luke about me?”

  “Who the fuck is Luke?”

  “Yeah, September,” added Bobo. “Who’s Luke?”

  Dennis made an exasperated noise. “He’s a friend of mine. A bartender at Thoreau’s Tavern in the city.” A hidden detail clicked into place. “Sam was going to give him some money to cover a gambling debt. He must have hired Spinner to watch him, too.”

  “That guy? The blonde kid?” Spinner scowled. “I don’t give two shits about him. That bar is one of Harding’s hangouts. I went there looking for him. Seeing your picture was an added bonus.”

  “Aha!” exclaimed Dennis. “You were looking for Sam, huh? So you are working for him?”

  “No, you idiot, you are!”

  “I am not!” Dennis hesitated. That technically wasn’t true. “Not like that, anyway,” he amended.

  “Let me go!” bellowed Spinner. He thrashed a moment longer before relaxing, and his fury seemed to dissipate. “Samuel Harding is not a nice man, kid. He’s been trying to get in this house since Elspeth’s parents died.”

  “Yeah, and you’re helping him.”

  “No,” Spinner insisted. “No, I’ve been trying to stop him.”

  “By doing what?” Dennis waved a hand through the air. “Showing up at his office and threatening him with a toy?”

  Spinner deflated visibly. “I can’t carry a gun anymore,” he sulked. “They dismissed me from the force after a perpetrator shot me. Nerve damage.”

  “You look okay from where I’m standing,” said Bobo, a tad too cheerfully for Dennis’ taste.

  “It’s fine motor control that’s the issue,” Spinner continued. “Without it, you can’t carry a gun, and that’s enough to disqualify you. I’ve been a private investigator ever since.” He looked up at Dennis. “See? That’s how I met Elspeth. She hired me to talk to her sister, and I found out that someone was trying to buy her house. It didn’t take much for me to work it back to Harding.”

  Dennis folded his arms. “Yeah, whatever. Why follow me, then?”

  “Your friend already said it. Elspeth saw an ad in the paper, and I dug around to find out who had posted it. By the time I got back from talking to Harding, she’d already called you.”

  “Sam didn’t give me up, then.” That was something, at least, and it was a point in Harding’s favor.

  “No.” Spinner’s expression fell back into a scowl. “He paid cash in person. It would have been a dead end if I hadn’t seen you at the office.”

  “That was it?” Dennis didn’t believe it. “I could have been there for therapy.”

  “He is pretty jumpy,” Bobo noted with a nod.

  “Nobody ever visits during Harding’s lunch breaks,” Spinner answered, ignoring Bobo’s comment. “You had to be a friend of his.”

  “But... but Evy remembers you.” Dennis immediately realized that the point didn’t make much sense, and his resolve began to slip.

  Spinner shuddered. “That’s great. I don’t want anything to do with her.”

  As if on cue, the ghost chose that moment to reappear. “Oh, well that’s nice,” she pouted. “Really, Malcolm, why must you be so cruel?”

  “Goes with the job, I expect,” Bobo grinned. Evy turned her attention his way.

  “Bobo, it’s nice to see you, as well, dear.”

  Dennis’ head was spinning. “Just what the hell is going on here?” he demanded. Evy cocked an eyebrow at him.

  “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, mister...?”

  “He’s a doctor, actually,” corrected Bobo. “Doctor September.”

  “I see.” Evy pressed her lips together. “Well, Doctor, I must say that I don’t approve of your treatment methods.” She nodded at Spinner for emphasis.

  “What is this?” Dennis looked from the ghost to Spinner and then finally to Bobo. “She remembers both of you guys, but not me?”

  Bobo lifted his shoulders and made a face that suggested his contentment with being clueless. “Maybe it’s our skin?”

  “That’s stupid.” Spinner kept his eyes firmly averted from the ghost.

  Bobo shrugged again. “Well, I mean, what else could it be?”

  “It does so remind me of Dante,” Evy sighed wistfully.

  Bobo blinked. “Who?”

  “The servant boy,” Dennis realized. He rubbed his forehead. “God, I’m stupid. Elspeth mentioned him, remember?”

  “Yeah, she said Evy weren’t too nice to him.”

  “It must have been an act, or maybe Elspeth just didn’t recognize flirtation when she saw it. She was pretty young, after all.” He looked at Evy. “That was it, wasn’t it? You and the servant – Dante – were lovers.” The ghost said nothing, but the look of humble embarrassment on her face was answer enough. “Actually,” Dennis continued, turning back to Spinner, “Elspeth mentioned that someone else had visited Evy, back when she first appeared. She said that he had dark skin. So, that fits with what you were saying, too.”

  “I’m so pleased.” The detective still wouldn’t look at Evy. He looked sick, Dennis thought. With a sigh, he held out his hand to Bobo.

  “Give me the knife.”

  “Here, September, the bloke’s on our side!”

  “I know,” Dennis replied. “That’s why I’m cutting him loose.”

  “Oh. Well, you had it last.”

  It took a moment of searching, but Dennis finally found the blade near where he had cut the tablecloth into strips. He took care in freeing Spinner’s limbs, worried that the man might lash out as soon as the bonds were gone. He watched Dennis closely, but only moved to gently massage the places where he had been tied.

  “You’re still in deep shit, kid,” the de
tective muttered.

  “Don’t I know it,” Dennis said with a sigh. “I told Sam that I’d be there with the key. He’s going to get pretty suspicious when I don’t show up.”

  Spinner’s brow furrowed, and he looked around the room for something. Before Dennis could say anything else, the detective pulled his shoes from underneath the chair. “What key?” he asked.

  This constant repetition was becoming tedious. “Sam and Eric had a safety deposit box where they stored the money from their last job. Eric had the key to it, but he gave it to his daughter.”

  “It must have been a lot, if it was worth waiting this long for. Why trust... you know, her... with access?”

  Dennis glanced at the chair, empty again, and wondered if the ghost could still hear them. “I’m not sure about that yet. She said she was waiting for them to get back from somewhere, but that’s it. I think she was working with them.”

  “You think?” Spinner scoffed. “Damn it, kid, you’d better be sure about it before you talk to Harding.”

  “Whoa, wait a minute!” said Dennis hurriedly. “I’m not going anywhere near him.”

  “But now we can get him!” Spinner clapped his hands together greedily. “We can finally make him leave Elspeth alone.”

  A heated discussion followed, with Dennis adopting the stance that they were better off leaving the situation behind, and Spinner insisting that they take action. Neither of them was willing to shift, and Bobo offered his own brand of input by jumping in with what were probably supposed to be amusing witticisms.

  “Let’s at least find the stupid thing, okay?” Spinner finally relented. “I’ll even let you hang onto it. Just make sure that it’s out of the house in case Harding shows up.”

  “Funny, he said the same thing about you,” muttered Dennis. “I’m kidding. Why would he show up now, anyway?”

  “The same reason he hired you, boss.” Both Spinner and Dennis turned to look at Bobo. “What? Just me? Okay, well, the shrink was afraid that Elspeth would recognize him, yeah? But she’s not here now, and he knows it.”

  “There you go, kid,” said Spinner. It was a reasonable explanation, despite being almost identical to the one that Harding had offered. If it hadn’t been for the picture that proved the psychiatrist’s deceit, Dennis might still have sided with him. He supposed that was what made the man such a successful con artist.

  “I don’t suppose you know what a safety deposit box key looks like?” Dennis asked.

  “Yeah, I do.” Spinner drew a shape in the air with his finger. “Back then, they usually had a clover-shaped head. If that doesn’t do it, something else will.”

  “Alright. Bobo, show him the drawer.”

  The three of them crowded through the door to the kitchen, with Bobo leading the way. The drawer was still open, and Dennis got his first real look at the assortment of items it held. In addition to a section dedicated entirely to keys, there was a neat stack of pens, a few loose safety pins and rubber bands, and a half-empty tube of glue. Spinner ignored the other items and started pawing through the keys, raising a few of them to his eye for inspection. One of them, apparently no different in appearance from the others, seemed to satisfy him.

  “Here we go.” He held the key out for Dennis. “There’s teeth on both sides, see?” Dennis took it gingerly and turned it over in his hand. Well, he supposed he’d trust Spinner’s judgment.

  “What’s the big deal with this, anyway?” Bobo asked. “Couldn’t the shrink just say he lost it?”

  The detective shook his head. “The bank doesn’t keep a copy, and they’d need Eric’s signature to drill open the box. Since he’s dead, they’d need the signature of a family member.”

  “Wouldn’t the shrink need a signature, too?”

  “Not necessarily. He wouldn’t be able to drill it, but he could still get in with the key.”

  “Wait, this doesn’t make sense.” Both men turned to Dennis. “If the Palins were here illegally, how could Eric have gotten an account in the first place?”

  Spinner sighed. “It’s a bank, kid, not the port authority. Back then you just signed the paper and paid the fee.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  “Now,” the detective said, “can we please go and get the bastard that wants to hurt Ellie?” His words were harsh, but his tone was subdued, and there was enough sensitive emotion in the man’s eyes that Dennis felt uncomfortable meeting them. Bobo looked away as well, contemplating a spot on the wall.

  “I’m still not sure about that,” Dennis answered gently. “At the very least, we should talk to her first. Elspeth really should have some say in this.”

  “You’re right.” Spinner’s quiet agreement caught Dennis by surprise, but the somber nod of his head was unquestionably sincere. “Yeah, you’re right, this is her deal, too.” He sighed, mirroring Dennis’ feelings, if perhaps not their source. “Come on, I’ll give you guys a ride to the hospital.”

  They left the house in pensive silence, the echoes of their footsteps barely covering the sound of a ghost shedding invisible tears.