The Ghost of Second Chances

by Anna J. McIntyre

  Through the window they could hear her shout, “Unlock the kitchen door!”

  Heather rushed into the library ahead of Danielle. “I saw Macbeth!” she announced for the second time. The first time had been moments earlier, when Danielle had unlocked the kitchen door and let her into the house.

  “Where was he?” Chris asked.

  “Walking along the beach, shooting kids.” Heather flopped down on the sofa and let out a grunt.

  “Excuse me?” Chris frowned.

  Walt stood up, using the chair’s arm for balance. He then hopped to the nearby recliner. “I don’t think we’re going to finish our game today.”

  Chris turned in his chair and faced Heather. “What do you mean shooting kids?”

  “Just that. I was jogging down the beach. I see what I assume is a man. And then I see he’s carrying a gun in his hand. Next thing I know, he raises the gun and shoots a little kid. You have no idea how freaked I was!” Heather dramatically shivered.

  “What happened to the kid?” Walt asked.

  Heather gave Walt her most disgusted glare and said, “Well, obviously nothing. Macbeth’s a freaking ghost and a nasty one at that. He shot me next, and then he disappeared.”

  “That’s kind of a weird thing for him to do,” Danielle said.

  Chris shrugged. “I don’t know. There’s been a few times I’ve considered shooting Heather.”

  Heather turned another glare on Chris. “Shut up.”

  Chris chuckled. “Okay, seriously, why is Macbeth’s spirit walking down the beach, using kids as target practice?”

  “He seemed angry,” Heather said.

  “Getting murdered can have that effect,” Walt suggested.

  “If they didn’t already have his killer in custody, I’d suggest we go find him,” Danielle said. “But if we’re lucky, after he shot Heather and disappeared—well, maybe he disappeared for good.”

  Oversized sunglasses covered a good portion of Sonya Kozlov’s face, along with the floppy straw hat, its brim pulled downward, concealing the blond hair tucked up out of sight. She sat behind the steering wheel of the van parked three doors down from Marlow House. In her hands she held an open road map; it rested against the steering wheel. She wasn’t reading the map—it would be impossible to do through the dark glasses. But it didn’t matter. The map was only a prop, should someone drive by and wonder what she was doing just sitting there in a parked vehicle.

  She glanced at her watch. That morning, she had spent hours sitting on a bench at the pier, pretending to read a book. From that venue she could keep track of cars coming and going on Beach Drive. When she first spied the locksmith van, she thought that was what she had been waiting for. But it wasn’t.

  Just as she decided it was time to move again, she spied someone crossing the street to Marlow House. It was a petite redhead and a tall man wearing a Cub’s baseball cap. Walking alongside them was a golden retriever. Sonya decided to wait a few more minutes to move, after they had reached their destination and hopefully went inside.

  Instead of going to the front door of Marlow House, Sonya watched as the couple and their dog made their way up the driveway and entered the side yard of Marlow House through the gate. When they were no longer in sight, she started to turn the key in the ignition when a white van came driving in her direction. She watched as it passed her and then made a U-turn and parked in front of Marlow House. Sonya smiled. This is it, she thought.

  “We really should have cancelled this delivery,” Danielle muttered under her breath to Walt. She stood in the hallway with Walt, Lily and Heather as they watched Chris and Ian help the two delivery men bring in the crate holding Macbeth’s paintings.

  “Can’t really keep them in storage indefinitely,” Walt reminded her.

  “What are we going to do with them?” Danielle asked.

  “You could always put them in the library where the originals were,” Lily suggested.

  “Walt and I already discussed that,” Danielle told her.

  “I don’t really need to look at a life-size painting of myself every day,” Walt said.

  “Didn’t seem to bother you before,” Heather reminded him.

  “In all fairness to Walt, he couldn’t really look into a mirror back then,” Lily said in a low voice so the delivery men couldn’t hear. “Who knows, maybe without the portrait he would have forgotten what he looked like. And I certainly can understand why he doesn’t want Angela’s portrait here anymore.”

  “Angela I can understand,” Heather agreed.

  “Are you sure you want us to put the crate in the hallway?” Ian asked as they set it down next to the basement door.

  “Not unless you want to take them all the way down to the basement,” Danielle teased.

  “You don’t want to keep the paintings in the basement,” Lily said. “They’ll get all moldy.”

  Danielle shrugged. “I guess you’re right.”

  The two deliverymen paid little notice to Danielle’s lack of enthusiasm over receiving the delivery and went back to the van, returning a few minutes later with the suitcases that had been removed from Clint’s rental van after the car accident. They set the suitcases on the crate. A few minutes later, they handed a clipboard to Walt and asked him to sign for the delivery.

  After the deliverymen left Marlow House, Walt hobbled to the living room while his friends helped bring the suitcases into the room with him.

  “Are you sure you want us to help you go through these?” Lily asked. “I thought that might be something you’d want to do by yourself.”

  “Why?” Walt asked. “They belonged to Clint, not me. To be honest, I don’t want to keep any of it, but I think I should at least sort through it before I donate it to some charity. But if you don’t feel comfortable—”

  “Oh no, Walt, it isn’t that,” Lily assured him.

  “Let’s just hope we don’t find anything we don’t want to find,” Chris said as he opened the first suitcase.

  “Like what?” Heather asked.

  “Like maybe Clint was a smuggler?” Ian suggested.

  “Or a drug runner?” Lily added.

  Danielle chuckled. “I don’t think we’ll find anything illegal. I suspect the police department already inventoried what was in the suitcases. I know they opened the crate and checked on the paintings.”

  “Well, pooh,” Lily grumbled as she opened the second suitcase. “Does that mean all we’re going to find is stuff like dirty underwear?”

  With reluctant fingers, Chris gingerly lifted a pair of wrinkled boxers from the suitcase he had just opened. “I suspect so.” Chris cringed and dropped the garment on the floor.

  No longer parked at Beach Drive, Sonya pulled into the parking lot of the Sea Horse Motel. Before getting out of her vehicle, she pulled her cellphone from her purse and made the call.

  “Hello?” came a male voice.

  “It’s me,” she said. “Are you sure you can pull this off?”

  “Did it arrive?” he asked.

  “Yes. They took it in the house. I think you should get it as soon as possible. We can’t waste any more time. But you need to do it at night, when just the two of them are there. People have been coming and going from the house all day. Right now there’s about six of them there,” Sonya explained.

  “We’ll do it tonight if we can,” he promised.

  “I guess I have to trust you on this,” she said.

  “Do you have the money?” he asked.

  “You bring the paintings to the designated site, and if they are what you say they are, you’ll get your money.”

  “If you don’t have the money, all of it, we aren’t leaving the paintings.”

  “You’ll get your money. Just bring me my paintings.” Without another word, Sonya ended the call and then tossed her cellphone back in her purse. Looking up into the rearview mirror, she removed her sunglasses and flashed her reflection a smile.

  Thirty

  “I don’t bel
ieve Marlow has amnesia.” It wasn’t the first time Joe had expressed this opinion. He and Brian sat with the chief in his office.

  “I have no reason to believe he’s lying,” the chief said. They had been discussing his recent visit to Marlow House. “And what would his motive be?”

  “To get close to Danielle, for one,” Joe said. “He knows she’s worth a fortune.”

  “The man just lost his fiancée,” the chief reminded him. “Danielle believes he was genuinely in love with her. Who knows, maybe he simply can’t deal with her loss, and this is his subconscious’s way of coping.”

  Good lord, man, you are getting as adept as Danielle at coming up with this BS at a moment’s notice, MacDonald told himself.

  “I still think he’s in some way involved with Bandoni’s murder,” Brian insisted.

  “Again, I can’t see a motive,” the chief said. “Although, I have to say, I don’t believe Laverne’s story. I don’t believe she killed him.”

  “At least not for the reason she’s giving,” Joe said.

  “Why do you think she’s lying?” Brian asked.

  “Her story doesn’t make sense,” the chief explained. “For one thing, Heather claims she saw a car that matches the description of Chet’s stopping in front of Marlow House twice. And Marlow heard someone running out of the house and saw them jump into that car and drive away.”

  “So he says,” Joe grumbled. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he lied about hearing someone running out of the house and seeing them get into that car.”

  “You forget Lily saw the same thing,” the chief reminded him.

  “Maybe Laverne is covering for her brother,” Brian suggested.

  MacDonald gave Brian a nod. “That’s what I’m thinking.”

  “Maybe Laverne and Chet are wrapped up in this, but I still think they’re working with Marlow. After all, Marlow would need an accomplice, considering he can’t get around very well in a cast,” Joe insisted.

  “And just what is his motive?” the chief again asked.

  Joe shook his head. “I don’t know. But if we dig a little deeper, I’ll bet we’ll find it.”

  A knock at the door interrupted their discussion. The three looked to the open doorway and saw Special Agent Thomas and Special Agent Wilson from the FBI.

  Thomas and Wilson were not strangers to the Frederickport lawmen. They had worked in conjunction with them on several cases in the past. In their mid-forties, both agents were clean-cut, had shortly cropped hair, and each wore a tailored dark suit. MacDonald thought all they needed were dark sunglasses and boater hats to fit the description of the stereotypical FBI agent he had seen in the movies.

  “Your person in the front said we could just come back,” Wilson said as he entered the office followed by Thomas.

  The three Frederickport officers stood, each extending hands in greetings. After a brief exchange of handshakes and hellos, the chief asked, “So what do we owe this visit to?”

  “We’ll let you have some privacy,” Brian said before the agents could respond. “Nice seeing you both again.”

  Special Agent Thomas stopped Brian and Joe from leaving the office by saying, “No. We’d like to talk to all of you. We understand you two were the ones who responded to the Bandoni murder scene.”

  “Perhaps we should all sit down,” the chief suggested, pointing to the two chairs sitting in front of his desk. He then looked up at Joe and asked, “Can you grab two more chairs?”

  Joe gave him a nod and left the office for a moment and then returned with two more chairs. When they were all seated, the chief asked, “So what is this about?”

  “We were hoping to talk to the woman you have in custody, Laverne Morrison,” Thomas explained.

  The chief arched his brows. “How does our murder case involve the FBI?”

  Wilson reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a woman’s photograph. He set it on the desk and slid it to the chief. “We’ve had Sonya Kozlov and her boyfriend on our radar for some time now.”

  The chief picked up the photograph and looked at it. Not recognizing the woman, he shrugged and handed it to Brian, who looked at it and then handed it to Joe.

  “Who is she?” Joe asked as he looked at the photograph.

  “She’s a Russian who has been living in Portland with her boyfriend. She has money—a lot of it. We believe she and her boyfriend, Maurice Beaufort, are behind a number of valuable paintings disappearing. Currently, she’s staying at your Sea Horse Motel, and earlier today, she was parked in front of Marlow House, watching the place.”

  “What does she have to do with Bandoni’s murder?” the chief asked.

  “When she first arrived in Frederickport, we intercepted one of her phone calls after she visited the local museum here. She was calling Macbeth Bandoni, and by what they were saying…” Thomas paused a moment and pulled a folded piece of paper from his jacket’s inside pocket. He stood up and handed it to the chief. “Rather than me explaining the phone call we intercepted, this is its transcript.”

  The chief accepted the paper and unfolded it. He read it quickly and then asked, “Can I read this out loud for Joe and Brian to hear?”

  Thomas nodded. “Certainly.”

  * * *

  Macbeth Bandoni: Why are you calling me? I told you not to call me again. We have nothing to talk about.

  Sonya Kozlov: If you wonder why you haven’t heard anything about the paintings being fake, it’s because the expert hasn’t seen them yet.

  Macbeth Bandoni: I don’t know what you’re talking about. Sonya, please. It’s over, and thank you for calling. It just reminds me I need to get another phone.

  Sonya Kozlov: No. But it’s not over, Mac. You can still get the paintings and get the money. Don’t you want the money?

  Macbeth Bandoni: What are you talking about? I explained it. Any day now they’re going to come looking for me, and I need to disappear for a while.

  Sonya Kozlov: No, Mac. You have until May. We’ve been given a reprieve. You’re back in business. We’re back in business. And I want my paintings.

  Macbeth Bandoni: Where are you?

  Sonya Kozlov: I’m in Frederickport. I’m going to stay until you get my paintings for me. Can I count on you?

  Macbeth Bandoni: If what you say is true, yes. I’ll get back with you.

  * * *

  After the chief finished reading the transcript, he folded it up again, stood, and handed it back to Thomas before sitting back down behind his desk.

  “The Bonnets,” Joe blurted. “That’s what they’re talking about.”

  Thomas nodded. “According to the docent in the museum who talked to her, she was there to see the Bonnets.”

  The chief shook his head and said, “The Bonnets—the originals—are all in Portland, locked up in some museum.”

  Joe shook his head and said, “That’s what they want us to think, Chief. They obviously switched Danielle’s paintings with the fake Bonnets Bandoni painted.”

  “I don’t see how,” the chief said. “I helped them load the paintings into the crate before it was locked and put into the van.”

  “How do you know the paintings you put in the crate weren’t the originals?” Thomas asked.

  Before the chief could answer, Brian said, “Sorry, Chief, even if you did load the reproductions in the crate, it would have been possible for them to switch the paintings that night. From what I know, the crate wasn’t loaded into Marlow’s van until the next morning, right before they left.”

  “Don’t forget, Chief,” Joe reminded him, “Bandoni showed up here and tried to get you to turn over the paintings after the accident. Now we know why he was so intent on getting them—they were the real Bonnets, and if you ask me, Clint Marlow was in on this. He would have had to have been. Bandoni would need someone’s help to switch out the portraits, and Marlow is the one who arranged everything.”

  The chief sat speechless, unable to come up with a believable retort. He knew Cli
nt Marlow had been involved in the attempted theft, and he knew the paintings had been switched. Of course, they had been switched back, Walt Marlow had seen to that.

  “When we leave here, we plan to interview Walt Marlow. In fact…” Wilson glanced at his watch. “Our art expert should be here within the hour.”

  “Art expert?” the chief asked.

  “Like Joe and Brian, we believe Bandoni switched the paintings before he left Marlow House. Our art expert will be able to prove that. The only question, was Marlow involved?” Wilson asked. “Not only in the art theft, but the murder.”

  “Of course he was,” Joe said.

  “I agree,” Brian chimed in.

  “You said something about wanting to talk to Laverne Morrison?” the chief asked.

  They brought Laverne into the interrogation room first and left her there. She sat alone at the table, her hands folded on the tabletop in front of her as her fingers fidgeted. Watching her from the other room through the two-way mirror were the Chief, Brian, Joe and Special Agent Wilson.

  “Who are you?” Laverne asked when Thomas entered the room and closed the door behind him.

  “Hello, Ms. Morrison. I’m Special Agent Thomas, with the FBI.”

  “FBI?” she squeaked.

  He took a seat across from her at the table and said, “I understand you have confessed to the murder of Macbeth Bandoni.”

  “What does this have to do with the FBI?”

  “What do you know of Bandoni dealing in stolen art?”

  Laverne frowned. “I know Mac was an artist. I don’t know anything about stolen art.”

  “Do you know what his relationship was with Clint Marlow?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “Just what I’ve heard around town.”

  “Which is?”

  “Mr. Marlow hired him to reproduce some paintings at Marlow House,” she said.