The Ghost of Second Chances

by Anna J. McIntyre

  The chief frowned. “Hero worship?”

  Adam nodded. “I used to find it a little odd. I mean, Mac was this short skinny guy, while his cousins, well, they were good-size boys even back then. I think the only reason they didn’t play football is because they’d gotten into fights in town and were each kicked off the team. But they idolized that older cousin of theirs. Talked about how he traveled the world. How smart and talented he was.”

  “Can you think of any reason Chet would want to kill Mac?” the chief asked.

  Adam arched his brow. “Chet? Not really. But to be honest, until recently, I hadn’t really seen him in years. I have no idea what’s been going on with him.”

  Thirty-Four

  It was late Monday evening, and they had finished dinner hours ago. Walt and Danielle sat in the parlor, contemplating turning in for the night.

  “I still can’t believe Chet’s dead,” Danielle mused.

  “The man was annoying, but it would be a little harsh to wish him dead. The chief doesn’t know if it was foul play?”

  Danielle shrugged. “I guess not. I assume they’ll know more when the autopsy is finished. But according to the chief, Chet is one of the suspects for Macbeth’s murder. While I didn’t have much use for him, I really didn’t see him as a killer.”

  “If he shows up here, maybe he’ll tell us what happened.”

  Danielle cringed. “Oh, please, Walt, don’t even suggest that! I didn’t want Chet hanging around when he was alive; I can’t even imagine how annoying he would be as a ghost!”

  “Tsk-tsk, Danielle. Speaking ill of the dead?” Walt teased.

  “You know what I mean. I’m sorry he’s dead. But that doesn’t mean I’d welcome his ghost.”

  “Even if he answers some questions?”

  Danielle stood up. “Even then. Some things just aren’t worth the trouble knowing. And with that, I think I’m calling it a night.”

  Thirty minutes later Danielle was upstairs in her bathroom, just getting out of the shower. After drying off, she dressed in a pair of plaid pajama bottoms and a pink T-shirt. Sitting on the side of her bed, she combed out her damp hair and thought of Joanne’s phone call earlier that evening. She was coming back to work in a couple of days. Danielle had enjoyed having some alone time with Walt and regretted it was about to end.

  Standing up, Danielle walked to her dressing table and tossed her brush in one of its drawers. She looked up in the mirror at her reflection.

  “It’s not like Joanne will be here twenty-four seven,” she reminded herself.

  Turning to her bed, she paused a moment and just looked at it.

  “I miss our evening chats in bed,” Danielle mused. She then glanced at her closed door. “Maybe Walt can’t make it up here, but I could always go down there. I mean, really, considering all the times he just barged into my room, aren’t I entitled?”

  Biting her lower lip while considering going back downstairs, she said, “It will all be very respectable. The poor man is wearing a cast.”

  Looking back to the bed, she realized she was no longer sleepy—and no longer ready to end the day.

  Since saying goodnight to Danielle, Walt had taken his shower and had slipped on a pair of boxers and a T-shirt. He had left his bedroom door open for Max. But so far, the cat had not shown up.

  Walt was just hobbling to bed when he heard a noise coming from the open doorway. With a crutch tucked under each arm, he made his way from the bedroom into the hall. At first, he thought the sound might be Max, who sometimes enjoyed a late-night romp through the house. But when he reached the middle of the hallway, there was no cat, and the source of the sound confused him. It came both from his right—and his left.

  The hallway, virtually dark save for the glow from the random nightlights in various electrical sockets along the floorboard, gave no clue as to the source of the sound. Walt heard it again and looked to the front door. A rattling noise came from that direction. But then, behind him, he heard a familiar voice ask, “Walt, what are you doing out here?”

  Danielle’s unexpected question sent him spinning in her direction, and he almost stumbled, yet with her help, he managed to keep upright.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Walt,” Danielle said with a giggle, still holding onto him. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  In the next moment it was Danielle who was startled when the front door crashed open, and three large figures quickly entered the house. Without thinking, Danielle let out a gasp, calling attention to herself and Walt.

  “Get them!” one of the men shouted.

  The three men each wore ski masks, concealing their faces, yet both Danielle and Walt had no doubt who they were, considering their size. The intruders had turned on the hall lights while closing all the doors leading to any rooms that faced the street. They obviously did not want any of the neighbors to see what was going on.

  One of the three men had pulled two dining room chairs into the hallway, about fifteen feet from where the crate sat near the basement door. The man told Walt to sit in one and Danielle to sit in the other. Another man pulled out a rope and used it to secure the pair to their respective chairs. So far, the intruders had not threatened them with guns or knives. Their size and number were intimidating enough for a man in a cast and a petite woman.

  The two prisoners watched as the three men hovered over the crate, trying to figure out how to get it open.

  Grateful the intruders hadn’t gagged them, Walt asked in a whisper, “Is the crate locked?”

  Danielle, whose eyes were on the men, nodded. “We should have just told Wilson and Thomas not to bother relocking it.”

  “Why don’t they just carry the crate out?” Walt asked.

  “They probably want to make sure the paintings are there. And maybe they don’t have room in their car?” she suggested.

  One of the men looked in their direction and shouted, “Where’s the key?”

  “It’s in the parlor, on the desk,” Danielle called back.

  “Parlor? You have a sissy parlor?” the man asked. The other two men started to laugh.

  Danielle nodded in the direction of the closed parlor door. The man went to retrieve the key and returned a moment later. Danielle and Walt watched as he unlocked the crate. With the help of his accomplices, they unloaded the enormous oil paintings and set them by the front door.

  One of the men looked to Danielle and Walt and said, “I’m pretty sure they’ll fit in here.”

  Another one glanced down at the crate and said, “Having a lock means we don’t have to nail the thing shut.” The three men laughed.

  “Wait!” Danielle shouted, “You can’t lock us in there. We won’t fit.”

  “We’ll make you fit,” the man told her as the three lumbered ominously in their direction.

  “Hold on!” Walt shouted. “Just take the paintings and leave. You can have them. There’s no reason to put us in there. We’re tied up.”

  The three men stopped, and for a brief moment, Walt thought they were going to take the suggestion, when the men started laughing again.

  “Seriously, Clint, you really think we’re going to let you get away with trying to double-cross our cousin?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Walt told them.

  “I don’t know who you are,” Danielle lied. “But Clint has amnesia. He doesn’t remember anything prior to the car accident.”

  “Even if that is true, which I don’t believe for a minute, once he gets his memory back, he’ll know who we are, and we can’t let that happen. I figure once we lock you in that crate together and get the paintings loaded, we can start a nice little bonfire in here. I don’t think it’ll take long for this old wooden house to go up like kindling.”

  “You intend to kill us?” Danielle shrieked.

  One of the men said, “Now you’re catching on.”

  “Why? You have masks on. We don’t even know who you are,” Danielle lied.

  “The mask
s are for your neighbors in case they see us leaving.”

  The three men stood facing their intended victims, their back to the now empty wooden crate. Instead of pleading for his or Danielle’s life, Walt focused all his attention on the crate. In the next moment, the lid slammed shut. The three men jumped in surprise. When they turned and saw what had happened, they laughed nervously, but turned back to Walt and Danielle, determined to carry out their deadly plan.

  They had only taken one step when the sound of something heavy sliding across the wooden floor distracted them. Turning back in the direction of the crate, the men were horrified to find it sliding across the floor toward them, picking up speed as it moved along.

  Unable to fully comprehend what was happening, the men stood frozen but then at the last moment tried to jump out of the way of the incoming missile. Unfortunately for them, they didn’t move fast enough and in the next moment were plowed down like bowling ball pins, sending them each flying in opposite directions.

  The crate stopped moving. A few moments later the would-be killers were just getting back on their feet when the front door flew open, and men wearing FBI bulletproof vests came streaming into the house, their guns drawn. One of the men was Special Agent Wilson, and another was his partner, Special Agent Thomas. Wilson holstered his weapon as his men put the three intruders in handcuffs and removed their ski masks. As Danielle and Walt had assumed, it was the Bandoni brothers.

  “That damn crate about killed us!” Angelo shouted, looking wild eyed at the now still crate.

  “This place is haunted!” Arlo screamed. “Get me out of here!”

  Thirty-Five

  Sirens coming up the street had woken not just Lily and Ian, but also Heather and Chris, who each lived on opposite ends of Beach Drive. It was past one in the morning on Tuesday, and it seemed that every light on the first floor of Marlow House was on. Lily and Ian had rushed over first, yet it wasn’t long before Chris and Heather had shown up. They had each looked out their front doors to see where the police cars were going when they saw the siren lights spinning around and around in front of Marlow House.

  Still shaken, Danielle sat on the sofa between Lily and Walt, with Walt’s arm around her shoulder, pulling her close. Joe Morelli, who was on duty and had arrived after the FBI agents, stood at the doorway to the living room, trying to process what he was seeing.

  He watched as Chris stood in a corner chatting quietly with Ian and Heather instead of comforting Danielle. Joe understood Chris still had feelings for Danielle, yet the man didn’t seem fazed that she was currently being comforted by someone like Clint Marlow. Even Lily’s expression when looking at Marlow confused Joe.

  “I’m glad plan A worked,” Walt said as he hugged Danielle tightly to his side.

  Leaning against his shoulder while Lily sat next to her, continually patting her knee, Danielle looked up to Walt and asked, “You had a plan B?”

  “Of course.” Walt smiled down at her.

  “What was plan B?” she asked.

  “No reason to kill us both. I was going to agree to willingly go into the crate if they would first put you outside out of harm’s way.”

  “I don’t think they would have agreed to that, considering their plan was to burn all the evidence,” Danielle said.

  “Thank God plan A worked!” Lily said. She then frowned and asked, “What was plan A?”

  Danielle chuckled and looked over at Joe, who stood by the doorway looking in their direction. “I’ll have to tell you later.”

  “Now that I think about it, we really didn’t need a plan A or B, the G-men would have still shown up in the nick of time,” Walt said.

  Lily glanced over in the direction Danielle had just looked and spied Joe staring at them. She looked back to Danielle and Walt and whispered, “Maybe you two shouldn’t be sitting like this.”

  “After believing I was about to be roasted alive, I don’t really care what anyone thinks,” Danielle told her.

  They brought Franco into the interrogation room first, while they held the brothers separately in other rooms. MacDonald, who was not on duty, yet had been called, had told his officers to give Wilson and Thomas what they needed. At the moment, they needed the interrogation room.

  Franco sat facing Special Agents Wilson and Thomas.

  “Okay, I confess, we were going to steal the paintings. But they belonged to us, so it’s not like it was really stealing.”

  “How do you figure that?” Wilson asked.

  “They were the last things Mac painted. He was our cousin. Actually, more like an older brother. When Mac called Marlow to see how he was doing after the accident, Marlow told him he didn’t want the paintings, told Mac he could have them. I guess because of everything that had happened, Marlow just didn’t want them anymore. Of course, Mac did. Before he could pick up the paintings, he was murdered. Since we’re Mac’s next of kin, we figured the paintings really belonged to us now.”

  “So why didn’t you just ask Mr. Marlow for them?” Wilson asked. “If you were so certain he was going to give them to your cousin anyway?”

  Franco let out a bitter laugh. “Yeah, right. Like he would just give them to us. But they mean something to me and my brothers. They were painted by our cousin. It’s sentimental, you know.”

  “But you weren’t just going to steal those paintings, were you?” Thomas said.

  Franco looked up to the agent. “What do you mean?”

  “You were planning to kill Marlow and Boatman.”

  “God no! I confess, one of us made a crack about it, more just to scare them so when we didn’t put them in the crate, they’d be relieved and maybe not call the cops when they got out of the ropes.”

  “So you weren’t going to kill them?” Wilson asked.

  “No way! Over a couple of paintings? You have to be kidding.”

  Thomas removed a photograph from a file folder he had been holding and slid it across the table. Franco looked down at it and frowned. “Who’s that?”

  “You don’t know her?” Thomas asked.

  Franco picked up the photograph and studied it a moment. He then shook his head and tossed it back on the table. “She doesn’t look familiar. Who is she?”

  “She was an acquaintance of your cousin’s. Her name is Sonya Kozlov. Do you remember Macbeth ever mentioning her?”

  Franco chuckled. “Mac hated his name. I called him by it once, and he slapped me into Sunday. Never did it again.”

  “Did your cousin bully you a lot?” Wilson asked.

  Franco glared up at Wilson. “I never said he bullied me. He hated his name. Can’t say I blamed him. I deserved that smack.”

  “Back to the original question, did Mac ever mention her?”

  Franco shrugged. “Not that I remember.”

  The agents asked a few more questions and then announced Officer Joe Morelli would be interviewing him next. A few minutes later, Joe changed places with the FBI agents.

  “We’ve been trying to contact you since your cousin’s death, but no one has been at your house. Where have you been?” Joe asked.

  “My brothers and I went to Portland. We left Saturday. Checked in about six that evening. I can give you the name of the place we stayed, and I’m sure they can verify that. We checked out yesterday, did some running around in Portland, and then headed home last night.”

  “But you didn’t go home,” Joe said. “We’ve had someone staking out your house since the murder.”

  “We didn’t even know Mac had been killed. We heard about it on the radio on the way home. Didn’t go back to our house. We came straight to Frederickport. Decided to get Mac’s paintings. After all, they were the last things he painted, and he was like a brother to us,” Franco explained.

  “What about Chet?” Joe asked.

  “Chet? Heard on the radio he was killed in some car accident.”

  “I thought he was staying at your house. Did he leave when you left for Portland?”

  “We t
old him he could stay at our house. Mac was crashing there too, said he didn’t care if Chet stayed. In fact, the day we left, Mac asked Chet if he could drop him off at Marlow House that evening. Mac’s car was broken down.”

  “You and your brothers, you only have one car between you, right?” Joe asked.

  Franco frowned. “Yeah, why?”

  “I don’t know. I’d just think three adult men would have more than one car between them.”

  “No reason. We get along fine with one car, and it’s cheaper.”

  “So Chet dropped your cousin off at Marlow House?”

  Franco shrugged. “I suppose. Last time I talked to either one of them was when we left Saturday afternoon.”

  “Who do you think killed your cousin?” Joe asked.

  “I know that crazy woman killed him. You arrested her, didn’t you?”

  “She was released after new evidence was discovered.” Joe watched closely for his reaction.

  “Her brother did it, right?” Franco asked.

  “Why do you think Chet Morrison would kill your cousin?”

  “It had to be either him or his sister. And I know Mac was going with him that night.”

  “Why would Chet or Laverne want Mac dead?” Joe asked.

  Franco stared at Joe a moment before answering. Finally, he said, “Mac used to date Laverne, years ago. It was just a summer fling. He wasn’t that interested. Her parents were invalids, and she was the primary caregiver. Chet was in high school then. Anyway, maybe Mac wasn’t that interested in her, but she—well—she was crazy about him. And when I say crazy, I mean crazy. One day there’s a house fire at her place, and both her parents are killed. Mac goes to comfort her, and she tells him she set the fire—which means she’s now free to go with him when he leaves for Europe. He never asked her to go to Europe with him.”

  Joe stared blankly at Franco for a moment before asking, “Are you saying Laverne Morrison murdered her parents?”