An Uninvited Ghost

by E. J. Copperman

  “What was the other factor?” Jeannie asked.

  “Well, Trent said he’d asked around town, and people were talking about my house because of . . . you know . . .”

  Jeannie looked puzzled. “Because of what?”

  “Because of the ghosts.”

  Jeannie grinned and punched me on the shoulder. “So you put one over on them, too, huh?” Jeannie, despite the most obvious evidence a person could see, still absolutely refuses to believe in Paul and Maxie. Her husband, Tony Mandorisi, however, has interacted with the ghosts, and is now a true believer, even if he can’t see or hear them.

  “Mmm-hmm.” I punted. After a while, there’s no point in arguing with Jeannie—she’s a force of nature.

  “How’s it going to work?” she asked. It took me a moment to remember what she was talking about.

  “Once the papers are signed, the four ‘cast members’ show up about six tonight. With the full complement of guests from Senior Plus, I had just the one room open, and they’re setting up their operations in there, pretending the kids are living in it all together. The four of them move in after equipment is installed in the room—which the production company insists will cause no damage that they can’t repair when they move out. Then I guess this Trent guy figures out stuff for them to do and films it.”

  “And they can shoot it all in three weeks? That seems fast.” Jeannie wasn’t asking any questions I hadn’t asked Trent the night before, but when he gave the answers, they seemed more reasonable.

  “He says they want to air the show during the summer, when people would really be here on vacation. So they film hours and hours and hours of stuff, and then they edit it down.”

  “Why didn’t they start sooner?” Jeannie asked.

  “What temperature was it here two weeks ago?” I reminded her.

  “About fifty-five.”

  “A little chilly for the bikini scenes they so desperately need on the beach,” I explained.

  “These people need to show a little gumption if they want to make it in show business,” Jeannie said.

  “Gumption is not what they’ll be showing.”

  We walked up the steps to the police station and went inside. At the dispatcher’s station, I asked for Detective Anita McElone (that’s Mac-el-OAN-ee) and was asked to wait. Jeannie lowered herself into one of the molded plastic chairs (orange) in the waiting area, but I chose to stand. McElone was already considerably taller than me, and I didn’t want to give her an added advantage.

  Let’s just say our relationship, while not hostile, had hardly been friendly.

  After a few minutes she appeared in the doorway, straight and rigid, took a look at Jeannie and me waiting for her and let out an audible groan.

  “Whatever it is,” she said, “I don’t want any.”

  I reached into the canvas tote bag I substitute for a purse (I carry a lot of stuff, and support my local public radio station) and produced my wallet, which I opened. The private investigator license that had been issued to me by the state of New Jersey was prominently displayed therein.

  “I just have a couple of questions,” I said.

  “The Dunkin’ Donuts was out of Old Fashioned Cake this morning, so I knew it was going to be a bad day,” McElone deadpanned.

  “May we come in?” I asked, all professional and everything.

  “We?” the detective asked. “Is your pal a PI, too?”

  “I’m an expectant mother,” Jeannie piped up, standing. “You can’t expect me to stay out here with hardened criminals.”

  “There’s no one else here,” McElone pointed out.

  “There’s no one else here now,” Jeannie retorted. Like I said, a force of nature.

  McElone waved us into the squad room and led us to her cubicle, which was kept incredibly neat and had only a picture of her family on her desk. A desk like that is the work of an unbalanced mind, in my opinion.

  Her entire body seemed to sigh. “What is it you want to know?” she asked. “You do realize I’m not required to share any police information with you at all, right?”

  “I was hoping you’d answer one question out of professional courtesy,” I answered.

  “Bring in a professional, and we’ll talk,” McElone muttered under her breath.

  “I’m sorry, what did you say?” Jeannie asked.

  “I said, ‘What is your question?’ ” McElone replied.

  “Have there been any mysterious deaths in Harbor Haven recently?” I asked. “Something at the Ocean Wharf or one of the hotels on the shore, maybe?”

  McElone looked at me as if I’d asked whether fish could walk upright. “The Ocean Wharf’s been abandoned for six years,” she said. “Who’s going there to die? And what do you want to know about mysterious deaths for? You trying to drum up business? Is that cursed guesthouse you’re running in the red already?” McElone is afraid of my house; she says it gives her “the creeps.”

  “I thought I was asking the question,” I said.

  “You can ask all you want,” the detective answered. “I don’t have to answer unless I’m satisfied that there’s a good reason for you to know.”

  “I have a client who’s concerned that something might have happened—an accident, maybe—and I’m trying to find out whether it did or didn’t. Is that so sinister?” Minus the comment about it being sinister, that’s exactly how I’d explained it to Jeannie. Trying to tell her I was representing a ghost would have been pointless.

  “With a mysterious death involved? Yeah, that’s pretty sinister,” McElone said. “Now, what do you know about this supposed incident at the Ocean Wharf?”

  “Didsomething happen there?” Jeannie insisted.

  McElone looked at Jeannie, then at me, then back at Jeannie. “You sure you don’t have a detective’s license?” she asked Jeannie.

  “No, but if you don’t answer Alison, I might have to go and get one.”

  The detective considered that, then turned her attention toward me. “When did this thing happen, according to your client?”

  “Six days ago. Last Friday, not sure what time.”

  “Friday was seven days ago. Today’s Thursday.”

  “Do we count today? I’m never sure.” I started counting backward on my fingers. “Wednesday, Tuesday, Monday . . .”

  “Never mind. Last Friday.” McElone punched up some information on her desktop computer screen. “No calls to that area at all on Friday.”

  “Could a body have been discovered Saturday, or any day since then?”

  “A body?” McElone shook her head. “If there was a dead body somewhere, I’d have heard about it.”

  “So nobody named Arlice has died mysteriously lately,” I reiterated, just to confirm.

  “Arlice! You mean Arlice Crosby?” McElone asked.

  “I don’t know. How many Arlices are there in Harbor Haven?”

  “Mrs. Crosby is the only one I know about,” she said. “Must be close to eighty.”

  “And she hasn’t died recently?” I wanted to report back to Paul without any hesitation and have this whole Scott McFarlane thing behind us as quickly as possible so I could concentrate on the coming onslaught of hard bodies and empty heads about to take over my quiet little guesthouse.

  “Not that I’ve heard about,” McElone said. “If she did, it wasn’t considered suspicious.”

  “Do you have her address?” Maybe I could swing by and visit Mrs. Crosby to absolutely confirm her aliveness.

  “We’re the police,” McElone said. “We have everybody’s address.” But she didn’t move to write it down, and she didn’t say anything else.

  “Well, can we have it?” Jeannie asked, scratching her belly, which seemed just a little larger than when we’d sat down.

  “Hell, no,” McElone answered. “Get it out of the phone book. Google it. Call her up on your cell phone. I’m not going to invade Mrs. Crosby’s privacy by giving her address away to every nut job who walks into the station.”


  We pressed (Jeannie even attempted to go into labor), but it did no good. But even as McElone dismissed us and we scurried off into the mid-morning, I felt better about this affair. Scott McFarlane hadn’t killed anyone after all.

  Probably.

  Five

  “Arlice Crosby.” Phyllis Coates, editor and publisher of the Harbor Haven Chronicle, sat back in her squeaky chair in her cramped office and rubbed her eyes with her thumb and forefinger. “You’ve lived in this town all these years and you don’t know Arlice Crosby?”

  Phyllis and I go back to my days delivering papers on my bike for her when I was thirteen years old. Before that, she was a crime reporter for the New York Daily News, and before that, she was probably in kindergarten. Phyllis was born to dig up the dirt and then print it, though always in a classy way.

  “I took a few years off when I was married,” I reminded her. “I haven’t lived here all this time. Come on. You know everybody. Who’s Arlice Crosby?”

  Jeannie had begged off the visit to the Chronicle office, or she might have been able to intimidate Phyllis, although I doubt it—Phyllis is pretty tough and usually amused by the goings-on in our town. Besides, Phyllis wasn’t McElone; she was perfectly happy to share information, especially if there was the possibility of a good story coming out of it.

  She didn’t disappoint. “Arlice Crosby is the widow of Jermaine Crosby, who died at least thirty years ago. He made a fortune in the amusement piers here, in Seaside Heights, Wildwood Crest and Asbury Park, and then he died young. Ate too much of that boardwalk food and had a series of heart attacks. Today they might have been able to save him, but not back then.

  “It was while I was working at the News, so I wasn’t around for it, but Arlice grieved, I guess—she holed up in that big house and essentially became a philanthropist, tending to Jermaine’s fortune so she could give plenty away but still keep a lot, too. Turns out she’s some kind of financial whiz, and she’s never lived like a rich lady, just a very comfortable one.”

  “So, she’s a hermit now?” I was learning, as an investigator, to read between the lines when people spoke to me.

  “Oh no,” Phyllis said. “She’s a fixture at the cultural commission, at the arts center over in Ocean Grove, places like that. She even shows up at Hanrahan’s every once in a while.” Hanrahan’s was one of the less refined saloons on Ocean Avenue, our main drag.

  Okay, so maybe I needed between-the-lines reading glasses. “Well, where do you think I can find her today?” All I wanted to do was confirm that the woman was alive. I didn’t need to write her biography.

  “I’m sure she’s at the house most of the time,” Phyllis answered. “You want the address?”

  “I didn’t come for the great coffee,” I told her. The coffee from Phyllis’s ancient hot plate, dangerously close to a few stacks of paper, was not something anyone would stop by to drink.

  Phyllis wrote the address of Arlice Crosby’s house on the back of a receipt for seven dollars and sixty-three cents’ worth of postage dated three years earlier. “You have to keep these things for the IRS,” she said as she handed it over, “so bring it back when you’re done. What’s this sudden interest in Arlice, anyway?”

  I told her the same story I’d given McElone, about having a client who wanted to confirm Arlice’s well-being, which was true. I left out the part about the client having been deceased for close to eighty years, as I didn’t see how that was relevant. And then I thanked Phyllis for the help, promised her an exclusive on the filming of Down the Shore at the guesthouse (no confidentiality was written into my contract, I was pretty sure) and got into my decrepit Volvo station wagon to find Arlice’s house.

  Luckily, I had a portable GPS device. Even as well as I knew the streets of Harbor Haven, this was a part of town I’d never visited before, not even in high school, when driving around town was our major form of recreation and social interaction. This was before Twitter and e-mail, when you actually had to be in the same car as your friends to spend the evening with them.

  Clearly, this was an exclusive little alcove that had been constructed for the more well-heeled among Harbor Haven’s citizenry. While it wasn’t gated, the entrance to the cul-de-sac bore a brass sign that read “Ocean Paradiso,” obviously quite old but still polished and shiny, mounted on a concrete pillar. Trees lined both sides of the drive, and looked to be quite well cared for. The grass was freshly mown. I also noticed a video camera on the top of the pillar. The residents in this area were interested in security.

  I passed a few really impressive homes, each one overlooking a different view of the ocean and a private beach, but based on the impression of the lady Phyllis had given me, I could tell right away which house belonged to Arlice Crosby: There was an absolute mansion, resembling nothing so much as the main house of Tara in Gone with the Wind, standing apart at the top of the hill with the best view and the best beach. It was also, clearly, the largest and most impressive house.

  Arlice Crosby’s place was right next to it, a very appealing but smallish Colonial, extremely well-maintained, with a long front porch and a glider, flowers on every windowsill and a few hanging plants, none of which had so much as one brown leaf. It made me think that I hadn’t done anything with my own front porch yet, and I should start getting ideas.

  I parked the Volvo in front of the Crosby house and thought for a few moments before getting out of the car. If I were a wealthy woman of advanced years, why would I decide to talk to a complete stranger whose sole purpose in coming to visit was to verify that I was actually alive? The only answer I could propose was that it would be nice for someone to show that level of interest. That probably wasn’t good enough.

  But wait—I had something with me that would serve as a terrific conversation piece in awkward situations. I took it out of my purse and walked to Arlice’s front door, where I rang the bell.

  It took some time, but the door did open, and behind a screen stood a woman who was impeccably but casually dressed. She had probably been quite tall when she was younger, but age had bent and shrunk her a bit. But she was not one of those older people who seem to carry their ages on their backs; she smiled warmly when she opened the door and looked me straight in the eye.

  “Yes?” she said.

  “Are you Mrs. Arlice Crosby?” I asked.

  “That depends,” she said. “Who are you?”

  I held up my investigator’s license. “I’m a private investigator. My name is Alison Kerby. May I ask you just a couple of questions, Mrs. Crosby?”

  “I haven’t yet said whether I am Mrs. Crosby, Ms. Kerby,” she pointed out. “What are the questions regarding?”

  “Well, there have been reports of some . . . strange occurrences in Harbor Haven, and the name Arlice Crosby came up. I’d love to talk to her, if that’s possible.”

  The woman pushed the screen door open and looked me up and down. “You’re not carrying a gun,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

  I answered it anyway. “No, I’m not.”

  “You’re an odd sort of private investigator.”

  I nodded. “This is an odd sort of case.”

  She seemed to make a decision; she nodded, more to herself than to me. “OK, you got me. I’m Arlice Crosby,” she said. “Come sit out here on the veranda. Would you like a lemonade?”

  “I’d love one.” Anything to get the taste of Phyllis’s coffee out of my mouth. “If it’s not too much trouble.”

  “Don’t be silly.” She disappeared back into the house, and I sat on a wooden rocker near a small table. I felt the glider might be a little strange for this type of visit.

  Arlice reappeared in just a few moments, carrying a tray with a pitcher of lemonade and two glasses full of ice; she seemed pretty spry for a woman in her late seventies. Or was I being ageist?

  “It’s sugar-free. I hope you don’t mind. I have diabetes,” she said after she’d poured for both of us and sat in a facing chair.

  “O
f course I don’t mind,” I said, taking a sip of the lemonade, which actually was quite good. “It’s delicious.”

  A rather sad-looking but enormous black cat ambled its way onto the porch and, without any attempt at niceties, sprung up onto Arlice’s lap. She didn’t jump at the impulsive move, and simply began stroking the cat while she sipped her lemonade.

  “This is Marcus,” she said. “He lives with the neighbors but, confidentially, he likes me better.” She produced some kind of treat from her apron pocket and fed it to the cat.

  “I can’t imagine why,” I said.

  “Enough of this polite chitchat. Tell me why you’re here.”

  “I have a client who is . . . concerned about you, and asked me to make sure you were all right,” I answered. Yes, even after practicing what I’d say the whole morning, that was the best I could come up with.

  “And who is this client?” Arlice asked, her eyes showing more amusement than anything else. She just continued to stroke the cat, who purred with some satisfaction and stretched on Arlice’s lap like it was a warm spot on the carpeted floor.

  “I’m afraid that’s privileged information.” I’ve watched a few detective movies in my time.

  Arlice pretended to look shocked. “Really! Here someone is so concerned about my well-being, and I’m not even allowed to know who it is? Did your client happen to mention why I might be in some kind of distress?”

  I had rehearsed this, as well, but I was still careful with the words I chose. “It’s a person”—at least at one point, he had been—“who felt that there might have been an attempt to hurt you, and was concerned that this attempt might have, unintentionally, involved my client.”

  “Very good, Alison,” Arlice said. “Not so much as a gender-specific pronoun. You’ve given this some thought, haven’t you?”

  “I’m just starting out as an investigator, Arlice. I can’t develop a reputation if I go around giving away information about my clients. Nobody will want to hire me.”

  “A sound decision,” Arlice said, nodding her head in approval. “But I can’t verify this attempt to do me harm unless I know what it involved.” She produced another treat from her pocket and gave it to the cat, who appeared to think he had indeed died and gone to Cat Heaven.