An Uninvited Ghost

by E. J. Copperman

  “What’s up?”

  “How much do you know about pool tables?” I asked him.

  “You usually have to bank your shots,” Tony answered. “And you’re supposed to hit the black ball in last.”

  “Come on. We have a repair job to assess.” And I didn’t give him the option of refusing, because I’d already turned and proceeded toward the game room.

  The room was empty, of course, since Jim and Warren were the only ones who ever came in, and they were out in search of something to soak up the alcohol in their systems. But they had at least cleaned up after themselves; there were no empties anywhere to be found in the room, and the pool cues were carefully placed back on the rack I’d mounted on the wood-paneled wall. (Maxie had practically thrown a fit over the paneling, but a game room with a pool table made such old school décor a necessity.) The Coca-Cola Tiffany-style lamp over the pool table was still turned on, and the barstools I’d put in for those not currently shooting were scattered to the corners of the room.

  “Uh-oh,” Tony said.

  He pointed. Sure enough, the green felt covering of the pool table had a very long vertical gash in it, reaching across for at least six inches, with a horizontal tear, only an inch or two, at the bottom of the gash.

  “That doesn’t just sew up, does it?” I asked.

  Tony snorted a bit and shook his head. “The whole thing needs to be replaced,” he said. “You can’t do this yourself; you don’t have the equipment. You need to get someone to come in.”

  “Price?”

  “Not cheap.” Tony raised the flap at the bottom of the tear, and then let it drop. “But the table is useless if you don’t get the repair done.”

  I moaned, but just a little. There’s a cost to doing business, and if you want to stay in business, you pay it. “Do you know anyone who does that sort of work?” I asked Tony.

  He started looking underneath the table. Contractors do stuff like that; even if they’re not going to make the repair themselves, the construction of the piece fascinates them, and they try to figure out how they’d do it if it were indeed their task.

  “I don’t, really,” he answered, his voice muffled under the table. “But I can ask around. Hey, what’s this?”

  “What’s what?”

  Tony’s voice sounded concerned, even though I couldn’t see his face. “You’d better take a look at this,” he said.

  I dropped to my knees and looked where Tony was pointing, at the underside of the pool table, in a specific spot, not far from the rail that returns the ball after it drops into the pocket. I had to get very low to the floor to see what he was showing me.

  There was something taped to the underside of the slate base of the pool table.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  Tony reached into his tool belt and pulled out a small flashlight. He turned it on with his teeth (men are so macho) and pointed the beam at the object attached to the table.

  I gasped.

  Taped to the bottom of my pool table, with plain cellophane tape that had not yet yellowed, was a small glass vial.

  Like the kind that could contain insulin.

  Fifteen

  “I’m glad you knew enough not to touch it,” Detective McElone said. She didn’t even grunt as she rose up from a low squat under my pool table. On top of everything else that irritated me about her, McElone was in really good shape.

  “Of course I knew not to touch it,” I said. “But I doubt whoever left it there was stupid enough not to wipe it off first.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” the detective answered. “They were stupid enough to leave it where it could be found instead of throwing it away or destroying it. You can’t ever tell with criminals. Some of them are really dumb.”

  She had already questioned Tony and me about the way we’d discovered the vial and seemed vaguely suspicious of Tony’s explanation of why he was underneath the table to begin with. I believe her comment was “The felt’s on the top part, right?”

  “It’s attached underneath,” he’d explained.

  “Tony was helping me with the pool table,” I’d told her. “Contractors like to check out every part of a job.”

  “Are you fixing the torn felt?” McElone asked Tony.

  “No,” he admitted. “I don’t do that kind of work.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Now, wearing latex gloves, McElone had gotten back down and was actually lying on the floor under the pool table. Tony remained standing, but I dropped down to watch what she was doing—if I was going to carry an investigator’s license, it couldn’t hurt to watch a professional investigate something.

  She carefully removed the tape on one side of the vial and held her hand under it when it dropped. But the tape on the other side held tight, and the vial did not fall off the slate.

  “Oh, come on, Detective,” I said. “You don’t really think Tony killed Arlice Crosby. In fact, there’s a whole roomful of people who can testify to the fact that he was all the way on the other side of the room when she collapsed. If the insulin killed her instantly—”

  “You’re right,” McElone said, slowly removing the tape on the other side, using a pair of tweezers. “I don’t think Mr. Mandorisi killed Mrs. Crosby.”

  “That’s good,” Tony said.

  “Then why are you being all suspicious about it?” I demanded.

  The tape came loose and McElone pulled the vial free, holding it with the tweezers until she could rest it safely in a plastic evidence bag. “I’m suspicious for a living,” she said as she stood up, considerably more smoothly and quickly than I did. “It’s sort of my job.”

  “What about my job?” I asked. “Is this now a crime scene? Can I still have guests and exhibitionist TV personalities in my house, or do I have to file for welfare?”

  “Relax, you can keep your little hotel going here,” McElone said. She liked to refer to the place as anything but a guesthouse when she was trying to get under my skin, but only because it worked. “But there’s a problem.”

  I wasn’t crazy about that pronouncement. “What?”

  McElone waved the evidence bag just a little. “This vial couldn’t hold nearly as much insulin as the ME found in Mrs. Crosby’s body,” she said. “So I’m thinking it wasn’t the one that was used to kill her, or at the very least, not the only one.”

  “That’s your problem,” I told her, exhaling. “Not mine.”

  “Well, see, in this case, what’s my problem is also your problem,” the detective said with a less-than-warm smile. “Because I have to assume that this is not the only vial the killer used. And so—”

  “Don’t say it.”

  She said it. “—now I’m going to have to run a very thorough search of this entire house. To see if I can find any other vials or diabetic supplies that might have been used in the crime.”

  There was a deep sound in the back of my throat that I didn’t recognize. “So you and a team of CSI wannabes are going to swarm all over my house and inconvenience my guests, is that it?”

  “Not CSI wannabes,” McElone answered. “The real thing. I’m going to call the county’s crime-scene team in on this.”

  “Swell. So I can expect a real professional going-over. Can’t wait.”

  “Good. Because they’ll be here within an hour.”

  She was as good as her word. The crime-scene team, three men dressed only roughly like storm troopers, showed up less than fifty minutes later and immediately dispersed themselves around the house. The sun was going down, and my guests would soon be returning to their vacation home away from home, only to discover people going through their underwear drawers looking for evidence of a murder they’d witnessed the night before.

  I didn’t think this was going to play well with Rance’s company. Good-bye future Senior Plus tours.

  McElone cleared Tony to leave with an unnecessary warning not to stray too far from home. Tony was an expectant father and had work lined up in Harbor Haven, Lav
alette and Seaside Heights over the next few weeks; the probability of him leaving for parts unknown anytime soon was pretty low.

  But Mom, who had stuck her head into the game room while McElone was questioning us and been told to go away (all right, so the detective actually asked if Mom would “please wait until I can get a clear picture on this”) was not far from my side anytime thereafter. She had, it turned out, retreated to the kitchen to heat up the massive meal she had brought in her picnic basket.

  “You know, my Uncle Nathaniel was a diabetic, and he used to have all sorts of things to, you know, keep his sugar in the right range,” she was telling me as Melissa came into the kitchen (after McElone had spent ten minutes asking her about the “dream” she’d had regarding Linda Jane) and started setting the table, as requested.

  “Was that how he died?” I asked, taking Mom’s picnic spread out of the oven.

  “No, he was in a three-car pileup on the Cross Bronx Expressway,” Mom told me.

  She had brought—no joke—a whole roasted turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, broccoli, cranberry sauce (which I secretly hate, but couldn’t tell her because it would hurt her feelings) and bread stuffing, all in that picnic basket. Well, some of it might have been carried in that backpack Mom wears whenever she goes out, like a sixth-grader.

  “Well, hopefully the crime-scene team can get this done quickly, because the three of us are going to have to go through all the guest bedrooms as soon as they’re done and straighten up,” I said. Mom nodded.

  Melissa, on the other hand, looked disgusted. “I’m not going through some socks and stuff ”—(with an actual shiver on the word stuff )—“from people I don’t even know.”

  “Yes, you are. We’re making sure they’re disrupted as little as humanly possible,” I told her, with a look that indicated no back talk would be accepted.

  “Excuse me.” Linda Jane Smith stuck her head in through the kitchen door. “I don’t want to intrude on your family dinner.”

  “It’s okay, come in,” I said. “I’m always available to a guest and, besides, we have way too much food.”

  Mom beamed; she loved being accused of overgenerosity. Linda Jane walked in. Now that I knew about her leg, I noticed the slight limp that I guessed I should have seen all along. She really was very good at not letting her prosthesis slow her down.

  “Thank you, but that’s not necessary,” she said, although her eyes were drifting toward the turkey and did not look uninterested. “I just wanted to ask about the police officers going through the house right now.”

  I grinned. “I’m not sure if any of them are unmarried, Linda Jane.”

  She smiled, too, but not as widely. “I’m sure I can find out if I want to,” she said. “But I assume they’re here to investigate Mrs. Crosby’s death last night, and I’m wondering what they might be looking for.”

  I told her what McElone had instructed me to say, and what I’d told the other guests before I’d come in to eat: “They haven’t told me anything. In fact, they wouldn’t tell me. I get the impression they won’t know what they’re looking for until they find it. Please, sit down and eat. Liss, get another plate.”

  Linda Jane tried to protest, but Melissa was up and at the cabinet before she could open her mouth. “That’s awfully nice of you,” Linda Jane said. As soon as there was a plate in front of her, Linda Jane started to load it up, and I was glad that Mom had brought too much. The woman could eat.

  “Was there something you were concerned about?” Mom asked. “Something you’re afraid they’ll break or something? We can ask them to be careful around a certain object, if that’s what’s bothering you.”

  “Oh, it’s nothing,” Linda Jane answered. “I was just worried they might be looking for insulin. I have some in my drawer; it’s part of my medical kit.”

  Everyone’s fork but hers froze in midair.

  “Is something wrong?” she asked.

  Sixteen

  Linda Jane stared at us for a very long moment until I regained the power of speech. “How . . . what makes you think they might be looking for insulin?” I asked her.

  She waved a hand. “When I was trying to revive Mrs. Crosby, I noticed the calluses on the tips of her fingers, where she’d probably used lancets to check her blood-sugar levels. And she was wearing an insulin pump, for goodness’ sake. When I first took a look, I thought she might be in a diabetic coma, but that wouldn’t have killed her that fast.”

  I stared at her again for a while. Linda Jane just went on eating.

  “Isn’t that what happened, Mom?” Melissa wanted to know.

  I stumbled over words for a few seconds, before I managed to get out, “Well, I don’t know that much, but I did hear it was diabetes-related.”

  “The cops wouldn’t be all over this place if they thought this was a death by natural causes,” Linda Jane argued, as if trying to make herself sound like a suspect. “If they’re looking for insulin, it’s possible someone injected her with too much and sent her into a hypoglycemic state, but it would take a lot to do it that fast.”

  “I bet,” Mom said.

  “The thing is,” Linda Jane went on, “most vials wouldn’t hold enough. Very strange.”

  “Yeah, but . . . they didn’t tell me that’s what they were looking for . . . or anything,” I stammered, sounding so ridiculous that even I didn’t believe me.

  “Would you pass the gravy?” Linda Jane asked. Melissa reached over her grandmother and picked up the gravy boat to give to her. “Anyway, if they find that supply in my medical kit, I’ll just have to explain it to them, I suppose.”

  “I suppose,” I said. “If that’s what they’re searching for.” I wasn’t going to get off the “I don’t know” train, no matter how far off the tracks it was veering.

  “Do you know the detective in charge very well?” Linda Jane asked.

  Mom and I exchanged glances. “I’ve had . . . dealings with her before.”

  “What’s she like?”

  “Sometimes she’s not very nice,” Melissa said. “But that’s just because she really wants to solve the crime, and she gets mad when she can’t.” Don’t ever think children aren’t good judges of character, or that they don’t see what’s going on.

  I heard the kitchen door open again and turned to look. “Wow, turkey!” Jeannie stood in the doorway, Tony behind her. “Is that for everybody?”

  “No, but you can have some,” Mom told her. “It’s good for the baby. Sit down.”

  I made the introductions between Linda Jane and my married friends and watched as Tony pulled up a chair for Jeannie and a stool for himself, as we were running out of seating options. “What are you doing here?” I asked Jeannie. I pointed at her husband. “I sent that one home a while ago already.”

  “He said there were armed men storming your castle,” Jeannie said, sitting down behind the plate Melissa had fetched for her. “I figured you’d need us to run some defense.”

  “So far, they’ve been leaving us alone,” Mom said. “We haven’t needed any defense.”

  “Good,” Tony answered. “Because I saw those guys, and I couldn’t take them without a power drill and a sack of cement.”

  “You want some cranberry sauce?” Mom asked me, noting its absence on my plate.

  “No, I’m good,” I said. “I’m trying to lose some weight.”

  “I used Splenda,” she said, and plopped some down on my plate, ruining some perfectly good stuffing. “Besides, you look perfect.”

  Melissa and I exchanged our “that’s Grandma” look, and she actually took a little of the cranberry slop off my plate when Mom wasn’t looking.

  “So, fill me in,” Jeannie said. “What have I missed since last night?”

  I gave her the Reader’s Digest version of the day’s events, including the visit with McElone and the drive with Trent. Jeannie’s eyes lit up at the reference to a single man in whom I might be interested, but I cured her of that misconception with a simple �
�Don’t.” Melissa, contrary to my expectation, did not look the least bit puzzled.

  Once she was completely informed, Jeannie looked at her cleaned plate, sighed and said, “Being pregnant feels like it should give you license to eat as much as you want.”

  Mom pushed the mashed potatoes in her direction, and Jeannie did not resist.

  “Okay,” Jeannie said when she could speak again. “Let’s go around the table. Who do you think did it?”

  There was a stunned silence.

  “I beg your pardon?” I asked.

  “Who’s your candidate? You’re an investigator. This is a good way to get all the ideas out there and start to zero in on the most logical person.”

  “It’s really not,” I said. “It’s wild speculation, it’s irresponsible, it’s uninformed and it’s . . .” I thought Linda Jane would be offended, but she didn’t seem to think of herself as a suspect, and was looking thoughtful, as if she were wondering what she’d say when it was her turn to speak.

  “I think it was that girl Tiffney from the TV show,” Mom said. “Anybody who’ll walk around like that without underwear is capable of anything.”

  “It’s called ‘going commando,’ Grandma,” Melissa informed her. I began to doubt I’d sleep that night. Had she been watching Down the Shore?

  “She had no motive and nothing to gain beyond a higher Q rating, and she’d never met Arlice before,” I pointed out. “It seems extremely unlikely she was mentioned in Arlice’s will.”

  “What seems unlikely?” Paul rose up from the basement and took up a position near the cereal cabinet, where he was unlikely to be disturbed. I flashed my eyes in Linda Jane’s direction, and he nodded. I couldn’t answer him directly.

  But Mom hadn’t gotten the memo. “It seems unlikely that the girl from the TV show killed Arlice,” she said.

  “But you just said you thought she did it,” Linda Jane protested.

  “Well, yeah, but I was just answering—”

  I gave Mom a stern look.