An Uninvited Ghost

by E. J. Copperman

  “I was answering Alison’s argument,” she went on. “She convinced me I was wrong.”

  “Well, who do you think did it?” Jeannie asked Linda Jane.

  She put down her fork and Paul suddenly looked more attentive. “If her death was insulin-related, then it has to be someone who had access to large quantities, someone with knowledge of how much insulin it would take to kill her,” she said, seeming to think out loud. “And it would have to be someone who was standing nearby at the time.” She looked serious for a moment and said, “Honestly, my best candidate would be me. But I have no motive, and I know I didn’t do it.”

  We all gave Linda Jane the laugh she was looking for, but it wasn’t exactly mirthful. There were odd glances all around the table and up near the cereal cabinet.

  “So, since I know it wasn’t me,” Linda Jane continued, “I’d have to say the next most logical candidate would be someone else who’s also a type 1 diabetic. They’d have the drug and the means of administering it.”

  “Are there any other diabetics among the guests?” I asked, based on Paul’s prompting. “You’re the RN; you would know.”

  “It would be unethical for me to disclose that information without the patient’s stated consent,” Linda Jane pointed out. “But yes, there is another diabetic in the house. I won’t tell you who.” I looked at Paul, who shook his head; no, it wasn’t the time or the circumstance to press her on the subject.

  “What about you, Melissa?” Jeannie asked. “Who do you think is the killer?”

  “Whoa, Jeannie.” I tried to put on the brakes. “Melissa is not—”

  “I think it was someone we’re not thinking of,” Melissa piped up. “Somebody in the room last night who knew Mrs. Crosby, but didn’t say anything. And they were real mad at her, so when they saw she was coming for the séance, they figured out a way to kill her without making it obvious that it was them.”

  That was actually, as speculation goes, fairly coherent. Paul beamed as I complimented Melissa on her detective skills. “But you still have to finish your math homework, young lady, so let’s get this table cleared.”

  Jeannie started to rise to help clean up, but Tony, traditional guy that he is, told her to stay seated. He started to clear dishes, as did Mom. Linda Jane, looking mournfully at her empty plate, joined in as well.

  “Nobody asked me,” Tony said, “but I think that one of those two beer-drinking guys did it. I bet one of them had a grudge against Mrs. Crosby for some reason. They were awfully quick to start pointing fingers this morning, trying to deflect suspicion. They don’t want to talk to the police. I’m saying: You grill them long enough, one of them is going to roll over on the other.”

  Paul folded his arms, then raised his right hand to stroke his goatee. It was his best pretentious “thinking” look. His mouth flattened out, and his eyebrows lowered. He must have thought Tony had made a decent point.

  “I think you’re reaching, honey,” Jeannie told her husband. “You’re guessing too much about the people you’re accusing.”

  “I’m not actually accusing,” Tony protested. “This is just a parlor game. And it was your idea.”

  “Alison,” Jeannie said, doing her best to ignore Tony, “you’re the only one who hasn’t answered the question. Who’s your candidate? Who do you think killed Arlice Crosby?”

  I didn’t get the chance to say that I didn’t have a candidate (although I was secretly starting to suspect the Joneses, just because they were sneaky enough to get in and out of their room every day and never be seen), because at the very moment we had cleared the table and filled the dishwasher, the kitchen door opened. Detective McElone walked in, followed by two of the CSI storm troopers.

  “Oh, you’re not going to take my whole kitchen apart, are you?” I protested.

  “What do you care?” she shot back. “You don’t serve food here.”

  “We still eat,” Melissa told her. Melissa has no fear of grown-ups. She might not develop one until she’s a grown-up herself.

  “Good point,” McElone acknowledged. Turning to me, she said, “Yes, we are going to search this room. It’s the last in the house that hasn’t been inspected.” She gestured to the two officers, who started to open cabinets and remove their contents. It was going to be a long night.

  Linda Jane walked over to McElone. “By the way, Detective, I was just telling Alison that if you were looking for insulin, you’ll probably find some in my med kit. I’m a nurse, and I have some in case a patient requires it.”

  McElone shot me a nasty look, probably thinking I’d gone around the house telling everybody an insulin search was on. I held up my hands, palms out, to begin to deny it, but she cut me off.

  “In fact, we did find some insulin in your bedroom, Ms. Smith,” McElone said. “We found three vials.”

  “That’s odd. I only have two.” Linda Jane looked genuinely puzzled.

  “In your kit, yes,” the detective nodded. “Thank you for giving us the key.” She handed a key to Linda Jane, who nodded an acknowledgment and put the key in her pocket. “We also found a vial taped to the back wall of your closet.”

  “I don’t understand,” Linda Jane said. “I only had the two and no reason to hide another one.”

  “Lieutenant!” one of the storm troopers called over from the pantry. “There’s a vial here stuck under one of the shelves.”

  McElone walked to the pantry and ducked down to look. Tony handed her his small flashlight, the one he carries in his pocket. “Very good,” McElone told the officer. “Save it as evidence, like the others.”

  “Hang on,” I said. “Besides the vials in Linda Jane’s room, how many others have you found?”

  “Eighteen,” McElone said. “The fact is, we found at least one in every room in your house.”

  Seventeen

  McElone’s pronouncement had something of a dampening effect on the evening. Despite their offer to “stay and offer a defense,” Jeannie and Tony went home when Jeannie decided she wanted a hot dog from a local place called the Windmill. I didn’t mind; there was very little left to defend against.

  Luckily, I wasn’t the one who’d had to deal with the cast of Down the Shore, since I’d heard considerable shrieking and a few thumps outside my back door, where the CSI team had gone to search the cast’s trailers. H-Bomb at one point shouted loudly that she would “stand like Rosie Parks” against the onslaught, and as far as I could tell, not one crew member had so much as guffawed.

  Mom stayed for a while, waiting until the dishes were washed, dried and put away. She helped Melissa and me clean up the damage the CSI team had done to the guest bedrooms, then got into her Dodge Viper and hit the road at the legal limit of twenty-five miles per hour. She’d be home within the hour, her townhouse being less than eight miles away.

  When I had the chance, I asked Paul if he’d gotten any Ghostograms from Scott McFarlane, but there had been no further communication from our erstwhile client. I was starting to wonder why I was this deep in this much trouble.

  I went back out to the front room to talk to the guests a bit. They were agitated because of the police activity, but most of them seemed to find the whole experience exhilarating. I have no idea what the reaction of the Joneses was, of course, since they had once again retreated to their chamber to do . . . I prefer not to think about it.

  Jim and Warren, unaware their names had been prominent in our earlier speculation, peppered me with questions about the investigation, almost all of which I answered with, “You’ll have to ask Lieutenant McElone. The police don’t tell me anything.” Which was almost true.

  After most of the guests went back to their newly tidied rooms, I forced Melissa to go to bed and started repairing the damage in the rest of the house. Every single book in the library had to be reshelved, a concept that left me close to tears. I started on one shelf, got emotional, and decided to finish the task in the morning.

  The front room wasn’t as badly disorganized,
so I concentrated on that area for a while, then moved on to the den. Maxie hovered over the fireplace, a delighted grin on her face at my inconvenience.

  “You really got yourself into something this time, didn’t you?” she crowed. “I can’t believe you let that old lady die here in our house, and now you can’t figure out what to do about it.”

  I was putting knickknacks back on shelves, and couldn’t remember where they belonged. “You can manipulate physical objects,” I reminded her. “How about helping me clean up?”

  “This isn’t my room. The attic is my room.” So we were back to that one.

  “Fine.” I went back to rearranging, putting things where I was sure Maxie would find them objectionable. “What do you want?”

  “Why do I have to want anything?” she asked. “Can’t I just be here?”

  “You can be in your precious attic. You don’t like me. Why come where I’m cleaning if you’re not going to help?”

  Maxie floated, considering. She picked up a small figurine, one that I’d picked up in an antiques store in New Hope, Pennsylvania. It was a sea captain, sitting back in a rocking chair, smoking a corncob pipe. I didn’t care for it very much, but I thought it was a good idea to have some sea-oriented decorations at a shore house. I fully intended, someday, to replace it with something less kitschy. “Yeah, I can see why you’d be worried that this might not find its way back,” Maxie said.

  “If you don’t want to help, don’t help. Some people would simply pitch in out of friendship, but don’t you feel obligated.” I was trying to remember why I wanted most of this crap out where I could see it, anyway.

  “Friendship? Are we friends?” Maxie seemed genuinely surprised.

  Okay, so maybe friends was stretching it a bit, but if Maxie was going to be in my house for, as far as I could tell, the rest of my life (if not longer), I might as well try to make a stride or two toward civility.

  “We’re not enemies. At least, I don’t think we are.”

  “You don’t like me,” Maxie replied.

  “What makes you say that?”

  She sputtered. “Everything.”

  “Melissa likes you. That’s enough for me,” I said. “The kid has unerring judgment.”

  “Where do you want this?” Maxie asked, holding a decorative mug with the seal of Monmouth University emblazoned on it that I’d bought when I was a student there. The idea that Maxie would ask instead of just deciding where she’d put it—or, more commonly, to “accidentally” drop it so it would no longer offend her sensibilities—was extremely unusual.

  “Why are you here, Maxie?” I asked again, ignoring her halfhearted attempt to be helpful.

  She put the mug on the mantel over the fireplace, pretty much the last place I’d have wanted it. I guess two could play at this game. She looked around the room and found a photograph of Melissa and me, a copy of one taken as a gift for my mother on Mother’s Day when Liss was about six years old. Maxie floated over and picked it up. “It’s my birthday next Wednesday,” she said.

  “What?”

  “My birthday. I’m going to be . . . would’ve been thirty years old on Wednesday.” Maxie didn’t look at me. She swirled around to the other side of the room, moved around some things I’d placed in unacceptable spots, and then vanished up into the ceiling, leaving me to wonder what the hell that had been about.

  Usually, I liked being alone when the house was quiet like this, but it had been an unbelievably long day, and now all I wanted was to get to bed. So I straightened up just to the point of acceptability and then turned to head for the stairs, and bed. I’d do the rest in the morning.

  When I turned around, Dolores Santiago was standing in the foyer by the staircase, her gray hair down to the waist of her long flannel nightdress and without her usual inch-thick eyeglasses.

  “Something I can help you with?” I asked her. Inside, I was thanking my lucky stars it wasn’t Bernice; another complaint right now might put me in the fetal position and on the floor until September. The look in Dolores’s eyes, however, was chilling—she was staring straight ahead and appeared to be in what I could only call a trance. Was she sleepwalking?

  She walked directly toward me, but never made eye contact. I repeated my question, but she didn’t answer me, and when we were only a foot apart, she reached up and touched the amulet hanging from my neck. The silver one in an uneven triangular shape.

  The one Arlice Crosby had given me the night before.

  Dolores cupped the amulet in her palm and caressed it with her thumb.

  “Are you all right?” I asked her. “Is there something about my necklace that you want to know?”

  “It’s a family secret,” Dolores intoned. Then she pulled hard on the amulet and snapped the chain right off my neck.

  “Ow!” I shouted. “Hey!”

  But she had already turned and headed for the stairs. Luckily, being forty years younger, I still moved more quickly than she did, and stood between her and the landing. “Where do you think you’re going?” I asked. I pulled the necklace out of her hand and stuck it in the pocket of my jeans. It was a tight fit, but better uncomfortable than missing, I always say.

  Dolores still didn’t answer. She just continued up the stairs as I called to her, and then disappeared into her room.

  I gave it a long, hard thought and decided not to think about it again until I’d gotten a good night’s sleep.

  It had been an unbelievably long day. Or have I said that already?

  “Have you seen Tiffney?” Ed the director was walking around my extremely large backyard, his camera crew at the ready, his cast (or most of it, anyway) assembled and his patience, apparently, wearing thin. “Do you know where she is?”

  I had no idea and told him so. I wasn’t interested in trailing the cast of Down the Shore around my property, since the four of them seemed, to my sensibility, a quartet of spoiled brats who needed to be told to sit down, shut up and eat their spinach, or there’d be no tequila, posturing or sex later. You have to have standards, after all.

  They were shooting a sequence in the backyard that was meant to show off the cast’s athletic skills (and most of their bodies) while they played “beach volleyball.” To achieve this, the crew had imported hundreds of pounds of sand to dump on my grass, despite there being an actual beach not three hundred yards away that had all the sand you could possibly want. No doubt the sand there didn’t look as sandy as this sand. I had been assured any damage done to my lawn would be repaired when the company was finished shooting, a moment I was starting to anticipate almost every minute of every day.

  I, in the meantime, was trying to forget all about last night and Dolores’s attempt at robbery while apparently sleepwalking. I hadn’t seen her this morning and assumed she was either out or hiding in mortification.

  I had found the library’s bookshelves mysteriously restocked (although very badly sorted) when I awoke this morning; maybe my speech about friendship had gotten through to Maxie after all. So, having rescued the rest of my house from the indignities heaped upon it by McElone’s CSIs, and having made it through the first ghostly performance of the day, I was now relaxing a bit in the backyard, watching what was supposed to be filming.

  Phyllis Coates had come by at my invitation (and because she wanted some pictures of the Down the Shore crew for the Chronicle), and we were eating burgers from the Harbor Haven Café that she’d brought with her as payment.

  I’d caught Phyllis up on the developments in Arlice Crosby’s murder—as many as I knew, anyway—and told her I was still deliberating about Tom Donovan’s offer, when Trent Avalon, stonewashed jeans, black T-shirt and two-hundred-dollar running shoes at the ready, raced onto the “set,” where a remarkably small volleyball net had been erected on the imported sand.

  Trent headed directly for Ed, and they began talking and gesturing. Everything in television, I was discovering, was a crisis. No cold water bottles? A crisis. A pimple on Rock Starr’s left (facial
) cheek? Crisis. Threat of rain in the afternoon? Massive crisis.

  But Arlice Crosby getting murdered in my den while the crew filmed four narcissists flexing their muscles? Great television.

  It’s a funny business.

  “From what I’ve heard through my police sources, Detective Anita McElone has more suspects and more evidence than she knows what to do with,” Phyllis was saying. “I guess it’s feast or famine in the police business.”

  “None of it makes the least bit of sense to me,” I told her. “I’ve been thinking about it. As far as I know, nobody in that room had any reason to want Arlice dead. And yet, everybody seems to be a suspect.”

  “For all you know, there wasn’t a person in the room who didn’t despise her.” Phyllis took a large bite of her burger and washed it down with black coffee. I loved Phyllis, but I doubted her digestive system shared the sentiment.

  In the distance, Trent’s hands went to the top of his head. He looked like he was trying to keep himself from flying up into space. This must have been a big crisis, like running out of H-Bomb’s favorite brand of sunscreen.

  “I didn’t despise her,” I said.

  “You barely knew her,” Phyllis countered. “But it doesn’t even have to be someone who despised her; it could just be someone who thought they’d speed up the distribution of her estate. Maybe you should take Donovan’s money and do some investigating.”

  “I’m not a real investigator,” I argued. “I have the license, but it’s not like I know what I’m doing. I’d be taking the money under false pretenses.”

  “No, you wouldn’t. Donovan would get exactly what you’ve told him you are. You’re the one he’s asking. You should do it.”

  “Ah, McElone will have the thing solved before I ask my first question,” I said hopefully. “She’s annoying, but she’s good at what she does. I’d just gum up the works. I’m sure we’ll discover this is much simpler than it seems, when all is said and done.”

  “That’s lunch, everybody!” Ed clapped his hands once for attention and shouted so the assembled crowd could hear. “Back here in two!”