by Angie Fox
“If he was willing to kill a prosecutor,” I began.
“He’d off a dirty judge,” Melody finished.
“Not necessarily.” I leaned against the machine to get a closer look at the grainy photo of Shane Jordan with those cold, steely eyes. “A dirty judge would be useful for a guy like that. If anything, Shane’s shady dealings would be a prime motive for keeping Greasy Larry alive.”
“Even if Larry was blackmailing him?” Melody countered.
Possibly. “He could afford it.”
She didn’t appear convinced, and I wasn’t, either. But it was worth considering both sides before jumping to conclusions.
“Can I get copies of that article and those photos?” I asked. I needed positive proof if I was going to bring this information to Inspector De Clercq.
“Sure. I also got you a transcript of the trial,” Melody said. “Plus, I pulled a bunch of photographs of the 1928 Red Hot Ritz from the society section of the paper and found something interesting.” She led me to the wood table and opened the file folder. “Here. Look at this,” she said, handing me the top photo. It was a big panoramic shot from last night’s lawn party. A group of laughing women holding shell drinks posed in the foreground. I didn’t recognize any of them. “Check out what’s going on in the background,” Melody said. “In this one, you can see Bruno Scalieri entering the menagerie. He was a notorious hit man for the Canova family.”
“Darn it, Frankie,” I muttered. He should have caught this.
“I doubt Scalieri was mingling at the main bash,” Melody said. “Maybe he snuck in the back.”
“Or in the side,” I said. We’d used a side exit on the edge of the property to make our escape last night.
“Look,” she prodded.
Melody held out another picture from last night’s toga party. It had faded with time and featured a society couple toasting with their fruity shell drinks, the menagerie in the background. And in the shadows, a horse-faced man with a patch over his eye—identifiable with the magnifying glass Melody handed me—slipped furtively through the side door. “Scalieri?”
She was right. “Scalieri would be hard to miss.”
“See the scar down the cheek? And the patch over his right eye,” she added before producing another photo, this one a mug shot, of the same man. Underneath read Bruno Scalieri, inmate number 27360.
“You are amazing,” I told her. “Truly gifted.”
Melody shrugged modestly, but she was grinning. “I’m good at research, and I like it. “It’s easier than what you do.”
I shared her grin. “I about gave Ellis a heart attack last night.”
“Are we still talking about ghost hunting?” she teased.
I shook my head. Right now, my focus was on solving this murder. If we could catch Shane in the act of laundering money or covering a crime, De Clercq could arrest him. Maybe that would satisfy the inspector until we could suss out who killed Larry Knowles.
I hoped Shane hadn’t completed his illicit meetings. We needed to catch him red-handed.
“I had a gut feeling from the start there was something wrong with that guy,” I told Melody as she ran off the microfiche article. “I should have watched him more closely.” I leaned against the table. “This is the final night of the Adairs’ party. Last chance to figure out what happened.”
“The last night is probably the biggest,” Melody mused. “This is the time everyone will be there, making the most of it,” she added ominously. “It’ll be Jordan’s last chance to conduct this kind of clandestine business meeting for a while. He won’t appreciate you interfering.”
Heavens. A chill went through me. “You could be right.”
“Please be careful,” she warned.
There it was again. “I’ll do my best.”
“Be sure to take Ellis with you,” she added. “A cornered killer is a dangerous one.”
Ellis would most likely be pulling a double shift, what with the murder investigation, but I didn’t bother to pass that along. It would only worry her. Besides, it wasn’t as if he could do much to protect me from a ghostly killer, and I’d have Frankie and the inspector with me.
Speaking of De Clercq, I needed to find the inspector as soon as possible. This information could be the key to his entire case. He wouldn’t be happy with Frankie and me after we’d dashed out of the investigation early last night—again—but this would more than make up for it.
I left the library filled with a renewed sense of well-being. I was contributing to the case now, finding out things that neither Inspector De Clercq nor Frankie could. Maybe I’d even earn some appreciation from the stoic policeman.
I hurried down the library steps with the file from Melody. I’d run by home, grab EJ’s package from my porch, and hopefully find Frankie in his shed, ready to help me hunt down De Clercq.
My phone rang. I saw who was calling and almost didn’t answer. But if I ignored it, he’d keep calling, and at least right now I wasn’t in the middle of anything. “Hey, Beau,” I said, heading toward my car. I’d parked down from the food truck, which was a good thing. Lauralee was already starting to get a line.
“Zoey said Lauralee said you’re at the library,” he informed me.
Oh, to be from a town where nobody knew your business. “I’m working on a case,” I said, waving at one of my neighbors, who carried a large brown paper bag from the food truck.
Go, Lauralee.
“I’ve been waiting at the studio all morning,” Beau said as if I’d asked him to do it. I very clearly recalled telling him I’d drop by in the afternoon.
I reached my car and tossed the file folder into the passenger seat. “I’m in the middle of something,” I said, slipping behind the wheel, “but I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“Try not to take too long,” he urged as I fired up the engine. “If you’re not here by the time the paint dries, you won’t have a chance to leave your handprint on the chicken’s back.”
I plopped my head onto the steering wheel and fought the urge to ask questions that I probably didn’t want the answers to. “I’ll do my best,” I said, lifting my head and fluffing my bangs. “I’ll see you soon, Beau.”
Heaven help us both.
In the meantime, I drove home as fast as I dared, hoping nobody had disturbed the key and pictures EJ had sent to my house. I wouldn’t know how to explain it to her if someone had stolen them, then left a pie in their place.
I was so worried about EJ’s things I barely stopped in time to avoid running my car—and worse, myself—into a filmy gray barrier that cut right across my road.
“Stars!” I cried, hitting the brakes. By the time I stopped, the ghostly gray chain-link fence sat halfway through my engine block. That was all right, I supposed. My car was part of the living world. But that fence would have cut me in half.
The ghostly barricade circled my entire property. It had to be twenty feet tall, with barbed wire at the top.
It looked like a prison.
A thick chain secured the gate and a sign over it read Sugarland Federal Penitentiary: Maximum Security.
Chapter 17
“Lucy!” My little skunk darted straight through the ghostly gate and into my arms. “Are you okay?” I held her up, her back legs wriggling in excitement. “You’re fine,” I said, snuggling her to my chest. She might not be able to see how her entire backyard play area had been turned into a prison, but no doubt she could sense something was wrong. “You’re a strong girl,” I said, stroking her. “I’m proud of you.”
“Hey! You want to back your car out of our gate?”
I looked up and saw a ghostly gray-uniformed guard approaching, a glower creasing his forehead. His mustache reminded me of a janitor’s broom, but other than that, he appeared quite neat and official: jacket buttoned from the base of his neck to below his waist, shoes so shiny they could have doubled as mirrors, and flat-topped hat on perfectly straight.
“Just a second,” I s
aid, hurrying to place Lucy into the backseat of the land yacht. I tucked her into her favorite car blanket, an afghan I’d inherited from my grandmother, and gently closed the door.
The guard stopped inches from my front fender, which was indeed poking straight through the prison fence. My car wasn’t on the ghostly plane. It could go where it wanted.
The guard held a clipboard in one hand and used it to tap the shield-shaped badge on his chest. “You see this? I’m in charge of this entrance. You can’t leave your vehicle like this. It’s against regulations.”
“It’s not like there’s a parking lot,” I pointed out, regretting my words almost immediately. I didn’t want to give these ghosts any more ideas.
My ancestral home, the place I’d fought so hard to protect, had been turned into a prison. Well, I wouldn’t stand for it. I refused.
I kept my back straight and my head held high. “Let me inside this instant,” I said to the guard, my voice sweet and calm—with an edge of steel. “This is my property and my house, and you’re the one who has no business here.”
His mustache quirked. “The inspector warned me about you,” he drawled, more indulgent than threatened. He leaned closer, like a parent to a child. “Maybe it would be best if you found a new place to live, eh? This place isn’t fit for a lady.”
“We’ll see about that,” I said, stepping around him to look for a gate, a break in the fence, any place I could use to walk onto my property, to go home.
I about cried when I took a good hard look at the front yard. Once upon a time, a ghost who had known my great-great-grandmother had shown me the old peach orchard that used to stretch for acres across the front lawn, back before my family had to sell off all that land. I’d recently planted saplings in the hope of starting fresh. I could hardly see the young, tender trees now.
Instead, I saw bare dirt. Rough-looking men gathered in small groups, some in heated discussion as they openly stared at me. They wore gray chambray shirts and rough-hewn pants with thick black-and-white stripes. One particularly sketchy fellow with an eye patch and a nasty scar blatantly checked out my legs.
“Trust me, miss. You’re safer out here,” the guard said, reading my fear. I despised that he could see it so easily and that I had a good reason to worry. “Best for everyone if you move on.”
I closed my eyes. “I can’t.” I wouldn’t. I’d sacrificed too much for my home to have it end like this. “You wouldn’t understand,” I told him, not unless he had a family legacy to protect. I didn’t need to explain myself anyway. “I need to see the inspector. Now.”
“All righty,” he said as if it were my funeral. “I’ll need proof of residence before I can give you a visitor’s badge.”
I dug into my purse for my driver’s license and held it out to him. He gave it a good hard look, glanced over the top of it at me, and then checked out the picture again. As if anyone in their right mind would want to be on my property now. Well, except for me.
The guard gave a satisfied grunt and then spent the next long minute filling out things on his clipboard. Lord save us from bureaucracy. When he’d finished, he handed me a piece of paper. “This is your visitor’s pass. Don’t lose it.”
“Believe me, I’ve been trusted with bigger things.” The ghostly slip of paper chilled my fingers as I took it.
“It’s only good for one day,” he instructed.
It wouldn’t last five minutes in my mortal hands.
“Thanks,” I said, heading for the gate.
“You’ll have to renew it tomorrow morning.”
This prison wouldn’t be standing tomorrow. Not if I had anything to do with it.
“Now back your car out of the fence,” he added as if I were the one creating problems around here.
“Right,” I said, turning back to my car. “I’ll move it right now, sir.” He was just doing his job. It wouldn’t keep me from doing mine.
I slid into the old Cadillac. “You doing okay, Lucy?” I looked in the backseat to see her curled up, asleep. At least one of us wasn’t worried how this would turn out.
I pulled my car back and parked it about twenty yards down the road from the prison.
The prison.
The ominous gray fence contained my entire property. Guard towers loomed at the corners. It disturbed me on a level I didn’t even know I could feel. Even if I wasn’t tuned in, even if I never again borrowed Frankie’s power to see ghosts, I would know this was here. I’d feel it. And it would make my home unlivable.
What I had to figure out was how it got here and why. I could understand why De Clercq would be upset about last night. Frankie and I hadn’t exactly been subtle in our investigation. It wasn’t a quality either one of us possessed in spades, but we’d gotten the job done. And the party wasn’t over yet.
Not until tonight.
I grabbed the folder Melody had given me at the library, the one with the articles about Shane Jordan. With any luck, the FedEx envelope with EJ’s photos and keys would still be on my porch. It wasn’t like the dead would disturb it, but the living were another matter. And judging from the strange pies, it seemed someone with a pulse had taken an unhealthy interest in me.
The guard stood at the gate, observing my parking job.
“Your husband know you’re driving?” he asked as I walked up the drive. “He know you’re here?”
I held up my visitor’s pass. “Let me in, please.” I smiled politely, fighting the urge to flex my hands from the chill of the ghostly paper.
The guard tutted under his breath, then slowly unlocked the chain and pulled the gate open. “Bet you’re a suffragette, too.”
“Women got the right to vote in 1920,” I informed him, breezing past.
He looked gobsmacked. “Glad I missed it. He shook his head. The gate groaned and rattled as he closed it behind me. “I can’t tell you how many of those suffragette harridans I arrested in my day.”
“Good for them,” I murmured, tucking my pass in my folder. The pass might not last longer in there than it would in my hand, but at least I didn’t have to touch it.
That was when I realized all eyes in the yard had turned to me.
I notched my chin up and strolled for my front porch, refusing to give them my attention or let them know how fast my heart had started to hammer. There were no more warm summer breezes in my front yard. Goose bumps prickled up my arms from the chill of so many ghosts in one place.
Never mind.
I could do this.
I needed to secure EJ’s envelope before anything else, then find Frankie and Inspector De Clercq.
Straight ahead was the awful ghostly prison barracks that took up the left half of my house. Over the bright white paint and blue hydrangeas my grandmother had planted with her own hands, I saw rough gray walls and narrow barred windows. A group of dangerous-looking men with handlebar mustaches and dirty faces stood outside near a darkened doorway, watching me.
This should be interesting.
Over on the other side of the yard, a shouting match between two men was escalating to a fight. Other prisoners ran to join in, cursing and hollering, with guards on their heels to break it up.
“Jeez, Capone and Moran are at it again,” one of the guards groaned as he jogged past me, pulling out his nightstick and blocking a punch from a prisoner. “Get them separated!” he yelled to his colleagues as he wrestled his attacker to his knees and slapped a pair of cuffs on him.
Lordy. I’d seen enough gangster movies to know that it was bad to have Al Capone and Bugs Moran in the same prison. If those two stayed, I would never be able to fall asleep here again.
I hurried up my front steps, careful to avoid the wall of the barracks that took up most of them, and found the envelope from EJ on my porch.
Okay. I breathed a sigh of relief as I stacked it on top of Melody’s folder. I’d accomplished the first thing I’d set out to do. Not everything was bad.
“Hiya, sugar.”
I turned. A
prisoner stood at the bottom of the steps, blocking my way. It was Bruno Scalieri. I’d have bet my life on it.
His scar crinkled and the toothpick between his rotten teeth tipped up as he treated me to a predatory smile. “Why don’t you come on down here and greet a fellow proper?”
My breath caught, and I looked for someone, anyone, to help, but the guards were all busy with the fight.
“I know you. I saw you at the Red Hot Ritz party last night,” I fibbed.
He stared at me.
“What were you doing in the menagerie with Shane Jordan?” I asked.
His expression darkened. “I wish you hadn’t witnessed that,” he said, climbing the stairs to come get me.
“Stop,” I ordered. “I mean it. Not another step.” I clutched the envelope and my folder to my chest. I’d never make it past this guy.
“Hey now.” Suds materialized at the bottom of the stairs, next to the creepy guy. Frankie’s old bank-robber friend wore a visitor’s badge and a wary expression. Suds placed an arm between the prisoner and me. “Lay off it, Lefty. She’s with the South Town Boys.”
Scalieri’s leer intensified. “I saw her first.” He blatantly checked out my body. “I didn’t know the live girl could see me back.”
“Come on down, Verity,” Suds ordered, his voice casual, his body tense. He kept his focus on the sleazy ghost and his arm up. “I’m gonna have a talk here with Mr. Scalieri.” He cocked his chin and stared me down as if to say hurry. “Frankie’s out back.”
“Gotcha.” I clambered down the stairs, skirted the ghosts, and shamelessly dashed away from the barracks and around the side of the house.
“See you soon, sugar,” Scalieri called.
No, he wouldn’t. I’d make sure of it.
Just as I neared the rose garden near the back porch, I spotted Frankie and De Clercq out by the shed.
