The Hostess With the Ghostess

by E. J. Copperman

  “Yes, they are, but they aren’t aware that Richard believed he was falling in love with his client,” I told her. I completely ignored her mention of my “client,” since that would bring in the whole communication-with-her-dead-husband thing, and who needed that? “I can keep that part of the story private and make sure that your name is not mentioned in the investigation at all.”

  Miriam’s eyes narrowed like a hawk’s. “There is no reason to mention me in connection with Richard’s death other than to say that I am the grieving widow.”

  “Unless it comes out that he might have been infatuated with someone else,” I said. “Even if you’re not considered a suspect after that, you would be known as the woman whose husband fell in love with a younger woman he barely knew. Was he beginning divorce proceedings?”

  Miriam’s voice dropped in tone and volume. “No. He was not. And I don’t appreciate—”

  “See, that’s the kind of thing people from the press will be asking if this comes out,” I said. “The police have no way of knowing about it, so they’re not going to mention it to anyone. But if I have to make a noisier inquiry than I’d like, you never know what might come out.”

  Miriam cocked an eyebrow in her last-ditch effort to demonstrate the superiority of her class over mine. What she didn’t realize was that my class was always phys ed or shop. “You are trying to blackmail me, young lady,” she said.

  I tamped down the impulse to say that blackmail is an ugly word. It’s not nearly as ugly as, say, mucilage or sludge. “I am attempting to show you the advantage in helping me along,” I said. “I’m not threatening you with anything at all.”

  “You’re treading on very dangerous ground,” Paul warned. “But it might be working.”

  Indeed, Miriam pursed her lips, and for a moment I was afraid she was going to spit, but let’s face it, this was a woman who probably hadn’t spit in decades, even when her dentist told her to. After a long pause, she barely opened her mouth and said, “What do you need?”

  “Access to any of Richard’s case files on Cassidy Van Doren and his e-mail password,” I said. I had asked Richard about his passwords before we left for the office and he’d made a vague reference to “gaps in my memory” that made getting them from Miriam necessary.

  “You will have them in five minutes,” Miriam told me. “On the single condition that I never have to talk to you again.”

  “Nothing would please me more,” I told her.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Paul said.

  Chapter 11

  The first person we showed Richard’s computer files to when we got home was Richard. It seemed the logical step to take. He’d understand the legalese better than anyone there and was intimately familiar with the case.

  “What is it I’m looking for that I haven’t seen before?” he asked.

  “Anything that might have prompted someone to see an advantage in eliminating you,” Paul told him. “The last time you looked at these files and these e-mails, you had no idea someone was going to kill you. Now you have that advantage.”

  “Some advantage,” Maxie said from her perch on the movie room’s ceiling fan. I was considering turning the fan on, which wouldn’t have bothered Maxie’s insubstantial body at all, but it’s a little weird to watch the blades go straight through someone even when she can’t feel it. Maxie actually thinks that sort of thing is amusing.

  “Is there a quiet space where I can work?” Richard asked, wisely not answering Maxie.

  “You have the room I gave you,” I reminded him. “Nobody else is going to go in there. In fact, the door is locked and I have the only keys.”

  “There is no desk in that room,” Richard said. “I need a desk and a computer. May I use this one?” He pointed at the unit we’d used to show him the files Miriam had given me on a thumb drive, which just happened to be Maxie’s laptop.

  “Hey,” Maxie said.

  “Yes,” I said. “But only for short periods because Maxie will need access as well.”

  Maxie, who believes I never stick up for her, smiled and nodded in my direction. “Thank you.”

  “You’re going to have to do some online research,” Paul said.

  Maxie pouted. “Figures. The only time you’d put me first is when you want something from me.” She zipped up into the ceiling and was gone.

  I felt bad, but mostly because my first impulse was to remind her that the second spook show of the day was coming up soon.

  “I will get to work immediately and let you know what I discover,” Richard said, and he too phased his way through the movie room ceiling, leaving Paul and me alone.

  “Your brother and his wife are not exactly kickback kind of individuals,” I said, sinking into one of the reclining chairs I have in the room for movie nights.

  “Not everyone is as footloose and fancy free as I am,” Paul told me. His thin smile indicated he thought he was being amusing.

  “Will Richard be able to get anything out of the computer files?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “It’s a place to start. It will probably take him some time, and the information he gives us will be technical and difficult to understand, if I know Richard. But it’s possible he will uncover something with his new insight that he didn’t see before. My best guess is that he will find information pertinent to Cassidy Van Doren’s case and not to his own. Richard has processed being dead faster than anyone I have ever seen.”

  It was true; over the years we had witnessed a number of people for whom the transition to a ghostly existence had taken weeks or months to sink in. Everett had not realized exactly what had happened to him until he’d overheard a conversation in the men’s room at a gas station, and even then he’d had to understand it and accept it.

  “So what do we do in the meantime?”

  Paul did his usual Sherlock Holmes thing: he “paced” back and forth in midair while stroking his goatee, although not as fervently as if a juicy clue had been discovered. “We need more basic information on the Van Doren case from another perspective. The murder took place in Cranbury, which is not very close to here, so Lieutenant McElone probably won’t be an enormous help on this.” Detective Lieutenant Anita McElone is the chief of detectives in the Harbor Haven Police Department. She and I have collaborated on cases before, meaning I have annoyed McElone to the point of distraction and she has very reluctantly given me information to make me go away.

  “I don’t know anybody in the Middlesex prosecutor’s office,” I said. “But Phyllis might.”

  “It would be worth asking,” Paul told me. “But we can also find out quite a bit, I’d think, from the subject herself.”

  “Cassidy Van Doren?”

  “Yes. I’m sure Richard, especially armed with his files and passwords, can provide some contact information.”

  This opened up a subject Paul and I have discussed at length, and one that never makes me feel good. “You’re talking about me going to see an alleged murderer,” I said. “I’ve had enough guns pointed at me, you’ll recall.”

  “I believe Cassidy’s modus operandi is drowning in a bathtub,” Paul noted. “Allegedly. In any event, I doubt that will be possible if you arrange the meeting in a public place. Besides, I will be there with you.”

  “How about you get on the Ghosternet and ask Keith Johnson who killed him?” I proposed. “He’s been dead a while. There’s no reason to think you won’t be able to find him.”

  Paul nodded. “That will be my first order of business. When we see Richard again, you can ask him about Cassidy’s cell phone number. Maxie should be looking up any details we can find on Richard’s murder, which took place in New Brunswick.”

  “Richard has her laptop,” I reminded him.

  Paul nodded again. “Can she use yours?” he asked.

  I groaned a little bit. My laptop was probably one of the beta units Steve Jobs rejected in the California garage where Apple got started. “She’s not going to be happy about it. And I ass
ume you remember what it’s like when Maxie’s not happy.”

  He closed his eyes. “I remember.”

  Before I could answer, Gregory Lewis appeared in the archway entrance to the movie room. “Excuse me, Alison,” he said. “Am I interrupting”—he looked around, then up, as your typical mortal will—“anything?”

  I’d barely heard Mr. Lewis speak at all since he’d gotten off the Senior Plus Tours van on arrival, but he was a guest, and my favorite kind too—the ones who don’t ask for much of anything. “Not at all, Mr. Lewis,” I said. “What can I do for you?”

  “I don’t want to be a bother.” He turned and started to shuffle away.

  I walked around him and more or less blocked his path. “You are anything but a bother, Mr. Lewis. Please, tell me what you need. I’m happy to help.” With guests like him, that’s actually true.

  Was this the right time to do my John Alden impression on behalf of Abby Lesniak? Was there such a thing as the right time to do that? I had promised Abby but had hoped the whole thing might be forgotten. I decided to see what Mr. Lewis’s request was first because that gave me more time to think.

  “Well, if it’s not too much trouble . . .” Mr. Lewis was doing his best to back out of asking me a question, but I’d mentally vowed to see this through.

  “No trouble at all,” I said.

  “I was wondering if you might be able to direct to a good gift shop in town,” Mr. Lewis said quietly.

  A gift shop? The town was lousy with them. It’s a Jersey Shore town. You can walk down the street and be pelted with gifts if you move slowly enough. “What kind of gift are we talking about?” I asked. This might be a clue toward proceeding with Abby’s request. If Mr. Lewis was buying perfume or jewelry, for example, it might be an indication that he was at least interested in someone at home.

  Paul floated by looking impatient. Anything that is not about the case is a waste of time in Paul’s eyes. If he wore a wristwatch, he’d have been checking it frequently.

  “You know, T-shirts, postcards, balloons, that sort of thing,” Mr. Lewis said.

  Sounded pretty standard to me. “There are plenty of those on the boardwalk in Seaside Heights, but here in town, if you walk down Ocean Avenue, they’re pretty hard to miss, Mr. Lewis.”

  He looked up at me; Mr. Lewis was a diminutive man. “Please call me Greg,” he said.

  “Thank you, Greg. There are lots of those gift shops in town. I’m sure you know.”

  “Yes,” Greg allowed. “But I need something a little better. Higher quality. Something that will stand out. You know what I mean?”

  Saying I did might have been an overstatement, but I nodded because there was a store I could recommend. “Go to Shanahan’s on Surf Avenue,” I said. I walked to a table near the windows and opened a drawer where I keep business cards of those local concerns I can confidently give to guests. “Their quality is a little higher than everyone else. No obscene T-shirts, no toys that’ll break on the ride home.” I handed Greg the card.

  “Thank you, Alison,” he said. “You’ve been a big help.” Greg turned and left the movie room, prompting a melodramatic sigh from Paul.

  “Finally,” he said.

  “This is a business,” I reminded him. “And it’s what’s keeping a roof over your see-through head, so don’t knock it. It’s always going to be my priority, and that means you need to cope with it.”

  “Yes. Now. About Maxie using your laptop.” Paul had given up pacing, his momentum completely interrupted by what he saw as an intrusion.

  “She’s not going to be happy.”

  “We can’t ask Richard to use yours. His work would be slowed down immeasurably. But Maxie can use yours because she’s accustomed to it and she has less data to analyze.” Paul even looked like he wasn’t just giving his brother preferential treatment.

  “Fine. But you have to tell her.” Never let it be said I can’t be vindictive when the occasion arises.

  Paul sputtered. “That’s a dirty trick, Alison.”

  “Welcome home.”

  He smiled. “I probably deserved that. Okay. I’ll talk to Maxie. If you hear the roof come off the house, you’ll know why.” He rose up and flew through the ceiling.

  I was alone for the first time that day. It actually felt pretty good. So naturally my phone rang. I reached into my pocket and pulled it out.

  My best friend, Jeannie Rogers, was calling, and I had to decide if I could summon enough energy to talk to her. Jeannie is one of the best people I’ve ever met, but she operates at a level of kinetics higher than I could achieve if I were a raging cocaine addict. I’m more into caffeine as a drug of choice (and even that in moderation), but I can imagine.

  I love Jeannie. I’d let her go on and try to relax while she talked herself out. It was a plan. “Hey, Jeannie,” I said when I pushed the accept button.

  “Alison!” See what I mean? Right off the top, energy. “How’s the old married lady?” This was a question she’d asked me four times a week since the day Josh and I made it official right before her very eyes. She finds some strange pleasure in reminding me I’m married, just in case I’ve forgotten or something.

  “Tired,” I said. “I’m working on an investigation, and I have five guests.” After the speech I’d just given Paul about my priorities, I probably should have said that the other way around.

  “An investigation!” Jeannie speaks quite often in exclamation points. “I thought you’d given that up.”

  “Well, I did, but then this came up and I sort of have to get it figured out so I can give it up again.” That made sense, right? Because I figured once we solved Richard’s case, Paul would be back on the road—or a couple feet above it.

  I gave Jeannie a very brief rundown on the investigation and tap-danced a little about who my client might have been by saying it was “someone close to the lawyer who was killed.” You really couldn’t get any closer.

  Jeannie is a fantastic listener, a skill she has cultivated through decades of being an excellent gossip. She said nothing while I was talking, not even asking a question. When it was clear I had finished my sordid tale, she waited a moment while digesting the information. “Wow,” she said. “Somebody didn’t want that girl to get off, did they?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, everybody was telling this guy the case was open and shut, that she’d put her stepdad under the water and held him there, right? But he comes in and starts finding stuff that might get her declared innocent, and the next thing you know, he’s got a pipe upside the head.” Jeannie thinks she’s street. She’s more cul-de-sac.

  “So you think this was about Richard finding something out that got too close?” I hadn’t thought through the motives enough in this case. Which wasn’t even slightly unusual, I’m sorry to say.

  Jeannie made a rude noise with her lips. “Plain as the nose on your face,” she said. “Not that I’m saying anything about your nose, you understand.”

  “No offense taken.”

  “It’s just real clear that the dead guy found out something that was going to show somebody else killed that stepdad, and whoever it was didn’t want him to say so. Otherwise, you could probably ask him what happened.”

  That was precisely what I intended to do.

  Chapter 12

  It turned out that Jeannie was calling just to pass on some fairly uncontroversial news about a high school classmate of ours who had married one of our high school teachers eighteen years after graduating. And to invite herself; her husband, Tony; and their two children over for dinner the following night once she found out my mother and Melissa (mostly Melissa) would be cooking. I sort of hustled her off the phone because I needed to go upstairs and talk with Richard and, if I could find him, Paul.

  Paul actually came looking for me to say that I owed him because Maxie hit the roof—or would have if she hadn’t already been sitting on it—when she heard she had to stoop to using my laptop even for a few hours wh
ile Richard toiled away on hers. He said the fury of her tantrum was similar to what Hurricane Sandy had unleashed on much of the Jersey Shore years earlier, which was actually a sort of tasteless hyperbole. There are still people trying to get their shore houses back together from Sandy.

  Nonetheless, Paul agreed we should go talk to Richard about his progress and the idea that he might have been holding back part of his story for reasons unknown. We checked on the room I’d given Richard but didn’t find him there. Which was weird.

  “I can’t understand why he’d go somewhere else,” Paul said. “He knows we need him to look through those files.”

  “He said that he wanted a room that has a desk so he could put the laptop down on something,” I remembered. “Is it that taxing on your arms?”

  Paul made a noncommittal face. “Not really. You’ll recall Maxie managed to carry you in the air for quite some distance a while back. But Richard is not used to his current state of existence and might still be operating on the same standards he had when he was alive. Which rooms have desks?” Paul has been living in my house with all my furniture for years and there are still rooms I don’t think he’s ever visited.

  “My old bedroom has a little pulldown shelf on the dresser that I used as a desk,” I said. “But Penny Desmond is in that room now. You don’t think Richard would use a room that a guest has taken, do you?”

  “If Penny is not there now, it’s possible,” he answered. “Richard wouldn’t concern himself with someone’s effects, but he wouldn’t want to be there working when she was present.”

  But a check of Penny’s room did not locate Richard. It’s a small enough room (albeit with a private bath, which means I can charge more for it) that one glance told the story there. I stood on the outside landing with Paul and ran through the furniture inventory in my mind.