The Hostess With the Ghostess

by E. J. Copperman

  Liss insisted on using her dumbwaiter to get us there, which meant taking turns (her first), and Paul had somehow found Maxie along the way so she was there when I arrived. Maxie, with Everett in tow, glommed onto the laptop like it was her missing puppy. It was not a puppy, and Lester, Melissa’s ghost dog, wanted us to know that. He was happily wagging his tail and scooting (six inches off the floor) from person to person. I was already starting to get itchy around the eyes.

  Maxie opened the top and started booting up before I could even grunt.

  “See if you can find the files about Keith Johnson’s financial dealings, particularly the personal ones,” Paul suggested.

  Maxie stopped midmotion. “No Grey’s Anatomy?”

  “Not just yet. Soon.” Paul sounded like a patient father. “Right now, we need to see that the financial records are there so we can begin our analysis.”

  “What-ever.” Maxie started pounding on the keyboard as Everett held the laptop up for her. Lester jumped up and tried to land on my lap but, not having gravity to gauge his jump, floated past my nose, making me sneeze, and kept going until he reached Melissa, who is always a more receptive audience anyway. “Okay, what do you want to see?”

  Paul pursed his lips. It wasn’t quite a goatee-stroking problem. “First, let’s take a look at Keith’s personal bank accounts. There was some money being exchanged that supposedly favored Cassidy. Pull those up and let’s see the dates and amounts.”

  Maxie stared at the screen. Then she stared some more. Just a moment longer. “It’s not here,” she said.

  Paul looked up with an expression of surprise, but his first reaction was to look at Everett. “Can you find Richard and bring him here, please?” he asked.

  Everett nodded. He would have saluted, but his hands were holding the laptop, which he gently laid on Liss’s homework desk. Maxie floated down to compensate. Lester, unconcerned with the state of Keith Johnson’s bank statements, jumped off Melissa’s shoulder, where he’d been perched, and floated around the room awhile taking everyone in. He loves company.

  As soon as Everett was down through the floor in search of Richard, Paul asked Maxie to look for any business records Johnson might have left in the files we’d gotten from Miriam. These were still on the hard drive, and Paul asked her to open the first one she could find. Then he huddled over her shoulder to see what came up on the screen.

  “There are gaps,” he said after a moment. “These have been redacted.”

  “They’ve be re-what?” Maxie demanded.

  “Edited,” I told her. There was a time I had to give Melissa vocabulary words. That was then; this was Maxie.

  Everett flew back in through the floor, and Richard was just to his left side. “What is going on?” Paul’s brother asked. He had the air of a colonel in the British Army. In a Monty Python sketch. It was a wonder he didn’t ask, “What’s all this, then?”

  “You were looking at these files before,” Paul said. “Did you notice any gaps in the information?”

  Richard’s eyes narrowed. “Gaps?”

  “Take a look.”

  Richard maneuvered himself through Paul to get a better look. He examined the screen closely and scrutinized the spreadsheet. “This is not the way it looked before,” he said.

  “Everything was there when you looked?” Paul said.

  “Yes.”

  “Maxie, close this file, please,” Paul said, and Maxie complied. She’d comply if I asked too, but she’d complain about it first. “Now show us the menu for Keith Barent Johnson’s financial records.”

  Maxie opened the menu, and Richard gasped when he saw it. “It’s been sabotaged,” he said.

  Paul leaned back from the posture he’d taken when he was staring at the laptop screen. Now his hand went to the goatee.

  “Someone doesn’t want us to see what’s there,” he said. “And it’s what’s not there that is interesting.”

  Chapter 16

  I spent the rest of the evening with Jeannie and her family, letting the ghosts (minus Dad) search the house again for clues to our intruder’s identity or to find an idea of how someone had slipped in, taken Maxie’s laptop, performed surgery on Keith Johnson’s files, and then put the laptop where I’d find it, all without being seen. It was easier to let them do it (with limited access to guest rooms as long as Melissa was present) than to keep making excuses to Jeannie.

  The knot in my stomach had dissipated to the size of maybe a staple. There had been a threat and no follow-up even after we did exactly what the paper had said not to do.

  Besides, I was pretty worn out on the whole Keith Johnson thing at this point. I’d never known the guy, but he didn’t seem like he was an especially wonderful fellow, and besides, Paul couldn’t even raise him on the Ghosternet. It didn’t seem like finding his killer would make that much of a difference in the real world.

  Mom and Dad cut out fairly early, with my mother making a pointed comment about calling me the next day. She’d want to know what the transparent contingency had discovered during the evening.

  Jeannie gave me a look after Mom (to her eyes) had left and asked what was bothering me. I couldn’t tell her because it would have violated our policy of my never actually mentioning the ghosts unless under duress, so I told her I was just tired, which was also true. She took that as a sign—unintended—that I wanted her and the family to leave, and no number of denials could convince her otherwise. She too promised to call tomorrow. I’d have to block off some time.

  “The fact is, I’m worried about Paul,” I told Josh when I emerged from the master bath that night. He was already in bed—because men have to just brush their teeth and they’re ready to sleep—reading a book about the Marx Brothers. Josh is something of a comedy freak.

  He closed the book and looked at me. “What’s to worry about?” he asked. “Nothing bad can happen to him, can it?”

  I climbed in next to him and leaned over to get an arm put around my shoulders. My husband complied because he is a wonderful husband, and with so little practice. “Not physically, no. Not as far as I know, anyway. But emotionally he’s still capable of feeling pain, and I don’t think having his older brother around is good for him.”

  Josh pulled me a little closer. “Why not?”

  He’s my husband, so I can tell him my crazy stuff. “Madame Lorraine told me he’s in great pain,” I said.

  “Madame Lorraine says that about everybody. It’s her catchphrase.”

  “I thought so too, but it’s the way Paul acts around Richard. Sort of like Lester.” Then I remembered Josh can’t see Lester, so he doesn’t know how the puppy might act. “He’s so desperate to please that he’s not thinking about himself at all. He doesn’t take charge when he should. He doesn’t question Richard’s opinions. It’s not like he’s just shrinking into the corner, but he’s not being himself, and I wonder if Madame Lorraine might not have a point.”

  “Well, from what you’ve told me, Paul always looked up to Richard,” Josh said. “It’s almost as if he’s a parent instead of a sibling. It’s not easy to stand up to your parents.”

  “I never had any trouble.”

  Josh chuckled. “Nonetheless, for someone like Paul, who seems to respect authority more than most, telling Richard he disagrees with an opinion would be a big step. Just give him a little time. He’s only been back here a couple of days. He’ll remember he’s a private investigator and start acting like himself again.”

  “I guess.” I put my hands on his arm to get a little warmer even though it wasn’t cold in the room at all. Not hot enough yet for air conditioning. This would be the week of perfect weather we get once a year. “So who do you think killed Keith Johnson?”

  “You have an interesting concept of pillow talk, Alison.”

  “You ought to know that by now.”

  “I don’t know as much as you about the case, but I always think the wife is the best suspect.” He pulled me tighter toward him. “That’s wh
y I like to keep you close, where I can see you.”

  “Oh, is that why?” It felt so normal in his arms. That’s why it was so jarring when a ghost’s lips showed up in the bedroom wall.

  I sat straight up and pulled the blanket to my chin. “What?” Josh asked.

  “Someone’s here.”

  The lips did not attempt to push their way any farther into the room, and when they moved, Paul’s voice came through them. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I did not intend to intrude on you.”

  “Nice compromise, Paul,” I said so Josh would know who I was talking to. “Can you hear me?”

  “Yes. I wanted you to know that we completed a thorough search of the house and found no evidence of anyone who might have taken Maxie’s computer and deleted the financial files.”

  I knew that already. “Did you manage to recover any of the files?” I asked.

  “Not yet, but Maxie thinks there might a way to dive deep into the hard drive and find some of them. She’s going to get on that as soon as she catches up with Grey’s Anatomy.”

  There was no point in arguing. Maxie has her agenda, and it will always come before everyone else’s. It’s her world, and even she doesn’t live in it.

  “What else can we be doing?” I asked. I wanted to get those lips out of my wall as soon as possible, and this was a good way to wrap things up.

  “Of course, right now we can do very little,” most of Paul’s mouth said. “But in the morning, I think we should discuss which of the suspects we should go to see first.”

  Again, offering any resistance would be counterproductive. And it would prolong this conversation, which was among the weirder ones I’ve had. It was like trying to talk to the opening to The Rocky Horror Picture Show. “In the morning,” I said.

  “Good night, Paul,” Josh said. He can pick up that much.

  “Good night, Josh.” I had to relay the message, and then, thankfully, the lips receded back into the wall and joined the rest of Paul’s face somewhere else in the house.

  I looked at my husband, who had half a smile on his face. “What must it be like to be married to me?” I marveled.

  He kissed me very well indeed. “I can think of worse things,” he said.

  And just when things were going to get interesting, my cell phone buzzed.

  Normally I would have ignored this call entirely. The circumstances being what they were, it was remarkable I even glanced at the phone to see who might be calling me at this hour (which admittedly wasn’t that late for regular people who didn’t run a paint store or a guesthouse and didn’t have to be up at the crack of dawn). But I do worry when my mother is driving home so I took a look.

  I saw the number of Detective Lieutenant Anita McElone of the Harbor Haven Police Department.

  That couldn’t be good. McElone didn’t call me . . . ever, pretty much, and I hadn’t even gotten in touch with her about either of the murders I was investigating because neither of them took place in Harbor Haven. It’s one thing to have a friend—of sorts—in the police department. It’s another to abuse the privilege. I try not to do that.

  Josh saw the look on my face and let go of me. “What?” he asked.

  “It’s McElone.” I reached for the phone and took the call. “Lieutenant?”

  “Do you know a Cassidy Van Doren?” she asked. She gets right to business when it’s business.

  My initial reaction was to wonder how many Cassidy Van Dorens there might be to know, but I suppressed that impulse and asked, “A little. How can you know about that?”

  “Normally I’d say something pithy like, ‘I know everything,’ but I don’t have time for that right now,” McElone answered. “I looked up Ms. Van Doren’s rap sheet, and what do you know, she’s on trial for a murder in Cranbury. And she lives in Rumson. But she says I should call you, so I’m calling you.”

  “She says you should call me? She’s there with you?”

  Josh sat up a little and took in the phone call. This was a little different than watching me talk to ghosts because he could at least hear the sound of McElone’s voice, but he still wasn’t getting everything.

  “Actually, she’s in the hospital. Seems there’s been an attempt on her life.”

  #

  Josh insisted on coming with me to the hospital. I’d reminded him that he had to get up before the sun rose even this time of year, and he’d given me a look that indicated further conversation would take place in the car on the way to the hospital.

  We took Josh’s delivery truck because it was fueled up, while my Volvo had been living on fumes for a full day and its negligent owner had not heeded the warning. Even my car can make me feel guilty.

  “What was Cassidy Van Doren doing in Harbor Haven?” Josh asked. I think he was talking to keep himself awake, which was something of a concern because he was driving.

  “McElone said she was coming to see me. She had my business card in her pocket and she was on her way to the guesthouse when someone tried to run her off the road and into a ravine.”

  “Are the police sure the driver was intentionally trying to harm Cassidy?” Paul asked. Paul was sort of on, sort of in the back seat. When he’d heard us getting ready to leave and asked what it was about, he’d insisted on coming along. The only reason I’d agreed was that I was afraid Richard would have decided to come along if Paul wasn’t there to act as his agent.

  “The lieutenant said it was pretty clear from the tire tracks and the way Cassidy’s car had turned over that someone else had pushed her off the road,” I said. I like to keep my answers general when there’s a ghost present and Josh is there. Josh knew Paul was in the car, but I still didn’t want him to feel left out. “No state troopers or local cops saw it happen. It was on one of the hillier areas of a back road off of Route 35. Nobody else on the road, Cassidy said.”

  “Odd,” Paul said, but he didn’t elaborate, and I was too tired to ask for the lecture.

  Josh pulled the car into the visitors’ parking lot at Jersey Shore University Medical Center in Neptune, and we got out to walk to the emergency room where Cassidy had last been reported. I’d tried calling the cell phone number she’d given me and gotten sent to voice mail.

  We found her in one of the cubicles, dressed and waiting to be released by a resident who clearly found her charming and was asking for her phone number. There was a bruise over Cassidy’s left eye, and her side had clearly been bandaged, judging from the bulge in her skintight top.

  We waited until the young doctor had finished his “examination” and Cassidy was being wheeled out of the ER and toward the parking lot. Josh offered to push the wheelchair, but the orderly working the room said it was hospital policy to have a staff member escort every patient to the exit.

  “Yeah, this black SUV just came out of nowhere and started bumping me,” she explained during the trip down the hallway. “I couldn’t figure it out. I mean, he could have passed me anytime he wanted. There wasn’t anybody else on the road.”

  “What did you do?” Josh asked her. His face had an expression that I read and nobody else would indicating he found Cassidy’s manner, let’s say, artificial.

  “I slowed up, hit the brakes,” she answered. “I figured if he was in that big a hurry, he could go ahead. But he slowed up and kept bumping me from the left lane, toward the side of the road. No shoulder there or anything. Just a drop down the hill. I figured I’d stop flat out, you know? But when I did, he backed into my grill and pushed me back farther. I was lucky I could start the car again.”

  We reached the doors, and the orderly nodded. Cassidy reached into her purse and tried to give him a bill, but the young man said that wasn’t necessary and walked back into the hospital wishing her good luck. He told her to have a good one. I thought that train had sort of left the station.

  “You put the car back in gear?” I asked. “What was the plan?”

  “Plan?” Cassidy laughed nastily. “I didn’t have a plan. I was operating on survival ins
tinct. It was all about getting away. When I realized I couldn’t do that—the radiator on my car was already steaming—I figured my best bet was to find a safe spot to let him push me over. So I managed to get it past the big drop and over toward a little ravine on the side of the road, and the next time he came around I steered into it. But I didn’t figure it that well. The car turned over, and I ended up upside down in the ravine. Then I heard sirens, and the guy in the SUV must have heard them too because he took off.”

  “You didn’t recognize the driver of the SUV?” I said.

  “I didn’t see the driver of the SUV,” Cassidy answered. “Tinted windshield, which you’re not supposed to be able to do in Jersey, right? And he was way higher than me, because I have—had—a little Mazda Miata. I was looking up at him the whole time.” She hesitated while we stood outside the hospital entrance and grimaced a little. “Can I ask you a favor? Can you drive me to my mom’s house? My car’s sort of . . . you know.”

  Josh nodded and went to get the truck without looking at me; he knew I’d agree. “Where is your mom’s?” I asked.

  “Rumson. Where she and Keith used to live.”

  We got into the truck, making sure Cassidy could manage into the back seat without hurting her cracked rib. Paul sat next to her, a few inches above the seat, watching her intently. If Paul had been visible, it might have seemed crowded. As it was, to me alone it appeared in the rearview mirror as if Paul and Cassidy were getting very, very friendly. Paul likes to get a very close look at a subject’s face.

  “Why were you coming to see me?” I asked Cassidy once the proper address had been programmed into the GPS. “Why did you give Lieutenant McElone my name to call?”

  “I remembered you said that I should get in touch if anything occurred to me about Keith’s murder that might be important to Richard’s murder,” she said, as if that didn’t sound weird even to me. “I remembered something.”

  “You could have called,” Josh said. “You wouldn’t have been out on the road tonight.”