The Hostess With the Ghostess

by E. J. Copperman

It didn’t take long. Josh was clearly intent on his task. I could see him from behind, leaning forward on the sofa, his head barely moving as he concentrated on the laptop in front of him. I understood that he was confused about his role, seemingly the least qualified person for the task at hand. But he was determined to do it well.

  He leaned his elbows on the table, no doubt horrifying my mother long distance, and placed his hands on either side of the laptop in a clear attempt to be ready should there be any movement.

  I could see from my closeted vantage point that there would be no immediate need for Josh to grab at the computer. There wasn’t any ghost in the area that I could—

  Wait a second! Coming straight up through the basement—which I noted was where I was supposed to be—was a spirit I had not seen before. It was a man, but he was difficult to make out because he was being so stealthy in his move upward. At first I saw only the top of his head, which was very close to being totally bald. He rose millimeter by millimeter, and it took almost a full minute before his eyes were visible. He stopped moving at that point certainly because he was scoping out the room. He looked in every possible direction except directly at the front closet, which was lucky for me.

  I held my breath. The last thing I wanted right now was to alert Josh to the presence of the ghost (or, as far as I could see, the top third of the ghost’s head), and I was too far away to do anything myself. To be honest, I wouldn’t have been able to grab this guy or stop him in any way even if I were a foot from his head, which was about six feet from the coffee table where Josh was wiggling his fingers in anticipation.

  The ghost’s eyes did a last quick survey of the room, and then his entire demeanor changed. Instead of moving at an excruciatingly slow pace, he sprang up from the floor and launched himself directly at Maxie’s precious laptop, right between my husband’s considerably more precious hands.

  The only thing I had going for me, largely because Paul had left me without any instructions at all, was the element of surprise. I shoved the closet door open and jumped out into the room, yelling, “Hold it, buddy!”

  Josh, excellent man that he is, dived onto Maxie’s laptop without hesitation and clutched it to his chest.

  My problem was that I had no way to hold this intruder at bay. If he decided to evaporate, he could do so, and there was a grand total of nothing I could possibly do about it. I yelled, “Paul!”

  He was there before the echo died away, and there wasn’t much echo in the den. Luckily the new ghost, whoever he was, seemed stunned by the sudden turn of events and did not make a move to escape. By the time he probably thought of it, he was surrounded.

  Paul, Maxie, Everett, and Richard had formed a circle around the new ghost even as Josh turned to look at me and say, “Did we get him?” I didn’t know so I didn’t answer.

  Melissa appeared at the entrance to the den and watched. She knew she couldn’t affect the action in the room either.

  I actually found myself wishing my mother was there. Mom has a way of talking people into thinking things are their own idea, and it occurred to me that might be a useful skill in the next few minutes.

  But Mom and Dad weren’t coming over until tomorrow.

  “Don’t try to run,” Paul said to the intruder. “We can hold you if we all try, but we don’t want to do that. We only want to talk.”

  The new ghost turned out to be a man in his sixties or early seventies, dressed casually but well. I would bet that if he had fingernails, they were polished. He wore eyeglasses. I’d seen ghosts wear glasses before, but I wondered whether they were actually serving a purpose or were just for fashion reasons. That wasn’t the first question I needed answered now, so I let Paul do the work.

  “I have nothing to tell you,” the ghost said.

  “How about telling me where my laptop is?” I said. A person gets to set her own priorities.

  “Who are you?” Paul asked.

  “I have nothing to tell you,” he repeated.

  But Richard stepped forward and took a closer look at the intruder. “I know you,” he said.

  The ghost looked like he would be sweating if he could. “No, you don’t,” he said.

  “Yes. From the photographs in the case file. I know you. You’re Keith Barent Johnson.”

  The ghost looked at the floor, and if Paul’s hands hadn’t been on his arms, I think that’s the escape route he would have used. “Yes,” he said. “I am.”

  “Have you been stretching something in one of the upstairs bedrooms?” Melissa asked.

  “Did you stick a note to my wall with a knife?” I asked.

  They were both good questions.

  Chapter 26

  There was a lot of talking over each other for the next few minutes. The snatches I was able to decipher and recall included the following:

  Paul: Keith Johnson!

  Richard: Yes, I’m quite sure.

  Johnson: I said that’s who I was.

  Maxie: My laptop! (She snatched it from Josh, who looked at me. I nodded that it was okay.)

  Melissa: Okay, everybody quiet down. (Nobody did.)

  Paul: Why are you trying to steal files that can help us discover who murdered you?

  Everett (to Maxie): You owe Josh some thanks.

  Maxie: He can’t hear me.

  Josh (to me): I think someone just passed through me. Sort of a cool breeze.

  Me: That’s Maxie.

  Maxie: Oh.

  Melissa: Everybody quiet down! (I was listening but doubted anyone else heard her. Except Josh.)

  Penny Desmond (who had wandered in during the brouhaha she couldn’t see or hear): Alison, dear, is there a good ice cream place in town you can recommend?

  Me: Stud Muffin actually has good ice cream, Penny, but there’s a soft custard stand about five miles away if you have a car.

  Penny: Oh, that won’t be necessary. Thank you, dear. (Penny left.)

  Johnson: You can’t make me say anything.

  Paul: Why wouldn’t you want—?

  Melissa: Quiet! (This time everyone heard, stopped talking, and looked at her.)

  She accepted the respect as her due (which she should) and lowered her voice to a more socially acceptable level. I appreciated that in case there were any other guests wandering about the house who might have heard the screaming and assumed someone was being attacked. No one showed up at the entrance to the den, which led me to wonder if I should be relieved or insulted.

  “Now,” Melissa said, “let’s all figure out what we want to do right now. Richard is only thinking about clearing Cassidy Van Doren’s name. Paul, you’re trying to find out from Mr. Johnson why he might have been trying to erase some files from Maxie’s computer that have to do with his murder. Maxie is just concerned about keeping her laptop safe, which is understandable. Josh is trying to keep Mom safe but doesn’t know who’s here or where anybody is except me and Mom. Everett is worried about Maxie but also wants to make sure he stands guard over the laptop and any other evidence. And Mom is most worried about me because that’s what she always worries about.”

  She turned toward the new ghost in the room. “So that leaves you, Mr. Johnson. What’s your concern here? Why did you come and take Maxie’s laptop and then my mom’s? Are you embarrassed about something we might find in your files?”

  Johnson, caught up in the scene, had been watching like a spectator and seemed a bit startled when Melissa addressed him directly. He blinked twice, thinking about her question. “Embarrassed?” he said. “No. I’m not embarrassed by anything I left behind. I don’t know why all you people are making such a fuss. You’ve been upsetting my family, so I came here to tell you to stop. It’s clear what happened. I’ve gotten over it. Why haven’t you?”

  “Why haven’t—?” Richard sputtered. Richard was an expert sputterer. It was almost an art form in his . . . mouth. It was a shame I couldn’t draw attention to his art because I’m sure Josh would have found Richard’s sputtering quite amusing. There
are some things that we can’t share even with our dearest ones.

  Paul spoke over his brother. “It is not in the least bit clear what happened, Mr. Johnson,” he said. “But since you are now here with us, we have the opportunity to get answers for every question we’ve had, so we’re very glad to see you indeed.”

  It was an effective shift in Paul’s tone, and at least in the short term, Johnson seemed to accept it and ignore the antagonism he’d been showing just a minute earlier. He looked at Paul, and his eyes didn’t exactly show empathy, but perhaps a touch of understanding.

  “I can tell you exactly what happened that afternoon,” he said in a quieter tone. “I checked into the Cranbury Bog and went directly to my room. Hunter came in to talk but only for a minute. We had a rule about not discussing business, so he was asking about a place to go to dinner that night. We usually went to a restaurant nearby, but it had closed since our previous visit. I said I’d look up some possibilities and ask Robin about it later. So Hunter left.

  “After that I unpacked my things. I don’t like to live out of a suitcase, and I hadn’t brought much because we were going to stay for only two days. I put pretty much everything I had either in the bathroom or in one drawer in my room’s dresser. Then I got a call on my cell phone that Cassidy was coming up. I didn’t want to see her and told her so.”

  I noticed that the visit by Erika Johnson was not included in her father’s narrative. Paul’s eyebrow twitched, which indicated he’d caught that as well. But he didn’t want to contradict Johnson now that he was talking, so he let the ghost speak.

  “Cassidy hung up on me and then appeared in my doorway only ten minutes later,” Johnson continued. “We immediately began arguing. She had upset Adrian, my wife and her mother, only the day before, forcing her to visit her father’s grave. I knew Adrian did not want to go; she considered her first husband a piece of her past she’d just as soon forget. But Cassidy had insisted, and Adrian had been agitated the rest of the day.”

  “Why didn’t you bring your wife with you if she was so upset?” Melissa asked. “Why not just take her along on your vacation so she could feel better?”

  “Hunter and I had agreed never to take our wives along on these trips,” Johnson told her, his tone slightly colder than I would have preferred. You watch the way you talk to my daughter. “Some rules just can’t be broken.” He didn’t add “little girl,” or I would have called my father to come and beat him up.

  “What happened when you and Cassidy started to argue?” Paul said, bringing the conversation back to where I was sure he wanted it to be.

  “She became violent,” he said, looking away from Paul and not making eye contact with anyone else in the room. That was quite a feat because there was a living person or a ghost in pretty much any other sight line. “She slapped me and said I had been poisoning her mother’s mind against her. I didn’t raise a finger to that girl, and she slapped me.” He sounded like he was asking for sympathy but did not attempt to elicit a reaction directly from anyone. He kept his eyes on a point on the wall where no being of any kind was in view. “And she tried to blackmail me.”

  Well, that set off an explosion in the room. “Blackmail?” Paul said. He thought for a moment. “Did she know something about the pyramid scheme you were trying to perpetrate?” It was a calculated risk.

  Johnson didn’t go for it; he was a practiced liar, but not an artful one. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

  “Yes you do,” Richard told him. “I saw the files that were missing from your hard drive, and I saw them before they were deleted. Some law enforcement agency is investigating your business and probably finding out things you didn’t want them to know when you were alive.”

  “I don’t know anything about that.” Johnson stared at the floor. “All I know is that little ingrate was trying to get me to transfer money into her trust account.”

  “What did you do?” Paul asked in an attempt to go with Johnson’s narrative and move the conversation forward. He tried to move into Johnson’s sight, but the new ghost continued to look down at the floor. It would have looked remarkably weird for Paul to have dropped down that low just to make eye contact.

  “I asked her to leave, naturally,” Johnson said. “And I do not remember anything after that.”

  Paul didn’t stroke his goatee, but he held his hand over it. “I think you do,” he said softly.

  Now Johnson raised his head and looked at Paul in disbelief. “I beg your pardon?”

  Paul leaned into the stare. “I don’t think you’ve forgotten at all,” he said. “I think you’ve been like this for long enough now that you remember everything that happened that night, but you don’t want to explain it. I think your animosity toward your stepdaughter is so acute that you’d rather have her convicted of killing you than name the person who actually ended your life. That is what I think. Would you like to know why?”

  Johnson continued to stare, his mouth slightly open. He did not answer.

  But Paul was on a roll. “Because Cassidy Van Doren was seen by numerous rescue and police personnel at the scene of your death, and she was wet only up to her elbows. She had tried to pull you out of that bathtub, not hold you down in it. I think you’re lying because you didn’t mention that your daughter Erika had come to visit you in the Cranbury Bog and left before Cassidy arrived. And surely Erika knew at that point that you had already been siphoning money into Cassidy’s account, money that Erika and her brother, Braden, no doubt believed was rightfully theirs. Your will is still in probate, Mr. Johnson. I’m wondering how that situation will resolve itself. So, yes, I think you’re lying. Would you care to explain why?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Johnson said, but his voice was less than persuasive. “Erika didn’t drown me in that bathtub.”

  “Then who did?”

  Johnson’s eyes got cold as he assessed Paul. “Do you remember the exact moment you died?” he asked. “That split second when you went from being a breathing human being and became what you are now? I remember fear. I remember being held down, the arms from above the water that wouldn’t let me up. The exact moment? I have no recollection at all.”

  Richard stepped forward like the attorney he would constantly remind us he was and put his hands in the pockets of his dress pants. The man had eternity to hang around, and he was wearing a suit. It’s telling, don’t you think?

  “I’ve only been in this state for a little over a week,” he said, his voice a low murmur that would no doubt build to a crescendo. “But I remember the moments before I was killed. If I had turned my head just a little, I would be able to tell you who was standing behind me with a deadly instrument. So please, don’t try to intimidate my brother with your questions about his death. He has processed the event. And that means he knows that even if you don’t remember the exact moment you moved into this state of existence, you certainly do recall the minutes leading up to that, when you were confronted by your killer and held under water. So please, just tell us who it was that murdered you, because that might lead to some information about who murdered me.”

  “I still want to know about the knife in my wall. Spackle doesn’t grow on trees,” I said. They ignored that. And I was pretty sure Spackle didn’t grow on trees.

  Keith Barent Johnson looked Richard straight in the eye with a resentment I had rarely seen in my life. “Cassidy killed me,” he growled.

  “No, she didn’t.” Richard countered.

  Johnson regarded him for a long moment, and then he just simply wasn’t there anymore. There is no defense for that; the ghosts do it rarely, but it’s extremely effective. They vanish and there is no trace of them afterward.

  We all just stood there for a long time. Nobody moved much, nobody spoke. There was a considerable amount of looking around and making very small noises that indicated frustration. Maxie didn’t even leave the room, and I was expecting that first.

  Josh looked up from the sofa a
nd caught my eye. “So how is the interrogation going?” he asked.

  Chapter 27

  “I spent that whole night in the room alone.” Thomas Zink was a very standard-issue-looking man, and he was sitting in a café of some sort, from the look of the place on Maxie’s laptop screen.

  We were video conferencing with Tom, as he insisted I call him, because he was back in Iowa and driving out to him was completely out of the question. Sitting in my backyard at a picnic table I leave out during the warm weather, I was enjoying the last school day of the year and the last full day I would have these five guests in my house—if by enjoying you mean sitting around watching a man on a computer screen explain how he hadn’t decided to take a strange woman back to his hotel room while on a sales trip to New Brunswick, New Jersey.

  “I went to this microbrewery a couple of blocks from the hotel, and I had a burger and a beer sampler,” he said. “I sat at the bar because a guy by himself at a table is pathetic. I didn’t talk to anyone but the bartender the whole night. I watched a Mets game on TV, and I don’t even like the Mets.”

  “How was the burger?” I asked.

  “Actually, very good. But I don’t think I can tell you anything else that can help you, Ms. Kerby. I’m sorry.”

  “He’s trying too hard to get you off the phone,” Paul warned me. With this much sunlight outdoors, he was even harder than usual to see, but I could hear him just fine. “He’s hiding something, all right.”

  After the confrontation the night before with Keith Johnson, which you’d have thought would clarify matters, we were even more in the dark than ever about Johnson’s murder and by extension Richard’s. Everybody seemed to be hiding something. The trick was going to be figuring out what and why. That had led us to our only current lead: Tom Zink. Although Richard was back upstairs analyzing the data to trace Johnson’s pyramid scheme.

  “Well, maybe you can, Tom,” I said to the screen. Talking to a screen is weird, but it’s better than hopping on a flight to Des Moines and driving for another hour to get to Ames. I was adjusting to life in the current century, although Melissa would certainly have told me I was at least seven years behind the curve. “Sometimes it’s the things you don’t know you remember that make the most difference.” I like to make general investigator-y pronouncements to make the other person believe I actually know what I’m doing.