We walked on, across the lobby, and found Tina near the front desk. She grinned at me and teased, “We all know your fingerprints were on the weapon. It looks pretty bad for you, Liz.”
“Forget that mystery-weekend stuff,” I said. “Can you come with us to the health club for a minute? I need your help.”
“Sure,” she said. She gave her location to someone on the other end of her walkie-talkie and followed Fran and me down the hallway. We picked out a table in the far corner, away from the pool, and as soon as we were seated I begged, “Tina, you’ve got to tell me everything you know about ghosts.”
Tina looked so startled that Fran explained, “Liz saw the ghost in room nineteen twenty-seven, and she’s kind of shaken up.”
“You really saw the ghost?” Tina clasped her hands together and her eyes shone. “People have complained about the noise and about the cold in the room, and a few people have heard a kind of whisper—”
“Like us,” I said.
Tina looked a little embarrassed. She ignored my remark and finished her sentence. “But nobody’s ever really seen the ghost. Tell me about her. Everything.”
“It’s not a her, it’s a him,” I said and went on to describe everything that had happened.
“Wonderful,” Tina said. “A true manifestation. It can’t happen to just anybody, you know.”
“It can’t?”
“No. Only to those with a certain kind of mind.”
“If you’re going to say—”
“Receptive,” she interrupted. “I was going to say receptive.”
“What I need to know is, why did the ghost appear to me? What did he want me to do? And why was he carrying a telephone?”
Tina raised her chin so that she was looking down her nose, which gave her an all-knowing look. She probably practiced that look in front of a mirror. “The telephone is an obvious symbol,” she said. “It stands for communication. He was telling you that he wanted to communicate with you.”
“Why? He can talk. Wouldn’t that be easier?”
“That depends. Did you speak to him?”
“Not after I found out he was a ghost. I was too frightened. Besides, he froze me, so I couldn’t move or talk.”
“Hmmm,” Tina said aloud to herself. “He froze you. I wonder what his purpose was.”
“To swallow me?” I suggested.
“An interesting interpretation, but I doubt that it’s valid,” she said. “Let’s forget about the telephone. Let’s try to analyze this fixation of yours that the ghost wanted to swallow you.”
“It’s not a fixation,” Fran said helpfully. “It comes from watching too many Saturday morning cartoons.”
Tina ignored him. “The fixation stems from a lack of self-worth,” she said. “Let’s take it step by step. What happens to someone who is swallowed?”
“Well,” I said, “she’d fall down a throat and through an esophagus, and end up in a stomach full of acid, and then—”
“Oh, yuck!” Tina said, and looked as though she were going to gag. “That’s not what I meant. I’m talking about disappearing. A person who is swallowed would disappear.”
“To other people,” Fran said. “Not to the person who is swallowed.”
“That’s beside the point,” Tina said. “We’re talking about swallowing equaling disappearing equaling a total lack of self-worth.”
“Are you saying I want to disappear?” I asked her.
“It’s my guess,” she said, “but tell you what—after I get my degree in psychology, I’ll give you a definite answer.”
“I can’t wait that long,” I complained.
The door to the health club opened, and Eileen and Detective Jarvis came into the room. They kept their eyes on each other as they chose a table nearest to the door, so they didn’t see us. Eileen glided into a chair and leaned toward Jarvis in a graceful arch, her hair falling gently around her shoulders. Even in that trench coat and fedora she looked like she was posing for a cosmetics ad. Why couldn’t I move the way she did?
Detective Jarvis leaned toward her too. Their faces were so close that they could have been discussing top-secret information, but I didn’t think that was it.
I wondered if I could rest gracefully in my chair the way Eileen did in hers. If I shifted my legs to the right, crossing one thigh over the other, then leaned forward …
Out of balance I grabbed at the table and nearly took it over, too, as my chair went down.
“What happened?” Tina asked, but Fran simply reached down and helped me to my feet.
“I’m clumsy, okay?” I muttered.
Detective Jarvis and Eileen had turned to see what the noise was all about. My face was hot with embarrassment, but I remembered to thank Tina for her help, grabbed Fran’s hand, and practically ran out of the health club, not looking at or speaking to anyone else.
“Tina wasn’t much help,” Fran said, once we had reached the lobby. He added hopefully, “The sleuths are eating lunch. Are you getting hungry yet?”
“I’m starving,” I told him. “Do you think the employees’ cafeteria has pizza?”
“We can hope,” Fran told me.
We weren’t in luck. The cook must have been talking to my mother, because there were lots of salads and vegetables—some of them green but undefinable—and the entree was a choice of fried fish, macaroni and cheese, or a brown goop with chunks of things sticking out of it.
“This place makes our school cafeteria look good,” Fran said as we took the dishes that seemed most edible and found a table in the crowded room.
He took a large bite of fruit cocktail and told me, “Don’t pay any attention to what Tina said. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about. You don’t want to disappear.”
Fran had a neat way of making me feel better, and I was awfully glad I was with him. “Not when I’m with you,” I said, and gave him a smile.
He smiled back, which wasn’t such a good idea, because he’d just taken a bite of the brown goop.
I glanced down at my plate, and remembering my less than graceful attempt to imitate Eileen Duffy, said, “Tina may have been sort of right about my lack of self-esteem, but she doesn’t know enough about ghosts. I need to talk to someone who really knows a lot about them.”
“Why?” Fran asked.
“Because,” I said, and I felt kind of scared putting my thoughts into words, “yesterday a man was murdered in that room, and—think about it, Fran—there was probably only one eyewitness to the crime.”
Fran stopped eating. “Who?” he asked.
“The ghost,” I said.
Fran took another slow bite. “In that case, you could talk to Mrs. Duffy. A lot of her stories have ghosts in them.”
“But Mrs. Duffy doesn’t believe in ghosts.”
“That doesn’t matter. She said she does research on everything she puts into her books, so that means she must do research on the ghosts she puts into them too.”
“Maybe you’re right.” I began to get excited. “I’ll talk to Mrs. Duffy as soon as I get a chance.”
I found that if I ate fast, I didn’t mind the taste so much, so I was through with lunch and eager to go before Fran had finished, and he was very nice about it when I kept telling him to hurry.
A few minutes later we left the cafeteria and went to the house phones, which were near the operator’s station in the room behind the desk. As someone walked through the door I heard an operator say, “I’m sorry, sir, we can’t give out room numbers, but I’ll be happy to connect you with Mr. Jones’s room.”
I didn’t know Mrs. Duffy’s room number, but I’d just learned that operators wouldn’t give them out, so when I picked up the house phone and an operator answered, I said, “Will you please connect me with Mrs. Roberta Kingston Duffy’s room?”
“Thank you,” the operator said, and I heard the phone ringing.
Eileen answered, and when I told her who it was she said, “Hi, Liz. What can I do for you?”
>
I hadn’t spoken to her in the health club. I’d been too embarrassed, and I was embarrassed now, but some kind of apology was in order, so I said, “I guess you think I’m kind of a klutz.”
“Of course not,” she said. “I understand what it’s like suddenly to grow tall. I did the same thing.”
“But not like me.”
“Exactly like you.”
It was almost impossible to believe. “My friend, Tina, said I’m clumsy because of my low self-esteem,” I told her.
“That could have something to do with it, all right,” Eileen said.
I groaned in discouragement, but she told me, “There’s an answer, you know, and when we get a chance I’ll give it to you.”
“Really?”
“Really. I’ve got to go downstairs now,” she added, “so I’ll see you later.”
“Is your mother there?” I asked quickly. “I need to talk to her.”
Eileen was suddenly cautious. “Is this an emergency? Have you said or done something we should know about?”
“No, no. Nothing like that,” I assured her. “I just need to ask your mother some questions.”
Mrs. Duffy came on the phone, gave me her room number, and invited Fran and me to come right up, so we did.
The Duffys’ room wasn’t anything like the suite they’d started out with, but it was large and roomy. There was a grouping of two chairs and a love seat next to the window, and we settled there. Mrs. Duffy brought out two cans of cola and invited us to help ourselves from a large container of chocolate brownies.
“Eileen always brings emergency food for her actors,” she said. “They work awfully hard, and it makes them hungry.”
The way Fran attacked the brownies, I wasn’t too sure there’d be any left for the actors, but I had more important things on my mind. “You said you don’t believe in ghosts,” I told her.
“That’s correct.”
“But you write about them.”
“People like to read about ghosts,” she said, “and besides, writing scary scenes is fun.”
We were coming to the most important question, and I took a deep breath. “All the things that ghosts do and the way they act—do you just make it all up?”
“I make up what happens in my own stories,” she said, “but I base the ghosts’ actions on what I’ve learned about preternatural beings.”
“You research ghosts!” I was getting excited.
“That’s right.”
“Then tell me, please. Do you know how to talk with a ghost and at the same time keep him from swal … from harming you?”
Mrs. Duffy leaned back against her chair and smiled. “If there were ghosts, you’d have nothing to fear from them,” she said. “A ghost can’t harm you. It isn’t possible, because you have a physical body, and a ghost hasn’t.”
I shook my head, dissatisfied. “Let me give you an example,” I said. “A ghost is in the room with someone, and he freezes her so that she can’t move and then comes toward her.”
“She freezes herself—with fear,” Mrs. Duffy answered.
“No! His eyes freeze her. She looks into them and sees these horrible black pits, and the black pits grow bigger and bigger …” I stopped and shivered as I remembered the ghost and his horrible eyes.
“That’s where the girl in your example went wrong,” Mrs. Duffy said. “She did freeze herself with her own fear. That’s without question. But she never should have looked the ghost in the eyes. All the responsible authorities on preternatural affairs are adamant about this. Never ever look a ghost in the eyes.”
I practically fell back against the love seat as I let out a long breath of relief.
“You did say she was alone, didn’t you?” Mrs. Duffy asked.
“She was alone. Was there something wrong with that?”
“Oh, no. There was nothing wrong—that is, if she wanted to see the manifestation of a ghost. It probably wouldn’t have shown up if there was anyone with her. From what I’ve read, they’re inclined to appear to only one person, sort of a one-on-one kind of thing. They aren’t fond of groups.”
I slid a glance at Fran. “How about two people?”
“It cuts the chances considerably,” Mrs. Duffy said.
“One thing about ghosts I don’t understand,” Fran said. “Why do they hang around?”
“According to authorities,” Mrs. Duffy explained, “it’s because they haven’t come to a complete ending to their lives. They think they can’t leave this earth until a wrong has been righted.”
“Weird,” Fran said, but I could understand how a ghost would feel. If you’d been suddenly murdered, you would kind of wonder what happened next.
Mrs. Duffy suddenly startled me by saying, “Now that we’ve finished with hypothetical questions, Mary Elizabeth, why don’t you tell me all about your experience with the ghost in room nineteen twenty-seven?”
The phone interrupted, and Mrs. Duffy took the call. As she put down the receiver she said, “You’ll have to tell me some other time, Mary Elizabeth. There are a number of sleuths in the health club who want to question you, and Eileen asked if you could get down there as quickly as possible.”
We thanked Mrs. Duffy and left her counting the brownies Fran hadn’t eaten. I could hardly wait until we were out in the hall before I grabbed Fran’s hand and said, “We’ve got to find Detective Jarvis! Now that we know how to talk to a ghost, he can question the ghost and find out who killed Mr. Devane!”
Fran shook his head and frowned, and I insisted, “Don’t you see? The ghost’s an eyewitness!”
“Do you really think that Detective Jarvis is going to take your suggestion and go into the real scene of the crime to talk to a ghost?”
“Well,” I said, my excitement ebbing away, “maybe I could talk him into it.”
“Sure,” Fran said. He pressed the elevator button and turned to me. “What’s he going to tell his captain? And the district attorney? ‘I arrested this guy for murder because a ghost saw the whole thing and ratted on him’?”
Fran was right. I leaned against the wall, wishing the elevator would hurry and come. “Darn!” I said. “I thought it was such a good idea.”
“It is, in a way,” Fran said. “If you could tell Detective Jarvis the name of the murderer, he could at least center his investigation on him and maybe find the evidence that would point to his guilt.”
“Yes,” I said, beginning to feel hopeful again. But something Fran had said suddenly struck me, and I asked, “What do you mean, if I could tell Detective Jarvis?”
“Face facts, Liz,” Fran said. “No one else has ever seen the ghost. If anyone’s going to question him, it will have to be you.”
I couldn’t face that ghost again! I absolutely couldn’t! Even if we never found out who committed the murder! I answered the sleuths’ questions as well as I could and showed them around the health club, as I was supposed to do; but my mind kept going back to the ghost, and I knew I must seem distracted.
Mrs. Bandini and Mrs. Larabee pulled me aside, after the rest of their team had left.
“Did you do it?” Mrs. Bandini asked.
“Do what?”
“Commit the murder,” Mrs. Larabee said, and threw an impatient glance at her friend. “You’re supposed to say it the right way, like the police do.”
“How do you know so much about what the police do?” Mrs. Bandini shot back.
Mrs. Larabee looked smug. “My hairdresser’s cousin is married to a security guard.”
Mrs. Bandini, somewhat deflated, turned back to me. “Well, did you?” she asked.
“Nobody’s supposed to know until the arrest takes place tomorrow at brunch,” I said. “But I’ll tell you, if you won’t tell anyone.”
They waited with wide eyes, and they looked as though they weren’t breathing.
“I didn’t commit the murder,” I whispered. “It was somebody else.”
“Then why are you looking so guilty?” Mrs. Larab
ee challenged. “It’s confusing everybody.”
“I didn’t know I was looking guilty.”
“Of course you are. A person asks you a simple question and you stare off into space, and sometimes you kind of jump and look behind you. I mean, your behavior is definitely suspicious.”
“Oh dear,” I said. “I’m sorry. I have something on my mind, and it’s a real problem, but it’s not Mr. Pitts’s murder.”
“There, there,” Mrs. Bandini said, and she gave me a grandmotherly hug. “We’re sorry you have a problem, and no matter what Opal has told you, there is nothing to apologize for. You are a lovely red herring.”
“Thank you,” I said. Another team was approaching, and I steeled myself to keep my mind on what I was doing. I couldn’t ruin the Duffys’ mystery weekend.
The sleuths, who had to come up with the answer of who committed Pitts’s murder and why before midnight, grew relentless. They dropped any attempts at politeness and grilled me unmercifully, asking so many questions my head began to ache. How could they possibly solve the make-believe murder by discovering whether or not any of the suspects had left a Continental Airlines flight schedule in the dressing rooms? Or the color of the bathing suit Crystal Crane wore in the hot tub? Or if Randolph Hamilton ever mentioned being on a cottage cheese and cucumber diet?
And how could anyone ever solve Frank Devane’s murder by refusing to interrogate the only eyewitness?
Filled with guilt by refusing even to consider going back to room nineteen twenty-seven, I went to the last detective’s meeting of the day, intending to sit in the back row and listen to the actors and not think a single thought.
As I entered the lobby the crowd had thinned, most of them hurrying to the ballroom to get the best seats. Randolph, in conversation with Crystal, was crossing the lobby from the left, but a nondescript man in a dull-looking suit made a beeline toward them from the right. He strode steadily and quickly, and as he approached he slipped his right hand under his open suit jacket and began to withdraw it with something in it. Without stopping to think I ran toward Randolph, not too sure what was happening yet aware that something was not what it should be.
The Weekend Was Murder Page 11
