How to Seduce a Ghost

by Hope McIntyre

  Sonny Cross had a lot to answer for. There could be no other reason why my mother had taken it into her head to have a fuchsia streak incorporated into her otherwise snow-white hair.

  They stood on the pavement for a long time, Tommy doing most of the talking, I noticed. When she finally came into the house her first words on entering the kitchen were: “Tommy’s been telling what’s just happened with that dreadful man. He says I’m to take care of you, Lee. So there you are, with me here you don’t need to worry about a thing.”

  Somehow this unlikely statement from my mother managed to make me feel even more frightened than I had been before.

  Two days later Richie returned to the land of the living. Sonny Cross, who happened to be at his bedside at the time, reported that his first words were What’s for tea? although we all had a hard time believing him.

  That night Sonny and Cath went out and got rip-roaring drunk. I went along for the first half of the evening, until I realized with a shock that I just couldn’t keep pace with them. At first I thought Cath was merely humoring Sonny, whose first words on leaving the hospital were “I’ve never felt so relieved in my life. This requires a celebration and you know what I mean by that, Cath.”

  To my surprise he took us to a rather seedy bar near the Earl’s Court Road. I glanced at Cath, expecting her to turn up her nose but she seemed happy enough. Then it began to get nasty. Instead of ordering an apple juice, or something equally innocuous, when Sonny looked at her and said “The usual?” she nodded. “Yes, whiskey and ginger, thanks, Sonny.” She’d downed two of them before I knew what had happened. When she asked for a third, I sat up sharply. What could I say? Oh by the way, Tommy told me all about your drinking problem.

  “I expect you’re looking forward to telling Richie about the baby?” I said finally.

  “I expect I am,” she said, not looking at me.

  “I thought it wasn’t wise to drink too much when you were pregnant.”

  “I’ve heard that too,” she said and took a large gulp of whiskey.

  Something about the way they replenished the rounds of drinks with barely any communication between them told me they’d done this before.

  Cath was an angry drunk. Every time she raised her glass, her eyes challenged me to comment until finally I let her have it.

  “Stop it, Cath! Stop it right now. Put down that glass and let me take you home.”

  “No way, José. Sonny and I are just getting started.”

  “You’re a fool!” I was almost screaming at her. “If you want to do this to yourself, fine. Well, not fine—but it’s ultimately your call what you do to your own body. But you’re carrying Richie’s baby. Just stop and think for one moment about what you might be doing to harm the baby.”

  She said nothing and gave me a sullen look, which made me think maybe my reaction had got through to her.

  “It’s Richie’s baby too. How can you do this to Richie while he’s lying there in hospital? I’m flat out disgusted with you, if you really want to know.”

  “I don’t, actually,” she said infuriatingly. “You can keep that sort of information to yourself. And while we’re at it, Richie doesn’t know what I’m doing. He doesn’t even know about the baby yet.”

  That did it. I reached out and grabbed her by the arm, pulling her to her feet. I picked up her bag and propelled her toward the entrance.

  “Sonny!” she yelled but he was ensconced in a conversation with the barman and he didn’t hear her.

  I got her outside and hailed a cab but when I pushed her into the cab ahead of me, she clambered across the seat and let herself out the other side. I slumped down in the back of the cab and watched her stumbling down the street through the rear window.

  “Want me to follow her?” asked the cabbie a little dubiously.

  I shook my head at him in the mirror and asked him to take me back to Blenheim Crescent. At least I’d got her out of the bar.

  The sound of Marvin Gaye singing “Ain’t That Peculiar?” blasted me in the face as soon as I opened the front door. I came upon my mother executing some kind of Tamla Motown solo line dance around the kitchen table. I was relieved to find her in a better mood than when I’d left for the evening. She had fallen into a sulk because she had not been included in Sonny’s invitation to celebrate Richie’s recovery. In fact she had spent the last two days sitting by the phone like a neurotic twenty-something.

  “What does it mean that he hasn’t called?” she asked me repeatedly. “Is he waiting for me to pick up the phone, do you suppose? What do I do, Lee, tell me, please.”

  I don’t know why she thought I’d have the answer. After all, it had been eight years since I’d been on the dating scene myself although even if I had been single, I doubt if I would have felt able to comment on the mating habits of an aging rascal like Sonny Cross.

  “It was the most exciting night of my life,” my mother had confided on her return from the hairdresser’s. She found me sitting in my office, still shaking from the effects of Buzz’s visit and sobbing intermittently whenever I thought about Noreen. I had all but forgotten the sight of Sonny Cross’s naked midriff hovering on the landing so I wasn’t prepared when, before I could tell her what had happened, my mother launched into her lurid description of her night with him. “He completely woke me up, Lee. He did things to me I’d never even heard of. He—”

  “Little too much information, Mum,” I cut in quickly, heading her off at the pass before she could subject me to too many embarrassing details.

  But Sonny didn’t call her for an encore and she sat by the phone like a wet rag. I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or sad. Part of me suspected that it could only end in tears but I hated to see her so bewildered and desperate.

  “Just try to accept it for what it was, Mum,” I told her. “A fantastic night of passion, a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Be glad you had it. Many people go through their whole life never knowing something like that.”

  She didn’t even have the strength to take me to task for uttering such a veritable string of clichés. Less than a week ago I had been dreaming up ways to shield her from the sound of sex between me and Tommy, thinking she would be shocked and embarrassed. Indeed, she was the one who insisted she had zero interest in that department. Well she had been proved wrong. Now she had to accept that it was my father she had zero interest in, not sex.

  “One night is not enough.” Her voice had a slightly crazed edge to it. “Can’t you understand? Now I’ve come alive again I want more.”

  I did understand. Lord knows, I’d wanted enough of Tommy when I’d first met him and although I didn’t want to go there, Buzz had had a similar effect on me in the not too distant past. In a way I was reassured to learn that nothing seemed to change as you got older. I just found it a little disconcerting hearing about it from my mother.

  Nor did I relish the thought of guiding her through the dating process.

  “Where’s Selma?” I asked. I’d only felt comfortable leaving Selma knowing my mother would be home. And of course I’d left strict instructions that she was not to open the door to anyone.

  “Upstairs. I took a tray up to her. She hasn’t been down all evening. So put me out of my agony. How was Sonny? Did he say anything?”

  “Nothing, Mum. Sorry. He never mentioned you.” I was being cruel to be kind and I hated the way she flinched. “It was a pretty strange evening, if you really want to know. He and Cath started getting pretty loaded.”

  “Well, that’s that then,” said my mother.

  “What’s what?”

  “He’s drinking.”

  “Who, Sonny? Well, yes. We went out for a drink.”

  “But he’s not supposed to. He’s—you know, he has a problem. That’s how he met Cath.”

  “What do you mean? He met Cath because she’s his son’s girlfriend.”

  “No”—my mother shook her head—“it’s the other way around. Cath met Richie through Richie’s father.”
Ah, I thought. That was why she had given me an odd look when I asked her how she met him and then come up with the Soham explanation. “I always had a feeling years ago that there was something about Cath, something she wasn’t telling us. I never liked to ask but I thought that was probably why she stopped seeing you. I thought maybe she was in rehabilitation somewhere.”

  “You know about Cath’s problem?”

  “Sonny told me. He and Cath met in AA. They went to the same meetings before he moved back to Liverpool where he’s from originally. By the way,” she added guiltily, “he’s not supposed to have told me that and I shouldn’t have told you.”

  “But he asked her if she wanted the usual,” I said, knowing even as I said it that that confirmed everything she’d said. “What should we do? How could he lead her astray like this?”

  “How do you know it wasn’t the other way round?” asked my mother fiercely. “He didn’t touch a drop when we had lunch. When he told me I asked him if he minded me drinking. I’d already had all those kirs on my own. You can imagine how I felt.”

  “Looks like you’ve been putting it away tonight too,” I said, pointing to the empty bottle of wine in the middle of the kitchen table. “Was that why you were doing your Tina Turner impersonation?”

  She didn’t reply and I sensed she was embarrassed that I had caught her reliving her sixties moment with Sonny.

  “What are you doing?” She eyed me moving round the table, picking up dirty plates and glasses. There were so many, it dawned on me they’d probably been there for days, accumulating after each meal. Strange that my mother had not whipped the place into shape. Normally she was the one trying to restore order and I was the slob telling her to leave it to the morning.

  “I’m clearing up, Mum. I’ve never seen the place in such a mess and it doesn’t look as though Bianca’s going to come near us again.”

  “Oh, she came this morning.”

  “Who did?”

  “Bianca. You know it was most odd. I was up early and she let herself in while I was making myself a cup of tea. But when she saw me she turned and fled. I ran after her, saying it was fine, we needed her, please come back but she disappeared round the corner.”

  “She was coming to see Selma, Mum. Selma called her and told her where she was.”

  “But why would she come early in the morning?”

  “She’s scared of running into Buzz, I imagine.”

  “Haven’t they found him yet?”

  “No,” I said slowly, “they haven’t.”

  When I said they I meant Max Austin and I was furious with him. Selma was going out of her mind with worry about Buzz and she had also been perplexed as to why she had not heard from Bianca. So when Max rang my doorbell the next morning, I stood in the doorway making no move to invite him in. He hadn’t anticipated this and as a result he was halfway through the door before he realized I was blocking his path. His face was about six inches from mine and I found myself thinking he had very long eyelashes, much longer than mine and it was really rather unfair.

  There was a definite moment. He could have stepped back instantly and he didn’t. Damn it, Cath’s right, I thought, he’s going to make a move on me.

  But I was wrong. In fact he did the opposite. He turned his back on me and jumped down the front steps like an excited child—a tall, gangling, excited child, his long arms waving in the air and his raincoat billowing out behind him.

  I was so taken aback by this display of energy, I didn’t know what to do.

  “Come for a coffee,” he said. “I’ve just been to see Richie, managed to have a bit of a chat with him. I wanted to tell you about it. Tell Cath to keep an eye on Selma or has she gone to work?”

  “She’s not around,” I said.

  “Where is she?”

  “You may well ask.”

  “Sounds like you’ve got a few things to tell me too. What about your mother?”

  I ran upstairs to get a jacket, yelling “Going out for a coffee, be back soon.” I was annoyed with myself for accepting Max’s invitation so readily but he seemed to have that effect on me. I wanted to talk to him about Cath, bring him up to speed about everything else that was going on, tell him about Noreen. I was angry with him but in a rather odd way, he had become part of my life.

  We settled at a table in Books for Cooks farther down Blenheim Crescent. It was a bookshop that sold cookery books and they had a little café in the back where they served food cooked from the recipes in the books they sold. We were rather early for lunch but they didn’t seem to mind serving us a coffee and a slice of some delicious-looking angel cake.

  “You seem angry with me for some reason,” he said as soon as we sat down. He appeared to have put his childlike enthusiasm on hold and he surprised me with his perception. “Have I done something to offend you?”

  “You haven’t found Buzz,” I said. “I’m worried about Selma. You’ve got to find him.”

  “You think it’s a piece of cake finding someone who doesn’t want to be found? You think we’ll holler and they’ll come running? What you don’t seem to realize is I haven’t got the manpower,” he said defensively. “If Selma Walker wants to come down the station and press charges, fine. But in the meantime she’s safe enough with you and I’m a homicide detective with a case to solve. Buzz Kempinski is a rotten piece of flesh but he’s already proved he’s not the person I’m after. Angel O’Leary’s still missing, by the way. Maybe they’ve gone somewhere together. The word’s out on Buzz but quite frankly my best bet is to keep a watch on your house. He’ll be back for Selma and we’ll get him then. Until that happens, you’ve just got to be patient and get control of all your guilt.”

  “I’m sorry, what did you say? Guilt?” I was mystified.

  “Selma Walker. You want to make it up to her. You want Buzz out of the way so she never learns what happened between you two.”

  Was he right? Surely I wanted Buzz apprehended because I didn’t want him to harm Selma anymore. But a new dart of alarm hit me. If Buzz appeared, what would happen to him? Max said they were keeping a watch on the house. Were there firearm officers lurking in the vicinity, poised to bring him down in two shots?

  “Will you give him any warning, you know, if he turns up?”

  “Before we shoot?” Max shook his head in exasperation. “He’s not a drug dealer as far as I know. You’re not running some kind of crack cocaine house, are you? If he comes back and he gives you a bit of aggro trying to get in to see Selma, we’ll do something about him. Meanwhile, I’m concentrating on who’s been setting fires and trying to kill his girlfriends. I wish there were someone I liked for it apart from Selma Walker but she’s beginning to look like a pretty good fit. Her hands are small. It’s logical the other set of prints on that can of kerosene in your potting shed are hers because Buzz brought it over from her house. But why would her handprints be all over the letterbox at Astrid McKenzie’s mews house?”

  “Are they?” I nearly spilled my coffee in surprise. “Are they Selma’s prints?”

  “I don’t know whose they are. Whoever it is they haven’t got a record. But someone with small hands managed to get them all mucky with wet pink paint over there and leave plenty of evidence. I’m going to have to come and question Selma again, take a set of her prints.”

  I was shocked. “You can’t put her through something like that when she’s recovering from an attack by Buzz. She’s put her trust in me to give her shelter. I can’t allow you to waltz in there and accuse her of being a killer. It’s totally insane.”

  He shifted in his chair and shook his head at me.

  “I mean it,” I said. “I won’t let you get near her.”

  “Well, then give me something she’s touched,” he said. “Something I can lift her prints off. If they’re not a match—and if she can produce someone in Devon who was with her New Year’s Eve—then I won’t need to upset her, will I? Meantime, you can keep her warm for me.”

  I didn’t sa
y anything. He made it sound so easy but what if they were Selma’s prints? It would mean I was harboring a murderer and then what would I do?

  “So besides the child—”

  “Who may not be a child,” he reminded me. “Don’t forget I’ve got another witness who says the person wearing a coat with a hood up—an anorak or whatever it was—they say this person was bigger than a child, more like a small adult. That’s why we’re wondering about Selma—”

  “But what about the witness who says they saw a woman? The one who wasn’t Felicity. Maybe that could have been Selma? Did they say she was a small woman?”

  “Ah,” said Max, “forgot to tell you, I’ve sorted that one. It was your neighbor Mrs. O’Malley. She’s the worst kind of person to interview in an investigation. Forgets to tell us Angel left with Buzz. Also neglects to tell us she went out into your alley to shout at Kevin to come in for his dinner. He was in your garden kicking a ball around on his own. He told us his mum called him in otherwise we’d never have known.”

  “You said you’d been to see Richie,” I suddenly remembered. “Did he tell you anything?”

  “I’m on my way to see the woman he interviewed the day he was attacked. His head’s not too clear and he can’t remember the details but he told me where to find her name and address. But he was clearly disturbed by his visit and I want to see what it was that freaked him out.”

  “This is the woman Buzz was involved with before he met Selma?”

  Max nodded.

  “And if it wasn’t Selma you think maybe it was one of his old girlfriends seeking revenge?”

  “No!” The way Max looked at me made me feel I was totally stupid. “How do you come up with that motive? Why would his old girlfriends who’d been beaten up go after the new ones? They’d want to warn them to stay away from him more like. And we want to find them to warn them that someone’s going after people Kempinski’s been involved with for some reason.”

  “Has Cath been to see Richie? I mean today, this morning?”

  “Not as far as I could see. You didn’t seem to know where she was. What’s happened?”