The Chick and the Dead

by Casey Daniels

  "Psst." Didi's whisper was close to my ear. I don't know why. It wasn't like Merilee could hear her. "The paintings." She tipped her head in that direction. "Elizabeth Goddard is the blond bombshell in the blue dress. She played Opal in the movie, and they were lucky to get her. At the time filming started, no one knew she was knocked up. Another couple of months and there was no way she could have been Opal. And Kurt." One hand on her heart, she stared up at the picture of the man with the mustache. "He was Palmer. Their first choice was Gable but let's face it, he was too old, and not half the actor Kurt was. For a while, they even talked about giving Cary Grant the part. Imagine!"

  I smiled across the room at Merilee. "Can't wait to hear what you have to say about Elizabeth and Kurt," I told her. "I mean, that whole thing about Elizabeth being pregnant and no one knowing it. That must have caused quite a stir. And Cary Grant as Palmer!" I laughed as if I actually knew who this Cary Grant guy was and why the idea of him playing Palmer was so funny. "Imagine!"

  "Yes. Really. Imagine." Merilee's expression soured. She didn't like to lose. But then, she'd pretty much told me that back at Garden View. Merilee didn't like surprises. Wouldn't she get a big one if I could prove Didi wrote SFTD?

  I decided now was as good a time as any to start.

  Doing my best to sound interested like a fan might be interested and not like a private investigator might be interested, I closed in on her. "So tell me about when you were writing the book. I mean, it must have been so much work. And you had a full-time job, too, didn't you?"

  "That's right. I was a librarian. Cleveland Public. In the reference room of the main library downtown."

  "Which explains why you know as much as you know."

  I meant it as a compliment, but Merilee didn't take it that way. She frowned, and an unattractive blotch stained her neck and crawled into her face. Her voice broke with emotion. "It's taken me sixty years to learn everything I know. And it has nothing to do with the library. It's because of work. Lots of hard work. I don't just make things up and say they're real and people believe it. I never write about anything unless I have documented proof. That's what history is all about. Proof. Not stupid, made-up stories. It's about facts and figures and…" She gulped in a breath, and even she must have realized she was a little too caught up in the whole thing. Her chin quivering, she clutched her hands together and got ahold of herself.

  "You know," she said, "I'm considered the foremost expert on the subject of the Civil War and its effects on Northern industrialization."

  "Something else we'll have to talk about sometime," I told her.

  When hell froze over, I told myself.

  "That's sort of what I was thinking about," I said. "I mean when I mentioned what it must have been like for you to write the book. It must have been very difficult. Did anyone help you?"

  Her perfectly arched eyebrows did a slow slide up her forehead. "Are you saying—"

  With the flick of a wrist, I waved away the very idea that I might have offended her. "I just mean that it can't be easy keeping all that information straight. And thinking of things to happen in a book. How do you fill all those pages?"

  "Research." Merilee tapped one finger against the cover of the book closest to her. "It's all about research."

  "But it's all so amazing. Where did you get your ideas? Did you brainstorm with anyone?"

  Merilee made a sound that reminded me of sandpaper on stone. Maybe it was a chuckle. "Like who?"

  I shrugged. "I dunno. How about your sister, Didi? Did you ever brainstorm with her?"

  Whatever emotion Merilee betrayed while she was preaching about railroads and petroleum, she shut it off completely. The look she trained my way was pure venom. "You seem obsessed with my sister, Didi. Really, Miss Martin, if you told Ella Silverman that you'd take this job only because you thought it was a way to serve some sick interest in my unfortunate sister—"

  Another shrug. I hoped it looked casual. "I'm interested in you and in your book. So naturally I'm interested in Didi, too. Besides, I'm going to include her on a tour I'm getting ready at the cemetery. 'Famous Faces.' That's what Ella wants to call it. I figure as long as Didi's one of our residents, we might as well include her."

  This time there was no doubt that the sound that came out of Merilee was a laugh. Even if it was a malicious one. "You've got to be kidding me! Didi, a famous face? My sister, Didi? What's she famous for, being the biggest tramp on the west side of Cleveland?"

  This was not something Didi had ever mentioned, and at the same time I made a mental note to ask her about it, I strolled closer to Merilee. "I wasn't thinking personally, I was thinking professionally. You know, because of her movie career."

  "Deborah? In the movies?" Merilee snorted and reached for another book. "You haven't been listening, and I'll tell you something here and now. If you don't listen, we're not going to get along at all this summer. Remember, I said that research is important. Obviously, you've got yours all wrong. My sister was never in the movies."

  "But she said—"

  I swallowed down the rest of my words.

  "I must have been mistaken," I told Merilee. And myself. "I thought before So Far the Dawn was filmed, she appeared in a movie with Kurt Benjamin. It was a bit part, sure, but it was still a part."

  "It would have had to have been before So Far the Dawn was filmed. Because by the time the movie was made, Didi was dead. And if she was in a film before that…" Merilee rose and flattened her palms against the desktop. "My sister never left Cleveland for more than a couple of days at a time. She was never in Hollywood, and I know for a fact that she was never in a movie with Kurt Benjamin or with anyone else. Research, Pepper. Don't forget. Research is important. If you did yours about my sister, you'd know that she was the biggest liar this side of the Mississippi."

  I wasn't naive; this was something I had considered. But after meeting Merilee—not to mention Harmony—I'd put aside my doubts in favor of proving that Merilee herself took the prize when it came to lying.

  Just thinking that I might be wrong…

  My stomach got queasy. If I was spending my summer in this hellhole for nothing…

  I took a breath and got a grip.

  "Well," I said, "then we could always include Didi on the tour because of the murder. That sort of makes a person famous whether they want to be or not, doesn't it?"

  "Murder?" Merilee's shoulders went rigid. "Whatever are you talking about? What murder? Whose murder? You don't think Didi was murdered, do you? I swear, you've got all your information all wrong."

  Merilee swept past me and out the door.

  "If you'd done your research, Pepper, you'd know that my sister Didi wasn't murdered. She jumped. Off the Lorain/Carnegie Bridge."

  Chapter 10

  Was Didi the biggest liar this side of the Mississippi?

  If the things Merilee said—about Didi's lack of a film career and her manner of death—were true, then, yeah, it was looking that way.

  But since I couldn't find Didi, I couldn't ask her. And even if I asked, could I put any faith in her answer? If she admitted to being a liar, then I couldn't believe anything she said, right? Not even the stuff about how she was a liar. And if she told me Merilee was full of it, I wouldn't know if that was because it was true or because Didi was making it up.

  It was like someone's sick idea of a riddle, and I thought about it the rest of the day. The results were predictable: a splitting headache.

  After all, if Didi was lying about being in movies and about being murdered (not exactly insignificant subjects), then she might also be lying about So Far the Dawn. And if she was lying about So Far the Dawn, I was wasting my time. And if I was wasting my time… well, if I found out I was wasting my time, I was going to be royally pissed.

  On the floor of the study, I sat back on my heels and brushed a curl of hair out of my eyes, stretching in an attempt to relieve the tightness in my neck. The muscles in my lower back were bunched, and my arms
felt like they were going to fall off.

  These pains, I couldn't blame on Didi.

  Aside from spending hours considering the possibility of her being a dirty, rotten liar, I'd also unloaded box after box that Weird Bob dragged up from the nether regions of the house and deposited in front of me with a gleam in his eyes and a lecherous smile on his lips.

  Now I knew why the bookcases in the study had been empty.

  "Who the hell drags an entire library of books across the country with them?" I grumbled. No one answered me. It was nearly seven in the evening, and Merilee had gone to dinner with the mayor. I was alone in the house (except for Weird Bob, but that was something I didn't want to think about).

  I sized up the stacks of boxes I'd already emptied and glanced toward the other stack—a little bigger—that had yet to be touched. "Doesn't Cleveland have perfectly good libraries?" I asked, my voice hollow in the empty room. "Isn't the Internet chockfull of information about the Civil War? Is Merilee completely out of her mind?"

  This, I couldn't say, and besides, what did it really matter, anyway? Until I cleared up a few things with Didi, I wasn't qualified to say who was crazy and who wasn't.

  Maybe they both were.

  I plucked the last book (The Emergence of Modern Economies in the Turbulent Years of the American Civil War) out of the box in front of me and jammed it onto the shelf with other books that sounded equally dull.

  "That's it!" I stood and dusted off my butt. "No more books. Not tonight. And if Her Majesty doesn't like it—"

  "I'm the one who doesn't like this. Not one bit."

  Remember how I said I was alone in the house?

  I remembered it, too. That's why the sound of a voice that wasn't Didi's caused me to spin around.

  "Reenactors." There I was, grumbling again, and frankly, my dear, I didn't give a damn if the man and woman (he in a Union uniform and she in a blue gown) who stood near Merilee's desk heard me. Bad enough I had to worry about Bob. Worse if the new security system he assured me was state-of-the-art wasn't efficient enough to keep out the freaks.

  "You shouldn't be here." I stepped toward them, chin high, and with a copy of War, Petroleum and Iron: The Industrial Consequences of the Fight for Confederate Sovereignty in one hand. Just in case I needed to bonk someone. Or bore them to death. "The museum isn't open yet. You can't just waltz in here. It's trespassing, or breaking and entering, or something."

  "It's ridiculous." The woman tossed her head. Her cascade of golden curls glittered in the evening light that streamed through the window on the far wall. She looked down at the notebook that sat on the top of Merilee's desk. "It's insulting!"

  "It's karmic justice. That's what it is." The man stood with his back to me, but I could tell from his voice that he was probably smiling. At least he sounded mighty pleased with himself. "It's about time she realized there's more to be gained from using the talents of a real thespian than there is from calling on a two-bit ham."

  "Ham!" The woman's blue eyes sparked. "I'll have you know, I trained on the stages of London and New York and—"

  "Yeah, yeah, yeah." The man waved away her protest. He turned and perched himself on the edge of Merilee's desk.

  That's when I saw that he had a bushy mustache.

  And a face that looked awfully familiar.

  I glanced over my shoulder to the portraits that hung above the fireplace.

  I turned the other way and took a closer look at the woman. It was the same gown, all right, sapphire blue and cut low to show off her slender neck and shoulders.

  The blood drained out of my face and left me feeling chilled.

  "Oh no!" I waved one hand, as if that alone could dispel the possibility that I was seeing what I was seeing. "No way you two are here. I've already got my quota of ghosts. One at a time. Take a number. Wait your turn."

  "What the hell are you jawing about, sister?" The golden-haired woman who I knew must have been Elizabeth Goddard—at least when she was alive—gave me a sneer of epic proportions. Her New Jersey accent didn't exactly tally with her elegant gown or her angelic face. "Can't you see we're having a conversation here?"

  "I can see it, all right. And I don't like it. Not one bit." I closed in on them, pointing to the door. "Out! Only one investigation at a time. Only one dead person at a time. I can't help either one of you."

  "But you're living and you can see us." Kurt Benjamin sounded puzzled. He gave his companion a quizzical look. "Is she the one I've heard about? The one with the—"

  "Gift? Yeah, that would be me." I answered before Elizabeth could, and let me just say for the record, I wasn't very happy about it. Kurt, who according to Ella had died only recently, had already heard of me. Or at least of my special skill. Apparently word was getting around on the Other Side.

  "Can't you two find someplace else to hang out?" I asked them. "I really don't have time for your problems right now."

  "It's not you we're here to see." I have no idea how these things work, but in the blink of an eye, Elizabeth had a long silver cigarette holder poised between two fingers. She perched it between her lips, took a drag, and let out a stream of smoke. "It's Merilee."

  "Technically, it's the sequel to So Far the Dawn." Kurt glanced down at the desk. "You know, she's working on it."

  This was not news, and I told them so. "She's been working on it for fifty years. Seems a little odd, don't you think?"

  Elizabeth snorted. "She's probably trying to figure out exactly the right, excruciatingly painful way to kill off Palmer! The son of a bitch wore out his welcome pretty much right after he walked into the first scene of the movie."

  "Opal would have been nothing without Palmer!" Kurt's accent was more refined. Like he came from old money. His voice carried all the oomph of a Shakespearean actor, center stage. "Without Palmer—"

  "Without Palmer, Opal would have lived happily ever after with that Hanratty fella. And I would have won the Oscar I deserved. But no!" She drew out the last word, emphasizing her point. "Nobody had a chance to find out what a really good job I did in that movie. They were too busy watching you chew up the scenery. I was great. The movie could have been great. If you hadn't turned it into melodrama with all your huffing and puffing!"

  "Melodrama?" Kurt stood and threw back his shoulders. "Honey, when they coined the word overplayed, they were talking about you. Those wide eyes and that trembling lower lip!" It was his turn to snort. "That's not acting. The only real acting you've ever done was when you spread your legs on the casting couch and pretended you enjoyed it."

  Elizabeth finished her cigarette. Don't ask me what happened to it, but when she set down the holder, it wasn't on the desk. "Are you still sulking because you didn't get a chance at me?" She laughed. "News flash, sweetums, you were never in my ballpark. Not as a man and certainly not as an actor. Like strutting around with your chest puffed out is acting. Talk about milking a scene."

  Kurt stepped forward and they stood toe to toe. "Talk about stepping all over my lines!"

  "Talk about histrionics!"

  "As if you could even spell it."

  "As if you know what it means."

  "As if—"

  I knew I had to end this before somebody got hurt.

  "Hey! Guys! You two want to take a deep breath?" Both Elizabeth and Kurt looked at me in wonder, and I felt the blood rush into my cheeks. "Okay, so you can't breathe. How about a timeout, then? Take a time-out. Both of you. If you're here to see Merilee, she's not home. So why don't you go wherever it is you go when you're not haunting a house and I'll let you know when she shows up."

  "We're not waiting for Merilee. Not technically." Elizabeth rolled her eyes.

  "We're waiting for her to get to work again." Kurt looked down at the desk. "You know, so she can turn the page. So we can find out what happens next."

  Elizabeth groaned. "He thinks he's going to have a bigger part."

  "She thinks the world can't go on without Opal."

  "He thinks
he's hot stuff."

  "She knows she's a has-been and that she doesn't stand a chance to—"

  "Stop it! Both of you!" I clapped my hands together. That got their attention. "Number one, the sequel isn't written yet, and number two—and this is pretty important so pay attention—it doesn't matter who has the biggest part. Neither one of you is going to be in a movie if a movie is ever made. Get it? You've gone on to the great curtain call in the sky. You're dead!"

  Kurt smoothed a hand over the front of his uniform. "That doesn't mean we don't have our pride," he said. He gave his costar a sidelong look. "Or at least I do. But then, I had a career I could be proud of."

  Elizabeth threw back her head and laughed. "Yeah, you went right from So Far the Dawn to a series of B monster movies!"

  "And you went from So Far the Dawn straight to the bottom of a bottle."

  "Yeah, well, if I drank, I had my reasons."

  "Your bad acting being one of them?"

  "Your bad acting being one of them. Why, if you didn't try to upstage me, people would still remember my understated performance in that scene where I help the escaped slaves find safe passage to Canada."

  "Understated? Is that what you call it? The way I remember it—and my memory is excellent, by the way—the New York Times said, 'Miss Goddard apparently did not get enough sleep the night before the climactic scene was filmed. Like a sleepwalker, she—'"

  "Baloney!" Elizabeth propped her fists on her hips. "They wouldn't know good acting if it hit them over the head. They said yours was—"

  "Refined and elegant." Kurt's smile was radiant.

  "Which only proves they didn't know what they were talking about."

  "Which only proves that you—"

  "You're doing it again." I didn't know if ghosts could actually do damage to each other, but I didn't want to find out. I stepped between the two of them. "Listen, both of you. You're waiting for Merilee to come home and get back to work. I can do you one better. How about if I turn the pages of the manuscript for you. Would that work? Then you can see what you want to see and get the hell out of here."