A Wild Ghost Chase

by E. J. Copperman

  “How, if you think he’s been lying to us?” Melissa asked.

  I was about to answer when the dumbwaiter to Melissa’s room clanked. That meant someone one floor down was attempting to come up. We all tensed just a little, but then the intercom next to Melissa’s bed buzzed, and through it came Loretta Kerby’s voice.

  “It’s Grandma, Liss,” she said. “Can you let me up?” Melissa released the lock mechanism on the dumbwaiter, installed at Alison’s insistence so no one (living) could enter Melissa’s room without her permission (although besides the dumbwaiter, it’s also possible to access the attic via pulldown stairs at the foot of Melissa’s bed). We heard the dumbwaiter gears start to turn and in about half a minute, Loretta was in the room with us.

  “You said five minutes, Grandma,” Melissa pointed out. “That was, like, one minute.”

  “The lights were with me,” Loretta said, waving a hand. “Let me sit down.” The dumbwaiter is easily operated, but does require a little physical effort. Loretta sat on the desk chair and Melissa sat on a beanbag chair next to her bed.

  Maxie and I floated about halfway between the ceiling and the floor.

  We gave Loretta a moment to catch her breath, and then I asked if her research had uncovered anything. She nodded.

  “I called the Department of the Interior, which used to include the Department of Indian Affairs,” Loretta reported. “They didn’t have any records of individual Lenni-Lenapes, but they did have their patterns of migration, and I sent that link to Melissa.”

  “I took a look, Grandma,” Melissa answered. “The group from around here was definitely not with Chief White Eyes.”

  “That’s what I told you,” Maxie said, a little irritation in her voice as if someone had insulted her. “I gave you a Unami glossary, too. Did you see that?” she asked Melissa in a gentler tone.

  “I looked, and it was a little helpful, but if someone starts talking like in conversation, we won’t be able to keep up,” Melissa answered.

  “What about the other part of your assignment?” I asked Loretta.

  “Lieutenant McElone didn’t understand why she was talking to me,” she responded. “She said it’s usually Alison who comes asking strange questions and disrupting her workday.”

  “I’ll bet,” Maxie snorted. “I like how she complains! She should have bothered to investigate our murders.” Maxie could be captain of the Olympic Grudge-Holding team.

  “Not fair, Maxie,” I said. “You know very well that the lieutenant didn’t come to work in Harbor Haven until six months after the case had been closed.”

  Lieutenant Anita McElone had been to the house a few times, so I had seen her. I know she and Alison have conferred a few times since Alison got her PI license, but I don’t know the lieutenant well. I assumed she was a good cop and saw no reason not to give her the benefit of the doubt.

  “What did Lieutenant McElone say?” Melissa asked. She is very good at keeping adults on topic.

  Loretta had been anticipating the question. She pulled a small notepad from her backpack and referred to some notes. “There were four incidents in the past ten years that fit your conditions,” she told me. “None of them involved a woman with the right initials and none of the victims had a nickname.”

  That was odd. Perhaps ten years had been too small a sample. “Do you think we need to go back farther?” I asked Loretta.

  Her eyes showed some trepidation. “You want me to go back there and ask her again?” she breathed.

  “Not necessarily.” I turned toward Maxie. “When do we think Antinanco will be back?”

  She bristled. “Since when am I the appointments secretary around here? The kid shows up when he wants to show up.” Her t-shirt changed into another that read, “And your little dog, too!”

  All our heads turned simultaneously as we heard a creak. The stairs were being pulled down.

  “Who’s that?” Loretta hissed.

  A good question. Antinanco, of course, would not have needed stairs to enter the room. Had we told him to meet us here? I tried to remember. We all watched breathlessly (two of us literally so) as the stairs descended and we heard footsteps on them.

  “What have we got up here that I can hit someone with?” Maxie asked.

  Melissa furrowed her brow and gave Maxie a look that indicated she’d prefer not to answer. But she didn’t speak.

  “What’s going on here?” To everyone’s relief, Alison’s head appeared in the opening, and she rose into the attic. “This is about the fourth conference I’ve broken up in the past few . . .”

  “When did you get back?” Melissa asked her mother. “I thought you were out.”

  “I was. Now I’m in. Mom? What are you doing up here?”

  Loretta, showing a capacity for lying I had not witnessed in her before, said, “I came up to talk to Melissa about getting concert tickets for a band we both like.” It wasn’t much, but it certainly was a distraction from the real topic.

  “Really!” Alison’s tone suggested she was not buying into the story. “And so the four of you are starting a fan club? Which band?”

  Loretta chewed her lower lip. “Which band?”

  “Yeah. Which band do you and Melissa both follow?” She pivoted quickly to address Melissa and pointed a finger. “Don’t you answer. The question is for Grandma.”

  This threatened to go on for a while, but it wasn’t the problem with which I was most concerned. I was more concerned that as the two women discussed the musical act, Antinanco had risen through the floor not two feet from Alison, and took up a position next to me near the window.

  “Who’s that?” Antinanco asked, gesturing toward Loretta, whom he had never met. Loretta smiled at the boy, then checked to see if Alison was looking her way; she was.

  Very quietly, I said to the boy, “Just wait a moment. Let them finish their talk.”

  “What?” Alison asked, turning to face me. “What’d you say, Paul?”

  This wasn’t going well.

  “Have you found my mother?” Antinanco asked. Apparently, waiting a moment meant something different to him. Something on the order of, jump in any time.

  “Nothing special,” I answered Alison. I knew she couldn’t see or hear our young guest, but if she were to stay up here and slow down the progress he was expecting, he might leave. I wanted things to resolve themselves now.

  “Uh-huh,” Alison answered. “Are you aware there are four Native American ghosts in the house right now? The one who speaks English was asking for you. Have you been on the Ghosternet again?”

  If Alison could see four respondents to my query, that actually meant that there might be as many as twelve or thirteen in the house. “I was doing a little communicating,” I answered. “Sorry for the inconvenience.”

  “Four!” Antinanco said. “Is my mother here?”

  “I don’t think so,” Maxie said.

  “What does that mean?” Alison asked her. “Paul’s not sorry?” She seemed genuinely confused.

  “Of course Paul is sorry,” Melissa told her. “Maxie meant something else.”

  Alison’s eyes narrowed the way a mother’s do when her child is being less than honest. “Oh yeah?” she asked. “Something about that band you and Grandma want to buy tickets to see?”

  “One Direction,” Loretta said, staring at a screen on the laptop Maxie was holding out for her to see. “That’s the band.” Melissa made a displeased face, but I don’t think Alison noticed.

  “Can I have my arrowhead back?” Antinanco interjected. Eight-year-olds, no matter how many centuries they have been conscious or how many times they have heard a promise, are not known for their patience. I did not answer him, and this time neither did Maxie, but everyone looked in his direction, and Alison did notice that.

  S
he stopped, pursed her lips, and breathed in. Her voice was quieter than before. “There’s someone else here, isn’t there?” she asked.

  Alison is an unusually intelligent woman.

  “There is,” I admitted, deciding to come clean. “We have a client named Antinanco, or Eagle of the Sun. He is a Lenni-Lenape boy, and we have been searching for his mother.”

  “You said I could tell her!” Maxie shouted.

  Alison’s eyes narrowed, and Melissa’s widened. Neither of those was a good sign. “Why didn’t you tell me?” Alison asked me.

  “You said you were busy with the guests and the bathroom,” Melissa said before I could answer. “We figured you wouldn’t want to get involved.”

  Alison laughed, which was very nearly the last reaction I had expected. “He’s a little boy trying to find his mother,” she said, shaking her head. “If I’d known, I would have helped. Did you think replacing some tile was more important to me?”

  “You had specifically told me not to bother you with an investigation,” I reminded her.

  “Yeah, but . . . well, I thought that meant you wouldn’t take one on. I mean, I know I said that . . .”

  “We heard you were having money problems,” Maxie said, with her usual level of tact and compassion.

  Alison looked at Maxie, then at Melissa. She put her hand on Melissa’s head and caressed her daughter’s hair a little. “We’re doing fine. You didn’t have to worry about me.”

  Maxie rolled her eyes, but everyone was silent. I looked away; it occurred to me that I should have understood she’d want to know about Antinanco.

  Until Antinanco repeated again, “Do you have any news of my mother?” He sounded more insistent this time.

  We all must have turned our attention to him again, because Alison asked, “What’s going on?” Loretta informed her of our client’s question.

  “Could one of the women downstairs be your friend’s mother?” Alison asked.

  Antinanco glanced up, a hopeful expression on his face. I shook my head. “No,” I said, perhaps a bit more bluntly than I intended.

  The boy looked crestfallen, and Melissa’s eyebrows rose.

  Maxie looked at me and said, “That was harsh.”

  Maybe so, and I’d apologize later; now we had to act before the women downstairs left the house. “Maxie,” I said, “please go downstairs . . .”

  Maxie turned her back on me. “No,” she said, mimicking my earlier blunt tone.

  There wasn’t time to argue the point. I turned toward Alison. “Would you go downstairs and tell the women, if there are no guests around, where we are?” I asked. “Especially the one who speaks English.”

  Alison nodded, efficient operative that she is, and headed back down the pulldown stairs.

  “I don’t understand,” Antinanco said. “How can you know my mother is not one of the women downstairs?”

  Loretta, appearing sorry about what she knew was to come, looked at me and nodded. Yes, it was time to be honest with the boy. I still didn’t understand everything that had happened, but there was at least one thing I was certain about.

  “Your mother is not a Lenni-Lenape woman,” I said as gently as I could. “And I’m sure you know that. You haven’t been telling us the truth this whole time.”

  Antinanco did not look me in the eye, even as I challenged him directly. “Yes I have,” he said, but his tone had no conviction to it.

  I floated down toward him, but he made a concerted effort to focus elsewhere, in this case beneath his feet, which were about a foot off the floor. “No,” I said. “You haven’t. You’re not a native boy. You’re not a Lenni-Lenape. And you certainly have not been here for more than two hundred years.”

  Antinanco trembled with what appeared to be suppressed rage, not distress. He bit his lower lip and his fingers fluttered seemingly without his control. “Yes I have!” he shouted, and Melissa shuddered.

  “Kid,” Maxie attempted, looking less angry and more sympathetic now, “you don’t actually speak Unami. You told us about a branch of the Lennis who were all the way on the other side of Pennsylvania. Chief White Eyes wasn’t on the Jersey Shore; he was in Pittsburgh, and he never had a son who died at the age of eight. All those things are facts.”

  The boy looked like he might flee, so I gently put my hand on his shoulder and held his shirt. I’m not sure that could have kept him from vanishing, but I could certainly see to it that he not fly away just yet. “We want to help you, son,” I said, knowing his name was probably not Antinanco. “But we can’t, if you don’t tell us the truth.”

  “I am telling the truth! I am Eagle of the Sun! I have wandered this land for over two hundred winters looking for my . . .”

  Two native women, people like Maxie and me, rose up through the floor. One was the woman I’d seen in the library, who couldn’t speak English but seemed to have a message for me. The other I had not seen before.

  I heard the dumbwaiter start to lower itself. No doubt Alison would pull herself back up.

  “Do you want these ladies to tell you about the Human Beings?” I asked our young client.

  The woman who spoke what I assumed was Unami began to talk, and the other quickly translated her words: “We are a moving people,” she said. “We do not own land; we use it and we respect it, but land owns itself. You asked about a woman named Jaci, the wife of White Eyes. Jaci is not a Unami name. And White Eyes was a chief from far away.”

  Antinanco appeared to be crying, but it was a frustrated expression on his face, not a sad one. “It’s not true,” he said. “None of it is true.”

  “Do you know anyone named Jaci?” I asked through the interpreter.

  “No one named Jaci was with the Unami,” our interpreter reported. “You have been given information that is not correct.”

  “Thank you both,” I said to the interpreter. “I think he needed to hear it from you.” I indicated Antinanco.

  The two women ascended into the ceiling, kept going, and were gone.

  “It’s not true,” the boy continued to repeat. “It’s just not true.”

  Alison arrived in the dumbwaiter, and walked to her mother, who filled her in on what was happening.

  “It’s okay, Antinanco,” I said, hoping the sound of the name he’d chosen would calm our client. “Nobody is angry with you. We still want to help you find your real mother. And I think we can.”

  Antinanco did not look up, but his sobs subsided. “You can help find my mother?” he said. “Really?”

  “I’m not sure we’ll succeed, but I am sure we can try,” I replied. “I had hoped that some information we’d gotten from the local police might have helped, but so far, it has not turned up a suitable incident.”

  “A suitable incident?” Alison cut in. “The local . . .” She turned toward Melissa and demanded, “Did you go to Lieutenant McElone?”

  “No,” Melissa assured her. “I didn’t.” Alison’s jaw relaxed, then clenched again when Melissa continued, “Grandma did.”

  “Can you tell us when you really became . . . like this?” I asked our client.

  “I am of the Human Beings,” Antinanco insisted. “I died of smallpox many centuries ago.”

  “No,” I told him. “Your story doesn’t add up. You are the only one of the Lenni-Lenape who seem to have absorbed the changes in time. They said the Human Beings stay to themselves and do not mingle with others. They knew about their time only. The ladies did not know about technology or the advance of white people in the land.”

  “I have been alone,” the boy said. “I watched television.”

  “You knew about dinosaurs,” I told him, and produced the plastic toy from my pocket. “I saw you play with this one and I heard you call it a T-Rex out loud. But the people of the time you say you are from would
n’t have had a clue what a dinosaur was, let alone the name for a T-Rex. I also saw you playing with Batman. You are a contemporary boy, pretending to be from another time.”

  “Why do you say I lie?” The boy still would not make eye contact.

  “Because I want to help you,” I said quietly.

  At that, he vanished, though his shirt remained.

  7

  We were at an impasse. From his cultural knowledge, I had deduced that Antinanco had died fairly recently, within the past few decades at the earliest. But he had continued to insist he was a son of the chief White Eyes and that he had inhabited this land for centuries, and now he had left, possibly never to return. I couldn’t go on without better information, and for reasons I could not begin to comprehend, our client would not provide it.

  This went on for some time. Melissa briefed Alison on our progress (if you could call it that) so far in the case. Alison sat on the floor next to her daughter’s bed and listened, only to blanch at the mention of Ned Barnes or Lieutenant McElone’s names. At one point she managed to murmur to Melissa, “You didn’t call your father, did you?” and looked sincerely relieved when both her daughter and mother confirmed that there had been no contact with the ex whom she sometimes refers to as “The Swine.” As I mentioned earlier, Alison’s taste in men can be . . . questionable.

  “I really don’t see another area of investigation,” I announced after some consideration. “We’ve done everything we can do, given that the boy, whoever he is, simply didn’t give us the facts.”

  “Why not?” Alison asked. “Why would he start the whole process if he knew he wasn’t going to tell you the truth?”

  It was a very good question. “I honestly don’t know,” I told her.

  Alison took on a very interesting smile, one that indicated she thought she was clever. “Use your own methods,” she said to me. “That’s what you always tell me; don’t jump to conclusions, just observe. What did you observe?”