A Bogie in the Boat

by Elizabeth Hunter

  I turned to see a nicely dressed Asian man walking toward me. He was wearing a serious expression and a suit even though the forecast said it’d be close to eighty-five degrees this afternoon.

  “Cop.” Frank and the dead guy both spoke at the same time.

  If he was a cop, he was the best-looking one I’d run across. And unfortunately, I’d met more than my share because of Frank.

  “Are you Lindsay Maxwell?” the probably-a-cop said. “I’m Detective Lee.” He held out a card and I took it.

  Why did Frank always have to be right?

  2

  Too Coincidental to Be a Coincidence

  “Hey,” I said, trying to ignore the two whispering spirits at my back. I glanced at the cop’s card. “Christopher Lee?”

  “Yes. Are you Lindsay Maxwell?”

  “Like the actor?” I smiled. “Vampire guy? Saruman from Lord of the Rings?”

  Detective Lee was extra cute when he was annoyed.

  “I know who you’re talking about,” he said. “Are you the Lindsay Maxwell who made the 911 call?”

  “Yeah, I’m Lindsay. Linx.” I shoved his card in my pocket and tried to ignore how cute Detective Lee was when he was irritated. I didn’t need to be distracted by that when there was a dead guy in Mrs. Lamberti’s boat, a new spirit had shown up, and the dead guy had probably been murdered. “I’m the one who found the body. Well, actually, Mrs. L found it, and she walked across the street to my house. She was looking for my nan—my grandmother—but I was the only one home.”

  Detective Lee nodded and frowned. “Do you know why she didn’t call 911 right away? Why would she call your grandmother? Do you recognize the body? Is it someone she thought you might know?”

  “I don’t think so.” I found that blatant honesty was usually the easiest way to deal with anything relating to my mother or my nan. “Mrs. L probably came over because she thinks my grandmother can see ghosts and she was worried one was hanging around on the back deck. You know, because of the dead guy. Who I don’t know.”

  His expression didn’t change much. “I see.”

  “My name is Vincent,” the dead guy was saying behind me. “Vincent Anderson.”

  I didn’t say a thing.

  Detective Lee pointed over his shoulder. “Okay. Thanks, uh, Lindsay.”

  “Linx.”

  “Right. If you could stay right here, I do have a few more questions, but I’m going to take a look at the scene before the lab guys get here.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “Why isn’t she telling the cop my name?” Vincent asked as I turned and walked back to the bench on the far side of the deck.

  “How would she know your name, dummy?” Frank said. “She tells the cop your name and he’s going to suspect she had something to do with your death.”

  “Oh. That makes sense.”

  Detective Lee didn’t tell me to go inside, so I was just staying put. Part of me was afraid if I left the scene with the extra ghost, I’d be stuck with him. I glanced at my phone. Where was my nan? Where was my mom? I really wanted to talk to either of them, because the new ghost was seriously freaking me out.

  Frank didn’t let my freak-out keep him from interrogating his first suspect in sixty years. I mean, he’d interrogated people secondhand—through me—but I could tell he was relishing Vincent’s presence.

  “Give me the story, kid. Let me guess, your memory of the events in question is fuzzy?”

  Vincent’s eyes went wide. “Yeah. How did you know?”

  “’Cause I was murdered too.”

  Vincent frowned. “I’m so sorry. That’s awful.”

  “You know, it took me a while, but I’m okay with it now.”

  I slapped a hand to my forehead. “Are you not getting that you are, in fact, dead? I mean, you were murdered. Probably. Are you sure you didn’t OD?”

  “I’ve never taken drugs before,” Vincent said. “So I don’t think I would now. I mean—”

  “What’s your game, kid?” Frank interrupted him. “You said you’re a thief.”

  Vincent shrugged. “Nothing big-time. My friend and me—”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Her name,” Vincent said. “Gabby. Her name’s Gabby. Anyway, Gabby’s hot, right? Geek girl. She worked at that comic shop on Lincoln for a while. The nerds loved her, right? Hot chick thinks guys who collect comics are cute. So she worked it.”

  “Comics?” Frank asked. “Like comic books? Those things are worth like a buck or something, aren’t they?”

  “No,” I said. “A first edition or really rare edition could be worth thousands of dollars.”

  Frank turned to me. “Are you kidding me?”

  “Nope.”

  Vincent shifted. “Yeah, so the geeks like Gabby, and they loved bragging about their collections with this cute girl, right?”

  “Ugh.” I couldn’t stop the sneer. “Did this chick scam guys by flirting with them and then robbing them?”

  Vincent looked uncomfortable.

  I kept my voice low. “That’s gross, Vincent. I’m not saying you deserved to get murdered or anything, but that’s super gross and wrong. You probably have an army of pissed-off nerds looking for you. We’re never going to find out who killed you.”

  Frank ignored me. “You said your friend used to work there?”

  Vincent turned his attention back to Frank. He didn’t seem all that remorseful. Jerk.

  “Yeah,” he said. “New manager moved in and got wise to the fact that a lot of the guys who came in to price comic collections or memorabilia were getting broken into afterward and missing the really good stuff. He couldn’t prove it was Gabby, but she could tell he was suspicious. She quit a couple of weeks ago.”

  “This scam isn’t making any sense to me,” Frank said. “You guys rob the marks, but then who are you going to sell to? The shops who’d buy that kind of junk would be wise to what got stolen, wouldn’t they? Where are you gonna fence useless old comic books?”

  “Oh Frank, you sweet lamb.” If I could have patted his shoulder, I would have. “The internet, Bogie. You can sell all that stuff online. You can be completely anonymous if you want. If you broke up the collections, I doubt they’d be able to trace anything. With a VPN, they couldn’t even track your IP address.” I looked at Vincent from the corner of my eye. Yeah, he was squirming. “I’m right, aren’t I?”

  “It worked,” Vincent said. “We’ve been doing it for a couple of years now, and no one caught on.”

  I was judging him so hard, and he could tell.

  “College is expensive!” he said. “We’re not stealing food or… cars or anything. These guys can live without their superheroes.”

  “The college excuse?” I asked. “Where’s your self-respect, dude? You could have learned how to strip like an honest desperate college student.” I raised an eyebrow. “You chose poorly.”

  “Strip clubs?” Frank asked. “Tell me you’re joking.”

  I shrugged. I didn’t actually know anyone who’d stripped their way through college, but I was betting Vincent didn’t either.

  Frank shook his head. “Sometimes I’m really glad I died when I did.”

  “Miss!” Detective Lee was walking toward me. He did not look pleased. “Who are you talking to?”

  I held up my phone. “Me? No one. No one important, I mean. My… grandma. I was calling my grandma so she’d know where I am. And she’s a friend of Mrs.—”

  “You need to hang up,” Detective Lee said. “You don’t need to be talking to anyone before I question you.”

  I frowned. “Am I in trouble? Because if I am—”

  “You’re not in trouble,” he said, clearly aggravated. “But I do need to ask you a few more questions, and I don’t want you talking to anyone but me until I do.”

  I blinked. “How long are we talking about?”

  He crossed his arms. They were nice arms. I could tell because the fabric pulled over his biceps, and sud
denly I was picturing him in a sleeveless shirt.

  It was a nice image.

  “Sorry,” he said, putting his hands on his hips. “Did you have something more important to take care of than a murder investigation?”

  Frank came alive. “How do they know he was murdered? Linx, ask him how—”

  “He was murdered?” I rose to my feet. “That’s awful. I thought it was just an overdose. How could he have been murdered?”

  Detective Lee was frowning at me. Or maybe it was just his serious face. It was kind of a frowny serious face.

  “Since you’re not part of this investigation, you don’t need to know that,” he said.

  “But since I do need to stay for questioning, can you tell me how long it’s going to be?” I glanced at the french doors where Mrs. Lamberti was watching us. “Because one, Mrs. L is freaked out. And two, I really need to pee.”

  Two spots of red marked his cheeks. “You can go to the restroom. Just stay in the house and don’t leave. And don’t call anyone.”

  “Awesome.”

  “Linx!” Frank almost yelled at me. “You cannot leave that hanging. How does he know the victim was murdered?”

  Vincent said, “Dude, I told you I didn’t do drugs. Obviously I was murdered.”

  “Were there signs of force?” Frank continued, following me into the house. “Fingerprints on the syringe? You’ve got to get more information.”

  I walked past the shaken Mrs. L because I really did need to pee. I walked down the hall and shut the door, but Frank’s head popped through.

  “Out!” I whispered. “You know the rules.”

  “You’ve got to get more information from that guy. He’s into you, even if he doesn’t want to be. Make it happen, Linx.”

  “Out of the bathroom, Frank!”

  He disappeared, but I could still hear him and Vincent arguing on the other side of the door.

  “So if there’s no light, am I just stuck here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Can we go see my mom?”

  “That’s up to Linx.”

  “Do I need to hang out with this girl all the time?”

  “You need to shut up now, kid. I’m thinking.”

  I sat on the toilet and put my head in my hands.

  Lord help me, I had two of them.

  When I came out of the bathroom, my nan had arrived. I went to her and let her envelop me in one of those hugs that only my nan can give.

  “Nan,” I whispered. “I have a new ghost.”

  She pulled away and her eyes went wide. “What?”

  Detective Lee walked in before I could say more.

  “I’m Detective Lee,” he told my nan. “Are you a friend of Mrs. Lamberti’s?”

  “I’m her neighbor. And Lindsay’s grandmother. Are you the detective investigating this poor boy’s death?”

  He shot a glare my direction.

  “Hey!” I said. “I did tell her that much, but she needed to know why I’d disappeared.”

  “Of course I did,” Nan said. “I would have been frantic if I’d come home and Lindsay wasn’t there. Wouldn’t your grandmother worry if you weren’t where you said you were going to be, Detective?”

  “My grandmother? Of course— Wait, we’re not talking about my grandmother.” He held up his phone. “Ma’am, have you seen this man before?”

  I peeked over Nan’s shoulder and saw a picture of Vincent looking very pale and very dead. He also looked very young. All the talk about grandmothers got me thinking about his mom. Surely there was a way to let her know what had happened to him.

  Damn it. Frank was going to be pissed, but…

  I said, “You know… looking at this picture when I’m not totally freaked out, I think I do recognize him.”

  Frank was in the corner on his feet, glaring at me and making “shut up” motions with his hands.

  Detective Lee said, “You know him?”

  “Not know him. Not really. But I think I’ve seen him… at that comic shop on Lincoln.”

  Nan said, “You go to a comic shop, darling?”

  “Yeah.” I stared into her eyes. “You know I love graphic novels.”

  Nan caught on immediately. “Oh! Is that where you get them? I thought that shop was only for comic books. Not… graphic novels.”

  Detective Lee looked between us. “Graphic novels are comics.”

  “Well,” I said. “That’s a bit of a simplification, isn’t it? I’d say… comics could be defined by the serial nature of their story lines as well as the larger fictional world they usually inhabit. And graphic novels are more stand-alone… and can be read like a book.”

  Detective Lee looked at me like I’d grown a second head. “Right.”

  “I mean sure, they’re related, but it’s really a completely different format when you think about it.”

  “Uh-huh. You said Lincoln Street?” he said, jotting something down in a notebook. “And you’re sure you recognize this guy?”

  “No.” It never paid to be too certain with cops. After all, people forgot stuff all the time, even when they weren’t lying through their teeth. “I mean, I think he kinda looks like a guy who I maybe saw there a couple of times, but I can’t say for sure.”

  “Kinda,” he muttered, jotting. “Maybe. Can’t say.” He looked up. “Thanks. That’s helpful.”

  Before I could make a snarky comment I’d probably regret later, one of the uniformed guys cracked the door open. “Detective Lee, I think you need to see this.”

  I nodded at Frank, who followed the two police officers outside. He couldn’t wander far, but he could follow the police out on the deck. Vincent stayed hovering over my shoulder.

  “Nan, meet Vincent.” I shrugged off the chill that prickled my neck. “Vincent, back up. You’re crowding me.”

  Nan said, “Even I can feel you, dear boy. You really must keep your distance.”

  “Sorry,” Vincent said. “Tell her I’m sorry.”

  “I will.” I thought about what Vincent had told us earlier. “Vincent, if Gabby left the shop a couple of weeks ago, what were you two doing to find marks?”

  “Marks?” Nan said. “So this young man was a…?”

  “Thief,” I murmured, watching the activity outside. They were bringing Vincent’s body up now, and I could see passersby being turned away. A few residents paused across the canal, watching and gossiping while their little dogs barked up a storm.

  Vincent said, “Gabby and I figured we could still do our thing, you know? We’d just have to be a little smarter about how we found the guys. She started trolling some online threads and message boards and stuff. Then there was this one guy—he was local. Actually just moved to Venice. I think it was even around here. She was chatting him up. Some big tech millionaire or billionaire or something. Really into comics.”

  Oh, no…

  A sinking feeling took over my stomach. “Tech guy who’s really into comics?”

  “Yeah, he invented some crazy-popular app that was like this online catalogue of every—”

  “Every comic ever published and its current market value?”

  Vincent nodded. “Yeah! That’s it. You know him?”

  Damn, damn, damn. This was going to get sticky.

  “Yeah, I know him.”

  It just so happened that Leo Caralt, billionaire tech wonder and new resident of Venice Beach, wanted a manga-inspired mural covering the library wall in his new mansion on Howland Canal, not two blocks from Mrs. L’s wood-shingled house.

  He wanted one, and he’d seen similar work by a local artist at a coffee shop on Abbot Kinney.

  So yeah, I knew Leo Caralt, tech billionaire and current mark of the dead guy talking to me.

  I was the artist working for him.

  “Lindsay, you cannot go back to that man’s house!”

  My nan was adamant. Frank was just as adamant.

  “This is great,” he said. “The bruises on Vincent’s body don’t leave m
uch to the imagination. He was held down and the syringe forced into his arm. Only an idiot was going to determine this was an overdose, and that Detective Lee is no idiot.”

  Vincent paced and pulled at his ghostly hair. “If Leo killed me, then we need to warn Gabby. She was the one talking to him.”

  “Lindsay,” Nan parked herself in front of my chair. “Tell me you’re going to cancel that job.”

  “I can’t cancel the job,” I said. “I’m halfway done with a really big project in Leo’s creepy, creepy library, and I have to finish it. Not only would it look unprofessional if I just quit, I really need the money. And the publicity. He has huge parties in that place.”

  Nan asked, “But why is his library creepy? And why would you go back if this man is a creep? You’re not reassuring me!”

  “He’s not a creep.” I shrugged. “Not really. I just think he’s kinda weird. And the library is creepy because he has all these action figures. And they’re all in boxes lining the walls. Shelves everywhere. I feel like there’s all these tiny, imprisoned people watching me all the time while I’m working.”

  Vincent and Frank both stared.

  “I’m with you on that one, kid,” Frank said. “That’s creepy.”

  “Super weird,” Vincent said.

  “But he’s not a criminal,” I said. “At least, we don’t know he is. Clearly he’s a suspect, but Vincent doesn’t remember who killed him, and we haven’t been able to find Gabby. It could be this is a coincidence and Leo is the victim here. Shouldn’t we be letting Detective Lee do his job?”

  Nan smiled. “He’s a handsome one, isn’t he? I saw you watching him.”

  I put my head down on the table. “Not now, Nan.”

  There wasn’t enough coffee in the world…

  “If I were murdered, I’d want a dashing detective looking for my killer,” Nan said. “It adds such an element of romance and adventure.”

  “We are sitting with the ghosts of two murder victims. So… kinda not cool.”

  “I meant no offense to either of your ghosts,” Nan said. “What will you do about this new one, love? You have a terrible record of getting stuck with your spirits. No offense, Frank.”