An Uninvited Ghost (21 page)

“Wait,” the detective said. “Mrs. Crosby asked you about the ghost show?”

“Yes,” I answered. “She said she had a real interest in the afterlife, that she’d been hoping to come into contact with real ghosts and that she’d heard I had some at my house.”

McElone made a rude noise with her lips. “Real ghosts,” she scoffed.

“Hold a civil tongue,” my mother warned her. “Some of my best friends are ghosts.” In fact, Mom claimed to be in periodic touch with my father, who had died almost five years earlier, but I’d been unable to contact him myself, and not for lack of trying.

“What is your mother doing here?” McElone asked me. “Don’t you usually use that friend of yours to try to intimidate me?”

“Jeannie has an appointment with her obstetrician,” I explained.

“On Sunday?”

I shrugged. “Dr. Liebowitz is Orthodox. He’s closed on Saturday and open on Sunday.”

“What am I,” Mom wanted to know, “chopped liver?”

“By the way,” I said, desperate to turn the conversation around, “what have you found out about Tiffney’s disappearing act?”

McElone gave me her patented “are you crazy” look. “Why should I tell you?”

“Because Trent Avalon keeps asking me to investigate, and I don’t want to. If I can tell him you’ve found out something, maybe he’ll trust you and leave me alone.”

McElone rolled her eyes a bit and took a breath. “You tell him that her credit card hasn’t been used, her cell phone has no activity on it since she left and her mother doesn’t know where she is but says she’s not worried, because ‘Tiff knows kung fu.’ Is that enough to gain Mr. Avalon’s trust?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “All that tells me is that you don’t know where she went, and you have no leads.”

“I’m not even supposed to be looking yet. We usually wait forty-eight hours, but this is going to get press because she’s a
big TV star
. But frankly, I don’t like the idea that this girl decides to vanish right after there’s a murder in your house, and I’d like to talk to her. Anyway,” McElone went on, clearly tired of the turn the conversation had taken, “Mrs. Crosby told you she wanted to come to your house that night, and you invited her.”

“That’s right,” I said, taking the opening. “We were going to have the séance anyway, but Arlice showed up just before we began, and she was very excited. She gave me this amulet.” I showed it to McElone, who actually put on reading glasses to see it clearly.

“That’s very interesting,” she said. “Does the shape mean anything?”

I shook my head. “Not that I know of. She said it had been in her family for a long time, and she had no children to pass it on to, so she gave it to me. I thought it was very generous of her, maybe too generous, but how do you refuse a gift like that?”

“You don’t,” Mom interjected. “You were brought up to be polite.”

McElone took a packet of aspirin out of her top drawer and took two with no water.

“Anyway, since I already told you everything I know about the night Arlice died, the next thing was that Donovan showed up at my house yesterday asking me to investigate her murder.” I looked at McElone, waiting for the inevitable crack about me being a sham as a detective, but she sat back in her chair and closed her eyes.

They stayed closed as she asked, “Did he say why he wanted you? There are plenty of detectives in the phone book.”

“He said Arlice believed in supporting local businesses, especially new ones, and that she had recommended me the day she died for any business he might have coming up.”

McElone opened her eyes and rubbed them with her thumb and forefinger. “Whose idea was it to go back to the Ocean Wharf?” she asked me.

“Mine, but he picked up on it in a second, like he was waiting for me to suggest it,” I said. “I thought it was a little weird that he was in his office on a Saturday, but he made his secretary come in, too. And then he sent her home after he got back from the Ocean Wharf.” Oops.

McElone’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know what he did when he got back? You left the hotel before he did.”

Telling her that I had a ghost operative on Donovan’s tail probably wouldn’t have earned me any plausibility points with the detective, so I scrambled and took the responsibility myself. “I followed him back and waited outside his office door,” I lied. “His secretary came out just a couple minutes later, and then I listened at the door and heard him sending an e-mail. He told whoever he was sending it to that the plan had gone well, and that the police officer on the case had bought his line.”

“You
heard
him send an e-mail?”

“He talks when he types,” I explained. At least that part was true, according to Scott. “I figured you were too smart to fall for that line, but I let him believe you had.”

I thought giving McElone the opportunity to congratulate herself would have slowed her down a bit, but I had underestimated her. “Why didn’t you tell me this yesterday?” she asked.

I’d anticipated this question. “I couldn’t be
sure
you didn’t suspect me, and I didn’t want to come in until I had something to say to you.”

McElone flattened out her mouth in thought. “
Do
you have anything to say?”

I nodded. “I think we should work together to find out who Donovan’s accomplice is, and what role they might have played in Arlice Crosby’s death.”

“Why should I work with a civilian on a homicide?”

“Because he already thinks he has leverage with me, and he thinks so because he underestimated you,” I said. “If we let him believe both those things, I think we can smoke him out, and it might be the key to the whole case.” Paul had briefed me well.

McElone thought about that for a moment, then leaned forward and put her elbows on her desk. She held her hands up in front of her and rested them under her chin. “The only way this is going to work,” she said, “is if you don’t get all full of yourself and start behaving like you know what you’re doing.”

“I’m perfectly willing to concede that you have a lot more experience doing this than I do,” I told McElone. “I’ll listen to you every step of the way.”

“All right,” she answered. “Let’s get to work.”

Mom looked at the detective, then back at me, and beamed.

“You’re so smart,” she said.

McElone wanted to delay the investigation a day so she
could get to church and have a day with her family, but I felt it was imperative to get to Donovan quickly, so we reached a compromise: McElone got me a tiny recorder to bring to my meeting (she felt wearing a wire would be “overkill”) and ordered me to keep in touch. She gave me her cell phone number and her best wishes.

Mom wanted to come with me to Donovan’s home, the address of which McElone had provided. But I draw the line at bringing my mother along on ghost-driven missions, much as I don’t bring my daughter (Melissa was at her best friend Wendy’s house for the day). It’s a business policy, I’d decided.

So by the time I dropped Mom off at the house, where her car was parked, and told Paul about the plan—which he loved—it took me about ninety minutes to get to Donovan’s house in the Volvo. That gave Paul the opportunity to get a message out to Scott McFarlane over the Ghosternet, which he assured me had been received.

I took a moment after I’d parked in front of his house to get myself into the moment. I’d taken an acting class once when I was at Monmouth, and had never really learned how to be a tree or a whisper or any of the other crap they wanted me to be, but I
had
learned about how to prepare properly for a scene. And this was, without question, going to be a scene.

I started by thinking about my father (I was a Method fraud, after all), and how angry I was that he had passed away when his granddaughter was only five years old and hadn’t really had many memories of him yet. Then I moved on to thinking about The Swine, which was really all the motivation I needed to dig up some decent anger. Steven had started out as a good man with a warm heart, and he could be awfully charming when he wanted to be, but then his business had taken him over and he’d become, well, a swine. One who’d abandoned his wife and young daughter for a Malibu girl whose name, if there was justice, would have been Barbie.

Yeah, that hit the spot. I could go in and be angry now.

I stormed up the steps to Donovan’s very tasteful house, a brick number with actual pillars outside the entrance. I considered ringing the doorbell, then pictured The Swine lying on a beach in Malibu, and banged hard on the door. A number of times.

It didn’t take long before the door opened, and there stood a plump little lady of about sixty-five, looking as much like Merryweather (one of the good fairies in the Disney film
Sleeping Beauty
) as I would have thought possible. Damn. That punctured my angry balloon in a hurry.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

This was no time to lose my nerve. Lives hung in the balance. Well, maybe some lives had already been taken, but there could still be others in the balance. In any event, this was serious business. I had to play my role, even if it meant being rude to this Mrs. Butterworth incarnate.

“Where’s Donovan?” I rumbled.

“You’re looking for Mr. Donovan?” she chirped, unaffected by my gruff demeanor.

“Yeah. Where is he?”

The little cherub turned toward the interior of the house and called, “Tom? There’s a young lady here to see you.”

“Thanks,” I mumbled. Sometimes, it’s impossible to undo thirty-six years of good manners all at once.

The lord of the manner appeared over her shoulder, tall, thin and dressed as a man of leisure, in Bermuda shorts and a tasteful T-shirt (blue) with a pocket, probably from Land’s End. He should have had on a sailor’s hat, too, to complete the look, but being inside his own house, was going without. “Ms. Kerby!” he said, as if he were actually happy to see me. “Has there been a break in the case?”

“The case?” the little lady asked.

“Yes, Martha. This is the woman I’ve been telling you about. The one who’s investigating Arlice’s death for us.”

“Oh my!” she answered. “Won’t you come in, Miss Kerby?” I didn’t correct her on the name. She probably thought people who said
Ms.
were still burning bras and marching on Washington in support of suffrage. But I did walk into the parlor, which was a very nice one, all done in marble tile. It probably cost more than my still-outstanding mortgage.

“Yeah, there’s been a break in the case,” I said. “The break is, I’m off the case. And you know why.” I gave him a significant look. And thought of The Swine being given a cold drink by Malibu Barbie in the next beach chair, like in those beer commercials where they never say anything.

“Me?” Donovan asked. I thought of asking for some butter, just to see if it would melt in his mouth.

“Yeah, you. Do you want to talk about it here, or in the office I assume you have in the house somewhere?” I thought of spitting, but that would just gross me out more than anything else. There are limits.

Donovan and Martha—his wife?—exchanged looks, and he nodded in my direction. “By all means, let’s talk in my office. You can tell me what’s gotten you so upset. Won’t you excuse us, dear?” he asked the little lady.

“Of course. Would you like some iced tea, Miss Kerby?”

“No.” Beach. Swine. Now, Barbie was wearing a tiny bikini.

“All right, then. I’ll leave you two to your business.” Martha didn’t even look puzzled as she walked away. Donovan ushered me toward a room to our left.

It was paneled, of course, in dark wood, with a thick carpet and excellent furniture, much of it leather. There was no head of a conquered animal sticking out of the wall; that would be gauche. But there were photographs on the walls of Tom Donovan with former and current New Jersey governors, state senators and at least one US president. The intimidation was subtle, but it was there.

“So, what can I do for you on a Sunday, Alison?”

I cut Donovan off, not succumbing to his paneling. “Just what do you think you’re trying to pull, Donovan?” I barked, using his last name as a way of sounding tougher than I really am. “I just got out of a marathon interrogation with Lieutenant McElone that threatened to turn into waterboarding.” I had tried to get McElone to get me some makeup that would look like bruises on my face, but she had refused, something about not wanting to get sent to jail herself. Wimp. “And it was your fault.”

One thing that Donovan had going for him was nerve. In this case, he had the unmitigated gall to look surprised. “Mine?” he asked. “How could it be my fault?”

“Don’t give me the innocent act,” I snarled at him. “You know perfectly well that you told McElone I was asking questions about Arlice Crosby’s will when I never said one word about it. You told her you’d never been to the Ocean Wharf before, that I had insisted you go there, and that was a lie. You told her I’d tricked Arlice into giving me this amulet.” I showed it off hanging from my neck. “You wanted to implicate me in her murder.”