Chance of a Ghost (18 page)

Tonight, wondering about his absence five years after his death, I finally let the tears go. But they weren’t because Dad had died. They were tears of self-pity because I now knew he could have come back to call me “baby girl” again, and with only one exception, he hadn’t.

“Larry Laurentz?” Penny Fields put on a show of trying to
remember her co-worker when I spoke to her on Thursday morning. It was clear from her amateur performance she could have answered the question without hesitation, but felt it was best if she seemed less concerned. “Oh yes. Poor man. Went very suddenly, if I remember correctly.”

Penny, who was the box office manager for the Count Basie Theatre, stood about five foot one but had an authoritative presence when she wasn’t being unconvincing in her manner. She’d agreed to talk to Jeannie and me after we’d barged our way through the front door and gone through three different employees before finding someone who’d worked with Lawrence at the box office. The Basie had a low rate of turnover; the box office staff was very stable, she said.

“Yes,” I agreed. “It was extremely sudden. And I’m wondering what kind of man he was.” I’d told Penny that I was a private detective but had foregone the whole maybe-it-was-murder scenario as potentially off-putting, substituting instead the idea that Lawrence had left “a little money” in his will, and I was tracking down the next of kin.

“I didn’t know him very well,” Penny answered. She
tapped some keys on the computer keyboard in front of her; I thought she was looking up Lawrence’s employee record, which might have been helpful, but as it turned out, she was looking at a page regarding the upcoming Stevie Nicks concert at the Basie. That wasn’t helpful, except perhaps to Ms. Nicks.

“Well, what can you tell us about him?” Jeannie asked. She was standing near the door to the box office, which was a very cozy (that is, small) sort of room. The box office consisted of three windows in the lobby, through which people would receive tickets; computer terminals (one in front of each window, and a few in cubicles in the cramped area to the rear); telephones situated on each desk in the cubbyhole section; some boxes on shelves in which preordered tickets were waiting in envelopes marked with the patrons’ names and a coffeepot, out of sight of the paying customers, in a far corner by the door. This was not a recreational area.

Jeannie had apparently noticed that Penny kept dotting her nose with a tissue, had decided that she was no doubt carrying typhoid and was keeping Oliver, who looked woozy, as far away as possible. Clearly, Jeannie was not going to be a ton of help on this case.

“He was an older gentleman, probably around seventy, but he was very vital and knew a lot about theater,” Penny said, concentrating on cataloging the areas of unsold seats for the once and future Fleetwood Mac vocalist. “I think it bothered him that we didn’t do more plays and musicals here, that it’s more often concerts, you know?” She clicked onto a page advertising the Flying Karamazov Brothers.

“Was he friendly with anyone who worked here?” I pushed on. “Anyone who might have been special to him?” I had to keep the fiction of a possible inheritance alive, even while trying to find out if Lawrence had made any mortal enemies during his time at the Basie.

That distracted Penny from her web browsing. “Friendly?” she echoed, and then stifled a rueful chuckle badly. “I don’t
think Larry would condescend to be friendly with anyone who would work in such a dismal corner of show business. He clearly considered himself meant to be hobnobbing with the talent, not the staff.” She shook her head, seemingly to herself, and looked back at the computer screen. “And the fact is, we never have contact with the artists.”

“I thought you didn’t know him well,” I said quietly. Jeannie switched Oliver from her left shoulder to her right expertly, without so much of a whimper from the baby. Jeannie, however, now that her son was getting a little larger and she hadn’t worked out since before he was born, grunted a little.

Penny’s head twitched a little, uneasy at having been caught in an unguarded moment. “I didn’t,” she said in a clipped tone. “That was just the aura he gave off. I’m sorry, but I don’t think I could tell you anything else.” She stood up in an effort to signal to us that the interview was over. But I wanted a little more time, particularly since Penny seemed to want me out.

“Oops,” Jeannie said. Then she did that thing where the parent holds up the child and sniffs at his diaper, which would bother me much more if I didn’t recall doing it myself when Melissa was that age. “I’m afraid someone needs to be changed. Do you mind?” She pointed at the counter next to the coffeemaker while clearly measuring the distance visually, to ensure that Oliver wouldn’t be anywhere near anything dangerous. Then without waiting for a response, she reached for her diaper bag, conveniently hanging off the handle of Oliver’s stroller, a contraption that probably had its own area code. Jeannie had her changing mat spread out on the counter (after wiping the counter down with a disinfectant wipe) before Penny could protest or suggest she move to the ladies’ room.

I smiled at Penny with a look that said, “New mother; whatcha gonna do?” “It sounds like Mr. Laurentz wasn’t an especially popular figure while he was working here,” I
said. “Was it just his attitude, or were there some people who didn’t like him more than others?”

Penny looked like she’d bitten into a chocolate doughnut and found it tasted like fish. “I don’t like to speak ill of the dead,” she said.

“It’s okay. He can’t hear you.” I knew that for a fact, since Lawrence was nowhere nearby. There
was
another ghost in the room, however, one who must have been from the 1930s based on his overcoat and hat. He looked to be in his fifties and was floating along horizontally, looking as close to asleep as the dearly departed can get.

“Well, all I can say is that when the news that Larry died got back to the department, there were some people who really weren’t all that sad.” Penny blinked a couple of times and drew a breath through clenched teeth.

“Like who?” Jeannie asked as she put a new diaper on Oliver.

“Oh, I don’t want to name names,” Penny said.

Jeannie gathered Oliver from the countertop, rolled up the changing pad and then grabbed the used diaper, which she had closed up tightly. She leaned toward Penny, although not too close because the woman still had a sniffle.

“Should I just drop this in the wastebasket?” she asked.

Penny gave us three names before we left, and in thanks, Jeannie put the diaper into a biodegradable plastic bag and disposed of it in the restroom.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad having her along on the investigation, after all.

Ten

I managed to convince the new parents—after failing to
make my case that investigating a possible murder could be dangerous for an infant—that I’d be doing no detecting at all until the next day, which I hoped would give me time to think of a way to extricate myself from days of sleuthing with an obsessive mother and a nice little guy who might burst into loud, easy-to-locate tears at any given moment.

I don’t know a great deal about murder investigations, but I’m pretty sure that would be bad.

Melissa and I drove home from Jeannie and Tony’s, Liss texting her BFF, Wendy, about something that went on in school that day—or the utter tragedy that there had actually
been
school that day, after the buildup that had convinced them they’d be sledding and throwing snowballs instead—and me musing on how I’d gotten hip-deep in playing detective for a guy who, let’s face it, was already dead.

Nan and Morgan Henderson had not yet returned from their dinner, so the evening was spent in consultation with
Paul and Maxie, then reporting in to Mom, who passed on our complete and utter lack of new information to Lawrence Laurentz (whom I still suspected might be a dangerous lunatic or criminal, neither of which I wanted keeping company with my mother for the duration).

I’d have to ask McElone to check him out the next day. Not calling her today had been a cowardly mistake. And one I would, under similar circumstances, no doubt make again.

When my guests arrived back at the house around nine, I believe I might have added to their suspicion that
I
was a dangerous lunatic by suggesting, in an ill-fated attempt to keep myself in their good graces, that we have karaoke night.

“Karaoke night,” Morgan parroted, with his usual deadpan.

“It sounds…lovely,” Nan attempted. “But we have early plans tomorrow, so I think we’ll turn in.”

“Early plans?” I asked.

“Yes,” Nan said, hustling her husband out of the room without further elaboration. I hoped the early plans didn’t involve finding other lodging possibilities. I began to fear the lousy reviews these two would be posting on TripAdvisor.

That night, when lying sleepless in bed, I thought mostly about my father.

I simply didn’t believe the part of Lawrence’s story in which Dad had supposedly exiled himself from the rest of the world—ghost and otherwise—for no discernible reason. It was odd that he hadn’t come to see Mom for weeks, especially without letting her know that would happen. It wasn’t like my father, dead or alive, to cause us worry.

That had been, perhaps, the most difficult part of his battle with the cancer that killed him. He detested seeing Mom and me so concerned about him, so sad that he wasn’t getting better, so terrified that the prognosis was dire. Particularly because it proved to be correct.

“I don’t want you to worry about me, baby girl,” he’d said to me the last time we spoke. I saw Dad a few times after, but he was asleep every time—he’d been in terrible pain, on morphine, and had barely registered recognition when I walked in the door of his hospital room. “I want to know that you’ll take care of your mother.”

“Mom will be fine,” I’d told him during that last conversation, regretting the message that she would get by just dandy without him. “She’s a lot tougher than you give her credit for. All we’re thinking about now is you getting well.”

Dad shook his head. “That’s not going to happen, Alison,” he said. When he called me by name, I knew he was serious. Mostly, it was “baby girl.”

“Sure it will. You’ll get stronger.” He gave me a look that indicated something less than complete confidence. I was lying, and we both knew it. He was in such pain that he could only talk for a minute or so at a time, and on enough morphine to make fifty addicts happy. It didn’t seem to be helping. He drew in a lot of quick, unexpected breaths when the pain struck especially hard.

I hate hospitals, by the way. Even when I gave birth to Melissa—the only happy time one spends in such a place—I hated the hospital and left the minute it was possible. There’s only so much hope you can summon on linoleum floors and under dropped ceilings. Whenever I was in a hospital room with Dad, we’d discuss what we’d have done to liven up the décor. Tops on the list were hardwood floors and incandescent lighting. Florescent sucks.

Again, he shook his head. “You don’t have to sugarcoat it for me,” he said. “I know the deal, and I’ve had a good life. I got no kicks coming.” That was a quote from his father, my grandfather, that we both loved. “But you take care of Mom, okay?”

“Dad…”

He fixed his gaze on me. “I promise I’ll try as hard as I can, but you have to promise to take care of Mom. Okay?”

I fixed my gaze on him. “You promise. You’ll never give up.”

“Promise. Now,
you
promise.”

I was putting such effort into not crying that I could only nod and say, “Okay.”

Dad had then closed his eyes and was snoring within a minute.

Tonight, wondering about his absence five years after his death, I finally let the tears go. But they weren’t because Dad had died. They were tears of self-pity because I now knew he could have come back to call me “baby girl” again, and with only one exception, he hadn’t.

“Larry Laurentz?” Penny Fields put on a show of trying to
remember her co-worker when I spoke to her on Thursday morning. It was clear from her amateur performance she could have answered the question without hesitation, but felt it was best if she seemed less concerned. “Oh yes. Poor man. Went very suddenly, if I remember correctly.”

Penny, who was the box office manager for the Count Basie Theatre, stood about five foot one but had an authoritative presence when she wasn’t being unconvincing in her manner. She’d agreed to talk to Jeannie and me after we’d barged our way through the front door and gone through three different employees before finding someone who’d worked with Lawrence at the box office. The Basie had a low rate of turnover; the box office staff was very stable, she said.

“Yes,” I agreed. “It was extremely sudden. And I’m wondering what kind of man he was.” I’d told Penny that I was a private detective but had foregone the whole maybe-it-was-murder scenario as potentially off-putting, substituting instead the idea that Lawrence had left “a little money” in his will, and I was tracking down the next of kin.

“I didn’t know him very well,” Penny answered. She
tapped some keys on the computer keyboard in front of her; I thought she was looking up Lawrence’s employee record, which might have been helpful, but as it turned out, she was looking at a page regarding the upcoming Stevie Nicks concert at the Basie. That wasn’t helpful, except perhaps to Ms. Nicks.