Inspector Specter, page 17
I’d held off on telling him about Vinnie the Goldfish because I wasn’t sure yet whether Lay-Z had been lying to get us to go away, or even if this Vinnie person actually existed. No sense getting Malcolm’s hopes up if we’d simply been misled by a teenager with a wildly long neck.
“Perhaps we should talk to Lamont’s mother,” Paul suggested.
I gave him a look.
“Perhaps not. Let’s see what Maxie finds out.”
On cue, Maxie dropped down through the ceiling in her hide-a-larger-object trench coat, which no doubt meant she had the laptop with her. As she opened the coat, which vanished as soon as she was clear of the ceiling, I could see she was wearing her usual painted-on jeans and black T-shirt, this time bearing the words “Kiss My Grits.” I had no idea what that meant, and was glad.
“I’ve been looking up Vinnie the Minnow,” she said.
“Goldfish,” the rest of us gave her back in unison.
Maxie nodded. “That explains things.” She started tapping away at the keyboard, which she rested on the counter near the stove. Luckily, the stove was not in operation. Ghosts tend to overlook things like that.
Dad, picking up on a theme that I thought had been put to rest, was still looking grim. He pointed at me. “If you think you’re going to start mixing it up with gangsters, young lady, you’re not setting a foot outside that door without me, you understand?”
A sigh escaped my lips that was at least forty percent unintentional. “I already promised you, Dad, and I promised Mom, and I promised Liss, that there is no way I’m talking to any gangsters besides Harry the Fish, who really can’t do me all that much harm from the second buoy to the left off the pier in Point Pleasant. So don’t worry, all right?”
“So what are you going to do when you find this Vinnie the Guppy?” Maxie asked.
“Goldfish!”
She grinned. “I just wanted to see if you were listening that time.”
I decided to forget that last part had happened. “I’m going to let the police know if I can make a connection between Vinnie and Detective Ferry,” I said. “What I’m thinking right now is that I’ll confront Harry the Fish with any evidence you can dig up and see how he reacts.” I glanced at Paul, who beamed approvingly. It was like I had three parents in the room, and only one of them was still alive.
“I don’t see how this gets us closer to finding Lieutenant McElone,” Melissa said, wiping Oliver’s mouth with a paper napkin, which he did not appreciate. “Aren’t we supposed to be more worried about her than about what happened to Detective Ferry? I mean, it’s bad that he’s dead and all, but we can’t make that unhappen.”
As usual, Liss had managed to articulate what most of us in the room (I can never completely make any assumptions about Maxie) were already thinking: We needed to find McElone soon, or her situation might become just as unfixable as Martin Ferry’s.
“Finding out more about what happened to the detective will only help us find Lieutenant McElone,” Paul explained to Liss. “If we know who’s behind it, we’ll know their motivation for killing the detective, and that will help us figure out where the lieutenant might have gone for her investigation.”
It was double-talk, but it was good double-talk. What Paul really could have said was, We have no way to find McElone, so we’re concentrating on the things we can do and hoping something will happen. But that would have upset Liss. In fact, it would have upset me. Not thinking about what happened to the lieutenant was my new hobby. And now—dammit!—I was thinking of her as a friend.
“So what do you think we need to do?” I started to say. But I was about halfway through think when Maxie started bellowing from the stove area.
“Here we go!” she said. “Vincent Louis Francis Manfred Monroe is the grandson of Harry ‘the Fish’ Monroe.”
“His grandson!” Mom exclaimed.
“Oh no,” Josh said, grinning. “Bringing his grandson into the family business? The man is a monster.”
Mom flattened out her lips. “It’s not the same kind of business as you and Sy, Joshua,” she reminded him, as if that were necessary. Josh nodded at her in apology for the imagined insult.
“Don’t sass your mother-in-law,” Dad chimed in, but luckily Josh couldn’t hear him. I chose not to react, so I wouldn’t have to repeat it to my boyfriend.
“Anyway,” Maxie went on, “Vinnie’s only twenty-four, but he’s been very busy the past few years. I found his juvie records—they’re supposed to be sealed, but, you know, I’m me. Got himself arrested the first time when he was sixteen for stealing someone’s Hyundai in Asbury Park. Charges were dismissed after the aggrieved party appears to have dropped the complaint, saying she had just forgotten that she’d actually parked the car where it was found.”
“Where was that?” Melissa asked.
“Spring Lake, only five miles away. Then when he was eighteen, Vincent found himself in some trouble with the law again, charges of possession of a controlled substance with the intent to distribute.” She stole a glance at Melissa to see if she’d gone too far.
“What was he dealing?” my eleven-year-old asked as she helped Jeannie’s eleven-month-old down from his high chair. “Weed? Coke?” I gave some thought to restricting her television hours, but that was a discussion for another day.
Maxie looked a little stunned. “Weed, mostly.”
Liss nodded. “Figures.” Oliver crawled over to me, and I advised him not to tell his mother that my eleven-year-old daughter thought she was a narc. But he was clearly not pleased about having nothing to stand and cruise on. The longer he stayed with us, it seemed, the more he wanted to be on his feet.
“In the past year,” Maxie went on, “Vinnie has been doing much better. He hasn’t been arrested once in close to sixteen months.”
“What a guy,” I said. “See? Rehabilitation works.”
She shook her head. “Not so much. The unencrypted sections of Detective Ferry’s files that Paul and I looked at have tons of references to ‘Goldfish.’ Personally, I thought the detective was partial to cheddar cheese crackers.”
“For the record, I never thought that,” Paul threw in.
“When you say they have references, what do you mean?” Mom asked.
Josh didn’t say anything, and most men would. I always like to watch Josh during exchanges like this. He can’t hear at least half the conversation, but a casual observer would have no idea anything special was going on around him. Now, he was sitting on one of the bar stools I use as kitchen chairs around my center island, smiling, watching me whenever no one he could hear was talking. He is a calm man, one who is content to be told what’s going on when it’s appropriate and not demanding to be the center of attention all the time.
Paul did not wait for Maxie to respond to Mom. “The lieutenant didn’t have all of Martin Ferry’s case files, but she did have some reports he’d filed in his investigation of Harry the Fish and Barnett ‘Buster’ Hockney, who appear to have been competitors,” he said. “Vinnie’s nickname comes up in connection with Hockney, but there are no direct links. I can’t tell if Vinnie and Buster were working together against Harry, or if Harry was using Vinnie to spy on the competition. The detective did not name sources in his notes, perhaps to avoid them being found by the wrong person. That’s why the data kept in the encrypted file is so vital to the investigation. I’m almost certain that’s where his best information would be.”
“But Lieutenant McElone encrypted the file,” Melissa pointed out, holding Oliver by his right hand so he could cruise around the room searching for . . . something. They were making the rounds of the kitchen. “That would mean she’s seen the stuff in there.”
Paul stroked his goatee—always a sign that there was something new to think about—and considered. “You’re right, Melissa. The lieutenant has information we don’t, and it led her in a direction that doesn’t seem to have gone well.”
“Malcolm Kidder said he’s been in touch with the Harbor Haven police and the Seaside Heights police,” I said, mostly for Josh’s benefit, who’d been so patient I felt he deserved to be rewarded. “So there’s no point in duplicating that effort.”
Josh, his eyes showing gratitude for being included, asked, “Has Phyllis Coates gotten back to you? She was supposed to check on Harry the Fish’s autopsy.”
I put my arm around him. “That’s actually a very good question.” I pulled my phone out of my pocket with my free hand and speed-dialed Phyllis, who answered on the second ring.
“I hear from a couple of places that Harry the Fish drowned in his car,” she said. Phyllis doesn’t bother much with pleasantries, although she’s always pleasant. Well, most of the time. There’s also no point in asking who her sources are. She’d go to jail before revealing them—and actually did so once, for three days. “Now, how could you have known that?”
“I didn’t call to talk about what I know,” I said. “I called to talk about what you know. How does a guy drown and then show up in completely dry clothes in the front seat of his car?”
“It’s unlikely he did it on his own,” she answered. “I’m guessing a buddy or two helped him out. Maybe the Fish was the designated drowner that night.” Phyllis sometimes thinks she’s funnier than she really is. One indulges her.
“Why bother? Why not leave him in the ocean?”
Phyllis chuckled. No doubt she’d been steering the conversation into this area so she could drop a bomb. “Ah, but that’s the thing, sweetie. Harry wasn’t in the ocean when he died. His lungs were full of both fresh and salt water. Traces of seaweed, too.”
Paul must have read my face. “What?” he demanded.
“He had both fresh water and salt water in his lungs?” I repeat things and make myself sound like an idiot just for the sake of some see-through people who populate my house. And yet have I ever been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize? I have not.
Paul looked intrigued. Mom and Dad turned to face me. Melissa helped Oliver move around some more, but he wouldn’t let go of her hand. Josh tightened his arm around my waist.
“That must mean there was salt water and then fresh, or the other way around,” Paul suggested. “Otherwise, it would just be fresh water with some salt in it. I wish we could see the report.”
Maxie lay back, the laptop on her outstretched legs. “If we’re done here, I’ve got somewhere to go,” she said, and then, without waiting for a reply, shot through the wall toward the beach.
“I’m on it,” Dad said, and followed Maxie out at a discreet distance.
“This habit of hers is becoming inconvenient,” Paul observed.
“Yep,” Phyllis answered, unaware of the other conversation happening in the room with me. “My source in the ME’s office in Ocean County isn’t as good as the one in Monmouth, but that’s what I’m hearing. There’s also some evidence that Harry didn’t drive the car to where it was found. Like there were no fingerprints on the steering wheel, and it was ninety-six degrees that day; he sure as hell wasn’t wearing gloves.”
The last time I’d seen Harry the Fish, he was thirty feet out in the ocean and couldn’t move back far enough to reach land. And since ghosts usually start where they died, Harry must have been killed in the ocean. Probably. How could the water inside his lungs be from somewhere else?
“This is confusing,” I said aloud, to no one in particular.
“It sure is,” Phyllis agreed. “The cops are baffled. They say there’s no evidence Harry had seriously annoyed anybody in his business recently. They think maybe this was personal.”
“Personal? As opposed to what? Impersonal?”
“Personal,” Phyllis repeated. “Like not business. They think maybe it was something like his wife, Teresa, was mad at him. In that family, you probably know a few people who would not have ethical concerns if you approached them the right way about filling a guy’s lungs with fresh water. Tap water, probably.”
Great. So we had the enlightening information that Harry the Fish wasn’t drowned in Evian water. “Why would Teresa be mad at him?”
“Why is anyone’s wife mad at them? I’m guessing Harry was fishing in uncharted waters.”
Paul moved a little closer (as if he could be heard over the phone, or by Phyllis at all) and said, “Ask her about Vinnie.”
“What about his grandson, Vinnie the Goldfish?” I asked. Sometimes it’s fun to trip Phyllis up.
“Vinnie’s a possibility,” Phyllis answered. She’s not so easy to trip. “Some of the cops say there was friction between the two of them, and Vinnie might have been looking for someone else to fund some of his . . . activities.”
I only had one name left to use. “Buster Hockney?” I asked.
“Maybe. Buster wouldn’t mind tweaking Harry the Fish a little. They were competing in some territories.”
Phyllis has a good deal of experience reporting crime stories. “How do you approach a guy like Buster?” I asked, not commenting on how big a “tweak” drowning was.
“From very far away.” And then she hung up; that’s Phyllis. The last piece of advice wasn’t a lot of help. I would have been glad Dad wasn’t there to hear her say it, but my mother is a big snitch and would tell him at her earliest convenience anyway.
“There are two places to go next, assuming you are staying away from Buster,” Paul said without being asked. Melissa looked up from tickling Oliver, who was lying on the kitchen floor specifically for that purpose. When she stopped, he looked annoyed. Who was interrupting his tickling? But Liss looked worried.
“I’m not going anywhere near Buster Hockney,” I assured everyone. “What are the options?” I asked Paul.
“You can go see Vinnie the Goldfish, if you can find him.”
“Option two, please.” I wanted to see Vinnie about four percent more than I wanted to see Buster.
“Something Phyllis said struck a chord,” Paul said, goatee a-stroking. “Something about thinking that Harry the Fish’s wife might have had a personal motive, that it wasn’t business.”
“You want me to find Harry’s wife?” We were increasing my willingness, but not that much.
“No. I think perhaps we should consider that approach when it comes to the murder of Detective Ferry. But start with his daughter.”
Twenty-two
I’m not huge on interviewing grieving people. I feel like an intruder, an annoyance, someone who would be better off, say, hosting a spook show at her haunted guesthouse. But that’s just me.
I had indeed been present for the Saturday morning ghost-a-thon. Rita and Stephanie had not attended (I think Rita was still rethinking the whole hanging-with-ghosts thing), but Joe had come and Bonnie, of all people, had risen early to watch as Paul had attempted the pull-out-the-tablecloth trick on my den’s side table (he fails miserably whenever he tries, which is why I never put anything the least bit breakable on a table I bought at a yard sale for $10) and Maxie—who had shown up in the morning and I’ll have more on that in a minute—had “walked” a pair of shoes up Joe’s shirt with her hands. Her big special trick was still not in evidence, and I was starting to believe it did not really exist at all.
Don and Tammy attended their first ghost show that morning, as they’d been far too busy touring the area and acting like newlyweds the whole time they’d been in the house to do so until now. They oohed and aahed at the proper moments, giggled with delight at the shoes going up Joe and then hit the road once again for Ocean Grove, where they’d heard there was good antiquing.
I’d gotten another non-update from Malcolm Kidder, who informed me that his children were starting to ask questions, and he didn’t know how much longer he could hold them off. Personally, I think it’s usually the best thing to tell kids the truth, but the last thing that man needed right now was to hear my parenting philosophy. He said there had been no further reports from either police department, and he was going to visit with an old friend of McElone’s, who might have an idea of where she’d go if things got really hairy. He’d call back later, he said.
My father had returned from his Maxie-veillance the night before with little to report. “She rushed out to the beach, went up and down about a mile in either direction and then headed toward town. I followed to about Route 35, but she was too fast for me, and I lost her.” He apologized a few hundred times. Paul, Mom, Liss and I got tired of forgiving him after a while and he stopped.
So my tasks for today were to talk to Martin Ferry’s daughter, Natasha, and find out more about her mother, because ex-wives make really good suspects in murder cases, something I was certain to keep in mind in the event that my ex, The Swine, ever found himself more dead than he would prefer. I’d already established a really good alibi for myself by living three thousand miles from Steven and having as little to do with him as possible.
Natasha lived with her boyfriend, Rolfe, in an apartment in Highland Park over Ruthie’s, a bagel shop and café. Although Natasha was to start college in Boston the next month, Rolfe was about to be a junior at Rutgers, which was just over the Raritan River in New Brunswick. It was about to become a long-distance relationship, she said, and that would be difficult.
For an eighteen-year-old recent high school graduate, Natasha Ferry seemed very much like a twenty-four-year-old recent grad student about to begin her career in either astrophysics or public relations. She was a very self-possessed young woman, someone her father was no doubt quite proud of when he was alive, and even after.
Then I remembered she was barely seven years older than Melissa, living with her boyfriend and sporting a shoulder tattoo of a rose, and I decided on the spot to homeschool Liss for the rest of her life, possibly adding a moat to my front yard and assigning a ghost guardian to her for the rest of her life. Not Maxie.
