Inspector Specter, page 21
I felt like I was getting the idea, but I didn’t know what it was. “So?”
“So what else was there?”
I knew better than to be a smartass now; give me credit. I closed my eyes. “A couple of cabinets, a box of cereal, a few dishes. A sink. A small countertop with a dish drainer.”
I opened my eyes and saw Dad grinning. I was getting close. “And in the dish drainer?” he asked.
“A big pasta pot.”
Dad pointed at me. “Right. So what does that tell you?”
Ferry, predictably, got there before I did. “No stove? No cooktop?” he asked. Dad shook his head. “So why a pasta pot when there was no place to cook pasta? It’s not like you could use it in the microwave.”
“What am I missing?” I asked. “What does the pot tell us?”
“That maybe there was another way to drown a guy.” Ferry was already “up on his feet,” pacing back and forth over the front steps to the building. “Maybe they did start drowning him at Anita’s place and then dragged him out to the ocean.”
“They?” I asked.
Ferry glanced sideways. “Seems like it would take more than one person.”
“Why do that?” Dad asked. “If you’re going to drown him, drown him. Why do it in two places?”
Ferry scratched his head. He looked like he should have been wearing a hat. “Maybe just because they wanted it to be confusing. A mixture of salt and fresh water in his lungs? Maybe they wanted it to last longer, really make Harry suffer. I don’t know.”
“They found Harry the Fish in his car, in a dry suit,” I reminded both men. “But he’s still out in the ocean, and he hates it. He hated the water when he was alive.”
Ferry wandered a bit too far, and I saw his foot freeze in midair. That’s what happens when a ghost who’s tethered to a spot tries to go too far. They simply can’t move beyond whatever barrier is fencing them in. “Damn,” he said absently. He shook it off. “Okay, so let’s say Harry the Fish was snitching for Anita. Some of his friends find out about it and they decide they disapprove. They lure him to Anita’s bungalow, maybe find out how she contacted him. And once he’s there, they show their disapproval by filling a pot with water and sticking his head in it. Then, just to be mean, they finish the job in the ocean. Once he’s dead, they bring him back to shore, dry him off, put him in dry clothes and stick him behind the wheel of his car to be discovered.”
“It fits the facts,” I said. “There’s one problem.”
“What’s that?” Dad and Ferry chorused at once.
“Who does that? How crazy do you have to be to go to all that trouble?”
“Pretty crazy,” Ferry said. “There’s only one guy I know batty enough to make it plausible, and that’s Buster Hockney. What we just described would be one of Buster’s more subdued days.”
A shiver went up my shoulders into my neck.
“Did you find anything that indicated Buster and Harry’s grandson Vinnie the Goldfish were working together?” I asked Ferry. “I couldn’t tell whether they were friends or enemies.”
“I could never find out,” the detective admitted. “They spent a lot of time together toward the end—my end, and Harry’s—but I couldn’t get close enough to figure whether Vinnie was trying to undercut his grandfather or get enough inside dope, if you’ll pardon the expression, to help Harry put Buster out of business.”
“What kind of guy is Vinnie?” That question was from Dad.
“Like Buster, but without the creativity,” Ferry said. “He’s mean and violent, but not what you’d call the sharpest tool in the shed.”
“So what do I do now?” I asked Ferry.
“If it was me, I’d squeeze Lay-Z a little more,” Ferry said. “The kid knows more about Buster than he’s saying, and he might be able to put Buster in the bungalow the night Harry died.”
I didn’t relish the idea of going back to the custard stand, especially if it was going to get me closer to Buster Hockney. “What about you?” I said. “We seem to be concentrating on what happened to Harry Monroe, but we’re not getting any closer to finding out who shot you, Detective. What can I do that I haven’t done yet?”
He avoided my eyes. “You’ve done what you can do,” he said. “Let it go.”
That was not the Martin Ferry I . . . honestly didn’t know very well. “You’re being evasive. Have you remembered something? Is this about the thirty thousand dollars?”
This time Ferry did turn toward me, his eyes flashing with anger for a second. He forced himself to relax. “No,” he said. “I haven’t remembered anything about that night. And no, the thirty thousand has nothing to do with it. That money . . . well, that money came to me legally, is all I’m going to say.”
Dad looked at him skeptically. “Detective, if we’re going to help you—”
Ferry didn’t get a chance to temper himself this time; he just turned and shouted. “You’re NOT going to help me!” he yelled. “You can’t help me! I’m dead! There’s nothing left that can be done for me, okay?” And then he wasn’t there anymore.
Like I said before, it takes some ghosts more time to adjust than others, and the ones who died violently are especially likely to be angry. Even Paul, who otherwise had a very mild demeanor, bristled when his killer was mentioned in his presence. Luckily, the subject rarely came up.
“That went well,” I said.
* * *
It turned out I got back to the house at a reasonable hour, mostly because there wasn’t a chance in hell I was going to look for Buster Hockney at night, even if I’d known where to look (oddly, Ferry had vanished without leaving an address lying around on a cocktail napkin for me to use). Besides, Jeannie and Tony would be back late the next afternoon, and I wanted to at least be able to say I’d checked in on Oliver the last night he stayed at my house.
He was, unexpectedly, still awake when Dad and I returned with a few quarts of Jersey Freeze ice cream in tow (I’d have brought Kohr’s frozen custard, but you can’t really transport Kohr’s when it’s hot out—the stuff is partially melted when you get it, and besides, you absolutely need the cone). I handed the quarts off to Mom for quick storage in the freezer. The ice cream would stabilize from the trip, and maybe I could get Oliver to fall asleep in the meantime. But first, I needed to know why he was awake at this hour.
“He was asleep for a while, but then he needed a diaper change,” Melissa reported. “So he cried and I went in to help him, and then he was awake. We figured he could burn off a little energy with the folks.”
Indeed, all six guests were in the den, and the karaoke machine was still warm, indicating they’d been having quite the time. Even Rita, who had been wearing anxiety on her face in place of sunscreen, finally seemed relaxed and happy. Maybe I should stay away from the guesthouse more often.
“You should have heard Joe singing ‘Piano Man’!” Bonnie Claeson told me as soon as I walked in the door. “He sounded just like Billy Joel!”
Joe smiled but looked away. “I didn’t.”
Bonnie hooked her arm through Joe’s, which was a surprise to me but apparently not to anyone else in the room. It was dawning on me that I hadn’t been around much for the past few days.
Stephanie gave me a look that indicated Bonnie might be exaggerating things a tad, but she grinned nonetheless. “I did ‘You’ve Got a Friend,’” she announced proudly.
“I wish I had heard it,” I said. I almost believed me, I was so convincing.
The two ghosts in the room (besides Dad, whom I don’t always count as a ghost) were not concerned with ice cream, babies or karaoke: Maxie was complaining that Melissa wouldn’t simply surrender her laptop permanently, and Paul was asking for an update beyond what I’d texted him after Martin Ferry had evaporated.
“I’ll be right there,” I said, ostensibly to Mom but really to Paul. “I have to see about my pal Ollie.” I dropped down on my knees. “Hello, Ollie. Hello, Ollie. What’s the boy doing up so late? Huh? What?”
“He’s not a puppy,” Maxie said. “He’s sort of a human.”
Oliver wisely ignored Maxie, perhaps taking his cue from me. Tammy and Don were sitting on the floor next to Ollie, rolling a toy train back and forth in front of him, giving him no incentive at all to go back to bed. You had to admire their enthusiasm, if not their grasp of the larger situation.
“Detective Ferry said he’d gotten the thirty thousand dollars legally,” Paul said. I guess he figured that just because I couldn’t talk to him right now didn’t mean he couldn’t dive in. That’s Paul. Though I was grateful that he was contributing to the investigation instead of competing with the local power company. “There are only a few ways that is a plausible scenario.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t stimulate Oliver quite so much right now,” I suggested to Tammy Coburn. “I think he needs to get some sleep.”
“Oh, of course!” Tammy said. She looked horrified that she’d done something “wrong,” and leaned back. I’d have to explain later that I wasn’t trying to criticize her behavior. This is the life of an innkeeper.
“He could have inherited the money,” Paul went on. I’m not sure if he was talking to anyone but himself. “He could have won it, in the lottery, perhaps. He could have had a side business, a legitimate one. Or . . .”
“What?” I said, pretending to talk to Oliver, who was annoyed that the train was no longer going back and forth on the floor next to him. He pulled himself up on the armchair near the spot where we were sitting and reached a hand out toward the train, trying to figure how to grab it.
“It’s possible there’s another way Ferry got thirty thousand dollars, especially if he was in need of it, if he’d fallen into debt, perhaps.” Paul’s goatee-stroking was reaching a fever pitch.
“Is it something I need to research?” Maxie asked. “I could borrow Melissa’s laptop . . .”
“Forget it,” Liss pretended to tell Oliver. It wasn’t that we didn’t want to let the guests know there were ghosts in the room—we are billed as a haunted guesthouse, after all—but I didn’t want to bring all my guests into my sideline as an investigator. Besides, it was more that repeating each line of a conversation can be tedious, time consuming and, in this instance, a little too close to smearing a man’s reputation in public.
Oliver moved a foot toward the train and caught himself on the chair. Too scary.
“It wouldn’t be a matter of public record,” Paul said. “There would be no paper trail without access to all sorts of accounts we don’t have.”
“What is it?” Again, me cooing at Ollie. You get good at it after a while.
“I’m not prepared to say yet,” Paul said. “It’s possible the information would be embarrassing to the detective, and I would not want to be the cause of that.” Unexpectedly, he turned toward Mom. “Loretta, I think we need more information out of Detective Ferry, and he appears to become agitated when it’s Alison doing the asking. Would you mind going over there tomorrow morning?”
I thought that was a touch insulting, but I didn’t want to say anything. I just humphed, but nobody seemed to notice.
“I’ll go along with her,” Dad told Paul. “For backup.”
Mom was watching the conversation but not reacting. Clearly, she didn’t think she’d need backup but was just as happy to have Dad along for the ride. She nodded imperceptibly, drawing on a lifetime of interacting with ghosts and making sure no one (for a long time, including me) could tell.
“Good,” Paul said. “I’ll send you a message with the questions I need answered.” He pointed to his head to indicate this would be a Ghostergram (a Ghosternet message aimed at one spirit) to Dad.
“I think he wants to walk,” Tammy said, pointing at Oliver.
“Stop him, Liss,” I warned. Melissa pulled Oliver, who looked surprised and irritated, onto her lap. Tammy seemed shocked, so I turned to her. “His mom’s coming back tomorrow,” I said. “Don’t want her to miss his first steps.”
“How would she know?” Stephanie asked.
That stopped me. It was a good question. “Okay, let him walk if he wants to,” I said to Liss. She did nothing, but Oliver pulled himself back up to a standing position and eyed the train again. His left foot was definitely in on the plan, but his right hadn’t necessarily gotten the memo yet. He pivoted.
The guests gathered around. They weren’t all parents, but they all had some family; it was a decent bet each of them had probably, at some time or another, seen a child take his or her first step. So you’d think they wouldn’t find this moment quite so magical.
But even Maxie was paying rapt attention. Paul ceased going on about clues or stratagems for the moment. He was watching, too.
But once Oliver, until now focused on the amazing train toy that he just had to have, noticed the volume level in the room drop to a whisper, he looked up to investigate. There were so many eyes focused on him that he must have found it completely overwhelming. He leaned forward, then back, fell on his diaper and started to cry.
“Aw . . .” Melissa said, and she reached over to give Ollie a hug. “I think he’s more tired than he knows.” He sobbed on her shoulder for a moment, then regressed to sniffling, which indicated he probably was on his way to sleep. Liss has an unerring instinct for kids; someday she’ll probably be a great teacher or a great mom, or both. Assuming she decides not to take over the world. While being a mom and a teacher.
Paul watched Melissa carry Oliver in the direction of his crib, hitched his shoulders and looked back down at me. “So Lieutenant McElone had been in the bungalow recently. What does that tell us?”
“Time for ice cream,” I said to the guests. That was also intended to inform Paul that I was tired and didn’t want to talk about this anymore tonight. “Who’s interested?”
Nobody, as it turned out. Stephanie and Rita headed up to their room, thanking me for a lovely evening I had not attended. Joe and Bonnie begged off, saying they wanted to go for a walk on the beach now that the temperature had moderated somewhat. Tammy and Don had plans to drive all the way to Vineland, about a two-hour trip, to go to the last drive-in theater in New Jersey. There was, they said, a midnight show. I began to think they did not sleep.
Mom, however, did sleep. “I think I’m going to hit the road,” she said once the Coburns had left. “It seems I have somewhere to go in the morning, and I’m not as young as I used to be.”
“But you’re still younger now than you’ll be tomorrow,” Dad reminded her. He thought, for reasons that defy logic, that he was being encouraging.
My mother shot him a look, saw he was innocent and smiled. They have the kind of marriage that has truly prevailed over every possible obstacle, even the biggest one. They left together, talking about their plans to come back to welcome Jeannie and Tony back tomorrow.
When Melissa returned from putting Ollie to bed, we were alone in the room with our two resident ghosts. And I was fading fast.
“Alison,” Paul began.
I held up a hand. “Not tonight, Paul. I don’t have anything left. Tomorrow morning, I promise. Early.” And I started toward the staircase to go to bed without even putting the karaoke machine away. It could wait.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Maxie’s body tense as if she’d heard a noise outside. “Boo-yah!” she shouted, and blasted her way across the room to the outside wall. She was gone in no time.
“Boo-yah?” Paul repeated. He shook his head in confusion.
But it confirmed a suspicion I’d been having for some time now. “So that’s what she’s been doing,” I said.
Melissa looked at me, grinning; at worst she’s on my level and usually ahead of me. “You think so?”
“I’d bet on it.”
Paul scrutinized us carefully, his eyes showing a total lack of understanding. “You’ve discovered where Maxie has been rushing out to every day and night?” he asked.
“I think so,” I said. “But I’ll have to confirm it, of course. I’ll do that tomorrow, too.” And I turned back toward the staircase.
“Alison!” Paul called after me. “Aren’t you going to tell me?”
I turned back and gave him an eyebrow raise. “Are you going to tell me where Detective Ferry got the money?”
Paul thought but shook his head. “I don’t think that would be appropriate without asking the detective first,” he said.
“Then you’ll have to wait,” I said, and didn’t stop on my way to bed.
* * *
I did in fact sleep like a rock that night, then woke early, in time to straighten up and get the coffee and tea going before the guests started straggling in. Even in the early morning, the air-conditioning was necessary, but it was more for the humidity than the temperature at this time of the day.
Rita came in first, sans Stephanie for the first time since I’d met her. She said her wife was still sleeping, so she’d come down for coffee and to sit quietly in the den for a while. I provided her with the coffee, and she availed herself of the ice I’d put out and sat with a cool drink. But it was soon obvious that she had come down to talk to me without Stephanie present, so I made myself an iced coffee and asked her if she’d been enjoying her vacation so far. This was an appropriate question because one, I’m an innkeeper, and two, Rita and Stephanie were leaving the next day, but I asked knowing it was an avenue toward whatever she really wanted to discuss, so I was ready for her response.
“The house is lovely, and I really adore the town,” she said. “But I have to admit, even with all the talk in the brochure, the ghost stuff really sort of . . .”
“Scares you?” I said. “That’s not unusual. But I can assure you, the ghosts in this house are incredibly friendly and no threat to anyone.” As long as you didn’t catch Maxie when she was grouchy.
Rita sipped her drink and scanned the ceiling. “It’s not here. I feel perfectly safe inside the house, believe me, Alison. But what I saw out on the beach—”
