Chance of a Ghost (31 page)

Once Liss was out of the way, Nan nodded at me again.
“We’ve both gotten the impression that something is making you tense, and that’s been creating a feeling of…unease with us. Like we’re intruding, and we don’t want to intrude.”

“Oh no!” I protested. “You’re not intruding at all! I’m very happy you’re here. It’s just…well, as I told you the other night, I’ve been having some family difficulties. It’s not a terrible issue, but it has been weighing on my mind. I sincerely apologize if that’s been interfering with you having a good time; that’s the last thing I’d want.”

The couple exchanged a glance; surely they had indeed thought my “family issues” were making their stay uncomfortable. “I don’t want to pry,” Nan said. “But what’s the status of your family situation now? Because if this is going to be an ongoing thing…”

“I promise you, you’ll never even notice anything going on,” I said, probably rashly, since Maxie was already snorting laughter. “Please, tell me what kind of vacation you’d like to have for the next four days, and I’ll do all I can to make that happen.”

Again, a glance between the two. Morgan, of course, looked unenthusiastic—he was probably seeing more lighthouses in his future—but he nodded.

The whistling from the kitchen indicated the kettle was boiling, but before I could move, Melissa ran through like a track star and pushed open the kitchen’s swinging door. Seconds later, the whistling stopped. Nan smiled, perhaps for the first time in days without the undercoating of tension.

“Well, one thing you could do is direct us toward some of the more infamous crime scenes in the area,” she said.

Suuuuure…
“I beg your pardon?” I asked.

She chuckled, and Morgan looked sheepish. “You see, Morgan just retired. He was chief of police in Ringwood, up in Passaic County. He’s really interested in unsolved crimes.”

“Unsolved,” Morgan repeated, nodding.

Nan tilted her head toward him and lowered her voice almost to a whisper. “He had to quit his job because he can barely hear. He usually wears hearing aids, but he thinks they make him look old. So he takes them out and repeats things people say to him like that’s a conversation.” She rolled her eyes. “Cops.”

A real cop, whose brain I could pick without suffering McElone’s snide condescension? Gold mine! However, immediately asking him to consult on my case might damage this fragile peace we’d just established. Let him settle in on the idea first. “But you’re
not wearing hearing aids now
,” I shouted in Morgan’s direction.

“New models,” he said, giving Nan a look that indicated his displeasure with her sharing his difficulty. “Coming here today.”

“Could you watch for the package?” Nan asked. “He’s so much less grumpy when he can hear.”

“I absolutely will,” I said, wondering what a less grumpy Morgan would be like.

Nan raised her voice back to a level that Morgan, who was leaning forward in a vain effort to hear her, could pick up. “So if you could furnish us with a list of some crime scenes we might be able to reach from here…” she reminded me.

I looked up at Maxie. “I’ll research that on my computer immediately and get back to you,” I said. “Give me”—Maxie held up both hands—“ten minutes.” Maxie vanished into the ceiling.

“Thank you,” Nan said. “I think this vacation just got a lot better for us.”

“Me, too,” I answered.

Maxie delivered the list to me a few minutes later and I passed it on to Nan. She and Morgan seemed quite pleased with it, although I was now worried about how many notable crime scenes we had in the area. After tea (Morgan had coffee), they said they would get out there and start visiting
the areas suggested the next day, but first they went out to do some shopping and find some dinner.

Once they were on their way, and before I could reflect on the welcome, if odd, turn our relationship had just taken, the doorbell did indeed ring, and Billy the FedEx guy delivered Morgan’s hearing aids, which figured; he’d have to wait until he returned to de-grumpify. I called for Paul, who rose up out of the basement and without prompting began to take stock of the investigation he thought we were conducting, which I was conducting.

“So let’s be clear,” he began, stroking his goatee at a fevered pitch. “We’ve discovered that the box office manager where Mr. Laurentz worked was the person to discover his body and call the authorities. We’ve also established that there were people who worked with him there who were angry with Mr. Laurentz, particularly Ms. Carter, who felt that he had informed on her and caused her to be fired.”

I figured if Paul was going to sum up, I might as well make myself useful—I knew all this stuff already—and began cleaning up the kitchen. There wasn’t much to clean, since making tea and coffee doesn’t require a huge operation, but it was something.

“Then there was the theater company, the Old New Thespians,” he continued without missing a beat.

“New Old Thespians,” I corrected. There weren’t enough dishes to bother with the dishwasher; I’d just wash them by hand in the sink.

“New Old Thespians,” Paul repeated, trying to maintain his rhythm. “Clearly, Mr. Laurentz created a good deal of animosity there, to the point that he was asked to leave the group. But was that enough to anger someone to the point of violence?”

“They got busted for being naked and they think he snitched on them,” I reminded him.

Paul nodded. “Yes. We need to find out which ones were involved and how seriously they were punished. That could
be a motive. The news report Maxie found wasn’t very specific; no names were mentioned. Can you talk to Lieutenant McElone again?”

I put the cups in the dish drainer and wiped my hands with a towel. “I don’t have to,” I told him, thinking I could ask Morgan.”I can utilize the power of the press.”

Seventeen

Saturday

“A bunch of senior citizens stripping down to do
Hair
?”
Phyllis Coates, editor and owner of the
Harbor Haven Chronicle
, threw back her head and laughed. “Oh, I can’t believe I missed that one!”

“Can you find out about it?” I asked.

Phyllis, as I’d expected, looked at me with mock disdain. “Can
I
find out about it?” she echoed. “Whom do you think you’re talking to?” Phyllis, a longtime veteran of the New York
Daily News
, had bought the
Chronicle
as her “retirement plan,” and prided herself on being a tough, fair street reporter. The fact that she was probably old enough to be my mother (and had been my first employer when I was a paper delivery girl at thirteen) was irrelevant.

“I think I’m talking to someone really talented and smart who could do me a great favor if she were so inclined,” I answered. “How am I doing so far?”

Phyllis chuckled. We were standing in her office, which took up only a small section of the overall
Chronicle
work
space, despite the fact that Phyllis was the only full-time employee of the paper. You’d think her work area would take a somewhat higher priority, but the “outside,” as she called it, housed all her previously published issues (aka “the Morgue”), plus advertising brochures, two light tables for studying photographs—Phyllis was just now starting to go digital—and all sorts of other dusty equipment I couldn’t identify.

“Not bad,” she responded. “Flattery will get you everywhere. Tell me, why are you so interested in this geriatric love-in?” She pulled a pencil out from behind her ear and looked on her desk—which was buried under mountains of paper—for a scrap on which to take notes. Phyllis didn’t mind doing some digging for me, as long as she got a story out of it.

I explained the situation briefly, without mentioning any dead people I’d talked to recently. “If I can find out who was arrested and if some people took it more personally than others, it might point me in a direction in the case,” I told her.

Phyllis narrowed her eyes, thinking. “You’re sure this Laurentz guy was murdered?” she said. “You said the ME’s report shows an arrhythmia. People do die from those, you know.”

“Actually, I’m
not
sure,” I said. “If I were sure one way or the other, this would be a lot easier. But until I can verify it was natural causes, I have to assume it was a murder, or I have nothing to investigate. Is this coffee from today?” I pointed at the half-full pot on her hot plate, which was inadvisably close to one of the many stacks of papers in the tiny office.

Phyllis looked, as if the coffeepot’s appearance would give her a clue to its most recent activity. “Today or yesterday,” she said off handedly. I decided not to chance it.

I gave her the date of the
Hair
performance and also the location: Cedar Crest, a forty-minute drive from Harbor
Haven but close to the Freehold area where most of the New Old Thespians lived. Phyllis took note of all of it, then poured herself a cup of the suspect coffee—she’s always been braver than I—sat down behind her incredibly unkempt desk and surveyed me closely.

“What’s the problem, sweetie?” she asked out of nowhere.

That stumped me. “Problem? I told you. I need to find out about what happened to Lawrence Laurentz.”

“Who do you think you’re talking to?” Phyllis demanded. “We’ve known each other a long time.”

“I don’t have other problems, Phyllis. I’d tell you.” I didn’t have problems I wanted to
think
about, anyway….

“You’re acting funny,” she said, then added—not leaving time for me to make a remark about how nobody was laughing—“You’re hesitant when you should be enthusiastic yet you’re rushing into something when you don’t have all the facts. You don’t know if this guy was murdered. You don’t know why someone would want to murder him. I don’t mind helping as long as I can get an article out of it, but this doesn’t seem like you. Is there something else on your mind?”

“It’s about my dad,” I said quietly, surprising myself. I’d had no idea that was going to come out of my mouth.

Phyllis’s eyes got sad. “He’s been gone a few years now,” she said.

I nodded. “Five years. And I know I’m supposed to have moved on by now, but I don’t think I have. And this thing with Lawrence Laurentz feels connected to him somehow.” I couldn’t say it was because Lawrence’s ghost had insisted Dad was involved. “It’s gotten me thinking about him a lot.”

Phyllis drank some of the coffee and barely grimaced at the way it must have tasted. She looked me straight in the eye. “You never get over a loss like that,” she said. “Don’t believe what people tell you; you don’t. And every once in a while, he’s going to pop into your mind and make you sad that he’s not here. You have to expect that once in a while.”

Suddenly I was fighting back tears, successfully, but just barely. “I know. The logical part of my brain is aware of that. But that doesn’t make it hurt less.” I could also have mentioned that I was upset with my father for not coming to visit me and his granddaughter after he was dead, but making Phyllis think I was crazy didn’t really seem like it would be a huge help.

“You know, I think I have a few clips about your dad in the…archives,” she said, tactfully avoiding the word
morgue
. “Come back in a couple of days, and I’ll put something together for you to remember him by when you choose to do so.”

At that second, my battle with the tears was lost. I sniffled, let a few drops go from my eyes, but managed not to break down in loud sobs, which I suppose was a pyrrhic victory. “You’re a good person, Phyllis.”

She patted me on the shoulder. “I know,” she said. “But don’t spread it around. I have a reputation to uphold.”

Paul was right: Later that day, while I was driving home,
Jerry Rasmussen called to apologize for what he described as “my regrettable behavior when we met yesterday.”

“I don’t think you need to apologize,” I said, having rehearsed for this once Paul had suggested the situation could arise. “You were upset, and I was saying things that would rightly upset many people.” The Bluetooth I was wearing made it sound like Jerry was in Siberia, but luckily, the drive from the
Chronicle
office to the guesthouse would be short. That was lucky, too, because the cup of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee I had in the cup holder (I just wasn’t brave enough for Phyllis’s coffee) would probably be an iced coffee by the time I arrived home.

“Still,” Jerry said, apparently trying to convince me that he was indeed an awful person, “I attacked the messenger
when it was the message I found objectionable. I regret my actions, and I wonder how I might make it up to you.”

I wouldn’t have seen that one coming if Paul hadn’t exhibited better foresight than I and had already coached me on a proper answer. “Well, you could answer a couple of questions I still need to figure out,” I said. “For example, how many of the other New Old Thespians lived in Whispering Lakes, like you and Mr. Laurentz?”

“Well, the group’s genesis was actually here,” Jerry answered. “Besides Larry, I’m not sure if you met Frances Walters. She lives there.” I hadn’t told Jerry that Frances had given me his name because I didn’t want him to resent her sending a private eye after him—I’d told him only that I’d gotten his address from “another member of the group.” This might have been his attempt to confirm it had been Frances, but I wasn’t biting, so he hesitated and then went on. “At the time, Marion O’Day was here, too, but she’s since moved to Taos, New Mexico, to live with her daughter. And Barney Lester passed away just a few weeks ago.”