Chance of a Ghost (33 page)

Finally, as quietly and unobtrusively as I could, I looked up at Maxie and asked, “No Dad?”

“I’m not sure,” she said. “I saw some shoes going through the roof, but by the time I got out there, whoever it was had gone. Nothing else.”

The glare from the angry ghost was distracting me. I look up and asked, “Can I help you with something?”

Maxie got between us, but her movement did not distract the ghost from the staring contest he appeared to think we were having, as he could look through her. But I didn’t get to ask him anything else because Josh had quickly returned from the front of the store.

“I’m sorry, but this is going to take some time,” he said.

“Don’t be sorry. This is your business. I’m taking up your time. I tell you what; I’ll come back when your grandfather is here, during the week.” I really just wanted to get out of the line of that ghost’s hostile glare so I could think clearly. This guy was really spooking me out, and given my usual circumstances, that’s saying something.

Maxie reached over and pulled off the grim ghost’s black hat. Nothing; he didn’t even try to reach for it back. “Geez!” she hollered.

I decided it was time to make a run for it. “Thanks,” I said to Josh. “Should I call before I show up next time?”

He took hold of my arm gently as I walked by. “Wait,” he said. “Maybe I could still tell you some of those stories about your dad. Like”—he looked away, in a shy sort of maneuver—“over dinner or something.”

“Oh man!” Maxie hollered. “He’s asking you out on a date!” She turned toward Grumpy. “Do you see this?” He, of course, did not respond. “I know!” Maxie answered.

I chose to ignore their antics. “I’d really like that,” I told Josh, and he smiled at me. I picked up a business card from the desk with his name on it. “I’ll text you my cell number and we can figure out a time and place.”

“That’s so twenty-first century,” he said. “I like it.” Then he went to attend to his customer, who was choosing among about seventeen shades of mauve.

As I turned to leave, I could sort of feel Maxie falling in behind me, muttering to herself about how a guy like that could ask me out. Like she’d had a chance.

But I decided to take one last parting glance at the angry-looking gentleman floating near the back window of the store. And sure enough, he was still there, still staring and still looking like I’d stolen his lunch money and called him a name. He narrowed his eyes as I moved away, and just as I was leaving the store, I heard him whisper: “Alison.”

I ran. From the safest place I could think to have gone.

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.”

Uh-oh. “I’m so sorry to hear that. What happened?” I asked.

“Heart,” Jerry sighed. “He’d been frail for a long time. I don’t think he appeared in a production for more than a year.” Well before Lawrence died.

“One other thing,” I moved on. “Can you think of a reason someone would want to be rid of Mr. Laurentz?”

“I can think of thousands.” Droll.

“Do you know if he left a large estate? Money, property, anything like that?”

“You haven’t checked on such things?” he asked, unimpressed with me.

“An investigator asks the same questions sometimes to see what answers she’ll get,” I explained, parroting something Paul had told me. “So, Mr. Laurentz’s estate?”

“You’d have to ask his accountant,” Jerry sniffed. “The
man was a ticket seller at a regional theater. I doubt he was sitting on the Hope Diamond and waiting for the right moment to cash in.”

As apologies went, it left me just a little unsatisfied.

“I don’t see how this is getting us closer to Grampa,”
Melissa argued. I was driving her to a bowling party for one of her friends from school, and gift in hand, she was still complaining about not doing any investigating today. Meanwhile, my new “official” assistant, Jeannie, had begged off for the day, saying she didn’t work weekends, which was not making her husband, Tony, happy. “You and Jeannie talked to a bunch of people yesterday, I talked to Lieutenant McElone, but even if we find out what happened to Mr. Laurentz, how does that help us get Grampa to come back?”

“That is a good question,” I admitted. “But I don’t have an answer for you now.”

“I don’t see why I have to sit in the backseat,” Maxie interjected. This time, I’d actually asked her to come along, as per Paul’s suggestion. She’d have work to do.

“I’m going to see if Phyllis gets anywhere with the theater troupe arrest angle,” I told Liss, doing my best to ignore the dead woman in the car with us. “There’s nowhere to go with the medical examiner’s report. I can go back and question some of the people I’ve already questioned—especially Penny Fields, now that I know she found Lawrence’s body—but I don’t know if I’m going to do that today. So that’s where we stand in the investigation.”

“So why am I going bowling for Justin Krenshaw’s birthday?” Melissa moaned.

“You like bowling.”

“I don’t like Justin Krenshaw.”

“Then why are you going to his birthday party?” Maxie asked.

“That’s what I’d like to know,” Liss answered.

“You were invited,” I reminded her.

“Hmmph.” That was Maxie, not Melissa. Occasionally I wonder which one is more mature. The rest of the time, I’m positive it’s Melissa.

I chose not to listen to the rest of the conversation (Maxie has a way of convincing Melissa that everything is my fault) and pondered Liss’s original question: How
was
this getting me any closer to finding Dad or figuring out exactly what was going on with him? And when I searched my heart, the fact was, I cared more about that than I did about what happened to Lawrence Laurentz. I know; I’m a bad person and a lousy private investigator. I have never suspected otherwise.