Ghost in the Wind (8 page)

The Jingles.

Once Again had an upcoming booking at the Last Resort, a small, seedy club in Manalapan on Route 9, the very next night. I considered going to see them, talking to Mastrovy and getting a gut reaction regarding whether or not he was a killer.

In retrospect, I probably should have looked up the band first.

The problem with my plan, of course, was that unlike Paul, Vance McTiernan was a mobile ghost who could easily follow me to the Last Resort by hiding in my car, and at this point in the investigation, I really wanted to keep Vance away from Mastrovy.

I wondered if I could actually ask Paul for advice on this. He was not usually so petty, but would he hold a grudge about
what was said the night before, or the fact that I'd asked Vance to join in the spook shows, and refuse to participate in the investigation at all?

I decided that the only thing to do would be to gauge Paul's mood later at the afternoon spook show. I'd play it by ear, and that was usually a reminder that I am essentially tone-deaf under such circumstances.

So I got out my phone and dialed Josh. “How'd you like to take me to a dive bar called the Last Resort to listen to a band that's probably not very good destroy some songs you've loved all your life?” I asked.

“Sounds great! When?” The perfect boyfriend.

“Tomorrow night. Dress grungy, and I don't mean Seattle Grunge, okay?”

“Is this a detective thing?”

“Yeah, but we're keeping that quiet, okay? I don't want Vance to hear anything about us going.” I made sure I said that quietly and looked around the room for any wayward shreds of ghost that might be visible in the walls, floor or ceiling. There was nothing.

“Got it. I'm still seeing you tonight, right?” he asked. “You're not canceling on me, are you?”

“No, of course not. Dinner's like always on a Mom night.”

“Good,” Josh said. “So what's our cover story?”

“Ooh, something exotic. We're going to the movies.”

“Nah,” Josh said. “We're watching a movie at your house the next night.”

Oh, yeah
. “
Ghost
,” I groaned.

“Don't be a sore loser.”

“It's okay. But we're getting to
Lawrence of Arabia
sometime. I want to see it on that screen.” Okay, we needed a cover story to tell everyone, not just Vance. That would make it less likely a slip would occur.

“I've got it,” Josh said. “We're going to see friends of mine and you're meeting them for the first time.”

“Nobody will believe that,” I teased. “You don't have any friends.”

“Their names are A.J. and Liz and we're meeting them after dinner.”

There was something in his voice. “Are these real people?” I asked.

“You'll find out tomorrow.” And he hung up.

So Josh wanted to have his fun. He deserved it. Not many boyfriends are willing to put up with a single mom who has two ghosts in her house. You have to be a little flexible about things when you find one who doesn't consider that odd.

I went downstairs, put out a couple of very minor fires for Tessa and Roberta (who seemed to be developing a friendship) and looked for Paul, who was not around.

Phyllis called while I was in the den. “You sitting down?” she asked.

“No. Should I be?”

“Your choice. It's more of an expression. I've got some information for you, which you can have if you tell me something useful.”

“Spill,” I said. “Tell me what you've got, and I'll let you know what it's worth.” Phyllis brings out the tough-as-nails dame in me.

“Who are you, Barbara Stanwyck?” She didn't wait for a reply but I considered myself more a Jean Arthur kind of girl. “I talked to my friend at the medical examiner's office. It took a little convincing, but he went back over the report on your pal Vanessa McTiernan. And there is something a little strange about it.”

That was promising. “What?” I asked.

“First, you gotta give me something.” Ah, Phyllis. The mistress of quid pro quo.

“Okay. Look for a guy named Lester who vanished from Topeka, Kansas.”

“Why?”

“I don't really know,” I said.

Phyllis's tone, usually businesslike with a tinge of humor, was now just businesslike. “Something I want, please.”

“What is it you want?” Okay, so I was stalling. I didn't have any information Phyllis could use. I didn't have information Phyllis didn't already have.

Let's face it: I didn't have any information.

“You know what I want. Give me something that helps me with the story.”

“I thought you didn't think there was a story,” I reminded her.

Maureen Beckman came into the den with her walker, inching her way toward what must have been the Promised Land: an overstuffed easy chair. She nodded at me as she entered, and I nodded back.

“So you need to tell me something that convinces me there could be,” Phyllis replied.

Well, I wasn't going to make something up. “I've got Vanessa's ex-boyfriend playing a gig with her old band in Manalapan tomorrow night,” I said, lowering my voice a bit. The den is a large room, and even if Maureen could hear what I was saying, it probably wouldn't mean much to her. But why take chances?

“That's it?”

I looked at the phone as if Phyllis could see my expression. “Am I mistaken, or are you the one who called me? Since when am I supposed to be the source of all crime information?”

“Jeez,” she said. “Somebody got up on the wrong side of the bed of nails. What are you so cranky about?”

“I have to figure out who killed Vance McTiernan's daughter four months ago, and one of my best friends is refusing to tell me something based on some strange journalistic barter system. That's what I'm cranky about.” I
looked up to see if Maureen had overheard me, but there was not a flicker, not a blink from her. I wondered if she had hearing problems, which would be unusual but not (no pun intended) unheard of in someone of her relative youth. More likely, she'd just tuned me out.

“Okay, okay. Obviously you don't know when someone's just having fun with you.” Phyllis's voice betrayed her words—she really did sound a little concerned that she'd hurt my feelings. I'd found a way to get to her and I wasn't even looking for one (that was something to file away for future use). “Here's the thing: There was soy sauce in her stomach.”

I waited. I wasn't going to give Phyllis the straight line she was waiting for. But she didn't say anything else. She was holding out.

“We knew that,” I muttered, giving in. I needed to hear the rest, and Phyllis obliged.

“That's just the thing. There was soy sauce. There wasn't anything else.”

How did that make sense? “What does that mean, there wasn't anything else?” I asked.

“No vegetables, no noodles. Just the soy. And going down pure, as it were, probably sped up the allergic reaction she had; there was nothing to absorb it.”

“You're saying she chug-a-lugged soy sauce?”

“Do you want to hear this or not?” Phyllis demanded. The hurt-feelings thing had clearly worn off and we were back to standard operating practices.

“Sorry. Go on.”

“Anyway, the contents of what she'd eaten included her lunch, which wasn't completely digested, but nothing else.” Phyllis was back in reporter mode.

“Except soy sauce.”

“Precisely. And people think it's the salt in that stuff that kills you.”

That was weird. Who drinks soy sauce, without a chaser or anything?

“Why didn't the cops investigate further?” I asked, mostly to myself. “Did the ME sign off on an accidental allergic reaction?”

Sometimes you can hear in a person's voice when she's smiling and Phyllis was clearly grinning from ear to ear. “That's my girl,” she said. Phyllis thinks I have the makings to be a great reporter. It's one of the many things she's deluded about. “No. The coroner didn't declare it accidental.”

“Then what was it?” I asked.

“Well, he didn't rule it a suicide, but he didn't say it wasn't,” she answered.

“No reason to think it was murder?”

“Ask the cops. Maybe they did,” Phyllis said. “Another good question for our Lieutenant McElone.”

“I did ask, and she said no.”

“McElone's good, but she's not infallible. Go back and follow up.”

Oy. My first inquiry with McElone had been awkward, and now Phyllis was suggesting I go back and ask why the Harbor Haven Police Department hadn't done its job adequately?
That
was going to go over real well, I was sure.

I looked over at Maureen, who had pulled an e-reader/tablet out of her purse and looked deeply engrossed in the screen, which I could not see from here.

“I have an idea,” I told Phyllis. “Why don't
you
ask McElone all about it and then tell me what she says?”

“Because I have a newspaper to run, and because you're the reporter on the story.”

“No, I'm not. I'm the source on the story. You ask me stuff, I answer, and then you write it up for the newspaper you run. And by the way, I have a business to run, too, and might not have the time to go ask the lieutenant all those questions you want answered right away.”

Phyllis laughed. “Coward,” she said, and hung up.

I'd had better days than this one, and it wasn't even three in the afternoon yet.

Speaking of which, I had to go pick Melissa up from school. As I passed Maureen on the way out of the den, I caught a sneaky glance at the screen on her tablet. I was right; she did want everyone to know how smart she was.

She was playing
Jeopardy!

Melissa was running her teeth over her lower lip, a practice she calls “scratching,” which is an indication she is thinking hard.

Against my advice, Melissa had quit the tech club, so she was coming home at her regular time. I was trying to find a way to suggest, once again, that she might have been hasty, but she had launched directly into a discussion of what she referred to as “
our
investigation.”

“So it was a straight ingestion of soy sauce that killed Vanessa,” she said. Melissa had left much of sixth grade behind her when she'd gotten into my Volvo wagon and was now in her best Encyclopedia Brown mode, where she took all the facts I gave her and told me what they meant in relation to the case I was working. “So if Vance is right and someone did murder her, it's possible that her killer forced Vanessa to drink the soy sauce, right?”

I know; you're going to say that most eleven-year-old girls don't talk like that to their mothers. I'm very proud.

“Or it's possible she drank it because she was depressed and didn't want to live anymore,” I said. “We can't be sure. We don't know anything yet. We can't get in touch with Vanessa to ask her, and as far as we know, nobody was there when she died.”

Liss, I could tell even while driving, gave me a sideways look. “You realize this would be a lot easier if Paul was involved.”

“Yeah,” came a voice from the backseat. I drew a sharp intake of breath and managed—valiantly, I believe—not to drive into the next lane and cause a six-car pileup.

“Maxie!” I hadn't known she was there. Maxie loves to hitch a ride in the car, not make her presence known (often by riding on the roof or hiding in the trunk or the engine block) and then pop out at an inopportune time, like ever. “Don't do that!”

“Sorry, sorry,” she drawled, not sounding the least bit sorry at all. “Who knew you were so excitable?”

“You should, from the seventy-five times you've done this to me before. What are you doing here?”

“I can't take a ride in the car?”

I was going to respond, knowing fully that wasn't why Maxie had secreted herself in my Volvo, but Melissa gave me a warning look that said my reaction wouldn't help, which it wouldn't.

“
Anyway
,” my resident poltergeist went on (as if I had rudely interrupted her thought), “I agree with Melissa. This is the kind of thing Paul loves to do and he'd be a big help.”

I stifled a groan. “May I remind both of you that it wasn't my idea for Paul to stay away from this investigation? He was the one who didn't want to help Vance, for reasons I can't begin to explain.”

There was an uncomfortable silence. You know when
you say something and no one responds . . . and you get the distinct impression it's because what you just said was so self-delusional they're trying to figure out how you could possibly be that blind and still drive a car?

“What?”

Melissa cleared her throat, which I would bet cash money didn't need clearing. “Well, you know, um . . .” That definitely wasn't helping.

“You told Paul you didn't want him on the case,” Maxie blurted.

“What? I did not.”

“Yeah, you did. You told him that if he didn't want to be on the case, you'd just do it yourself, and then you walked out of the room without even giving him a chance to talk.” Maxie didn't even sound as gleeful as I would have anticipated. Which was troublesome, because it meant she was being sincere.

“That's not the way it was,” I insisted.

Melissa made another very uncomfortable sound. “Yes it was, Mom,” she said. “I'm sorry,” she quickly added.

Was that true? Had I actually ordered Paul to stay away from Vanessa McTiernan's death just because I felt disrespected?

“But he said I was a bad detective and I didn't know what I was doing,” I tried.

“No he didn't,” Liss told me gently. “He said he didn't think Vance was telling us the truth and he didn't trust him. He said it was dangerous to get involved with a case when you didn't know the facts and you couldn't depend on your client.”

“It went further than that,” I told her.

“Yeah,” Maxie—of all people—agreed. “But both of you pushed it there; it wasn't just Paul.”

My head was swimming a little. I actually considered pulling over to the side of the road, but I got my second wind and soldiered on (it helped that we were pulling into the driveway). “I'm gonna have to think about this,” I said.

“You can just ask him,” Liss suggested. “He's, like, really good at this detective stuff.” She sounded like she was worried about my progress if I didn't have Paul's guiding hand behind me.

And that reminded me of my argument with Paul to begin with. “Are you saying I'm
not
any good at it?” I asked. I didn't mean to sound angry with Melissa but my voice was not performing as I was requesting.

“That's not it,” my daughter was quick to answer. We got out of the car and walked toward the back door, Maxie floating alongside us. “I'm saying it's better to have two people working on something than just one. In school when we do group projects, you have to let other people do stuff, too.”

“Like how I do all the research,” Maxie helpfully chimed in. She doesn't do
all
the research but she has a need for validation that she exercises more frequently than I do my triceps.

I opened the back door and walked into my kitchen. Vance McTiernan was there, hovering by the refrigerator as if he was about to get some food, though he was, of course, far beyond the need for nourishment. At least physically.

It had gotten to the point now where I sort of expected to see Vance; you can get used to anything. It's like when you get a new sofa and you can't help but admire it whenever you walk into the room, but eventually it's just the thing you sit on.

Maybe Maxie and Liss were right: maybe I
should
just swallow my allegedly misguided pride and ask Paul for help. He wasn't the type to lord it over me and I would feel better if things could be at least closer to the way they usually were when I pretended I was a detective. I'd seek him out shortly and get him on board.

“What's going on, Vance?” I asked when we were all inside the kitchen. I put my car keys on the hook next to the kitchen door. See how casual I was about having
Vance McTiernan
in my very own kitchen? I'm so professional.

“Where have you been?” He sounded insistent, which caught me off guard.

“I was doing some work on your case,” I said. It is slightly possible I had the smallest touch of defensiveness in my voice. It is also possible I was lying, since technically I had been out collecting my daughter from school.

Then I sneezed, just to remind me of what I
hadn't
done, which was getting some allergy medicine from the drugstore. Absolutely next on my agenda after the impending spook show.

“Have you been crying?” Vance asked.

Maxie, floating near the ceiling (Vance was lower, more on eye level with me), snorted.

“No, I haven't been crying. I have allergies.”

Melissa, normally interested in such things, hustled through the kitchen and toward the stairs to her room without stopping. Odd, but she's eleven.

“Well, if you need something for it, I know a good pharmacist in almost every town in the world,” Vance said. Suddenly I was glad Melissa had left the room.

“Maybe another time, Vance. I think with this one I'll go for the over-the-counter stuff.”

“Your choice, love. I wanted to tell you there's someone I think you should be looking for. Friends in the business, who only just passed on recently, tell me she had a big album on the way from Vinyl Records. Maybe that's why somebody wanted her dead. Jealousy, or greed or something.”

Now, please keep in mind that I worshipped Vance McTiernan's music. I'd spent much of my life identifying with him and wondering what it would be like to have him as a friend. Before I went to college, I spent a week in my room playing Jingles albums to get me past my anxiety about leaving home (don't tell my mother, okay?).

But I knew a line when I heard it. And I was hearing it.

Maxie was faster than me, though. “Oh, gimme a break,” she howled from the ceiling. “These days anybody who wants to can have an album. Why would somebody kill your daughter because of hers?” She pointed at me. “You're gonna have to do better. She's not as stupid as you might think.”

“Don't help me,” I told her. She looked a little surprised. Makes you wonder.

“I've simply realized the error in my ways,” Vance said, his accent getting just a little less Ringo Starr and a little more Kenneth Branagh. “You were right, Alison. I wasn't thinking straight. I was so upset with my grief that I wasn't helping you find Nessa's killer. I want to help now. You got through to me and I want to thank you for it.”

He floated over toward me and put his hands over mine. It's not true that the ghosts can't touch us at all; they can. In fact, Maxie and Paul have been capable of carrying Melissa through the “flying girl” sections of the spook shows—something all parties concerned who aren't me enjoy immensely—and Maxie once carried me out a window.

Vance McTiernan's hands on mine felt neutral and unresponsive. It was like having an object touch me. It wasn't scary or threatening; it had no sensation attached to it other than a sort of inanimate contact. I was at once surprised and disappointed: The idol of my adolescence had just touched me and he might as well have been a block of wood.

“You helped me see the error in my ways,” he said. “You did it through the way you think and the way you talk. I can't possibly thank you enough.”

This tactic should have worked. Vance was a consummate showman who knew how to put over an act to an audience. But he had miscalculated in one crucial area. He had not considered my past (which was not his fault because he knew nothing of my past). If he had, he would have known that was exactly the kind of line The Swine had used on me a hundred
times, and he would have realized that I could spot that hogwash seventeen miles away.

“Nice try, Vance,” I said. “Now tell me what's
really
going on.”

Vance actually looked hurt. How could I not have simply swallowed his insincere praise and utterly false declarations of change when he was pretending to mean them so deeply?

“What I said,” he tried.

“I don't think so. You have an agenda. You're a man who's used to getting what he wants. And now you want me to believe your daughter was murdered, and to some extent I do. But if you really think I'm going to do what you ask, you'll have to tell me the truth. So I'll ask again: What's really going on?”

“I read about the album in
Billboard
, in the back section that lists new signings. Nobody I know told me about it. I made that up.” His voice was raspy and forced.

“Why?”

“It's part of my charm,” he said. And then he was gone.

Maxie made a noise with her lips that I can confidently report was not meant to be respectful. “Something's definitely going on with him,” she said.

“Ya think?”

I walked out of the kitchen and into the den, where once again Maureen Beckman was sitting, this time with a long scarf she was crocheting. “How's it going, Maureen?” I asked as I passed by.

She looked up as if I'd startled her from a light nap. “Oh, I didn't hear you there, Alison. I'm doing just fine; how about you?”

“Pretty much the usual,” I said truthfully, and smiled. She didn't need to know what my “usual” was.

The scene with Vance might have given me more resolve. It might have convinced me that I was definitely on the right track, because you can be sure that you're doing something
right when a person without a lot of credibility tells you to do something else. It might even have made me feel empowered and fierce, as if I should go out and start snooping on Once Again immediately, but I had that planned for tomorrow.

Instead, I had a sneezing attack in my front room just as I heard my mother call from the kitchen on the other side of the house. “We're . . . I'm here!” she shouted. “And I could use some help with the groceries!”

Knowing it wasn't a dire emergency, I didn't break land speed records getting back to the kitchen. Maxie had vacated the premises, probably in favor of the roof. Once there, I saw Mom unpacking the child's backpack she uses in place of a purse (“It's easier on my arms”) with what appeared to be enough food for seventeen people.

“Did you invite the 101st Airborne Division without telling me?” I asked, grabbing eight ears of corn from her hands and putting them on the counter. “There's only four of us who'll be eating dinner.” Sure, there would probably be three or four other people in the room while we ate, but being dead apparently cuts back one's appetite pretty severely.