Inspector Specter (27 page)

“Oliver!” his mother shouted. “You're walking!” Her gaze shot up from her tiny son toward me, and her eyes narrowed a little. “When did that start?”

I felt my mouth open and close, but the voice that I heard after that awkward moment was Melissa's. “Just now!” she exclaimed. “He's so excited to see you!” She held up her cell phone. “And I got it all on video for you!”

Jeannie chuckled and swooped down to pick up her son. “Oliver Woliver,” she singsonged. “What a big boy! You're walking!”

Ollie made a gurgling sound and then said, “Da.” He held out his arms toward Tony.

Jeannie did her best not to look hurt and handed their son over to her husband. She got herself all the way into the kitchen, and hugs were given and received all around. Paul and Dad, the only ghosts left in the room, went unhugged but didn't seem all that put out by their exclusion.

“Bermuda was
fabulous
,” Jeannie said. She took a furtive glance at her husband and added, “What we saw of it.”

Tony, seemingly engrossed in watching his son, blushed.

“This was
just
what we needed,” Jeannie went on, despite no one having asked; I think we were all trying not to acknowledge what she'd just said. “A little time alone as a
couple
.” She looked over at Josh. “You know what I mean.”

“Easy, tiger,” I told her.

Oliver, disturbed that only one parent was paying him undivided attention, held out his arms again. “Ma,” he said.

My phone vibrated as Jeannie took her son away from Tony, who disappeared into the movie room to note my lack of progress. Then Jeannie took Oliver into the den to change his diaper, which probably didn't need it—Jeannie just wanted to assert that she was the mom.

The call was from Thomas, who reported that the Long Branch house, while clearly used for selling drugs, was abandoned, and his wife was not there. “But Vinnie's doubled back,” he said. “He went to Harbor Haven from here.” He gave me an address just off our main drag. I read it out to Josh, who looked it up on his iPhone.

“It's a pizzeria,” he reported. “Luigi's III.”

“Luigi's has been closed since the storm,” I said. “Why would Vinnie go there?”

“That's a good question,” Thomas responded. “I think I'd better go check.”

“I'm closer,” I said. “Is Vinnie still there?”

“No. He took off and is still driving in the direction of Asbury Park.”

“Okay, so it's not dangerous to go to Luigi's. I'll just look inside for the lieutenant and come right back.” I looked around the room; volunteers to join me were already trying to angle for a seat in my trillion-year-old Volvo wagon. I looked up at Dad. “You want to come along?” I asked.

But I'd miscalculated the angle; Josh thought I was looking at him. “Of course,” he said. “Just let me check in with Sy.”

“No,” I answered. “You've been away from the store long enough. This isn't going to be a big thing, I promise. If it looks sketchy, I won't even go inside.” Josh seemed confused. First I'd asked; now I was sending him away? “Your grandfather is over ninety years old. You can't leave him in the store this long by himself,” I continued.

“I'll go,” Melissa began. I think she was a little relieved to be relieved; that is, that Jeannie and Tony had taken custody of Oliver again and she didn't have to worry about him quite so much.

“You won't,” Mom told her. “I'll go.”

“No, you won't, either.” This was getting silly. Now I was turning down assistants by the armful. “I'll go”—I gestured toward Dad—“by myself. I'll be fine.”

Mom and Liss saw and nodded. Josh, probably realizing now that I hadn't been asking him in the first place, smiled a private smile, kissed me lightly to remind me that I liked that and left, making me promise to keep him posted every step of the way.

I made my apologies to Jeannie and Tony (who had come back from the den and the movie room, respectively) and told them I wouldn't be long. Then Dad and I headed for the front door. I asked Melissa to tell the guests that the morning spook show would be pushed back to eleven (then asked her to make sure it started then in case I was late) and braced myself for a stifling ride in my old rattletrap of a car.

Outside in the swelter, we had just about reached the car—in fact, Dad's left leg was already inside, and I hadn't unlocked any of the doors yet—when Paul appeared at my side wearing his long leather jacket.

“Isn't it a little hot for that thing today?” I teased him.

He reached into the jacket pocket and took out Vinnie's gun. “Take this,” he said, forcing it into my hand. “Just in case.” And before I could argue, he was gone.

I sighed a little at Paul's burdening me with the thing, for which I naturally had no license if I got stopped. “I've never shot a gun in my life,” I said as I got into the car.

“Let's go for the no-hitter,” Dad said, and put the gun in the glove compartment.

The drive to Luigi's, which took every bit of seven minutes, was mostly hot. New Jersey in the dog days is enough to give dogs a bad name. I was surprised my Volvo could actually make it all the way to the abandoned pizzeria. Just getting through all that hot, heavy air in the noonday sun was a tough job for my poor Swedish car. The thing had never really acclimated to its adopted country.

I parked across the street from Luigi's. The place had suffered serious damage during Sandy, and the owners had decided that it wasn't worth the effort to repair the building. Parts of the roof were still gone, and “FEMA” was spray-painted on the sidewall, for all the good it had done. Luigi's was never my favorite pizza place—too oily—but it hadn't deserved a fate like this.

“Looks like they made one too well done,” Dad said. “That's going to take a good deal of wallboard compound.” He can't help sizing up construction projects.

“I think it's beyond compound,” I told him as I got out of the car. Dad simply stood up where he'd been “sitting” and floated his way out to the sidewalk. Then I sighed, remembered Paul's advice and took the gun out of the glove compartment. I slipped it into my cargo shorts in the right-side pocket.

It wasn't, at least, demonstrably hotter outside than it had been in the car. There was almost no one on the street, which wasn't terribly surprising, given the heat. A lot of businesses had been hit hard by the storm, but most had rebuilt. The restaurants would probably see more business at night, and the small shore souvenir stores that were too far off the beach itself for tourists to drop in now would make their rent when the sun went down and people started coming out to eat.

A small, somewhat disheveled woman was walking in front of Luigi's. If she had been pushing a shopping cart or wearing more clothing, I might have thought she was homeless. When Everett was the official Harbor Haven homeless man, he used to look like he was dressing for the Yukon even in the middle of a heat wave; he couldn't afford to lose a valuable piece of clothing and have to replace it when the first cold winds of winter started to blow.

I walked across the street quickly to intercept her, although she wasn't exactly tooling down the street at warp speed. “Excuse me,” I said. “May I ask you a question?”

“That
is
a question,” the woman answered. New Jerseyans. You have to love us.

“A different question.”

“Fire away, honey,” she said.

She wasn't homeless, and she wasn't dirty. She was simply middle aged and not especially concerned with her outward appearance. The woman was thin and wearing a loose cotton dress that had probably fit her better back when Ronald Reagan was in office.

“Has anyone been hanging around here lately?” I asked. Boy, did that sound like a stupid question. “Anyone, just like, just spending a lot of time near this building?”

The woman looked at me, then at what had once been Luigi's. Then back at me. “Yeah, because this place just naturally draws the tourists, right?”

“I'm serious,” I said. “Are you around here a lot?”

“No! I'm from Pennsylvania.” It figured.

“Tell her you're sorry to have bothered her,” Dad said. “I see someone down the street who's a lot more suspicious.” He pointed.

Sure enough, about a hundred yards up the street near a surf shop (where the prices were inflated by a degree of about two hundred percent) was a young man with a sunken chest watching us. Through a pair of binoculars.

“Don't move,” Dad said. “He'll run if you look like you've spotted him.”

I turned toward the woman and did as Dad had said. “I'm sorry to have bothered you,” I told her.

“Seek help,” she said, and walked back up the street. Pennsylvanians.

I reached into my pocket for the Bluetooth device I use when I talk to ghosts on the street so people won't think I'm psychotic. Of course, I do live with the delusion that people actually pay attention to what I'm doing.

Except this guy
was
watching me with binoculars. So there's that.

“What should I do?” I asked Dad.

“Let me go down and check him out,” he answered. “You don't want to spook him if he's a lead.” Note the irony of the ghost using the word
spook
.

I agreed and watched Dad float down the street, hands in his pockets, trying to look nonchalant. Dead for six years and the man still forgets most people can't see him.

To make myself less conspicuous while trying to appear unconcerned, I walked to where the entrance to Luigi's had once been and leaned back on the large plate-glass window in the front. If I smoked, I would have definitely lit one up just then. You can't look less concerned than when you smoke. It tells people, “Yeah, I know I'm making myself gravely ill, but I look good, don't I?”

Not having a nicotine habit or a desire to start one, I tried to keep an eye on Dad without actually looking in that direction. He was still ambling through the air. Granted, he can't exactly move like Usain Bolt, but he seemed to be taking an especially long time to get where he was going and then come back. And because I was trying not to be seen, I averted my eyes most of the way.

Since I didn't smoke, I decided to indulge the other great addictive habit of the twenty-first century—I texted Josh to let him know things were still all right. That took about fifteen seconds, and then here I was again, left without a thing to do but wait.

When I looked up, both my father and the Peeping Tom were gone.

That didn't seem promising. But presumably I was no longer under surveillance, and Dad would report back when he had something to report, so I decided to do what I'd come here to do: look inside Luigi's.

The windows, as you might imagine, were not immaculate. They were so filthy it was difficult to make much out inside the place. Of course, there were no lights on inside Luigi's, either, although the missing patches of roof let some sunlight shine in. I could make out shapes. Not much else.

I tried the door. Open. Go figure. Well, why bother to lock a building that's been decimated by an enormous storm? The owners had abandoned it; the insurance company had probably dropped the policy. Most likely the building was waiting for some government functionary to stamp the DEMOLISH order on its Form 1564-D. In triplicate.

I thought that Dad might be concerned if he got back and didn't find me where he'd left me, but glancing inside the pizzeria and then coming back out wouldn't take long. Also, I decided to leave the door open, leaving a metaphorical trail of bread crumbs for him to follow.

The building was essentially divided into two spaces. The larger was the former pizzeria's business space, where there were still a few tables and most of a counter, but no longer a refrigerated case for sodas and certainly not the flat-screen TV that had once hung near the ceiling. What hadn't been damaged in the storm had no doubt been taken not long after, when it became clear that the owners weren't coming back.

There was no sign of McElone, but I hadn't really expected any. Vinnie had come here, perhaps to talk to a “business associate” who might be in the area—for all I knew, Lay-Z—or to see if someone else had an idea of what had clearly been going on behind his back.

There was some fire damage; it was possible that the storm had exposed some faulty wiring and triggered damage, but it wasn't related to the fire that had taken the Seaside Park and Seaside Heights boardwalks—those were miles from here. The place was certainly dusty and dirty; I noticed myself taking care not to touch anything. I walked inside and looked around, seeing nothing but dirt and abandoned tables.

The back part of the building had been devoted to the kitchen. The wall separating it from the dining area was still intact. That meant I'd have to walk to the back through the room as it was, and the lack of living things was certainly a good thing for me right now.

Even better, from my perspective, was that there was a
non
living thing there. There was a woman's ghost sticking out of the pizza oven (no longer working, not that it would have bothered this woman if it had been set at five hundred degrees—she was dressed in the style of the eighteen hundreds, wearing an oppressive amount of clothing even if this weren't the second-hottest day of the decade). But her expression was more concerned than uncomfortable; she didn't feel anything, but she seemed engaged. A lot of ghosts I see more or less ignore the living. We are not part of the world they inhabit; it's like the relationship we have with bacteria. We know they're there, but we rarely think about them other than when we're using a disinfectant wipe on the kitchen counter.

This woman, though, was watching me intently.

I looked up at her. “You haven't seen a police detective around here, have you?” I asked. My mother always says we should engage with people because most of them are quite nice. This, despite having lived in New Jersey almost all her life.