The Chick and the Dead (5 page)

"Bowman?" Still on my knees, I looked up at Didi, more confused than ever. "Bowman like in Merilee Bowman?"

Didi nodded. "You got that right. She's my sister."

I got to my feet and wiped my hands against my khakis. "Merilee Bowman, the famous author, is your sister. And you were murdered by—?"

As if the motion could clear both our thoughts, Didi shook her head. "I told you, this has nothing to do with murder. It's all about the book."

"
So Far the Dawn
." What other book could we possibly be talking about? It seemed even the dead were caught up in the frenzy that had infected Ella and the rest of the known world. "So your sister wrote the book and you died and—"

"I died, all right. It's the other part you've got all wrong. Merilee didn't write
So Far the Dawn
. I did. And Pepper, I want you to prove it. Before that movie premiere."

"No."

Talk about a mantra. Between the afternoon Didi told me she was Merilee Bowman's sister and the next day, I'd spoken the word no fewer than a hundred times.

"No, no, no. I told you, Didi, there's no way."

"But Gus said you were really good at this sort of thing."

I was supposed to melt under the warmth of the compliment. At least that's what Didi had planned. She didn't know that I was way beyond being schmoozed by the warm and the fuzzy. After all, I'd been schooled by the best of them.

Nobody does hard-nosed like a Mafia don.

Just to prove how impervious I was to Didi's pleas, I got up from my desk. It was lunchtime, and I switched off my computer monitor and grabbed my purse and the brown bag I'd brought along with me from home. Peanut butter and grape jelly on white bread. Not exactly my favorite lunch (which was more in line with a Cobb salad and a glass of crisp Chardonnay at one of the darling little bistros over on Murray Hill) but I didn't have to remind myself that I had to learn to economize. Poverty was scratching at my door.

And the noise was getting louder by the second.

I twitched away the thought and headed across my office. For the third day in a row, the sun was shining (not a common occurrence inCleveland in the spring) and there was a picnic table outside the back door to the administration building. I had plans. And while they might have included PB & J, they did not include listening to Didi for one more moment.

"Murder is one thing," I said to her. Again. "If you wanted me to find out who murdered you, I might be able to handle that. But fraud is a whole different ball game. Even if you could pay me…" I paused here to let the message sink in and to give Didi the opportunity to come up with some kind of solution to my thorny monetary problem. When she didn't, I sighed and went right on. "When I worked on Gus's case, I had help. Gus's help. I had no idea what I was doing. I was lucky I found out who killed him."
Lucky
, of course, is a relative word, and if I had the sense, I would have remembered it. Luck didn't have anything to do with the weeks I'd spent dealing with mobsters, mistresses, and federal agents. Of course, it did say something about the fact that I'd managed to survive them all.

"It's not that I don't want to help you, Didi," I said, leaving out the part about how a little financial incentive would have made the
want
part more sincere. "It's just that I honestly don't know how. You're telling me that you wrote a book. A famous book. You're telling me that Merilee didn't. It makes my stomach hurt just thinking about how complex the whole thing is. Like I told you yesterday, I wouldn't even know where to start."

"But Gus says you're smart."

"Gus is a very good bullshitter."

"And he says you're clever."

"It's not something he ever told me when I was working on his case."

"Gus says you'd never let down a friend."

"And I didn't know we were friends."

The way I figured it, any self-respecting ghost should have taken the not-so-subtle hint and hightailed it back to the Great Beyond. I guess Didi wasn't self-respecting.

When I made a move toward the door, she blocked my way.

"You're the only one who can help me."

I had heard the same argument from Gus right there in that office, and not that long before, I answered Didi the same way I'd answered him. "I can't help. I don't know how. I'm not—"

"A detective? Sure you are. At least that's what Gus says."

I didn't want to admit that what I was really going to say was
I'm not even sure I believe you
. I just wasn't ready to tell Didi that the story she'd told was a little too outrageous for me to accept at face value. So far, the only proof she had offered to support her claim of being the author of
So Far the Dawn
was her word. Call me cynical, but I didn't think that counted. Besides, I'd heard this song-and-dance before.

Take my word for it.

It was just what Dad had said when the news broke that he was being investigated for Medicare fraud.
Take my word for it, Pepper. I didn't do it.

And when the evidence piled up that proved he did…

A shiver crawled up my back and settled on my shoulders. As heavy as a load of bricks. I sidestepped my way around Didi and my own painful memories. "What I was going to say," I told her, lying through my teeth, "is that I'm not sure I know enough of the facts. I've never even read the book. I can hardly remember the movie. Except for the horses."

"You think I'm lying."

Maybe Didi was more perceptive than I thought.

Without confirming or denying, I stopped and looked her way. That day, she was dressed in a gray pleated skirt that skimmed the bottoms of her knees and a pink blouse with rolled sleeves and a D

monogrammed over her heart. There was a touch of pink color on her lips, and just at that moment, a tear slipped down her cheek.

"Oh no!" I backed off and backed away, clutching my brown paper bag and my purse to my chest as if they could protect me from the guilty conscience that was sure to result from thinking that the ghostly waterworks were the result of my insensitivity. Not to mention my skepticism. "Don't pull that act on me." Didi sniffed. "What act would that be?"

"That crying act."

"It's not an act." Where it came from, I don't know, but she touched a lace-edged hanky to her eyes.

"You've shattered my hopes, that's all. You've destroyed my faith in the milk of human kindness. And Gus said you weren't that kind of person. He practically promised. He said you'd help, but here I am, getting the royal shaft. And there you are, being alive and young and pretty, and instead of appreciating everything you've got and everything you're able to do, you're a party pooper. And—"

"Enough, already!" I managed to not scream, but only because I didn't want to take the chance that someone in the outer office might hear me and wonder why I was in there talking to myself. "I'm sympathetic. Honest, I am. But I've got important things to worry about. Like how I'm going to buy groceries. I can't help you. I'm sorry, but really, I can't."

Just so she'd know I wasn't going to change my mind, I turned my back on Didi, opened my office door, and stepped into the hallway.

Out of the realm of the woo-woo and straight into chaos.

A wall of noise hit me, and I glanced around in wonder at the hallway that was usually empty and as quiet as the tombs that surrounded us.

There was a guy sitting on the floor right outside my office door. He had a TV camera slung over his shoulder and was shouting into a walkie-talkie, "Testing, one, two, three." I heard a crackle and from the other end of the hallway, the reply from a woman I recognized as the tiny body with the big head with the bigger smile who sat behind the anchor desk on the six o'clock news.

"That's not good enough, Larry." Her perfectly arched brows dropped low; her perfectly bowed lips thinned into a frown. "We can't afford any glitches. Not with a story this big. I can't understand what you're saying. Talk more clearly, will you? Try again."

Larry did. His voice, each word spoken slow and loud, lapped over the sounds of a different camera crew setting up in the file room across from my office, the ringing of not one, but two of our phone lines, and the excited purr of conversation from down the hallway. I turned the corner to find everyone from Jim, the cemetery administrator, to Jennine, the woman who made the coffee and welcomed the grieving to Garden View so that they could choose a suitable site for their loved one's eternal rest, was out of their offices and milling around.

They were also all talking at once.

"What do you think, Pep?" Because I reported directly to Ella, Jim and I didn't often have the need to talk to each other. Aside from the fact that I knew he was quiet and not in the least bit flashy and that I'd heard he was married, had grandchildren, and was considered competent and professional by Ella (who would know competent and professional when she saw it), I barely knew the man. Which made me wonder why he'd suddenly gone from calling me Ms. Martin to calling me Pep. He didn't usually hop from foot to foot, either. He smoothed a hand over his navy and maroon striped tie, and I noticed there was a soup stain the size of a dime in the center of it. Jim's hair was silver, his cheeks were red. His stomach sagged over his belt, and every time the TV

anchorwoman looked his way, he sucked in his gut. When she went back to riddling with her walkie-talkie, he let go a breath, hiked up his pants, jiggled the change in his pockets.

"You think this color will photograph well?" he asked me.

I realized he was talking about his tie, and I nodded. I didn't bother to mention the soup stain. "What's going on?"

Before Jim could answer, Ella came swooping out of her office. Today's outfit was a little red and yellow number that floated to the floor and had a matching jacket. With her chin up, her shoulders squared, and her eyes blazing, Ella looked like a middle-aged Wonder Woman.

She acted like it, too.

No sooner was she out of her office than she had everything under control.

"I've just heard," she said, and when the people in the hallway realized she was talking but they couldn't hear what she was saying, they shut up instantly.

Larry the cameraman jumped to his feet and flicked on his video camera. Anchorwoman elbowed her way to the front of the crowd.

"I've just heard," Ella said again, louder this time. "As of twenty hundred hours last night, Merilee was packed and ready to go. At precisely eight hundred hours this morning, she left herCalifornia compound. That's Pacific Time, of course."

There was a buzz of excitement in answer to the announcement.

It got in the way of me trying to figure out what this twenty hundred and eight hundred stuff was all about.

I didn't have time to work it out; Ella raised her voice again. "ETA is sixteen hundred hours,Cleveland time. She's coming in on her private jet. Don't know yet where she's landing, but I've heard from an informed source that until the premiere, Miss Bowman will be living at the family home."

"The one that's being turned into the
So Far the Dawn
museum?" When the anchorwoman poked her mike under Ella's nose, Ella nodded.

"Will she come here right from the airport?" someone else shouted from the back of the crowd.

"Not sure yet," was Ella's reply. "When I know—"

It was the
not sure
that did it. Certain there was nothing else to be learned for the time being, the reporter backed off and signaled to Larry to turn off the camera. The crowd went back to buzzing and humming and talking. The noise swelled, louder than ever.

I took the opportunity to close in on Ella. "Twenty hundred hours?" The skepticism in my voice said it all. "What the hell—"

"We're coordinating," Ella informed me. "All the chapters of ISFTDS. It's easier to work in military time. Helps keep everything straight and everyone on the same page. My gosh, Pepper! Can you believe it?

Another few hours and Merilee will be right here inCleveland ." She drew in a deep breath and pressed a hand to her heart. "I can hardly think straight and my head is buzzing, I'm so excited!"

"Ella!" Jennine had left to answer a ringing phone, and she came back into the hallway, all giggles and motioning toward the waiting room and the phone on her desk. Her eyes were as big as saucers. "I've got network news on the phone. Stone Phillips! He wants to ask you some questions."

"Got to take this." Eyes twinkling, Ella patted my arm and went back into her office. I headed for the picnic table outside, thinking that Stone Phillips and I had something in common. Because I had questions for Ella, too.

Like how the hell had she allowed everything to get so out of control that our usually peaceful office suddenly looked like the staging point for D Day?

And what would she say if she knew superstar Merilee Bowman had been accused of being a phony by her own dead sister?

There were two TV sound trucks outside the office door, a couple of SUVs that didn't look familiar, and a guy with a big-ass 35mm camera who raised it as soon as the door snapped open.

"Rick Jensen!" he called out. "
National Inquisitor
. Are you—"

"Anybody?" I hated to burst Rick's bubble, but there was no use in him wasting his film. I gave him a smile and a wave. "Sorry. I only work here."

Rick was a good sport. He shrugged and took a picture anyway. Probably on the off chance that I might actually prove to be somebody who was somebody.

I didn't stop to exchange pleasantries. Between Didi and the circus that was once my sort-of-normal work environment (except for the ghosts), my head was thumping like the bass line in a Metallica song. I walked around to the back of the building, hoping for a reprieve.

It was quieter than ever out there, and though like most people in their mid-twenties, I thrived on the stimuli of computers, DVDs, and iPod tunes (sometimes all at once), I closed my eyes for a moment, truly appreciating the silence. The picnic table was tucked in a secluded spot not easily seen from any of the grave sites. This was where Jennine and the other smokers came for their breaks. I turned up my nose at the lingering smell of their cigarettes, and just in case there was any stray ash around, brushed off the bench before I sat down. I massaged my temples with the tips of my fingers, willing away the tension and trying to convince myself that calories aside, really, peanut butter and jelly wasn't all that bad. I'd just opened my brown bag and taken out my sandwich when I heard the unmistakable click of a camera shutter.