The Ghost and the Dead Deb

CHAPTER 13

Lady in the Lake

“I still ain’t heard who killed Muriel . . .”

“Somebody who thought she needed killing, somebody who had loved her and hated her . . .”

—Raymond Chandler, The Lady in the Lake, 1943

THE LESS SAID about the next half hour, the better. Suffice it to say that a corpse that has been strangled in summer and submerged in water for “only about ten or twelve hours” has pretty much lost all resemblance to anything human.

Black swollen tongue, blue-gray skin mottled with angry red-black patches, stringy, mud-soaked clothes and hair, and the incongruity of a bright sunflower-yellow rope embedded deep into the puffy flesh at the throat—the victim was not a pretty sight. And I’m not even bringing up the insects.

Through features like hair (long and copper), eye color (brown), and items like clothes the woman was wearing (that one-of-a-kind Betsy Johnson pink and green sundress with the lace-up corset and gauzy skirt), I became convinced the corpse belonged to Angel Stark, and told Chief Ciders and two officers from the Rhode Island State Police crime scene unit exactly that.

“From her fingerprints and dental records, the crime lab people should be able to positively confirm her identity within a few hours,” Ciders told me as we walked back to the Inn together.

“Sadie and I really have to get back to the bookstore,” I told the Chief. “We left poor Mina on her own for the last two and a half hours.”

A few minutes later, Ciders released us all, saying he’d be over to the bookstore soon to get a corroborating statement from Mina. Bud offered Sadie and me a lift back to the store. Seymour decided to tag along as far as the post office. Fiona returned to nurse her stricken husband, whom she’d “put to bed for a long nap.” It was a solemn, quiet group who trudged out to the Inn’s parking lot and piled into Bud’s Ford Explorer.

After we dropped Seymour at the local post office, Bud pulled up in front of Buy the Book. I was surprised when he cut the engine and followed Sadie and me into the store.

For a summertime Saturday afternoon, the place was fairly busy, and I breathed a sigh of relief when I spied a familiar face at the register alongside Mina. After bagging a bundle of paperbacks and passing them to the customer, Linda Cooper-Logan gave us one of her big, open smiles. In her late thirties, Linda still wore her short platinum hair in the spiky, punkish style she’d first worn in the eighties. These days, she usually favored long flowered skirts and a copious amount of silver bracelets, but on this warm afternoon she wore cut-off denim shorts and a chocolate-brown “Bakers Do It Early” T-shirt, which was dusted with flour.

“Boy am I glad to see you,” I gushed.

“Not half as glad as I was,” said Mina.

Linda dismissed my thanks with a wave of her hand. “I brought the pastry over for tonight’s meeting and saw a line of customers, so I volunteered to fill in until you guys got back.”

Linda and her husband, Milner Logan, operated the Cooper Family Bakery, a small but profitable bread and sweet shop down the street from Buy the Book. Linda handled the comfort foods, and Milner the fancy French stuff. (He and Linda had met when Milner was teaching a cooking school class in Boston on the art of French pastry.)

“Honestly, I can’t thank you enough,” I told her.

“So what’s going on? I’ve got to know,” Linda asked.

Yeah, said Jack Shepard. I’m with the blonde porcupine—What in hell happened at Bird-Woman’s lace-doily nest?

I was about to reply when I looked beyond Linda’s shoulder, to see the look of worry and apprehension on Mina Griffith’s face. Mina, in turn, was watching Bud Napp and Sadie head toward a set of comfortable chairs near the back of the store, speaking in hushed tones as they went.

I took a deep breath and broke the news to Linda and Mina about the discovery of Angel Stark’s body along the wildlife trail near Finch Inn. I also told them that Victoria Banks, Bethany’s sister, was also missing. Linda was intrigued, but as I expected, Mina took the news hard. Harder still was the next bombshell I dropped on the poor girl.

“Chief Ciders believes Angel was strangled, murdered—and he thinks Bud’s nephew Johnny had something to do with it.”

“My God,” Mina choked. The shock was too much and she broke down. Linda took over the register, and I brought Mina upstairs to privately comfort her with a cup of tea and a shoulder to cry on. I hated having to tell Mina the truth, but I knew it would be better for her to hear it from me than Chief Ciders, when he sought her statement.

Mina didn’t say much, just sipped her tea and said that she couldn’t believe this was happening—that Angel was dead and Johnny was being sought as a likely suspect.

“I admit he was really stupid to go off with Angel like that,” said Mina after blowing her nose, “and I was really angry with him . . . but, Mrs. McClure, I really like Johnny. Up until last night, he’s been the kindest, sweetest guy I’ve ever gone out with.”

I nodded. “I’m glad,” I said, “but I really don’t know Johnny.”

“He spent hours last weekend helping my little brother and his friends build a treehouse, which he knows how to do because for years he’s volunteered his time to Habitat for Humanity to help build low-income houses. He loves his uncle, and I know he cares about me . . . he told me so . . . he’s a good guy, Mrs. McClure, he . . .”

Mina began to cry again. Then she shook her head. “One minute with that stupid Stark girl would tell anyone she’s trouble,” murmured Mina, wiping her nose. “I don’t know why he went off with her like that.”

As I poured the last of the tea for Mina, I felt the slightest whisper of a cool breeze on my cheek. You know this is a frame job, don’t you? said Jack in my head.

“I want it to be,” I silently told the ghost. “But is it really? How can you be so sure Johnny isn’t guilty? Jack, I’m afraid Johnny just isn’t as ‘nice’ a guy as he wants Mina and his uncle to believe.”

You could be right. But there are an awful lot of notes in play here . . . and it’s a kind of tune I’ve heard before.

After Mina dried her eyes and insisted on continuing her shift—she said it would help keep her mind off her worries for Johnny—we went back downstairs to the store.

Bud and Sadie were still deep in conversation, and things seemed fairly quiet. I thanked Linda for her help. She went on her way, and Mina took over the register.

“I think we need fresh stock on the new release table,” I told her. “If you cover the counter, I’ll take care of it.”

“No problem,” said Mina, blowing her nose one last time as I headed toward the archway leading to the Community Events space. I crossed the empty room, then strode quickly down the short corridor, past the restrooms. When I got to the storage area, I called to Jack, hoping to continue my communication with the gumshoe from beyond.

“You were saying that someone might be trying to frame Johnny . . . ?”

Like an original van Gogh, doll.

The storage room was nothing fancy: a plain white box with stacked cartons of books waiting their turn to be placed on the selling floor and an old wooden desk from the store’s early days against one wall—which we now used to hold office supplies. The room felt warm and a little bit stuffy when I’d walked into it, but Jack’s presence had dropped the temperature and the air around me felt comfortably cool. Too bad his ghostly presence couldn’t be constant and in every room, I mused to myself; the store would save a fortune in air-conditioning.

Very funny, said Jack, overhearing.

“Come on, Jack, don’t get testy.”

The cool air suddenly got decidedly colder. I shivered as a mini whirlwind swirled around my thin sleeveless cotton blouse and bare shoulders, seemed to whisper at my ear. You remember that dream I gave you last night? There’s a case file in those boxes that’ll finish the story. Look for the file marked “Stendall.”

I shook my head. “I don’t have the time for that right now.”

Make the time, baby. The files are five feet away.

Jack was right, of course. After his still-unsolved murder here in 1949, one of Jack’s acquaintances, a young reporter named Timothy Brennan, took possession of his files—and created an internationally best-selling series of books featuring the hard-boiled private detective Jack Shield. On every dust jacket, Brennan boasted that the Shield stories were based on Jack Shepard’s case files (a boast Jack wasn’t exactly keen to learn about).

After Brennan was also murdered here a year ago, his son-in-law, who subsequently took over the writing of the still-popular series—and owed me the favor of a lifetime—agreed to let me keep the original files here for him in storage. His only condition was that he first review them himself so he could Xerox “selected files” that interested him. I assumed the ones selected would be precisely the ones his late father-in-law hadn’t yet gotten around to exploiting for his fictional Jack Shield book series.

A week ago, the promised boxes finally arrived, and I had been hoping for the time to go through them—a part of me even fancying the idea that I myself might be able to puzzle out some theories about who might have killed Jack and why. But finalizing the Angel Stark appearance had left me with very little free time to peruse the files. And now that she was dead and Bud’s nephew the prime suspect, I really didn’t have the time.

“Couldn’t you just give me the shorthand on that case?” I asked Jack as I gathered and stacked on a handcart an array of hardcovers and paperbacks that made up the most recent releases by various publishers.

The shorthand is that this Johnny was obviously framed for the Bethany Banks murder. Legal technicalities can throw out confessions and incriminating statements, but if he’d really done the deed, there would have been enough physical evidence on the body for the DA to put him on trial. What seems more likely here is the frame didn’t stick—the locals didn’t have the stomach to look hard at the sons and daughters of any powerful, well-heeled families and the deb’s real killer got off. Except now your authoress was trying to keep the case alive in the public eye—so she gets bumped and once more Johnny gets blamed.

“You’re saying the person who killed Angel also killed Bethany?”

That’s the bet, honey. Not a sure thing, but if it were a horse, I’d give it pretty decent odds.

“Who then?” I asked.

Who were the people around Angel last night, who were also around Bethany the night she was murdered? Besides the old man’s nephew, of course.

“Kiki . . . she was at the reading. And she was staying at Fiona’s inn last night, too, which is where Angel was staying.”

Who else?

“Let’s see . . .” I grabbed a box cutter from the desk near the door and slit open a carton of All My Pretty Friends. I piled five books on the handcart and flipped through the sixth until I got to the color photo insert.

“Angel claims there were plenty of people at the party but only a small circle who had strong motives to kill Bethany. Bethany’s fiancé, Donald Easterbrook, was one . . .”

I studied the photo, which looked like the typical candid shot found in any photo album of a young man hanging out on an athletic field. Sporting jeans, a rugby shirt, and effortless posture, Easterbrook was tall and muscular with short, dark hair, blue eyes, a strong, square jaw, and a broad, easy-going smile. According to the caption, Easterbrook was the offspring of an aristocratic, polo-playing father and a wealthy Brazilian mother. The combination had produced a strikingly handsome young man.

“He’s described in the caption as a ‘young prince of Newport,’ ” I murmured. “Hmm . . . very JFK, Jr.”

Who?

“John Kennedy, Jr.?” I replied impatiently.

Baby, I need more.

I winced, realizing to whom I was talking. “Sorry, Jack—before your time. JFK, Jr. was the famously good-looking son of a famously charismatic president who was assassinated in 1963, an event that gave their family legendary status in America ever since. The son died in a tragic small-plane accident—”

Collision?

“No, he wasn’t instrument rated, but he tried to fly through overcast skies at night anyway. Refused to change plans even though he got a late start and the weather warned of visibility problems. Apparently, he lost his bearings and flew right into the ocean.”

Got it. He’s what we’d call a victim of the carefree, careless class. They like to roll the dice, take their risks, for an entirely different reason than the street punk, but fate often gives them the same outcome.

I sighed. “Well it was a national tragedy, I can tell you. JFK, Jr. was a charismatic young man, and the country loved him almost as much as his father . . . It looks to me like Easterbrook has the same features as the late president’s late son, who was very popular with the ladies, too, by the way. Easterbrook’s also engaged to Kiki now,” I noted. “And Kiki is apparently also my cousin, through marriage, but let’s not go there—”

You may not want to go there, doll, because it’s another motive for Kiki to have killed Bethany—if she was in love with this super stud Easterbrook and wanted him for herself. Did you see Easterbrook at the reading?

“No. But it doesn’t mean he couldn’t have been around Quindicott.” I flipped another page. “Another of the circle Angel mentions is a young woman, Georgette LaPomeret, but she committed suicide after this book was published.”

Next.

“There’s a young man named Hal McConnell.” The photo of Hal depicted a typically preppie young man in a polo shirt and khakis. Brown hair brushed neatly back, good-looking face with regular features, and hazel-green eyes. He was shown laughing with Bethany on the deck of a yacht, an almost tender expression of affection on his face. “I didn’t see him around either.”

What’s his motive?

“I do believe he was in love with Bethany. Unrequited.” I looked down at the book again to find I’d reached the end of the photo section. “That’s it.”

What about the little girl who blew a gasket at the big show?

“You mean Victoria Banks? Bethany’s little sister.”

Hold the phone. That little girl was Bethany’s little sister?

“Yes . . . Oh! And I forgot to tell you, I learned from Officer Eddie Franzetti, on the way to Fiona’s, that Victoria Banks’s friends reported her missing around midnight. She’d left their motel room for a soda and never came back.”

Is Banks, the younger, in that book?

I flipped through the book some more, went to the index. “No. Nothing on Victoria Banks. What makes you think she might have killed Angel?”

You’re kidding, right? Angel smeared her late sister’s name in that book you’re holding, revealed all kinds of trash. And Victoria threatened Angel in public. You heard her yourself, sweetcheeks.

“Don’t call me that.”

Why not? You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of, baby—they’re a luscious pair. Aces.

Despite my having been exposed to Jack for some time, my face flamed. “Stop it, Jack.”

Male laughter filled my head and I felt the room’s cool air grow icy for a moment, enough to raise goosebumps. The ghost was playing with me again. “Jack. Stop it.”

He laughed once more, but the chill receded.

Okay, Miss Priss, he finally said. Set me straight, then. What’s your big theory on the Banks girl?

“Just that Victoria’s public threat is exactly why I wouldn’t put her at the top of the suspect list. Too many witnesses to her threats. How stupid would she have to be to carry out a murder right on the heels of it?”

Maybe she didn’t care. You’re forgetting about someone trying to run Angel down right on the street out front. It could have been Victoria and her friends. Don’t you see? She could have killed Angel and fled. That’s why she’s missing.

“But you said that the person who killed Angel also killed Bethany, and Victoria didn’t kill her own sister.”

First of all, you don’t know Victoria Banks well enough to say that. Second of all, Victoria’s murder of Angel also set up Johnny as the fall guy. If Johnny did kill Bethany, then wouldn’t that be the perfect revenge—to set him up with a second chance to be convicted of a second murder while getting rid of the dame that’s dragging your late sister’s rep through the mud?

“I’ll grant you that the theory holds water . . . but Victoria looked too small and frail to have strangled Angel by herself.”

Listen and learn, doll. One thing this business teaches you is, don’t rule out anyone based on size or appearance or the perception that they’re ever too smart or too dumb to inflict the big chill. Everybody who’s sucked in a breath and let it out again is capable of murder, given the right set of circumstances, and rage has been known to send every rational thought out of people’s heads—that’s what a crime of passion is. Victoria Banks might be young and delicate looking, but there wasn’t much to Angel, either. Little Vicky may have had her friends help her, too. On the other hand, she may have done the deed alone. She had a loud mouth and a hot temper last night. And, in my experience, mousy exteriors can hide a lot of rat.

For some reason, I thought of Mina, but I didn’t like the thought—

Of course you don’t. She’s been a good employee and never gave you a second to doubt her . . . but you wouldn’t be a decent dick if you didn’t consider she had a motive.

I sighed, remembering the look of hurt and anger on her face the night before when Angel had thrown herself at Johnny, the way she’d violently tossed around those event room chairs after they’d gone off together. Could she have confronted Angel after Johnny had stood her up?

Her roommate picked her up, Jack pointed out. So if she confronted Angel, then her roomie probably drove her to the scene to do it. Easy enough to check out. Unless roomie is sworn to secrecy.

“Speaking of secrets,” I said, continuing to fill the handcart with books. “I wish I knew what Bud and Sadie were talking about. They’ve been at it since we got back.”

I got an earful, baby. It’s personal stuff. The old man’s telling your auntie about his wife’s death from cancer a couple of years back, and how he was glad to help out Johnny. He was telling how much he liked the kid and how he can’t believe Johnny’s guilty. Mostly, I think the old guy is feeling lost and betrayed and alone. Little Sadie’s helping him through it just fine . . . I suspect the old girl’s got the eye for Bud, by the way.

“Bud’s a good man . . . but I think you’re mistaken. They’re just friends. So what’s my next move?”

That’s easy. Let the cops handle it.

“I can’t do that, Jack. I’m worried about too many people here. If Johnny’s guilty, I want to know it—as much for Mina’s safety as every other young woman in this town. And if he’s not guilty then I want to help the kid—for Bud’s sake.”

Baby, listen to me. You want to fit yourself with my fedora, but you haven’t learned the angles, not by a long shot.

“Okay, fine. I haven’t learned the angles. So you can teach me along the way. You can help me prove Johnny did it—or find the real killer.”

There was a long silence. The room, which had been comfortably cool, was slowly becoming warm and stuffy again. I felt Jack’s presence receding.

“Jack? Don’t leave me. Come on! You can consider it a pastime. Helping me solve another murder has got to be more interesting than watching a sluggish parade of overheated customers make their beach reading selections.”

The silence was interminable.

“Jack? Listen. I’m going to do it anyway—with or without you.”

Finally, the room cooled again. I felt a whisper of a breeze against my cheek.

One condition, he growled in my head.

“Name it.”

Read my files. Starting with the one marked “Stendall.”

“Fine. Okay, after I . . .”

NOW.

I jumped. “Okay, okay, calm down . . .” I swallowed nervously, hating that Jack’s haunting temper could still rattle me and walked over to the files—eight boxes of them. I lifted the top off the first, hoping to find some part of the alphabet, the M’s through the O’s or the T’s through the W’s. But the files weren’t alphabetical.

“Talbot, Lionetti, Hague, Zika, Walters, Karpinsky,” I recited, reading the typewritten labels on the dusty beige folders. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Jack, what was your filing system?”

Alphabetical, sweetheart. Two things I prided myself on when I was alive—an organized mind and an organized office.

“But these aren’t alphabetical. They’re a big mess is what they are.”

And they’re not the way I left them. What did you expect after fifty years of the biggest a-hole in the world pawing through them, stealing my life to create his best-sellers. And from what I remember about the louse, Timothy Brennan was cheap as a dime store kazoo and orderly as a typhoon. This proves the latter.

With a sigh, I pawed through the first box, then placed the lid back on it and went to the second. I finally found it in the fourth box I opened.

“Stendall! Found it!”

Bravo, baby.

As I pulled the folder free of its dusty confines, a tremendous sneeze shook me, and I nearly dropped the file. In the process, I felt something slip out and fall to the floor with a ding.

“What fell?” I muttered, looking around my feet. The wink of silver caught my eye and I bent down to pick up the coin. “It’s a nickel . . .”

A buffalo nickel, to be precise—a coin minted only from 1913 to 1938, after which it was replaced with the Jefferson nickel. Seymour Tarnish had excitedly brought one in a few months back after one of his ice cream truck customers had passed it to him without noticing.

The profile of a rugged, dignified American Indian’s head was engraved on one side with the word Liberty and the year 1937. I remembered Seymour saying that the artist based his image on a composite of three models: Iron Tail, Two Moons, and Chief John Big Tree. The reverse side displayed an American bison in the center of the coin, United States of America arced over the bison’s head, and Five Cents stretched beneath its hooves.

“Jack?” I whispered, running my fingers over the old coin. “Was this yours?”

“Yeah, baby.”

With my eyes still fixed on the engraved buffalo, I slowly realized that Jack’s answer hadn’t been in my head. The ghost’s voice, for the first time since I’d initially heard it almost a year ago, sounded as if it had been projected from two feet in front of me. Perplexed, I lifted my eyes—and gasped.

“Jack . . . ,” I rasped, “I can . . . see you . . .”

“You’ve seen me before,” he pointed out.

“But not . . . like this . . .”

Over the past year, I’d seen Jack Shepard in my dreams mostly, or in the black-and-white photo on the flap of Timothy Brennan’s Jack Shield books. On very rare occasions, I thought I’d glimpsed him in other ways—as a silhouette or shadow, but nothing more than a flickering blink. This time, Jack appeared before me as real and solid as the stacked brown boxes around me in this storage room.

He was tall, over six feet, and his powerful form was draped in a gunmetal-gray double-breasted suit that rose in a V from his narrow waist to his acre of shoulders. Beneath his fedora, his forehead was broad with brows the color of wet sand; his nose like a boxer’s—slightly crooked with a broken-a-few-times bump. His jaw was iron, his chin flat and square—with a one-inch scar in the shape of a dagger slashing across it. And his eyes were the most intensely piercing gray I’d ever seen.

He blinked at me, then pushed up the brim of his hat with one finger. A tiny smile touched his lips. “Take it easy, baby. You look like you’re ready to kiss concrete.”

I swallowed. My mouth was suddenly filled with cotton balls. “Yes . . . I do feel a bit . . . shaky . . .” I turned away, went to the old wooden desk, and sat down, placing the nickel carefully on the desktop to wipe off my suddenly sweaty palms. I spun the chair to face Jack again—but he was gone.

“Jack?”

“Pen! . . . Penelope?”

The voice was male, but it wasn’t Jack’s. And it was coming from down the hall.

“Bud?” I croaked, seeing Bud Napp pop his head into the storage room. The space had become warm and stuffy again. My throat was still dry, my heart still pounding like a carpenter working overtime.

“I’m about to head out, but Chief Ciders is pulling up. Sadie wanted me to let you know. He’s probably here for Mina’s statement.”

I nodded. “Thanks. I’ll be right there.”

Bud left, and I rose on unsteady legs. I crossed the room to pick up the Stendall file, placed it on the handcart, and rolled it into the hallway. Before I snapped off the light, I remembered the buffalo nickel. I went to the desk, picked it up, and shoved it into the front pocket of my khaki pants.

“Jack?” I called again. But he was gone.