The Ghost and the Dead Deb

CHAPTER 1

The Princess Ball

The girls I know do not like real life. When it roars in for a landing in their backyards, threatening to fly them from dance class to dorm room, beach chair to office, bar stool to altar, they race for the underground, looking for shelter. After all, why be neurotic when you can be numb?

—Angel Stark, Comfortably Numb

Quindicott, Rhode Island

Today

“ALL THE PLAYERS were in place. The lights were up, the stage was set for a tragedy worthy of the bard . . .”

Crisp paper rustled through the warm July air of Buy the Book’s Community Events room, a space so packed with people, the store’s modest air-conditioning unit had been rendered irrelevant. At the carved-oak podium, a slender young woman with long copper hair and triple-pierced ears had paused from her reading to slowly pour water into a glass. The audience, packed elbow to elbow, waited with reverent patience for the young author to sip her drink.

I, Mrs. Penelope Thornton-McClure, thirty-something widow, single mother, and co-owner of Buy the Book, leaned forward in my folding chair, joining my customers in their anticipation—an atmosphere of breathless expectation as artfully created as I’d ever seen.

After swallowing deliberately, Angel Stark gave a little smile. The daring, corset-laced bodice of her green and pink Betsy Johnson sundress alone could have held the room’s attention. But she’d come to my small Rhode Island town for a reading, not a fashion show, so she cleared her throat and finally returned her attention to the open book.

“No, perhaps good William is not the appropriate model for our tawdry little tale,” she read. “Perhaps the story of Bethany Banks’s final moments more mirrored one of those lurid Jacobean tragedies by John Webster, where the adulteress is punished by cruel torture and horrible death for her carnality. Of course, every tragedy, even a tawdry one, is unique. This tragedy, my tragedy, unfolded in a gilded beux arts mansion by the sea, under glittering lights that twinkled from high crystal chandeliers like a billion beckoning stars of the northeast. The Newport players were coifed and manicured young women and affluent and mannered young men. Like the cast of an A&E movie, they smiled and chatted as they waited in regal finery for the uncrowned, yet silently acknowledged, queen of our courtly crew to arrive.

“Before something could happen, really happen, Bethany Banks had to put in an appearance. That’s the way things worked—at the annual parties, the sorority, those weekends in the Hamptons or Cap Antilles. Bethany was our diva and our queen, our Simon Says . . .”

From the folding chair beside me, I heard a familiar tsktsk of disapproval. I frowned at the pale, slender man in tailored slacks, a crisp, white short-sleeve button-down, and bow tie.

“Simon Says?” he whispered when he saw my raised eyebrow. He shook his head in dismay. “Good lord.”

I sighed, not entirely surprised at Brainert’s critical reaction to Angel Stark’s prose. J. Brainert Parker (the J was for Jarvis, a first name to which he’d refused to answer since the age of six) was an assistant professor of English at nearby St. Francis College. In his thirties, well-read, acerbic, and gay, Brainert was one of Buy the Books’ most loyal customers—and one of my oldest friends. He never missed an opportunity to voice his opinions about the books I stocked or the authors I brought in for readings. In Angel Stark’s case, he’d dismissed her work the very day her publicist had phoned to accept my invitation to appear at Buy the Book.

I myself had been delighted that the author of the acclaimed best-selling memoirs of her years of depression, addictions, and therapy—and now a controversial true crime tale—would come to our quiet little town, and I immediately rolled out the welcome mat. But when Brainert Parker had heard the news, he’d been less than impressed.

“Angel Stark!” he’d cried. “You mean that silly girl who wrote Comfortably Numb. Every angst-ridden teenager in America had to have a copy, which made her the darling of the New York literary set for two afternoons in a row.”

“Lighten up, Professor,” I’d replied, feeling that as a bookstore owner I should stand up for the honor of any and all authors.

“Forgive me, but I’m speaking as an educator,” Brainert had informed me with a sigh. “It’s a genre now, you know, ‘Prozac-Girl-Interrupted-in-a-Bell-Jar,’ and I found nothing redeeming in her contribution to it or the influence of any of it on my impressionable, if not downright gullible, students. She has a lazy, self-indulgent style, glorifies antidepressant cocktails, and, in my opinion, the most disturbing ‘affliction’ she displayed in her story was her addiction to the letter ‘I.’ Whatever possessed you to ask her to appear at a mystery bookstore?”

There’d been no need for me to answer. My seventy-three-year-old aunt Sadie, and my partner in Buy the Book, had been locked and loaded.

“The subject of Ms. Stark’s new book is true crime,” Sadie had sharply informed Brainert as she polished the glasses that dangled on a chain around her neck. “It’s all about the Bethany Banks murder. Angel Stark was there, and apparently knew the victim quite well. I hear the book is a real tell-all. So why don’t you listen to my niece—and lighten up already on Ms. Stark.”

(What Sadie actually said was Miz Stahk. The “Roe Dyelin” accent can vary from light to heavy as you travel our state—the tiniest in the Union—but it’s murder to write out phonetically. To wit: Car, pasta, letter, and chowder would look more like cah, pahster, letta, and chowda. So, you’ll forgive my going with the conventional spellings here.)

“Hmm,” Brainert had replied to Sadie, clearly intrigued in spite of himself. “I concede you have a cogent point.”

An understatement if ever there was one since the Bethany Banks murder and subsequent investigation were the biggest scandals to rock the Newport jet set since Klaus von Bülow was accused of injecting his obscenely rich wife with enough insulin to send her into a coma until the twenty-second century. And when I’d heard that some of the chic book emporiums in Providence and Newport had refused to consider an author appearance by Angel, I’d immediately issued an invitation for her to come to Quindicott. Miracle of miracles, Angel—or her publicist, at least—had accepted our invitation, and here she stood in our packed Community Events room.

I would have turned my attention back to Angel’s reading just then, but my thoughts were suddenly interrupted by another voice. The one in my head—

In my day, dames with money from well-heeled families hired me to help them duck scandal on the QT. The last thing they’d ever do was write a book about it and tart it up in front of a ham-handed audience for applause.

The booming, masculine voice was either Jack Shepard—the ghost of a private detective who’d been haunting Buy the Book since his murder here more than fifty years ago—or a delusion of what would have to be my half-demented mind.

Which was true?

Take your pick.

“It’s a different world than the forties, Jack,” I silently replied, not a little annoyed that the ghost—who, so far as I knew, only I could hear—broke our agreement that he’d stay silent on evenings of important author appearances.

I liked my world better, Jack shot back. The uptown crowd kept their trashy messes in the back alley, not on their bookshelves.

“Shhh!” my thoughts insisted. “I want to listen to Ms. Stark’s reading.”

“Bethany was our radiant star,” Angel continued from the podium, “and like moths to a flame we circled her, even though at times our wings got burned.”

Brainert tsk-tsked again.

I glanced his way.

“Moths to flame?” he whispered. “Forget the Banks girl, these cliché’s are killing me.”

I shushed him, too.

“In medieval times, songs would be sung about a young maid’s beauty, her wisdom, her virtue. Bethany, like all my other pretty friends, lacked an intellect, an original mind, but no matter. Of her beauty much was written—in the gossip columns and fashion magazines, the Internet fan sites and fawning letters—for Bethany had beauty enough to be envied by all, not to mention a PR flack with a fat Rolodex. Her line of handbags, created by a ghost designer, was sweeping the world. Her face was used to sell magazines. ‘Bethany,’ the new fragrance by an exclusive cosmetics company, was just hitting the market.

“In a life so short, Bethany Banks had possessed it all. But a perfect face, a perfect figure, perfect teeth, a perfect trust fund, and a perfect life were at least one perfect too many for someone. Clearly, that someone had decided that the only experience Bethany lacked was to be brutalized.”

Listen, babe, I’m getting the drift—there’s a big chill unsolved here.

“Yes,” I said. “This is a type of book we call in the book business ‘true crime.’ Most books of this type recount the murder, the apprehension, and the trial. This one covers the crime, but it’s still unsolved. And the author was a friend of the murdered girl.”

So, the author’s got the inside scoop?

“Yes.”

Then who are her suspects?

“She hasn’t gotten around to naming them yet.”

Well, she better get to it soon, ’cause all this overblown yammering is putting me to sleep.

“Jack, if you don’t settle down, neither of us is going to hear a thing!”

Take it easy, doll. Don’t get your panties in a twist.

I could feel the heat on my face and just knew my pale complexion was reddening. “I wish you wouldn’t use that phrase, Jack.”

His response was a deep laugh—and a whisper of cold air to cool off my flaming cheeks.

“Bethany wore a spotless white gown the night of the New Year’s Ball, the night of her murder—a radiant white so pure she appeared ghostly under the heavenly gleam of the chandeliers. When she floated down the stairs, all eyes followed. Then she paused to girlishly wave her gloved hand at us, her closest circle of friends, a group that, incredibly, held a person capable of murdering Bethany before the clock struck twelve midnight. Of course, at that dazzling moment of arrival under the thousand-bulb chandeliers, our princess was not dead. Not yet.

“All Newport balls are resplendent, and this one was no exception. The Gilded Age mansion gleamed in polished marble and gilt-edged moldings. The army of waiters in white-jacket uniforms carried brimming silver trays. The bejeweled women and turned-out men were there, obeying the black-tie command printed in gold ink on the crisp parchment invitations. And, as usual, everyone appeared captivated by Bethany’s angelic beauty. But let’s be frank, since we’re telling the truth here. Not even Ms. Banks’s fiancé would describe her character as angelic, not with a straight face—for God knows, there wasn’t much virtue left inside that perfect shell. No, by this time, Bethany Banks had filled her mortal vessel with almost every vice imaginable . . .”

Back to the trashy mess again, Jack complained. Is she ever gonna get to the suspects?

“You’re trying my patience, Jack,” I silently scolded.

“Still,” Angel continued, “Bethany had a way of diminishing the rest of us, of banishing us to bit parts, walk-ons—shadow players in our own lives. Here stood I, a literary light with a best-selling book and film adaptation on my resume, yet the fire that was Bethany Banks shone so much brighter.

“For Georgette LaPomeret—pathetic, eager to please, eating-disordered Georgie-girl—it was her absurd dream that her grotesque couture would become a runway sensation.”

Okay, finally, the first suspect.

“Beyond her sad illusion of fashion immortality, Georgie lived for two things—the pharmaceutical fortune she would one day inherit, and copious amounts of a snowy powder distilled not in her family’s New Jersey factory, but South of the Border down Cartegena way. That habit—like all bad habits—was actively encouraged and enabled by Bethany Banks. Then there’s Henry ‘Call me, Hal’ McConnell, who lived for love, not that he ever got any . . .”

Second suspect.

“Hal was the sweet, clueless man-boy who had pined since elementary school for the girl next door Bethany Banks, the beauty he could never touch. The irony here was that ‘hands-off Hal’ Bethany had done more than touched so many others. . . . Katherine Langdon used the breezy, approachable nickname ‘Kiki’ as a façade to disguise her cold-as-ice interior.”

Number three.

“In a world of old money and old reputations, Kiki put the stiff in ‘stiff upper lip.’ With the calculated strategy worthy of Mary, Queen of Scots, or Catherine the Great, she became Newport’s Princess of Wales, another lady in waiting who would only have to wait a little longer.

“And last but not least, there was the uncrowned king of our little fiefdom: Donald Easterbrook, Jr.—‘Le Donald.’ The Prince who escorted the Princess to the ball, only to discover that his lady-in-waiting had not waited for him.”

That makes four.

“Of course, Donald shouldn’t have been too surprised. On that particular night, at that particular ball, Bethany Banks was not waiting for anyone. In fact, the Princess was fleeing her assembled subjects without leaving so much as a glass slipper behind.

“It was midnight when Bethany Banks hurried out of the main ballroom and down the back stairs. Reality was stalking our heroine, you see. Adolescent no more, her debutante days behind her, Bethany was fast approaching the one true thing that none of us could deny or avoid. Soon Bethany would relinquish her belle-of-the-ball status to her little sister, her sorority presidency to an underclassman, her key to the ‘special rooms’ at Manhattan and Hampton nightspots. Adulthood loomed, and real life was closing in.

“Now, the girls I know do not like real life. Anything close to reality sends them packing for underground shelters. As I’ve often been quoted, my saying still applies: ‘Why be neurotic when you can be numb?’

“Bethany Banks ducked underground often—‘slumming’ in the Depression-era parlance of her Chief Justice grandfather. Like a Roman noblewoman cavorting with gladiators, on the last night of her life, Bethany Banks descended dark and narrow stairs to a dank hole in the wall, a workspace occupied by the peons who served her drinks and prepared her foods and tended her gardens and, as it turned out, fed her addictions to sex, to drugs, to popularity.

“You see, Bethany Banks led a secret life. For her, low life and high life were interchangeable. She slummed with the best of us, too often (as we have seen) behaving like the worst of us. And the next morning she woke up, combed out her hair, pulled her clothes over her head, and went back home to Ma and Pa’s mansion to sleep it off. Seemingly untouched by the orgy of self-indulgence, and incapable of an orgy of self-recrimination, Bethany moved between the worlds with an impunity others were not lucky enough to possess. Bethany used drugs, but never became a slave to them—rather, she used the power of illegal drugs to enslave others.

“Bethany swam in a sea of available young men, taking on lovers and dropping them as quickly and easily as last year’s fashion, and came away unscarred by abortion and unpolluted by STDs.”

STDs? Jack queried in my head.

“Sexually transmitted diseases,” I silently informed him.

Ah . . . Neat little abbreviation. In my day, the lingo wasn’t quite so pretty.

“What was it?”

Jack whispered it in my head, and my face flamed again. Suffice it to say, I’m too much of a prude to repeat it.

“After so many successful escapes, evasions, and near misses, Bethany must have felt herself immortal. How could she know that on this night, the precious, privileged, pampered Princess of Newport would face the consequences of her actions? How could our Duchess of Malfi know that one of the princes in her life—perhaps the very prince she came to meet in secret rendezvous—had shed his human guise and become a werewolf?

“Perhaps the realization came after her gown had been hiked up, her panties removed—at the moment the leather belt wrapped around the tender marble-white of her throat and squeezed the life out of her.

“Did Bethany know the hands that murdered her? Did she understand who she had wronged, and why the end had come? Or did she laugh as if it were a prank, until the leather noose tightened and silenced her laughter forever?

“What were Bethany’s final thoughts as her lips turned blue, then purple? Before her green-flecked eyes grew dim, who did Bethany see? When her tongue turned almost as black as her sins, did Bethany know—did she really understand—why it was that she had to die?”

And that makes five, said Jack.

“Five?” I whispered in my head. “Who’s the fifth?”

Who do you think, doll? Angel Stark herself.

The slender young woman at the podium employed a lengthy pause, then loudly and emphatically closed her book, signaling to the audience that she had finished her reading.