The Ghost and the Dead Man's Library

LATER THAT NIGHT, buried under a pile of bedcovers, I tried not to lie awake, repenting my decision—and failed.

After Sadie and I had arrived home, I drove our part-time clerk Mina Griffith back to her dorm room at St. Francis College, paying her double-time for baby-sitting Spencer. Finally, well after midnight, I returned home and collapsed.

Now I lay on my mattress, eyes wide. Across the shadowy ceiling, the stripped-down limbs of our hundred-year-old oak became a bacchanal of dancing skeletons. Down the street, the long, tubular chimes, hanging from Mr. Koh’s grocery store awning became a melancholy specter, moaning on the storm’s dying wind.

Need a bedtime story, baby?

“Jack?”

Well, it ain’t Clark Gable.

I closed my eyes and sighed, happy to hear his voice. “Strange,” I whispered.

What?

“I never would have thought there’d be so many things in life more disturbing than talking to a dead man.”

Such as?

My eyes opened again. I turned onto my side, punched my pillows, then hugged one to me. “I can’t get the image out of my head.”

You mean, Peter Chesley’s broken old body, lying at the base of the staircase he couldn’t climb?

“Don’t, Jack.”

Don’t what?

“Don’t push me to pursue this.”

You’re the one who can’t sleep, sister.

“Yes.”

But it’s not just because of Old Man Chesley, is it?

“No.”

Reminds you of another body, doesn’t it?

“Yes.”

Believe me, baby, I know how it goes.

“He was right there, next to me. His head was on the pillow, sleeping but alive…and then…and then he was sleeping on the concrete.”

There was nothing you could do.

“I got up to take care of Spencer, start the coffee…I came back and there he was, on the ledge. I called his name, ran to him…”

There was nothing you could do.

“You’ve said that before, Jack, but that’s not how I feel.”

We’ve been over this ground already, baby. Your husband was sick and self-absorbed. He lied to you about seeing his doctor, taking his medication. He verbally abused you, and his family ignored the problem. Then he tried to fly. But the way he treated you, neglected his own son, fired doctors who were trying to help…the man wasn’t even close to getting wings.

“I was right there tonight, too, Jack. And I couldn’t stop it again. I was right there with Mr. Chesley, and I heard that crash upstairs. I knew something was wrong, but I left. I drove away! It was like Calvin all over again. Mr. Chesley was sick. But he was alive. He didn’t deserve to die like that. Nobody does.”

Baby…who do you think you’re talking to?

I squeezed my eyes shut. “Sorry, Jack.”

Forget it.

“But don’t you see?” I tossed and turned again, this time landing on my back. “That’s what I’m trying to do…forget Chesley, and Calvin…forget my brother, my parents. Not the good memories, but the awful pain of missing them, of seeing the life leave their eyes. I keep thinking if enough time goes by, I won’t see them dead anymore…”

There’s no forgetting, honey. Counting my war service, I’ve seen enough corpses to fill ten Books of the Dead, maybe a whole library, like that crumbling depository of Chesley’s Molding Manor.

“Books of the Dead?…You know about those?”

I myself had seen one only once, in a museum collection. There were pages and pages of family corpses, dressed in their Sunday best, propped and posed for their daguerreotypes. Medicine being what it was in the nineteenth century, and disease cutting short so many young lives, there were a heartbreaking number of children in that book—babies, young people, men and women in their prime.

Old-timers still had Books of the Dead in my day, Jack said. Passed on from their parents and grandparents. You know what some of the superstitious rubes believed, don’t you?

“You mean the thing about a photograph of a corpse preserving some part of a person’s soul?”

Funny what people make up about things they don’t understand.

“I don’t suppose you understand why you’re still around?”

The room was only slightly chilly, nothing like the refrigerator it had been last winter. Outside, the wind whipped at the sturdy window frames, as if trying to gain entry at the insulated edges. But we’d had a pretty good year financially and had splurged on new windows for the old building. All of a sudden, I felt a whispery touch on my face, as if a ribbon of air had managed to slip into my bedroom and brush my cheek.

I’m around because of you, baby…

“Because of me?” I repeated, the feathery touch sending prickles of electricity across my skin. “What do you mean?…”

It took a long minute for the ghost to answer.

I don’t want to miss your latest line-up of mooks and grifters.

“Come on, Jack. Don’t make me laugh.”

Why the hell not? Life’s short.

I refluffed my pillows. “Apparently not your afterlife.”

Cheap shots now, huh?

“That’s rich, coming from you.”

Listen, lamb chop, you remember the last case we worked on together, that crazy debutramp with the triple-pierced ears, peddling her glorified true confession tale for the cover price of a decent day’s wage in my time?

“Sure, I remember. Angel Stark and her true crime book. How could I forget?”

Remember when things were dicey, how I got your mind off your troubles?

“Yes, Jack, but I don’t think—”

I got to thinking about those old photos on Chesley’s wall…the ones next to that creep show of a grandfather clock. They reminded me of another photo…it was given to me during a case I worked on back in ’46, a missing persons.”

“A woman?”

A man. His name was Vincent Tattershawe. When I questioned his fiancée, I honestly didn’t have a clue whether the guy had crawled back into a bottle, met with an unfortunate accident, or took a powder with her assets in his pocket. Didn’t matter what I thought, though. I couldn’t let on to the woman—Dorothy Kerns was her name. I needed as many leads as she could dole out, and I’d gotten marching orders from her brother.

“Marching orders? What kind?”

Dorothy wanted a shamus on the case, but it was her brother who’d hired me. He’d invited me up to his gentleman’s club, gave me the once-over, and the okay to get started. Told me he never liked Tattershawe, and he suspected the man hadn’t simply “disappeared,” but instead had run off with his sister’s money. That’s why he wanted him found.

Seems Miss Dorothy Kerns had given Tattershawe some lettuce to invest. Now her brother wanted the money back, so he wanted Tattershawe found, but he didn’t want his sister to know where the man was. I was supposed to find the guy then let Kerns deal with him.

“Okay, I follow. So what did you do?”

First thing: I interviewed the dame. Baxter Kerns warned me that his sis was this weak thing, full of dread. But, after I talked to her, I could see she was made of sterner stuff. All that anxiousness was only on the surface. Beneath it, I found some fairly solid metal…like you, Penelope.

My cheeks warmed. Jack had used my first name and bestowed a compliment—not something he did very often.

“You turning sappy on me, Jack?”

Don’t get fresh, lamb chop. Leave the cracking wise to yours truly.

“Are we going to partner up again?”

Listen, Penny with the copper hair, you got lucky twice now. But you’re still wetter behind the ears than a drowning flounder, so take my advice. Keep your mouth shut and your eyes open…after they shut for the night, that is…I’ve got some things to show you…

Jack’s voice had gotten softer and sweeter, and soon my eyelids felt like velvet Broadway curtains slowly coming down…

New York City

October 18, 1946

Dorothy Kerns lived on Fifth Avenue across from Central Park. Her building had a clean granite façade and an impressive lobby with leather divans, modernistic paintings, and that peculiar scent so pervasive after the war: old and new money mixing together in presumable harmony.

Jack presented Miss Kerns’s calling card to a middle aged doorman in dark blue livery, a diminutive man with a big nose, big hands, and a big attitude. He snapped up the card, as full of himself as the people who strolled Fifth’s wide, exclusive sidewalks.

Jack waited as the doorman phoned Miss Kerns. When he got the all-clear, Jack moved to the elevator. The inside aviator caged him in and took him up three flights. There were only two apartments on Miss Kerns’s expansive floor—but four doors. Each flat had a front door for its residents and their guests and a service door for the help.

Jack rang at Dorothy Kerns’s front door, well aware he was a hired man, no better than those going in the back.

A young maid with pinned-up raven hair and peach cheeks received him with a shy smile. Jack tipped his brim to her, then placed his fedora in her small hands, along with his overcoat.

“Would you like anythin’, sir?” Her voice was light and young with traces of an Irish brogue. “Perhaps somethin’ to drink?”

“Scotch and water.” He might have ordered it neat instead, but he’d had a lot to drink already. Pity, he thought, since he doubted Dorothy Kerns would be serving her guests coffin varnish. This well-heeled dame probably stocked the best tonsil paint around.

“I’m sorry, sir,” the young maid said, “but Miss Kerns doesn’t allow alcohol in the apartment. Would you care for a lemonade?”

Jack suppressed a shudder. “No, honey. Just bring me one on the city.”

“Excuse me?”

“Water. I’ll have a glass of water.”

“Yes, sir. This way, please.”

The maid directed him through a pair of French doors into a grand sitting room, where he was left alone for a good ten minutes. Tall casement windows along the far wall looked out on the mannerly street busy with smart looking couples, chauffeurs in black livery, valets in overcoats walking family dogs.

It was a different world in this hemisphere—south of Harlem, north of Bowery. You had no hustlers or grifters in this pocket of wealth near the park, no beggars or booze-hounds. Off-duty cops were singing “Danny Boy” in the Irish pubs downtown, not here. And tanked-up clerks and salesmen, wailing about their war wounds, wouldn’t be falling down on these sidewalks.

It was a good place for picking innocent cherries, Jack thought, if you were an operator like Vincent Tattershawe.

The maid brought him his water and Jack glanced around the large salon. If heaven had a waiting room, he figured this would be it. The walls, furniture, and rugs were all ivory and cream. The fireplace was white marble, carved with tiny cherubs. Although no fire burned in its pristine grate, he took a load off on a cloud-colored armchair nearby.

Figurines of crystal lined mirrored shelves and tasteful paintings graced the walls. French impressionism, if Jack was guessing right, muted, pastel views of reality.

“Mr. Shepard?”

Jack rose, and a tall woman swept toward him.

Dorothy Kerns was a blonde, but not the kind who have more fun. She was the fragile type, like a fairy queen, delicate and untouchable, friable as a frozen bird.

From the “spinster” picture her brother had painted, Jack practically expected a matronly dame with graying hair and grandma shawl, a pair of knitting needles in her arthritic hands. Dorothy wasn’t even close. Yes, her lips were too thin, her skin too pale, and her blue eyes set farther apart than Great Neck and Newark; but she had high cheekbones, intelligence in her gaze, and only the faintest hint of wrinkles at the edges of her mouth.

No man could deny she was a striking woman—not a raving beauty by any stretch, but nothing close to her brother’s narrow view of her. But then, Jack had noticed how often family members viewed each other through out-of-date glasses.

“Please excuse me for not greeting you when you arrived.” Dorothy held out her hand. “To be perfectly honest, I was in my robe and needed to change.”

Jack had expected a dame like her to show up in a prim dress or skirt. But her long legs were clad in flowing brown slacks, a thin leather belt circling her trim waist. She wore a white silk blouse, and a string of pearls around her slender neck, showed to advantage by upswept hair.

“Miss Kerns.” He lightly took her hand, felt as if he were trying to grasp a sparrow without crushing its delicate bones. “I appreciate your making time for me tonight.”

Jack tried to release the bird, but Miss Kerns held on tight—and with surprising strength. “You must find Vincent for me, Mr. Shepard. Promise me you’ll find him.”

Jack could see the sincerity in her wide-set eyes. They were shining and he realized why—they were wet with unshed tears.

“I’ll try to help,” Jack replied and used his left hand to diplomatically pry loose his right.

Dorothy turned away, recovering herself. She dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief she’d pulled from her pants pocket. “Won’t you sit down?”

Jack took a load off again—in the same armchair by the cold fireplace. Miss Kerns sat in the chair opposite, crossed her long limbs. Her young maid brought in a tray with a tea service.

“Tell me honestly, Miss Kerns. What do you think happened to your fiancé?” Jack asked after the maid departed. “Another woman? Or maybe he was the victim of a fast money scam gone wrong? Do you think maybe he lost your investment and was ashamed to face you?”

“I would like to believe it is none of those things, but the alternative is no better. Vincent had a drinking problem, you see.”

“You think he crawled into a bottle?”

“He told me he would never drink again. That was my condition for our engagement. My brother…he doesn’t like Vincent, you know?”

“I got that impression. How did you two meet, anyway?”

“At a big New Year’s Eve party last year. Vincent hadn’t been Stateside long. He’d been stationed in Europe—”

“Army?”

“Yes, he’d been badly wounded after D-Day, during combat in the hedgerow country—”

Jack winced.

“You were there, Mr. Shepard?”

“Not in that action. But I knew about the losses. It was a real meat grinder. I pushed through Carentan to Cherbourg, that’s where the U.S. set up her regional HQ—uh, headquarters.”

Dorothy presented a weak smile. “I know what HQ means, Mr. Shepard. My late fiancé, my first one, had written me for years from the front. He’d lost his life in the same battle where Vincent lost half his left arm.”

She paused and glanced at the dark window, as if looking for a memory.

“When I first met Vincent, at that New Year’s Eve party, and discovered he’d been in the same action that had killed Gabriel, he and I began to talk. But not like people usually talk at social gatherings. We began early in the evening and didn’t stop until after breakfast the next morning. I don’t suppose you know how that can go, Mr. Shepard? Talking all night when you first fall in love?”

Jack shifted uncomfortably, thought of Sally. For a moment, in a dream, he’d seen a future with her, a home and family. But he’d slept too long. And when he finally awoke, Sally Archer was long gone.

“I know something about it, miss. Go on.”

“Well, we did fall in love that first night, and it deepened as the weeks and months went by. He asked me to marry him on my birthday in June. We set a date to be married next year—June 1947—although my brother raised objections.”

“So why didn’t you just take off with Vincent if you loved him and your brother was so disapproving? You’ve got your own money, right?”

“I…only have a little bit left now. I gave Vincent the bulk of my inheritance to invest.”

“Yeah, about that…I understand Vincent could earn a dollar?”

“Yes, that’s right. Before the war, he made a great deal of money by investing in steel. He saw what was coming, you see? And it paid off for him. And I was sure it would again.”

“So, you gave a drunk all your money…to invest?” Jack asked.

“He’s not a drunk. Not anymore. You see, about a month ago, Vincent came upon some information about a lucrative investment in a company that manufactures air conditioners.”

“Air conditioners?” Jack jotted that down. “Do you know the name?”

“Ogden Heating and Cooling Company. They’re located in the South. Vincent says air-conditioning’s going to transform that entire region. He got a tip that Ogden was going to be bought by a much bigger corporation. He believed he could double my money in less than a year.”

“But he disappeared? With no word on your money or what he did with it?”

“I love him, Mr. Shepard. And I trust him. You wouldn’t understand.”

“No, I guess not.”

Miss Kerns leaned forward, her eyes shining, the unshed tears threatening once again to fall. “Find him, please, Mr. Shepard. I miss him so, you see.”

She was suffering so visibly that Jack wished she were right—though he believed in his heart that the woman had been taken, or her fiancé had fallen down a bottle again and something ugly had happened to him.

Jack got more information from Dorothy, standard stuff like where Tattershawe worked, where he lived, any known friends or relatives—all of whom, no surprise, she’d already contacted and gotten bupkus as to the man’s whereabouts.

“One last thing,” Jack said, glancing around the large salon. “Do you have a recent photo?”

Dorothy rose and walked out of the room. When she returned, she handed Jack a photo of Vincent in an oval frame about the size of his palm.

“Take this,” she said. “It’s hard for me to look at now anyway.”

Jack nodded, encouraged by Dorothy’s admission. Baxter Kerns had asked that Vincent’s whereabouts be kept a secret from his sister. Jack wasn’t all that keen on lying to the lady; but if she were angry at her fiancé, then some part of her probably knew she’d been played.

“You mean you can’t stand to look at his face?” Jack pressed. “You’re that steamed?”

“Not at all. I have other photos of Vincent that provide me with much happier memories. This one’s the last gift he gave me. He sent it to me just before he disappeared.”

Jack frowned at that response then studied the picture he’d been given. Like all black-and-white portraits, the subject was a deceptive contrast of shadows and light, a collection of shaded traits. In this incarnation, Tattershawe appeared handsome: a rectangular kisser with a long forehead, solid jawline, dark hair, and dark eyes.

Jack tucked the oval frame in his pocket, wishing someone would invent the camera that could show you whether or not a man had a dark heart.

With no more questions for Dorothy Kerns, Jack bid her goodnight, and stepped into the building’s hallway. As he waited for the elevator, he heard a door opening behind him. It was the service door to Miss Kerns’s luxury apartment. The young Irish maid emerged in a plain overcoat, a hand-knitted hat, and scarf. She nodded politely and waited with Jack for the elevator to arrive.

“Miss Kerns must be difficult to work for,” Jack fished. “I’ll bet she can be very demanding.”

“Oh, no, sir. She’s the sweetest woman in the world. This is the latest I’ve ever worked for her, and she felt so bad about asking me to stay, she gave me car fare to get home.”

Jack raised an eyebrow. “You’re not a live-in?”

“Miss Kerns likes to do for herself. I help out a few hours a day and also receive guests when she has ’em.”

“Does she get a lot of guests, then?”

“Over the past year, they’ve mostly been the ladies from the veteran’s charity.”

“Veteran’s charity?”

“Didn’t she tell you, sir?” The maid looked over her shoulder at the front door then lowered her voice to a whisper. “That’s why she gave all that money to Mr. Tattershawe. It was her idea to start up a special private foundation for disabled veterans in our area, help them in all sorts of ways. I was so proud. My brother lost his eyesight, you know, and she told me he would be one of the men she’d be helping.

“She and Mr. Tattershawe discussed it night after night. It was hard not to overhear them. Mr. Tattershawe believed he could turn her inheritance into a fortune and they’d have the funds they’d need to do anything they wanted.”

“What did you think of Mr. Tattershawe?”

“I liked him, sir. He seemed a fine man.”

“Seemed?”

The maid looked down. “Well, he run off with her money, didn’t he?”