An Uninvited Ghost (30 page)

“I’ve already explained—” Donovan began.

“Yeah, Arlice was a great patron of the arts and a true believer in new businesses, and she loved to nurture young entrepreneurs. Spare me the speech, okay? You also told me Arlice didn’t really recommend me the day she died. You knew I wasn’t going to find Arlice’s killer, and that’s why you hired me. You didn’t
want
her killer found.” I looked over at Maxie, who seemed engrossed in the scene. I would have expected her to be in hysterics over my admission that I didn’t know what I was doing.

Donovan folded his arms and scowled. “This is ridiculous. No one is coming up here. I’m leaving.”

“But you’re not denying it, are you?”

He had started for the attic stairs, and stopped to regard me with royal bearing. “It’s a pity you never went to law school, Ms. Kerby,” he said. “You would have made an excellent prosecutor.”

“I never even finished college,” I said—technically I had a degree from Monmouth, but this sounded tougher, more “street”—“but I know someone sweating when I see it. It’s not that warm up here. Sit down, Mr. Donovan.”

Donovan actually took a handkerchief out of his pocket and spread it out on the plywood before sitting. But he sat.

We stayed there for quite some time without speaking. I had somehow gotten it into my head that I held a position of advantage over Donovan if he sat and I didn’t, so I stood there, aware of every muscle in my legs that wanted to rest. Maxie, without muscles to worry about, laid herself out like Cleopatra floating down the Nile on her barge, rested her head on her right tricep and smiled.

“This is cute,” she said. “You’re having a not-talking contest.”

Paul, who seemed to think observation was the only tactic necessary in an investigation, stood inches from Donovan’s face and studied it. “I’ll bet his heart is racing,” he said.

I kept not talking, so as not to cede the contest. I did glare at Maxie for a moment before once again occupying my mind with thoughts of the murderer about to come up the stairs.

But no one came.

“Why are we sitting here?” Donovan asked finally. “You can see there isn’t anyone coming. Your whole theory is absurd. And you’re wasting my time.”

“You won!” Maxie laughed.

“You’re right,” I said to Donovan. “I shouldn’t be standing here waiting. I should be getting the answers I want right now.”

“How are you going to do that?” he asked.

Maxie sat up. She and I had discussed this (however briefly, considering how mad she was at me) before, and she seemed to sense her cue was coming up.

“I’m not going to do anything,” I said. “I’m going to let my associate handle the rest of the interrogation.”

Paul looked at me abruptly, puzzled. “What? How can I . . . ?”

Donovan looked toward the stairs. “Associate? What associate?”

I’d left a baseball bat between a couple of the uncovered crossbeams, and Maxie swooped over and picked it up, grinning an evil grin that only I got to see. What Donovan got to see was a baseball bat flying into the air under its own steam.

“
That
associate,” I answered.

Maxie advanced on Donovan, hefting the baseball bat, tapping it on one hand while holding the knob in the other, no doubt as she’d seen tough guys do in the movies.

“Alison . . .” Paul said.

“Now, my associate here can’t ask you the questions,” I said as Donovan’s eyes widened and his sweat glands went into overdrive. “But he’ll ask me, I’ll ask you, and you can answer him.”

“Him?” Maxie asked. “Do I look like a him?”

“That’s right, Vinnie,” I said back. “He’d better answer them fast.”

“Are you proposing to . . . Ms. Kerby, seriously!” Donovan was as white as a . . . well, what you’d think a ghost would look like if you were basing your assumption on cartoons from nineteen fifty-six. “I can file charges against you for kidnapping and assault if anything so much as—”

“You’re going to file charges that say I had a ghost beat you up?” I asked him. “They’ll think you’re crazy; I can tell you from experience. Besides, I’m not holding you here. You’re free to leave whenever you like. Good luck making it to the stairs.”

“This is not admissible evidence, Alison,” Paul warned me. “Anything he tells us, we’d have to prove elsewhere. This is really bad policy.”

“Nothing’s going to happen as long as you answer honestly, Mr. Donovan,” I said, trying to make my voice sound gravelly. “Vinnie here isn’t really a mean guy. Don’t let the fact that he was executed by the state of Texas worry you; they execute everybody down there.”

Maxie seemed to enjoy that part quite a bit. She smiled broadly and took a large “step” toward Donovan, which made him flinch.

“I don’t have anything to tell you,” he said.

“That’s too bad for you,” I answered. “Vinnie?”

I stepped aside, and Donovan’s eyes sort of flitted around in their sockets as he tried to decide—I’m guessing—whether to stay still on the floor or make himself a larger target by attempting to bolt for the stairs. Maxie cocked the bat back like Mickey Mantle aiming for the fences.

“Ms. Kerby . . .” Donovan began.

“Vinnie wants to know who contacted you about Arlice Crosby’s will—
before
she died,” I started. It was a guess, but an educated one. The only motive in the case seemed to be the will, and a killer would have to know about the contents of the will, or why would they bother?

“Not a living soul,” Donovan wheezed. “I swear that’s the truth.”

Maxie took a couple of practice swings. She probably would have made a decent women’s softball player.

“Vinnie doesn’t think it is,” I said. “So I’m going to ask you again, and this time, I want you to think
really hard
about your answer, okay? Now. Who contacted you about Arlice Crosby’s will, and what did you tell them?”

“That information is confidential,” Donovan said, his voice a hoarse squeak now. “I wouldn’t tell anyone—”

“Bad answer, Donovan,” I broke in. “One last time: Who contacted you?”

“Not a living soul,” he repeated. “I can’t tell you anything else, because that’s the truth.”

“Go to it, Vinnie,” I said, and Maxie raised the bat over her head.

“Please!” Donovan pleaded.

Now, in the interest of full disclosure, Maxie would never have touched Donovan with that bat. We’d talked about that in advance. Her job was to intimidate, never to do any injury. It was the way I’d conceived the plan, and the only way Maxie would agree to participate. So there never was any physical danger to Tom Donovan.

But it still chilled my blood to get that far, and then to hear a creak on the attic stairs.

Maxie froze. Donovan froze. I’m relatively sure I did, too. But the one thing we definitely had in common was that we were all looking at the opening to the attic to see whose head would appear in that opening. And the last possible head I could have imagined was the one I saw.

Melissa’s.

“Did you find that English homework?” she asked, pretending the suggestion she’d made previously had been real. “I’d really like to give that a look tonight, and . . . What’s Maxie doing with that bat?”

Maxie looked sheepish and put the bat down.

“Maxie?” Donovan asked. “Who’s Maxie? What happened to Vinnie?”

“Who’s Vinnie?” Melissa asked.

“This is why you don’t plan a gambit like this, Alison,” Paul began. This, clearly, was the best time to lecture me on investigative techniques.

From the bottom of the stairs, I heard my mother’s voice. “Melissa! Did you go up there? Didn’t I tell you not to?”

I looked at Donovan. “Oh, just go,” I said. “Nobody was ever really going to hurt you.” He got to his feet and started down the attic steps in what was, for him, a hurry.

Making a mental note to admonish my daughter for disobeying both her mother and her grandmother, I threw up my hands in a gesture of futility, and looked to my two dead friends.

“That’s it,” I said. “I’m beaten. We’ll get no more done tonight.”

I climbed down the stairs behind Melissa, who kept asking questions I wasn’t in the mood to answer. I didn’t say anything even as Mom, Paul and Maxie joined behind me, offering suggestions, criticisms (in Paul’s case) and other chatter.

They followed me all the way down the stairs to the front room, where Jim and Warren had returned, and were actually drinking red wine instead of beer. They must have brought some from their excursion into town.

“Can I have some of that?” I asked Warren. “I’ve had a day.”

“Get a glass,” he said.

But something caught the corner of my eye, and I walked toward the game room instead of the kitchen. The plastic easel was back in the hallway outside the library, but the letters had been rearranged again.

“MAYBE NEXT TIME,” they read now.

And for some reason, that did it. I turned toward Mom, who was of course directly behind me. “Get Jeannie and Tony on the phone,” I said. “I’m going to call Lieutenant McElone. Again. And get the TV crew into the den. I’ve had enough.”

“What’s going on?” Mom asked.

“We’re having another séance,” I said. “Right now. We’re going to get in touch with the spirit of Arlice Crosby.”

“But I haven’t heard a word from Arlice,” Paul, who had dropped in from the ceiling, noted.

“I know that, and you know that,” I told him. “But the murderer doesn’t know that.”

I asked Paul to put out an alert on the Ghosternet that we were looking for as many otherworldly visitors as we could get. I wanted the house to be filled with spirits, just in case Dolores’s gizmo really could take some measurements. Paul also sent out the word to Scott McFarlane, who showed up in very little time. I’m sure he looked determined, but I would have no way of knowing for sure.

I got Donovan on his cell phone as he drove home. Given our previous encounter, it took a good deal of persuasion, but I assured him he would be in no danger whatsoever, and he agreed to come back to the house. I think when I told him Lieutenant McElone was coming and was expecting him, it might have made the difference.

Melissa, already in the doghouse with me for her attic stunt, still had the gall to ask if she could stay up late to watch the séance. I was, if you’ll pardon the expression, dead set against it.

Naturally, she prevailed anyway. I’ll spare you the negotiations. Just suffice it to say that rooms would be cleaned, dishes would be washed and homework would be done with no complaints for a long period afterward. I might not always stand my ground, but I always drive a hard bargain.

Word of the new séance spread around the house like wildfire, and within twenty minutes the den was once again packed (with the predictable exceptions of the rumored Mr. and Mrs. Jones). This time, Trent made sure to keep his cameramen hovering about the room, not trained only on the three remaining members of his photogenic cast. I had every window in the den open, and it was still pretty warm from the crush of humanity.

It was odd to notice that, like in classrooms from childhood, people tended to go to the same spots in the room, as if they had been assigned.

They even left a space where Arlice Crosby should have been.

Bernice, of course, positioned herself back on the sofa, and made many of the same complaints about not being able to see. But they were even shallower than the last time, because mere minutes after I’d announced the event, Trent had managed to hang a TV monitor high on the wall (all the while assuring me he would pay for any necessary repairs) to help Ed the director with his task while I conjured the spirits available to me.

I was surprised at how many of them had answered Paul’s Ghosternet broadcast. For the first time, I could see ghosts who weren’t Paul or Maxie, mostly older people dressed as if they were going to a mid-priced restaurant in Boca Raton. White belts and shoes abounded. Other spirits were invisible to me, but were clearly in contact with the specters I could see. It had never occurred to me that my ability to see ghosts might develop in time. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it, but there was no time for self-therapy with this crowd in the house. I’d have to remember to be freaked out later.

There was one, a man in his late fifties, I’d say, decked out in biker regalia and an actual German Army helmet, trying very hard to get Maxie’s attention near the ceiling. She was attempting with equal force to look bored, but it was lost on the guy. He kept jabbering on, and she kept not making eye contact.

Near the side table, slightly higher than the living humans’ heads, there hovered a red bandana. I wanted to make sure I knew where Scott McFarlane was the whole time we were in this room. The last thing we needed was for him to be too close to anything else he might be blamed for later.

I waited until Tony and Jeannie showed up, told Tony my plan (Jeannie would not have acknowledged it) and asked him to watch the areas of the room I couldn’t, and especially to keep an eye on Melissa and Mom, who were inching their way in from the far door, where I had begged them to stay. Tony said he would make sure they didn’t get too close if something started to happen.

When Lieutenant McElone showed up at the back door, I made a beeline for her before she got too close to the freaky crowd in the den. McElone is not a fan of deceased spirits and doesn’t like coming to my house.

“The only reason I came here at all was that you said you knew who killed Arlice Crosby,” she reminded me. That was, after all, what I’d told her on the phone. “Now, who did it exactly, how do you know and why couldn’t you just tell me on the phone?”

“Well, saying I
know
might be overstating it just a little,” I admitted.

McElone’s eyes got angry. “So you got me down here by lying to me?”

“Look, Lieutenant, I really do think we can find the murderer in this room tonight if you just go along with what I want to do.” I didn’t have the whole plan worked out yet, but I had the beginnings of it. What had seemed like a great idea when I was steaming mad after seeing the new message on the easel was starting to fade as anxiety took over from determination. It is not, I’m sorry to say, an unusual pattern for me. “I’m going to announce that I’m in touch with the spirit of Arlice Crosby and that she knows who injected her with insulin Thursday night.”