Ghost in the Wind Read online

  “He writes songs for TV commercials?” Was McElone playing some sort of game only cops found amusing?

  “No, the band. The Jingles!” Jeez, Mom, would you get with it already? All the kids are listening to them!

  “I don’t know that one,” McElone said. She looked at her screen again. “Nothing special in Vanessa McTiernan’s toxicology report. She had a reaction to the soy sauce she put on her veggie lo mein. Closed up her throat and she couldn’t breathe. Died of suffocation. No reason to think it was anything else.”

  “I’m told there was too much soy sauce in her system,” I said.

  McElone’s eyes performed the second act of Swan Lake, then returned to their normal position. “You been talking to Phyllis again?”

  “I’m afraid that’s classified.”

  “Mm-hmm. Yes, the ME said there was a high concentration of the stuff in her stomach, but it was consistent with someone who might have been trying to hurt herself with a known allergen that would close her throat.”

  That didn’t sound like information Phyllis would be anxious for me to hear. I had to dig deeper. Going back to the Chronicle office without new information would be admitting incompetence, and while I’m usually more than willing to do that, seeing Phyllis be smug (and still not tell me what I wanted to know!) would be too much.

  “She knew she was allergic to soy,” I told McElone. “She wouldn’t have put it on her food.”

  She shrugged. “People make mistakes.”

  “Not like that. Not when they know they could die.”

  McElone raised an eyebrow. “Maybe she wanted to,” she said.

  “Oh, come on. Suicide by veggie lo mein?”

  “I did the due diligence,” she said with a little force. “There was no reason to think anybody did her in. Murder by veggie lo mein?”

  Touché. “So was it ruled a suicide?”

  She shook her head. “Not officially. The evidence wasn’t conclusive. Could have been on purpose, could have been an accident. Either way, she died from the allergic reaction.”

  Time to change tactics. “Where did she die?” I asked.

  “In her apartment, over on Pier Avenue. The door was unlocked,” McElone answered. “The police got a call about loud music playing over and over for two days. Apparently she had a record on—regular vinyl, an LP—on an old turntable that could repeat it, so it was playing the same side endlessly.”

  “What record?” I asked.

  “Something called Enemy of the Mind,” McElone said, scrolling down. “By—well, what do you know!”

  “The Jingles,” I said. It was not a question.

  “Well, that’s not so unusual,” McElone suggested. “You said her dad was in this band, after all. She was just kicking back with some Chinese takeout, right?”

  “How about the door being unlocked? Isn’t that weird?”

  McElone cocked an eyebrow. “Do you lock your front door when you’re in the house?”

  “Look, if you’re going to be logical about it I don’t see how we’re going to get anywhere with this,” I replied. “Vance says his daughter wouldn’t use soy sauce, and it makes sense to me. He says somebody killed her and he wants to know why.”

  The lieutenant stared at her screen. “Says here Vance McTiernan died eight years ago,” she said.

  “And?”

  McElone closed her eyes tightly. “I’m in no position to tell you that’s crazy,” she admitted. “But I can’t go to my captain and tell him I want to reopen a death by natural causes because the victim’s dead father says his little girl wouldn’t do such a thing. Can’t you ask the girl herself? Since she’s . . . gone?”

  I shook my head. “It appears she didn’t become a ghost.”

  McElone scowled. “That’s inconvenient,” she said.

  “Do you have anything in there about a boyfriend?” I asked. “Bandmates? She was in a band.”

  The lieutenant’s mouth twitched a bit, and as she punched keys she mumbled something about how she believed herself to be mentally ill for even bothering. But she did, and after a few moments her mouth twitched again.

  “She was in a band. Something called Once Again. Three other members: Samantha Fine, a drummer, William Mastrovy, the bass player and lead singer, and a guy named T.B. Condon, guitars. The only one with a record was Mastrovy.”

  That was interesting. “A record?” I said.

  “Well, he’s not exactly squeaky clean but there’s nothing here to indicate a history of violence,” she said. “Some dealing, just weed. Nothing huge. An outstanding warrant for his arrest nobody is bothering to enforce because the paperwork would be more trouble than he is on the street. Not even a traffic ticket. But the other band members said Vanessa had just broken up with Mastrovy. So maybe that’s why she went the soy sauce route.”

  “Mastrovy was her boyfriend and she’d just dumped him? You didn’t think that was worth checking out?”

  McElone put her hands flat on her desk. “You come in here months after the fact and tell me the dead father of a woman who died of an allergic reaction says she was murdered and you want to tell me how I should have done my job?” She had a point. I knew McElone was a good cop and a thorough one.

  I backed off. “Is there an address for the Mastrovy guy? The other two band members? Vance would like me to find them.”

  McElone’s eyes narrowed. “Really. This is going about as far as I’m willing to go. The dead woman’s dead father wants to find people he thinks might have been involved in his little angel’s death? So he can get his ghosty revenge? And you want me to provide the coordinates? I don’t think so.”

  “It’s not like that,” I said, although I thought it might have been exactly like that.

  “I’m not giving you the address,” she said. I didn’t ask again. I know that tone. And I respect McElone enough to accept her decisions on professional issues. I nodded. “Fair enough. Anything you can tell me?”

  “Well, we talked to the kid from the restaurant but Vanessa didn’t get delivery; she picked it up from Ming Garden, on Surf Boulevard,” the lieutenant said without checking her screen again.

  “You were at the scene,” I reminded her. “You don’t give up that easy most of the time.”

  She put on an innocent look that didn’t suit her. “There was no reason to dig any deeper,” she said. “The doctor did the autopsy, found the cause. The lo mein was still in her living room on the coffee table. Nothing left to ask about.”

  That was awfully pat. “You don’t think it’s fishy that a woman who knew she had the allergy ate exactly the thing that would kill her?” That was what had been bothering me. Vance had a point: Why hadn’t McElone looked into Vanessa’s death more closely?

  “Not really,” the lieutenant said. “The uniforms came in, saw the scene. They didn’t know what killed her and she was alone, so they called me, I looked, didn’t see any evidence of violence and waited for the ME’s report. That sewed it up.”

  “Not too clean? Not like someone wanted them to find her just like that? She put on her dad’s record on auto-repeat and then committed suicide via Asian food? It’s just too staged.”

  McElone shrugged. “I’ve never seen you as a conspiracy theorist before,” she said. “This kind of thing happens. Not all the time, but it happens. The woman was unfortunate and it’s sad. I’m sorry your dead friend lost his daughter, but it doesn’t have to be a murder just because he doesn’t want to face it.”

  I wasn’t listening anymore. “Who are the cops?”

  “What cops?”

  “The uniforms. The officers who found Vanessa’s body. Who are they? I want to talk to them.”

  She made a “yeah, sure” face. “I don’t think so.”

  “It’s on the police report, right? That’s a matter of public record, isn’t it?” I stuck my ha
nd out. “Let’s have a printout, please. I’m a citizen and I’m exercising my right to know.”

  McElone sighed but she hit print on her screen and pointed toward the door. “You can pick it up on your way out. And I’ll tell you something.”

  I turned back toward her. “What?”

  She did not smile, did not twinkle her eye at me. In fact, she didn’t make eye contact, looking at documents on her desk. “You’re better at this than you used to be,” she said.

  There are small victories in life. You have to savor them.

  Seven

  The sense of victory didn’t last long. One of the cops on McElone’s list had left to work in Paterson, a good hour to the north. The other told me exactly the same information that the lieutenant had. Nothing new.

  He didn’t know Lester, either. I was now asking everyone I met. The mental image of that forlorn ghost dragging an empty wagon and looking for Lester had gotten to me.

  And I sneezed again the second I walked back into the guesthouse. This was getting tedious.

  Before any of the guests could spot me (as my eyes got puffy and red), I made my way to my bathroom upstairs, opened the medicine cabinet and looked for the antihistamine.

  It wasn’t there. It had been so long since my last allergy attack that I’d forgotten to replenish my supply. Drag. Since I didn’t want to be sneezing and wheezing tonight or on Sunday, I would have to get back out to a drugstore and pick up the proper medication. But for now, a hot shower would clear out the sinuses and besides, I needed one.

  Before I did that, though, I did a quick round of the downstairs to make sure none of my guests needed anything. Just when I thought I’d gotten a free pass to the shower, I ran into Berthe Englund walking in from the beach into the den. The glass doors in the back open right into my backyard, which leads to my beach (which technically belongs to the town of Harbor Haven, which means I have to buy beach passes for myself, my daughter and my guests every summer to go out onto property right behind my house. Welcome to New Jersey).

  “Alison,” Berthe called as she walked in after wiping the sand off her feet. “Do you have a minute?”

  “Sure, Berthe. How can I help?” The ancient rime of the innkeeper.

  Berthe, a larger woman with a friendly smile and a lovely island lilt to her speech, walked over and met me near the door from the den to the front room. “I missed the morning ghost show and I hear there was a wonderful musical performance. Is it going to be repeated this afternoon?”

  “You’ll just have to come and see,” I said. The ancient rime of someone who really didn’t know the answer to the question.

  “I’m so sorry I missed it,” she said, shaking her head.

  Great. Now having Vance McTiernan play instrumental versions (as far as the guests could tell) of his greatest hits was going to become an expected feature of my spook shows. That would be amazing—if I could guarantee it would happen.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” I said. Maybe I’d ask Maxie to get Everett here as a backup should Paul, Vance or both decided not to play the gig.

  The gig? Now I was talking like a musician.

  Berthe then asked me for a recommendation for a surf shop; it turned out that in her youth in Bermuda, she’d been an accomplished surfer before relocating to Highland Park to be with her (now late) husband, a professor at Rutgers University. Berthe wanted to see if she could take up the sport again now after “an interval of some years.”

  I directed her to Cut Bait and Run, a local surf and deep sea fishing business that also sold athletic shoes. Ted Iacobuzio, who runs the place, was a few years behind me in high school, which is annoying. He’ll always be younger than me, no matter what.

  Berthe thanked me and headed to her room to change. I decided to do the same while I had the opportunity; the next spook show would be in about two hours and I had to see who would be in my lineup for the afternoon.

  I took the quickest shower in recorded history and had just managed to get myself fully clothed again when Vance McTiernan emerged through the floor and asked, “So is there any progress on finding Vanessa’s killer, love?”

  After a very deep and not necessarily voluntary breath, I gasped, “Vance! I asked you just yesterday not to come into this room unannounced, right? I just came out of the shower.”

  Vance, doing his “I’m-so-naughty-but-aren’t-I-charming” face, put up his hands in a defensive position. “Okay, okay,” he said. “I’m not really all that dirty an old man, you know. It’s just what’s expected of one in my business.” He started to float backward toward the door.

  “Hang on. Since you’re here anyway, I wanted to ask if you might keep playing at the spook shows maybe once a day while you’re here. The guests really enjoyed it.”

  He cocked an eyebrow. “The guests? Not you?”

  “You’re fishing for compliments, aren’t you? It was the highlight of my year. You know I’m a big fan.” He looked at me with the look that no doubt afforded him much success back in the day. “Of your music.”

  “Killjoy.”

  “So you’ll play the gig?” I asked.

  “For you, love, anything. Now, how about some suspects and their addresses?”

  I sidestepped the question. “I’ll tell you what I’ve been thinking: Doesn’t it make more sense to look for Vanessa’s mother, Claudia?”

  It’s not possible for ghosts to turn white—they’re already pale enough, wispy and semi-transparent. But Vance McTiernan’s reaction screamed for the ability to look ashen. His eyes bulged, his Adam’s apple took a trip up and down his neck and his lips quivered.

  For reasons I couldn’t begin to imagine, what I’d said had scared him.

  “Claudia?” Was that the best he could do?

  “Yes. She might have some ideas about what happened to your daughter, no?”

  Vance’s tongue did a lap around his lips. “Yeah, see, the thing about that, love, is that Claud and I didn’t exactly get on great in life, you know? I don’t think she’d want to hear from me.”

  “She wouldn’t be hearing from you—you’re dead. She’d be hearing from me.”

  He shook his head. “No, no,” he said. “You’re barking up the wrong tree there, I think. Just do your detective stuff without Claud, right?”

  “This is ‘detective stuff.’” From the wall I heard Paul’s voice, and I turned to see his lips—just his lips—protruding through the plaster. “I thought you’d asked Alison to find out what happened to your daughter. Are you sure you want her to do that?” Paul floated all the way into my room, something that—unlike Vance—he almost never did unless asked in specifically.

  “Jeez, I should sell tickets today,” I said. “Everybody’s coming through here. Where’s Maxie?”

  “She’ll be here soon. Something about finding the right shirt to wear.” Paul turned his attention back to Vance. “You don’t seem that interested in finding the truth as much as punishing those involved. So is this about justice, or revenge?”

  “What’s the difference?”

  I interrupted to change the subject in a hurry. “Paul, I’ve asked Vance if, while he’s here, he might continue to play songs during some of the spook shows. I hope that won’t be a problem,” I said. Note that I did not ask if that was all right with him; it’s my guesthouse. Paul’s just the guy who haunts it.

  I couldn’t read his face. It’s not that easy most of the time—the ghosts’ faces, like the rest of them, are largely transparent. His teeth clenched but he did not look shocked. “I don’t see why it would be,” he managed to spit out.

  “All right!” Vance butted in. “We’re playing on the same bill, mate!” He clapped Paul on the shoulder and Paul looked like he was considering decking Vance. That probably wouldn’t help things much, so quickly I turned toward Vance. “As for progress in the investigation, I have gotten
some information, but nothing I can report back to you yet. I will when I know more. Now both of you get out of my bedroom and don’t come back unless invited.”

  I’m sure Paul would have blushed if it had been possible. He stammered a bit, opened and closed his mouth to no coherent effect, and dropped down through the floor.

  Vance, on the other hand, just shook his head and chuckled. “As you wish, madame,” he said, then simply evaporated, slowly. His eyes were the last feature to disappear. The rock star as Cheshire Cat. He was clearly going to require some supervision during his stay.

  And that was why I wasn’t at all disappointed when Maxie came floating down from the ceiling. She spends a lot of time on the roof and in Melissa’s attic bedroom, so I can expect her to descend. Paul tends to ascend. It provides, I don’t know, symmetry or something.

  “Did I miss it?” she asked once in the room.

  “Miss what?”

  Wearing her trademark skintight jeans and a black T-shirt (this one bearing the legend “Danger, Will Robinson!”, which frankly didn’t seem to have merited extra time to select), she hovered in the area of my dresser, surveying my outfit and choosing, against her usual nature, not to comment on it. “It sounded like there was gonna be a showdown between Paul and the British singer. I thought maybe they’d get in a fight.” She sounded enthused about that last part. “Did I miss it?”

  “There was nothing to miss,” I told her. “We had a brief discussion about Vance playing some songs during one of the shows every day, and Paul wasn’t happy about it but he didn’t get mad.”

  Maxie looked disappointed. “Really? He doesn’t like that guy.”

  “He doesn’t like a lot of guys I meet,” I reminded her. Paul has an odd jealous streak and sometimes reacts badly to men in whom I show an interest. The fact that Josh had hung in for a year now was no small thing. Paul didn’t exactly welcome him, but he didn’t seem to dislike Josh, either. It’s hard to dislike Josh, and Paul’s not the type to put in the effort. “There’s something I want to talk to you about.”

  Maxie straightened up a little. “Whatever it is, I didn’t do it,” she said.