An Uninvited Ghost (19 page)

He reached over and opened one of the doors for me, ever the gentleman. The board that had been holding the two together swung open along with it, its usefulness long since gone. I stepped over some broken glass and a couple of discarded beer bottles as I walked inside.

“This is prime real estate, even in a bad market,” I said. “I’m amazed no one ever bought the property, even if just to knock this place down and build some condos or something.”

“I know,” Donovan agreed. “I looked into the ownership for a client once and discovered such a tangle of legal documents that even I couldn’t unravel the whole thing before the client decided to move on. The land alone must be worth millions.”

The entranceway was enormous but dusty and utterly empty. Donovan pointed toward the right and said, “This way.” I followed him toward a pair of dark wooden doors with metal pulls in the shape of an
O
and a
W
. He opened the left door, and we walked through.

“This is where we found the ‘ghost’ Arlice was looking for,” Donovan continued.

“What was this fascination with ghosts?” I asked. “What made Mrs. Crosby so curious?”

Donovan shrugged, which seemed incongruous from a man in such a well-pressed suit. “She had developed this interest only in recent years,” he said. “Maybe it was a way of dealing with advancing age, the idea that there’s another existence after death. People get a lot of very odd ideas when they have to face their own ends.”

Yeah
, I thought,
I’ll be sure to mention that to the two ghosts hanging out in my house when I get back.

The room was enormous, surely a ballroom in the hotel’s heyday. It was totally empty, except for a rather large rocking chair with rounded armrests and a high back sitting almost perfectly in the center of the room. The chair had seen better times, but was definitely not in keeping with the rest of the building.

“This chair was brought in from somewhere else,” I thought aloud. “It’s the least art deco–looking piece of furniture I’ve ever seen.”

“Yes, that was my first impression, as well,” Donovan said. “Someone was setting a stage here. It was designed specifically for Arlice to see.”

“It must have been a really elaborate prank,” I said, walking slowly around the room, and seeing tons of nothing. “What do you suppose the purpose was?”

“When it first happened, I thought it was just an odd joke, something that someone had set up to frighten anyone who came by, to establish the Ocean Wharf as a haunted house or something.” Donovan wasn’t following me around the room; he stayed near the door, as if hoping we’d be using it again very soon.

“You say, ‘When it first happened’—did something change your mind?” I asked. There were marks on the floor, running from either side toward the center, just in front of the rocker. When I dropped down to examine them, it became obvious they were only spots where the dust and grime had been cleaned up. Masking tape? Perhaps for the “spooky noises” Arlice was to hear, wires had had to be laid down. In any event, all the equipment had been removed.

“Well,” Donovan said, “after what happened to Arlice last night, I can’t help but wonder if the whole thing had been set up to try to induce a heart attack in her, or some other kind of fatal incident.”

I was almost all the way across the room, quite far from Donovan, and I had to raise my voice to be heard at that distance, which produced an unfortunate echo effect. “So when this ghost thing didn’t work, whoever it was went to plan B, using a massive insulin overdose? It seems like an awful lot of trouble to go through.”

Again the shrug. “I’m only speculating,” Donovan said. “Maybe they didn’t have access to the insulin at the time,” he suggested.

There was a small set of doors, low to the floor, which I assumed led to a storage cabinet of some kind. I hesitated in front of them.

My recent experience opening a closet door had not been one I cared to repeat.

But Donovan sensed it from across the room. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

Now I had to pretend to be brave. “Nothing. Just thinking about this cabinet.”

He wrinkled his brow. “Open it.”

Easy for you to say
.

“Yeah.” I knelt down, took a deep breath, and pulled on the cabinet doors.

They were locked.

“That’s weird,” I said as Donovan came closer. “This cabinet is locked. Wouldn’t they have opened it when they were cleaning the place out? Why take everything but leave one cabinet locked?”

“Excuse me,” Donovan said. He indicated I should get out of the way, so I did. And being the Big Strong Man, he got down on his expensive knees and gave the doors a mighty yank. Nothing happened, except perhaps that Donovan strained his biceps a bit.

“Wait,” I said. “These are pretty cheap locks.” I’d worked at a home improvement superstore before I was married and spent a good deal of time in the locks department. I knew a few things about opening stubborn ones.

Sure enough, putting pressure in certain spots while holding a key between the doors did the trick quickly. The doors swung open, and I forced myself to look inside.

It was, I have to report, both a relief and a disappointment.

Inside the cabinet we found all the crazy gear the perpetrators of the prank had left for Scott McFarlane to wear: a pirate hat, a long blue coat with hook-and-link buttons, an eye patch.

And at the bottom, just as Scott had suspected—a real, clean, sharpened sword, neither a cutlass nor a fencing epee, but something that looked for all the world like it would do some honest-to-goodness damage to someone if it hit her exactly the right way.

“Don’t touch it,” Donovan said. “We have to call the police.” He started to reach for a cell phone in his jacket pocket.

I pulled mine out of my canvas bag faster. “Don’t bother,” I said. “I spend my whole day doing this.”

 

 

After an hour of questioning from Lieutenant McElone (which began with, “So you decided to stick around until I got here this time?”), I got back to the house just in time for the four o’clock show, this time with the benefit of a flying ten-year-old girl, who pretended to be terrified, while the ear-to-ear grin on her face told all paying attention that she was having the time of her life.

Mom wasn’t joining us for dinner that night, so Melissa and I ordered Indian food. But as soon as I went back “on duty” after dinner, Trent Avalon walked toward me, cell phone in hand, talking quickly.

“I’m just on my way—we’re shooting on the boardwalk in Seaside Heights,” he said. “We’re shooting around Tiffney, and she wasn’t scheduled for tonight. Come with me.”

“What?”

“Come with me. I need to talk business with you, and I can’t stay here while the crew is eating up money in Seaside. Let’s go.”

“I can’t go. There’s nobody to watch Melissa.” That was a good excuse. Next, I could rely on “I have paying guests.”

“Bring Melissa along. She can play Skee-Ball on the production company’s dime.” Trent was chewing on a plastic straw. I’d seen him look frantic and harried, but I’d never seen him look nervous before.

“I’m getting my shoes,” Melissa said. Who knew she was close enough to hear?

“What business do we have to discuss?” I asked. “I’m not going to investigate Tiffney’s disappearance.”

“Alison, please!” he begged. It was sort of endearing, in a very unsettling way. But I wasn’t buying it.

Then Melissa showed up beside me, jacket on, shoes tied and smile in place. “Ready to go?” she asked.

In the car on the way to Seaside Heights (a half-hour ride Trent’s driver was determined to do in half the time), he took another shot at convincing me to look into Tiffney and her strange disappearance. I tried telling him that with the “terroristic threat” I’d found in Tiffney’s trailer, McElone was now investigating, but Trent didn’t want to hear it. “I don’t know what we’re going to do without her,” he began.

“Isn’t this going to create great publicity for your show?” Melissa asked. This is what happens when children have Internet access.

“Not the kind I want,” Trent answered in a sour tone. “If the fans find out there’s a possibility Tiffney won’t be on the show, I could be finished. Someone from the crew must have talked, because there are already rumors in one of the show’s chat rooms. If that grows—and it will—I’m going to need to find Tiff really fast, or they’ll replace me with someone who can.”

He got such a look of despair on his face that Melissa didn’t ask another question, and the car was very quiet until we reached the boardwalk. The driver cut through the relatively sparse crowd—it was only April, after all—and dropped us off right at the entrance to the amusements, which might have been open only because of the presence of the
Down the Shore
cast and crew. Otherwise, this was just too early in the season to bother.

Melissa, armed with a cell phone and a fifty-dollar bill from Trent (over my objections, which admittedly I did not voice too strenuously), headed for the games, and was told to check in every fifteen minutes in the hope that she would check in every half hour. Trent led the way toward the ring toss game, where H-Bomb and Rock Starr were working tonight.

The fact was, no one really had to lead the way. Given the lights and equipment necessary to shoot the completely spontaneous and unrehearsed action, the ring toss game could probably be located with the naked eye by someone standing on Saturn.

And already it was clear the “dramatics” were in full bloom.

Trent took on his “commander of the troops” air as we approached, standing straighter and walking with more purpose when his cast could see him. In the right outfit, and given a corncob pipe, he could easily be seen as General Douglas MacArthur returning to Korea.

The cameras were not rolling, so there was nothing yet to interrupt, but H-Bomb (who else?) was in fine voice and screeching away with wild abandon.

“I don’t
care
if he knows how to get people to play,” she was braying at a guy in a light blue polo shirt and jeans. “The camera can’t see me if he’s always standing in front.”

The guy noticed Trent and immediately beckoned him over. “I have an agreement with you people,” he said as soon as Trent was within earshot. “I let you disrupt my business for three weeks, but they have to work the game. I can’t have these constant temper tantrums about who’s standing in front. I need them to get people to put down money and play the damn game.”

Trent was already in full conciliatory mode. He held up his hands, as if to show he was holding no weapons. “I understand, Bill,” he said. “Let me talk to my cast for a moment, and we’ll work this out.”

“Another night like this . . .” Bill tried to start.

But Trent turned and faced him. “It’s April,” he said. “Another night like this, with six people on the boardwalk and us paying you a fortune, and you can retire to Boca Raton. Don’t push your luck, Bill.”

Bill, it should be noted, backed off, holding up his hands in exactly the same gesture Trent had just made.

I didn’t stick close enough to hear what Trent had to say to H-Bomb. I didn’t want to be there if she was hearing something she didn’t want to hear, which happened most of the time. Even from back where I was standing, near the frozen custard stand, I could hear her decibel level and her pitch rise every time she spoke. Something about a shadow on her nose.

Finally, Trent got the conversation down to something approaching a scream and must have said something to tame his star. Rock, meanwhile, was stretched out on the table behind the game, doing crunches. H-Bomb took a visibly deep breath, smoothed out the shorts that barely covered her thong and smiled unconvincingly. The crew applauded, and everybody went back to work.

Trent left the technicians to set up their scene and walked back to me. “Want to be a TV producer?” he asked. “Because right now you could have my job for a ten-dollar bill and a ride to the airport.”

“I’m very impressed,” I said. “You know how to handle people.”

He waved a hand. “That wasn’t me at my best,” he said. “Tiffney was the easiest—I could get that girl to do anything. You
sure
you won’t help find her?”

“I’m not tracking down Tiffney. Did you see that thing in her trailer? Somebody’s seriously deranged.”

Trent shook his head. “It’s sick, but it’s playful,” he said. “It’s exactly the kind of thing H-Bomb would do. Scare the hell out of her, but do it with cosmetics.”

“It wasn’t cosmetics. It was interior house paint.”

“Lieutenant McElone said it was red nail polish,” Trent answered.

I supposed I’d have to tell Paul he was right, but I wasn’t going to rush into doing so. Let him think I actually had expertise in
some
field—for a while, anyway.

“Anyway, I don’t think it was meant to be threatening,” Trent went on. “It was meant to be scary, not violent.”

“Well, then it was a complete and total success. I was terrified. And I’m still not taking your case.”

“That’s not what I wanted to talk to you about, anyway,” Trent said. “I have another business proposition.”

Immediately, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. “A business proposition?” I repeated.

“Absolutely. I’ve been watching what goes on in your house for a couple of days now. The ghosts, the guests. And I’m telling you, there’s a really strong reality show there.”

It took me a moment. “You want to turn my life into a reality show?”

Trent smiled, and it almost worked. “It’s not the way you think. You wouldn’t be required to do anything embarrassing or degrading.”

“No. I’d just have to have a camera crew follow me around all day, every day. I’d have to subject my ten-year-old daughter to the kind of scrutiny usually reserved for girls famous for getting out of cars with no underwear on when they’re on their way to rehab. I’d have to pretty much give up the business I’ve dreamed about having all my life to accommodate the comings and goings of technicians, publicists, producers and makeup artists. You’re right—that wouldn’t be the least bit embarrassing or degrading.”