Make the Ghost of It (Witch Woods Funeral Home Book 3): (Ghost Cozy Mystery series) (7 page)

Chapter 13

The day was unseasonably hot by the time Basil and I reached the café where Theo had agreed to meet us. Thankfully, he didn’t ask us who had given us his phone number. It would’ve been hard to explain that it was his old boss who was now a ghost.

I had been relieved to hear that the police had asked Theo, Norbert, and Violet to stay in town to help them with their inquiries. Basil had not been so pleased; he figured the only reason was that the police wanted to extract some evidence against him from one or all of them.

Basil and I walked down the sidewalk, and I watched idly as mirages, little puddles of water, appeared in front of me and then vanished just as quickly as they had appeared. The air was still, making the heat even more unbearable.

We had suggested Theo meet us in one of the cafés that had al fresco dining. Basil said that none of the cafés in town had air conditioning, due to the fact that it was never really this hot, so at least we had the hope of catching a breeze if we sat outside.

The al fresco area was in fact cooler, with a cover of sorts and plenty of flowers and shrubs which gave the impression that it was not as hot as it was.

I ordered an icy drink, and Theo and Basil followed suit. Theo wasted no time in coming to the point. “So, what did you to want to see me about?”

Basil and I exchanged a quick look. “As you know,” Basil began, “I have inherited Lewis’s business.”

Theo interrupted him. “Do you know what you’re going to do with that yet?”

Basil shook his head. “No, I’m afraid that’s not my priority at the moment. I have to wait until the police find and arrest Lewis’s murderer.”

Theo plastered what I took to be a fake look of sadness on his face, but maybe I was just too suspicious. “Oh yes, of course,” he said.

“The lawyer has already given me some of Lewis’s papers,” Basil said, and I noticed that Theo’s expression suddenly became most attentive. Basil continued. “I see that Lewis was auditing a firm by the name of
It’s Accrual World
. The principal is Simon Smarts.”

Theo nodded vigorously, and then sipped his drink. He remained silent, and averted his eyes from Basil’s.

“Were you working on that, assisting Lewis?” Basil asked him.

Theo shifted in his seat, and then wrung his hands. He looked more like Mr. Burns than ever. “Yes, I was.”

“And did Lewis tell you that he uncovered evidence of embezzlement?”

Theo’s eyes widened. “Are you sure that he did?”

“Positive,” Basil said.

I was watching Theo carefully. He seemed to be acting guilty, but then he always had that look about him.

“Are you absolutely sure?” Theo asked again.

Basil nodded. “Yes, it’s certain. Someone in that firm was embezzling a lot of money. Do you have any idea who it would be?”

Theo shook his head, and again avoided looking at either of us. “No, I don’t have a clue. I’m awfully shocked. There must be some mistake.”

“Could it be Simon Smarts?”

Theo met Basil’s eyes. His eyes darted from side to side. He reminded me once more of a snake, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if his tongue had flicked in and out. “What do you mean?” he asked.

“Could Simon Smarts have been the embezzler?” Basil asked.

For a moment, I thought Theo was going to make a run for it. He was certainly acting furtively. “No, I’m sure Simon has nothing to do with it. He would be just as shocked as I am.”

“Well if you happen to speak to him, please don’t mention it to him,” Basil said.

“Of course, of course. Whatever you say.” Theo’s manner was at once obsequious. “Do you have any evidence as to who the embezzler was?”

I looked at Basil to see what he would say.

“I haven’t had a chance to look through all the paperwork yet,” Basil said simply.

Theo made a show of looking at his watch. “Oh look! Is that the time! I must be going.” He left his drink unfinished and hurried out the door, with a backward glance over his shoulder.

“He sure seems guilty,” I said to Basil.

Basil agreed. “He could be guilty about something else entirely—other than the murder, I mean.”

“And where could he possibly be going?”

“Anywhere away from here,” Basil said with a laugh.

I smiled. “The lawyer didn’t really give you any papers, did he?”

“Actually, he did,” Basil said, “although I couldn’t see anything of interest, and certainly nothing about the embezzling with the short time I’ve had to go through it all. Anyway, I’ve canceled my appointments for the week and given Mrs. Anise the time off. Would you like to come back to my office and help me look through the paperwork? We might uncover something.”

“I’d love to.” I knew that being asked to see his paperwork was not the same as being asked to see his etchings. Still, I was happy to look through boring paperwork, anything that could help solve Lewis’s murder and prove Basil’s innocence.

When Basil opened the door to his building, I was instantly hit with a blast of cool air. “Oh it’s lovely and cool in here.”

“That’s because it’s an old stone building,” Basil said. “Natural insulation. My office isn’t so good due to the big north-facing windows, but I do have air conditioning and heating.”

“It’s a pity that the cafés in town don’t have air conditioning,” I said.

“That’s because most of them only have heating,” Basil said. “It’s never usually this hot, and it doesn’t help that it hasn’t rained for weeks. This is usually the month when we get the most rain.”

“It certainly is dry around here.”

Basil followed my gaze to the large potted plant in the waiting room. “I’d better water it,” he said. He had just finished watering it when a man hurried into the office.

“I’m sorry,” Basil said. “I’ve just popped into the office, but we’re closed for the week.”

“Are you Basil Sandalwood?” the man said by way of reply. I looked him over. He was dressed in a tight suit, and looked uncomfortable. His face was beet red, and the top of his bald head reflected the fluorescent light. He smelled overpoweringly of aftershave—I guessed Old Spice or a grandfatherly aftershave like that. “I’m Simon Smarts of
It’s Accrual World
,” he announced. “I wonder if I might have a moment of your time.”

Basil looked at me and raised his eyebrows. “Sure,” he said to the man. “Please come into my office.” Basil motioned to me to follow them in.

The man appeared to be uncomfortable with that. “Mr. Sandalwood, I’d like to have a word with you in private, if that’s all right.”

“Mr. Smarts, this is my assistant accountant, Laurel Bay. I have no secrets from her in this firm.”

The man looked flustered. “Sure, that’s fine.”

I was even more flustered than Simon Smarts looked. I sure hoped he didn’t expect me to do any addition, or then he would soon find out that I was mathematically challenged. A six year old child would be better at math than I was.

Simon Smarts and I sat down, while Basil turned on the air conditioning. I fervently hoped he turned it to maximum. He walked over and took his seat opposite us. “What can I do for you, Mr. Smarts?”

“Please call me Simon,” the man said. He had that slick air that some salespersons have. “Theo Derringer told me that you have inherited Lewis Lowes’ accounting firm.”

“That is correct,” Basil said slowly. I could see that Basil was being careful, and was wondering what was coming next, as was I.

“Have you decided what you are doing with Lewis’s business yet?” Simon said. “Will you be selling it?”

Basil shook his head. “It’s entirely too soon to make such an important decision,” he said evenly.

“I understand; I understand,” Simon said hurriedly. “I would, however, like to make you a good offer for the business.”

Basil shot me a look. I figured he was thinking the same thing that I was, that Simon wanted to buy Lewis’s firm so he could bury the evidence of embezzlement. Was I in the same room as Lewis’s murderer? A tremor ran through me at the thought.

Simon appeared uncomfortable that Basil hadn’t yet answered. “Would you be interested in selling the business?” he asked him.

Basil was silent for a few moments. “Quite possibly,” he said after an interval.

Simon’s face remained a mask. I expected he would have made a good poker player. “Here’s my card. Let me know what figure you’d like for it, and we can talk.”

He stood up, and so did Basil and I. The three of us shook hands. Simon’s handshake was limp and his hand was clammy. He looked at me with rheumy eyes, and then took his leave.

Basil and I followed Simon out, and Basil locked the door behind him. He turned to me. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Yes,” I said. “Simon Smarts wants to buy Lewis’s firm from you to cover up the evidence of embezzling. We have to go to the police with this.”

“But that doesn’t mean that he’s the murderer,” Basil pointed out.

“No, it doesn’t,” I agreed, “but the police at least need to know about it. It’s a valuable piece of evidence. You know, he and Theo might be in it together.”

Basil ran his hands through his hair. “Unless we can find something in the paperwork, some evidence of embezzlement to show the police, then we can’t go to them. We can’t exactly tell them that the ghost of Lewis Lowes told us he had uncovered evidence of embezzlement the night before he was killed.”

I thought about it for a minute. “Okay, I think I know the solution. There will be evidence of embezzlement, won’t there, right?”

Basil nodded. “Yes, but I might not be able to get my hands on it until after probate. By then, I could well and truly be awaiting trial for murder.”

I held up a finger. “Hear me out. You could tell the police that Lewis told you about Simon Smarts’ firm the day that he was killed. It’s not a lie as such. Lewis did tell us that he uncovered the evidence about the firm; it’s only that he did it in his ghost form. The police won’t believe that, so you have to get the information to them from some other angle. Let’s go and tell them that Simon Smarts has just made you an offer for the business—I was a witness to it—and then you can say that Lewis told you about the embezzlement before he was killed, rather than after.”

Basil took me by the shoulders, and electric tingles ran right through my body. “Laurel, you’re a genius!” he said, and then he kissed me hard.

Chapter 14

Basil and I were sitting in the police station’s waiting room. The station was in the next town, which was considerably bigger than Witch Woods and only a half-hour drive away.

I was starting to think this was all a bad idea. We had been waiting there for ages, and I wondered if this was a ploy by the detectives to make us feel uneasy. Perhaps they thought they’d get more out of us that way. The seats themselves were comfortable enough, black vinyl and pushed against a cream wall. In fact, every wall I could see was a different shade of cream. Even the floor tiles were cream, in vinyl squares. The ceiling did not look to be in terribly good condition, and the fluorescent lights beat down upon us, several of them flickering and threatening to give me a headache.

Finally Detective Brand came out and said—or rather, grunted—that we were to follow him into an office. Detective Brand took his seat at a large but old wooden desk that looked like a government issue from the 1950’s. Detective Swan leaned against a window, underneath crooked and aged gray venetian blinds that had seen better days. There was a modern desktop computer on the desk, but everything else appeared to have been caught in a time warp.

There was a government-issue wooden bookcase, and two cream filing cabinets with their doors hanging half open. Files were tossed haphazardly on top, along with a vintage fan. I figured that could bring some money on eBay! Behind the fan were various certificates, and three wooden shields. I was too far away to read the inscriptions.

The smell of stale cigarette smoke hung in the air, although I did not see any ashtrays. Perhaps it clung to the clothes of the detectives themselves.

Detective Brand was scribbling furiously on a notepad in front of him, and Detective Swan was just looking at it, so I continued to look around the room. The floor was mainly olive green, with black and white running through it in rivulets, and there were red squares placed at random. The walls here, too, were cream, although there was a strange navy blue stripe about eight inches wide along the perimeter of the floor. Bizarrely, there was an old framed photo of someone sitting on a horse hanging on the wall to our right.

Finally, Detective Brand looked up. “The desk sergeant said you had some information for us.” The way he said it made it sound like an accusation.

Basil looked him straight in the eye. “As you know, Lewis stayed in my house the night before we went skydiving. He told me that he was auditing an accounting firm, and that he had just uncovered evidence of embezzlement. Just before he drove to Witch Woods, he had called the principle of the firm, Simon Smarts, and told him.”

“Why didn’t you tell us this before?” Detective Swan said.

“I didn’t think anything of it at the time,” Basil said, “but today, Simon Smarts came to my office, and offered to buy Lewis’s firm from me. I think he was only doing that so he could bury the evidence of embezzlement.”

Detective Brand raised his eyebrows but didn’t say anything.

Basil continued. “Lewis told me that he suspected that Simon Smarts was involved in the embezzling.”

“Do you have any proof of that?” Brand asked him.

“Not yet,” Basil said, “but after probate, I’ll be able to get my hands on all the documents, and the evidence of the embezzling will no doubt be there.”

Detectives Brand and Swan looked at each other, and then looked at me. “And what is your business in this?” Brand asked me.

“I was at Basil’s office when Simon Smarts came and made an offer to buy Lewis’s business from Basil,” I said evenly. I felt guilty, although I had no idea why. Perhaps it was my surroundings.

“What’s the name of this accounting firm?” Brand said.

“
It’s Accrual World
,” Basil said.

“What!” Brand said, and then he chuckled. “How do you spell it?”

“I’ll write it for you,” Basil said. He was clearly frustrated. He wrote on a piece of paper and then pushed the paper over to Brand.

Swan leaned over Brand’s shoulder and sniggered. “I didn’t know accountants had a sense of humor.”

Basil shrugged, but I could tell he was irritated. I had no idea if they were taking our information seriously. I expect they thought that Basil was trying to push the suspicion onto someone else.

“Look, I know you think it was me,” Basil said. “It wasn’t me, but I don’t expect you to believe it. At least I hope you will follow up on this lead.”

“We’ll do what we have to do, and we won’t discuss it with anyone,” Brand said firmly, with a tone that bordered on rude. “Do you have any other information for us?”

Basil shook his head. “Just what we’ve just told you. The night before he was murdered, Lewis told Simon Smarts that he had uncovered evidence of embezzlement in his firm. Lewis told me that he suspected Simon. Also, Simon didn’t go to Lewis’s memorial service, but he came all the way to Witch Woods today just to make me an offer on Lewis’s firm.”

Detective Brand stood up. “Thanks for the information. We’ll look into it.”

And with that, we were dismissed.

When we got outside, I put my hand on Basil’s arm. “Don’t worry; I think they did take it seriously, even though they didn’t want to let on.” I expected Basil to disagree, but to my surprise he did not.

“You know, they were treating me differently in there, and I don’t think it was just because you were with me. Maybe they now suspect someone else.” He sighed. “I hope that’s not just wishful thinking on my part.”

I suspected it
was
just wishful thinking. I had only made that comment to make Basil feel better. It seemed to me that the detectives had Basil firmly in their sights.

“I’ll take you home,” Basil said, opening his car door for me.

The ride home was spent in silence.

I wondered if Basil would come in, and hoped it wouldn’t be awkward. However, Lewis solved the dilemma for me. He was standing outside the entrance to the funeral home, waving his arms at us. It was quite unnecessary—who would overlook a ghost?

Basil and I wasted no time hurrying over to him. “What is it?” Basil asked him.

“I have some urgent news. I wanted to tell you what I overheard at the police station, but I didn’t want to appear to you in front of the detectives, in case you stared at me and they thought you were insane. Also, I didn’t want to appear in the car, in case you ran off the road.”

Basil was clearly growing impatient. “Well, what is it, Lewis?”

“I’ve spent the last couple hours following the detectives around, listening in to what they were saying.”

“They no longer think it was me?” Basil said hopefully.

I held my breath, waiting for Lewis’s answer.

“Oh, they think it was you, all right,” Lewis said almost gleefully. “But they
are
looking at all the other suspects.”

“Well that’s good. I suppose,” I added lamely.

Basil shot me a half smile, and then addressed Lewis. “Do you have any specific news, or did you just come to tell us that they were looking at the other suspects?”

Lewis shifted from one foot to the other, and then floated upward. He shot me a look, and then landed. “No, I found out something really significant.”

“What is it?” Basil was obviously exasperated.

“It’s about Violet,” Lewis said. “They were talking about her as a serious suspect.”

“Why?” Basil interrupted him.

“I’m getting to that, if you’ll give me a chance to tell you,” Lewis said with a scowl. “Violet was previously married, and to a multimillionaire. When he died, she inherited everything, apart from a summer house that he gave to his aunt.”

I thought that over. “So is Violet a millionaire now?”

Lewis nodded.

“And did you know that?” I asked him.

Lewis shook his head forcefully. “No, I didn’t have a clue. I knew she was very well off, but I didn’t have any idea of her full financial status. I knew Norbert and Violet from my college days, and then we lost touch for some years. I did say we should sign a pre-nup before we were married, and she agreed. I did think at the time that she agreed a bit too readily, and she also said that she was going to insist upon one, anyway. I just assumed I had more money than she did, so I thought it all very strange.”

“That’s not all you didn’t know about her, if you don’t mind me saying so, Lewis,” Basil said.

Lewis’s face changed from a ghostly white to a ghostly red. “You mean her affair with Norbert?”

Basil nodded. “I bet Norbert’s just after her money.”

“That’s exactly what I was thinking,” I said.

Lewis looked offended. “But she’s awfully good looking, you know.”

Basil and I exchanged glances. “At least you know she wasn’t after you for your money,” I said, hoping that would cheer him up.

He did look brighter, but then Basil put his foot in it. “Perhaps she was a hoarder—you know, a money hoarder. Lewis was a millionaire, too. Laurel, just because you and I aren’t millionaires, we think having one million dollars would make someone financially happy forever, but obviously that’s not the way that Violet thought. It seems she was after every cent that she could get. Look at the awful fuss that she made when she found out that she didn’t inherit anything from Lewis.”

“But you
are
a millionaire now, Basil,” I pointed out.

An awkward silence fell over us, until Lewis broke it. “Anyway there’s more,” he said in a serious voice. We both looked at him expectantly. “Remember I said that Violet inherited the money from her first husband? Well, I presume he was her only husband.” He paused, and I wished he would just come out and tell us the information. “Her first husband died,” he continued.

Basil’s face was growing red, and I could understand why he was losing patience with Lewis. “Just tell us, Lewis!” Basil snapped.

I could see then that Lewis was embarrassed, and that was the reason he was reluctant to tell us. “Violet’s first husband was killed.”

“Do you mean murdered?” I asked him.

Lewis held up his hands. “Who knows? I didn’t even know that she had a husband.”

“Didn’t you hear the detectives discuss it?” Basil asked him.

“Yes, of course I did,” Lewis said. “They said her husband died in suspicious circumstances. They said it could’ve been an accident, but the fact that he was so wealthy and she had come from nothing and stood to be a millionaire after he died, made the detectives look into it. I was there when Detectives Swan and Brand called the detectives who investigated the case—it was five years ago—and then those detectives said that they could never get any evidence on her, and they really didn’t have an opinion either way as to whether she did it or not. They said there was no evidence that it was murder.”

“How did he die?” I asked him.

“Apparently he owned several large farms, and he went there one day to inspect one of them. They found him in a grain silo. He’d smothered to death due to the weight.”

I shuddered. “How ghastly!”

“The detectives who investigated the case told Swan and Brand that he only owned farms, but that he wasn’t a farmer himself, so probably didn’t know not to climb up and go looking in the top of the silo. They think he just overbalanced and fell in, or perhaps he was walking down the grain, and someone opened the chute at the bottom. As I said, they said they had absolutely no evidence.”

“I wonder how likely an accident like that would be?” Basil said.

“They said it’s a fairly common type of accident, and the thing was that Violet had accompanied him to the farm. They weren’t in sight of any of the farm workers, because they were on a different part of the property, drenching sheep.”

“So Violet might have murdered her first husband, and then murdered you?” I asked Lewis.

Lewis paled, a feat in itself considering he was a ghost, but Basil shook his head. “Why didn’t she wait until she was married to Lewis?”

“Lewis did tell her that he’d changed the will and that she was his only beneficiary,” I pointed out.

“Still, it would’ve been better to wait to kill him.”

Lewis interrupted. “Hey, don’t talk about me like I’m not here. It wasn’t Violet; I tell you. It was Norbert!”

I looked at Basil. “We need to do some investigating.”

“Norbert and Violet?”

I nodded. “I’ll call Tara and ask her to talk Duncan into getting some information on them.”