The Ghost and the Dead Deb (23 page)

After a final respectful nod from Judge Brainert, I escorted Johnny and Bud out of the Community Events room and through the dimly lit store. I unlocked the front door to let them out, and Johnny turned to face me. “Thanks for everything, Mrs. McClure. I left a note in your storage room. On that old desk. It’s for Mina. Could you make sure she gets it?”

I nodded. I had sequestered Johnny in that room until the meeting began. “I promise she’ll get your message first thing in the morning.”

“I told her everything.” He shook his head. “She’s been the best thing in my life since all the bad stuff happened. She made me start to feel good about myself and . . . I don’t know . . . to
want
to be a better person, you know?” He shrugged. “I decided she deserves to know the truth . . . everything . . . and then she can dump me if she wants to. I won’t blame her.”

“Mina cares about you, Johnny,” I assured him. “I haven’t known her long, but I don’t think she’s the kind of young woman who gives up on people. You’ll see.”

As they exited the store, Bud Napp put his arm on Johnny’s shoulder, gave his nephew a reassuring pat—a paternal gesture that just about tore my heart out.

“What’s your verdict, Jack?” I silently asked.

“But Johnny’s innocent,” I replied. “And Bud believes the court will clear him.”

The old guy’s sucking hope through an air hose, kiddo. Bud’s happy thoughts and square-john rectitude ain’t gonna keep that kid from wearing a fresh fish special
—

“Huh?”

A prison haircut. You’re fresh fish when everyone knows you’re the new guy because you’ve just been clipped. My point being that these are high-altitude crimes, with crème-de-la-crème stiffs pushing up daisies, so the heat’s on the suits in the system to throw a neck-tie party
—
even if the guest of honor’s just a patsy.

“But—”

I returned to the Community Events room, where a funeral pall had descended over the assembly. Seymour and Brainert were silently munching cinnamon rolls. Fiona clutched a cup of tea, and was leafing through a copy of
All My Pretty Friends
. Joyce Koh was dramatically blowing her nose into a tissue.

“Poor Johnny.” She sighed. “He’s so young and cute. It’s like, how could anyone so buff be a criminal? Bummer.”

“You think he’s innocent, then?” I asked.

Joyce blinked. “Don’t you?”

“I’d like to know what everyone else thinks.”

“Well, I think he’s been framed,” said Seymour. “And not because I represented the guy. I know those rich bums up in Newport. I’m sure one of them did it. They’re all pond scum.”

“That’s a blanket generalization,” said Brainert. “Overruled.”

“Listen, Judge, the trial’s over, and I speak of what I know.”

“What has the Newport set ever done to you, Seymour?” Linda asked.

“That’s easy. Remember last year, after I had to have my ice cream truck repainted after some dude’s guts got splattered all over it?”

I shuddered, recalling the murder of a young Salient House publicity assistant that occurred right in front of this store.

“That paint job set me back a few dollars, let me tell you. Plus I lost a week of selling while the work was getting done. My ice cream business struggled for the rest of the summer, until I feared I’d have to sell a few pulps to swell my bank account. I decided to extend the ice cream season, instead.”

Brainert adjusted his bow tie and huffed impatiently. “What’s your point, Tarnish?”

“Well, then came autumn and I was still working to make up for lost revenue. I was parked down at the Inn during Fiona’s Oktoberfest celebration when a few rich snots from Newport asked for sundaes. I whipped them up, served them up with a smile, and the a-hole who ordered them just walked away with his friends without paying—like it was free or something. I tried to collar them, but the guy just laughed. ‘It’s only ten bucks,’ he said, like it was too little of an amount to bother fishing out of his wallet. When I got more adamant, I was muscled by some bodyguard-type, and those a-holes just strolled away.”

Brainert frowned “That’s no reason to brand an entire class.”

“Why the hell not?” Seymour replied. “I’m like an elephant that way. Do me wrong, I never forget.”

The room fell silent for a moment, everyone lost in thought. Suddenly Aunt Sadie spoke. “What if Johnny
is
innocent? He’s no Klaus von Bülow. He can’t afford proper legal representation. I feel like we’ve condemned the poor boy to the gallows.”

For once these cornpone yahoos are talking sense,
said Jack.

“Quiet, Jack,” I silently replied. “And my friends are not yahoos.”

“I think he’s guilty,” said Milner. “It doesn’t make sense, otherwise. If Johnny didn’t do the crimes, who did?”

Fiona slapped her book closed loud enough to get everyone’s attention. “I know I’m supposed to be the prosecutor here, but to be frank, I can finger a few other suspects just by perusing Angel Stark’s book.”

“I read that book, too,” said Brainert. “And despite what she claimed at her reading here, I thought Angel dropped the ball when it came to blame, wrapping it all up with the old ‘unanswered questions’ summation.”

“She didn’t
name
anybody,” Fiona replied. “But a close reading reveals some tantalizing clues.”

Brainert huffed. “If you say so. I yield to your true crime expertise.”

We faced Fiona. Some of us were hopeful. Others—like me—were dubious.

“Well, it says on page two nineteen that Donald Easterbrook, Bethany’s fiancé, disappeared from the party about an hour before Bethany’s body was found. Angel also writes that Bethany cheated on Donald many times. That’s certainly a good motive for him to murder her in a fit of rage.”

“I don’t know,” said Brainert. “Maybe Donald Easterbrook didn’t care.”

“He cared,” said Milner. “What man wouldn’t?”

This time I spoke up. “Okay, maybe Donald had a motive for killing Bethany, but that doesn’t explain Angel’s murder
or
Victoria Banks’s disappearance.”

“Okay,” said Fiona. “What about Hal McConnell? Unreasoning rage caused by unrequited love . . . Maybe he followed her to the utility room, tried to force his affections on her, she had choice words for him and he kills her?”

Joyce nodded with enthusiasm. “Sounds like it could happen.”

“Only on one of your soaps,” said Seymour.

“It did,” said Joyce. “Last month on
Destiny
.”

“
Destiny
?” asked Linda. “I don’t know that soap.”

“Korean channel. Out of Boston,” said Joyce. “Chin loved Bo-bae with all his heart, but she was cruel to him and one day when he declared himself, she humiliated him, and in a fit of rage, he smothered her with a silk pillow.”

The Quibblers stared at Joyce.

Linda Cooper-Logan leaned forward, wide-eyed. “What channel?”

“Seventy-two.”

I cleared my throat. “Getting back to Johnny’s case . . . Hal McConnell might have killed Bethany, true, and he might have even killed Angel. But he never would have hurt Victoria, because, in my opinion, he’s transferred all the affection he felt for Bethany to her younger sister.”

“Hey!” Seymour cried. “Then maybe Victoria isn’t dead or kidnapped. Nobody’s found a corpse or a ransom note. Maybe Angel killed Bethany then Victoria and Hal killed Angel and then ran off.”

“Sounds good, except I spoke to Hal today,” I informed him. “He hasn’t run off. And he said he was on the West Coast interviewing at a grad school. He took the red eye last night and just got in this morning.”

Seymour’s face dropped. “Oh.”

“You just read too many of those damn pulp novels,” said Fiona. “That, or you’re an incurable romantic.”

Seymour snorted. “Forty-five years of bachelorhood has cured me of any residual romanticism, I assure you.”

“Anyway,” said Brainert, “according to Angel’s book, Bethany slept with dozens of men. Any one of them could have been the killer.”

“Yeah,” said Milner, nodding. “I couldn’t tell you the number of crime stories I’ve read that had the victim dying during rough or kinky sex. And Angel wasn’t exactly pure as the driven snow. Maybe she ran afoul of the same pervert.”

Mr. Koh groaned again.

“Take it easy, Dad,” said his daughter. “It’s nothing I haven’t heard on Court TV.” But Joyce’s words did not reassure her father. Once again, he said something in Korean, and she came back at him in the same language. Then they continued arguing back and forth.

“Well, the meeting has finally degenerated, so I move we call it a night,” Brainert declared.

“I second the motion,” said Linda. “Mil and I have to get up early and start baking.”

Brainert slammed the hammer down. “This meeting is adjourned . . . and I’m getting me a real gavel for the next get-together. The damn thing is quite useful.”

“Good God,” I groaned. “I’ve created a monster.”

After everyone left and my aunt climbed the stairs to bed, I turned off the coffeemaker and the lights in the community room. Then I headed to the storage room to fetch the note Johnny left for Mina. I wanted to make sure she found it as soon as she got to work on Sunday, as I wouldn’t be here to give it to her. Tomorrow I was scheduled to take Spencer to the McClure family reunion at Windswept, an outing I would have gladly traded for a more pleasant experience—like a root canal sans novocain.

I found the note in the center of the old desk—a letter, really, sealed in an envelope culled from boxes of stationery, Mina’s name in ink, printed in neat script on the front.

As I picked it up to take it into the store, I spied Johnny’s denim work shirt draped over the back of the metal chair he’d been sitting on. He’d shed the garment earlier in the evening and had apparently forgotten it when he left. I picked up the shirt, and a bundle of keys dropped out of the breast pocket with a loud clatter. The keys to Bud’s store, his home—and the Napp’s Hardware truck concealed in the woods near the highway.

“Jack, are you there?”

“Johnny forgot his keys . . . do you think there’s something inside that truck that might back up his story and help to clear him?”

“What?”

 

 

IT WAS MIDNIGHT before we got on the road. I’d checked on the sleeping Spencer and told Aunt Sadie I was ducking out to the all-night convenience store for a few things. She raised an eyebrow but didn’t ask any questions.

The heat of the day had given way to a breezy night. With my car windows rolled down, the pungent scent of Quindicott’s saltwater inlet permeated the air. The cloudless sky was jammed with stars, and the roads were virtually deserted as I moved through town and out into the countryside. I didn’t see another pair of headlights until we approached the main highway. Along a wooded stretch without streetlights, I slowed the car.

“The lovers’ lane is along this stretch of road somewhere, if I remember correctly.”

“Jack, even I was young once . . .”

“None. I was a wallflower. My husband was my first and only real boyfriend. But my late brother Pete was a heart-breaker. He used to talk about this place to his friends, and I eavesdropped.”

“Funny, Jack.”

I swerved off the highway, onto the shoulder, then slowly edged my car onto a narrow, unpaved service road consisting of two worn wheel paths with vegetation growing in the middle. As we bumped along, I could hear the tall grasses scraping along the bottom of my car. After rolling along for about a hundred yards, the road was blocked by two concrete posts with a steel cable strung between them.

“Not according to Joyce Koh.”

I stopped the car, threw it into neutral, and popped the door. The interior alarm beeped, informing me I’d left the keys in the ignition. The door only opened about halfway before it hit a wall of scrub weeds and gnarled trees. I had to squeeze my way around it.

Over the purring engine I could hear night sounds—crickets, the buzz of cicadas, and the roar of traffic on the highway, still almost a mile away. In the glare of the headlights, I examined the barrier. Despite Joyce’s assurances, it didn’t seem possible to detach the steel cable and proceed, except on foot. Then I noticed that the ring bolt on one post lacked a nut to hold it in place. I grabbed the cable with both hands and tugged. The ring nut popped out of its hole and the thick steel cable dropped to the ground.

Neat trick,
noted Jack.
Put the cable back and it looks like a dead end. The patrolling prowl car jockeys who come along think the place is jalopy free, meanwhile half the bobby-soxers in town are using the strip like a hot-sheets motel. How did Johnny-boy find this spot, I wonder?

I smiled. “My guess is that Mina showed it to him.”

Back behind the wheel again, I drove between the concrete poles and onto the road beyond. As we crawled along, the headlights cast bizarre shadows all around us. The brush was so close on either side that it seemed like we were moving through a narrow tunnel. Trees leaned into the roadway like giant hooded sentinels, their branches resembled curling claws that seemed to reach out like hands ready to strangle. I tried to forget the memory of Angel’s corpse, the yellow rope wrapped around her throat; the description of Bethany’s murder, the belt around
her
throat.