The Ghost and the Dead Deb (31 page)

“You must be furious with Donald then. He slept with both of the women you loved.”

Hal laughed at that, a broken, brittle sound. “You think I loved Bethany? Once maybe. But by the time she was murdered I hated her so much I probably could have killed her myself.”

“But not Victoria.”

“No. Not her. But then there was always more to her than Bethany. She quickly regretted getting involved with Donald. She . . . she was starting to love me, I think.”

I swallowed my nerves. “And then, of course, Angel killed Victoria. I know that, too, Hal. I found the evidence.”

His expression darkened. “I heard the whole thing over the cell phone. We were talking, Vicky and I. Suddenly Vicky said something like ‘what are you doing here,’ and then I heard another voice. Angel’s. She said something like ‘you want to threaten me
now
?’ That’s when the connection broke.”

“You were in Newport when this happened?”

Hal shook his head. “I was already in my car, on my way to that fleabag motel on the highway. After the connection broke, I floored it. When I pulled into the parking lot, I saw Angel getting into a parked car. I thought Vicky might have been in that car, too, and I followed it.”

“So you came here to confront Angel.”

“I got here right as she pulled up. Of course, Vicky wasn’t in the car. Not in the backseat, not on the floor, not in the trunk. By that time, Vicky was already dead in the woods. But I didn’t know it at the time. I demanded Angel tell me where Vicky was, what had happened.”

“And did she?”

“Angel was high, I think. She laughed and ran down this path. She thought it was a big game. She had some yellow rope draped around her neck, told me how she’d grabbed a few pieces of it off the back of that kid Johnny’s pickup, just so she could frame him a second time.”

I closed my eyes a moment. “Jack, did you hear that?”

Yeah, baby. Remember the kid’s testimony in the bookstore
—
he’d said he’d been so upset trying to get away from Angel he’d flooded the engine in the parking lot. It wouldn’t start for a few minutes.

I could hardly believe it was that simple. “That must have been the moment Angel grabbed the lengths of rope,” I silently agreed. “But Johnny had been so focused on the truck’s stalling, he never saw her do it.”

“Angel’s hands were still bloody when I confronted her,” Hal continued. “She was still holding the gun she’d used to beat Vicky unconscious. She pretended to tighten the piece of rope around her neck so she could show me exactly how she’d killed Vicky. It was a big game, a big taunt to torture me. That was Angel’s kick, you know? Making people squirm. She’d gone to the motel, called Vicky from one of the motel’s pay phones to lure her outside, then forced her at gunpoint into the woods. There were no bullets in her gun, she told me she’d thrown them in Johnny Napp’s face when he’d refused to help her. So she beat Vicky unconscious with the butt and strangled the life out of her with one of the pieces of rope she’d taken.”

His gaze, which had gone far away as he recounted that night, suddenly focused on me. “Angel was a monster and had to be stopped. And I was going to stop her. That’s all I could think. I just snapped . . . slapped her and cursed her. She fought me, but I took the ends of the rope she’d draped around her neck to taunt me and I started to choke her. Angel fought hard. I know what she wrote about me in that book—she called me childish, sentimental, weak, had no respect for me. She never thought I had it in me . . . but I wouldn’t stop . . .”

My throat suddenly felt like it had been stuffed with cotton balls. I tried to clear it.

“So that’s why you were wearing the jacket and tie when I met you at the bookstore?” I asked. “And why you quickly threw on a wrinkled, dirty windbreaker from your car’s trunk after you got back to the parking lot. To hide the scratches?”

“Yes, Mrs. McClure, and why I’m wearing this jacket now.”

“And you knew your skin and blood might be under Angel’s fingernails and on her body. So you threw it into the water hoping to destroy any such evidence.”

“Yes. For all I know, it didn’t,” he admitted.

“For all I know, it did,” I said.

Hope flashed behind Hal McConnell’s stare, followed by suspicion. “Why am I here, then? This
is
blackmail, isn’t it? You want money, don’t you?”

“Not blackmail,” I said. “Blackmail is impossible. Look up.”

Hal lifted his head. “See that box on the pole behind me, the wires leading out of it, to the bushes over there?”

His eyes traced my map. Hal nodded.

“There’s another security camera up there. If you killed Angel right here, as you said you did, then the murder was caught on camera and that recording is also in the hands of the State Police.”

Hal’s eyes dropped. He reached one hand into the pocket of his sport jacket. “I guess I’ll need this then . . .”

As I watched, Hal drew a bloodstained handgun out of his pocket. Before he could raise the weapon, Seymour Tarnish burst from behind a pile of canvas-covered wood on the site, waving a baseball bat he kept in his ice cream truck and yelling—

“Don’t try it, buster. You might be able to shoot me, but you can’t shoot everyone!”

Milner Logan stepped out from his hiding place behind the chest-high brick foundation, weaponless, though his muscular physique was imposing enough. From behind Hal McConnell, Mr. Koh emerged from his hiding place behind a bush, a long branch in hand. Finally, Fiona Finch, my aunt Sadie, and J. Parker Brainert stumbled out of their own hiding places. Poor Brainert was cursing that he’d stepped his loafers in a pile of goose dung.

Hal McConnell quickly realized that they’d heard every word.

“Yes, Hal. They are all willing to testify to the things you confessed if they have to.”

Hal shrugged, turned the gun handle first and handed it to me. “I wasn’t going to shoot you. There are no bullets in the gun,” he said. “It’s just another piece of evidence I wanted you to have.”

Suddenly, Hal’s face and body seemed to completely relax.

I stared at him, puzzled. “You look relieved.”

“It’s all going to come out now,” he said. “All of it. No more wall. No more code of silence. They’ll never forget Bethany now. Or Victoria . . . and they’ll all pay for hiding the truth.”

I took the gun and he met my eyes.

“But, Hal, the truth won’t set you free,” I said softly. “You’ll have to stand trial.”

“It’s okay, Mrs. McClure. I’m ready. Unlike Angel, I have a conscience.”

EPILOGUE

I have a secret passion for mercy . . . but justice is what keeps happening to people.

—Ross McDonald

 

 

 

“I HAVE A surprise for you, Jack.”

It was late Monday evening, chilly for early October, and I was alone in my bedroom, getting ready to turn in. I pulled the combination alarm clock/CD player out of the shopping bag and began struggling to free it from its foam prison.

“It’ll just take a few minutes to put together,” I promised.

Today, I had finally found the time to drive to All Things Bed & Beautiful. Besides the alarm clock/CD player for myself, I’d gotten Aunt Sadie a new comforter and Spencer a set of Spider-Man sheets. He was sleeping on them now. But Sadie wasn’t under her new comforter. She and Bud Napp were, once again, out on the town—which for Quindicott meant pizza at Franzetti’s and a drink at Donovan’s Pub.

For weeks, Jack had insisted that Sadie and Bud’s nights out were “dates.” I had disagreed, thinking a man of Jack’s time just couldn’t grasp how a man and woman could be platonic friends. But then last week, I caught Bud kissing my aunt by the door, and I finally had to admit that maybe Jack Shepard knew a thing or two more than me about human nature.

Any news yet on the McConnell kid’s fate?
asked Jack.

“Yes, as a matter of fact . . .”

After discovery by both sides and much haggling by Hal’s legal team, the district attorney’s office had agreed to let Hal plead guilty to manslaughter. There would be no trial. And the sentencing had just come down earlier this very afternoon—which was probably also why I felt the need to take a drive.

“The judge gave him seven years in a minimum security facility,” I informed Jack, “and he’ll be eligible for parole in four.”

“Not for somebody who’s used to the freedom wealth brings. Of course, I hear he’ll be doing an independent graduate studies program out of Brown University while he’s in prison. Egyptology, I think—”

“Don’t make fun, Jack. I feel bad enough as it is.”

“You know why. Hal McConnell wasn’t really a murderer. He was just trying to protect Victoria that night, and—”

“But Angel was a murderer herself, two times over.”

“I know . . . and Bud is grateful beyond words. So am I, Jack. To you.”

I laughed, then went back to trying to set the right time on the digital display of my new alarm.

“Really, Jack, I mean it. If you hadn’t suggested faking that security camera on the pole that night, I don’t know if I’d have figured out how to get Hal to . . . you know, uh, give up the ghost, so to speak . . . no offense.”

“Seymour Tarnish’s ice cream truck came in handy on that score . . . and Milner Logan was great in actually climbing the ladder and getting it up there. Not bad for a bunch of—what did you call them?—cracker-barrel yahoos.”

“Oh! That’s right, I never told you. He went to culinary school. Bud’s helping him with some of the tuition, and Fiona is lending him the rest. She said once he graduates, he can work off the loan at her new restaurant—assisting the head chef, which she hasn’t exactly found yet. But I’m sure she will before the Finch Inn restaurant opens for business this Christmas.”

“On what?”

“Quindicott is a charming and quaint little town, Jack Shepard. Repeat after me. Quaint is good.”

I was unwrapping a new CD when the words sunk in. I completely froze, unable to believe my ears. “Jack? Did you just go sappy on me?”

“You know, Jack, seriously . . . I never asked you: What did you think of my work . . . as a P.I.?”

I smiled. “Thanks.”

“I won’t. But I’ll tell you what, I’m pretty sure this will.”

I pulled a bottle of chilled champagne out of my tote bag. A minute later, I was popping and pouring the bubbly into a shallow glass—okay so it was a cheap plastic party glass and not fluted crystal, but the champagne was real.

I smiled and hit the play button on the new CD player. “And here’s a little something for you.”

He didn’t have to ask twice. The CD of Glenn Miller’s greatest hits immediately began to fill the room with 1940s’ big band classics, starting with that haunting standard, “Moonlight Serenade.”

“Aw, Jack, you remembered. How romantic.”

He laughed and so did I. Then I leaned back on my bed, closed my eyes, and sipped champagne. After two hours, I had (mostly) forgotten how bad I felt about Angel Stark and Victoria Banks and today’s sentencing of Hal McConnell. I had finally learned how to relax with my ghost. I was so relaxed, in fact, I began drifting off and almost didn’t hear Jack talk to me one last time.

I’ll see you in your dreams, baby,
he whispered. Then I felt the cool kiss of his presence temporarily recede, back into the fieldstone walls that had become his tomb.

Hard-boiled private eye Jack Shepard didn’t have much use for books—at least, not when he was alive. Scholarly tomes never helped him persuade a clammed-up booze-hound to spill, nail a fakeloo grifter, or make a hatchetman grab some air until the coppers showed. So, of course, he has little interest in the crate of dusty old volumes that arrive at the Rhode Island bookshop he’s been haunting for fifty years. On the other hand, young widow Penelope, her aunt Sadie, and their book-loving friends in the Quindicott Business Owners Association (a.k.a. the Quibble Over Anything gang) are
thrilled
with the delivery. The rare leather-bound library of Edgar Allan Poe limited editions had been willed to Buy the Book by an elderly admirer of Sadie’s. The dead man’s library is so valuable that Pen and Sadie are immediately inundated with astronomical bids for each and every volume in the set. Everything appears rosy, until Pen and Sadie begin to sell off the books one by one . . . and one by one each buyer dies. The police don’t believe Pen’s “literary” theory—that these deaths are linked to the rare book purchases. In fact, the police don’t believe these deaths are murders at all. Pen, of course, knows differently, which means it’s time to persuade her hard-boiled haunter to stop resting in peace, start cracking some clues, and make sure this twisted Poe freak kills “nevermore.”