The Weekend Was Murder (15 page)

“Thank you,” the operator said, and I heard the phone ringing.

Eileen answered, and when I told her who it was she said, “Hi, Liz. What can I do for you?”

I hadn’t spoken to her in the health club. I’d been too embarrassed, and I was embarrassed now, but some kind of apology was in order, so I said, “I guess you think I’m kind of a klutz.”

“Of course not,” she said. “I understand what it’s like suddenly to grow tall. I did the same thing.”

“But not like me.”

“Exactly like you.”

It was almost impossible to believe. “My friend, Tina, said I’m clumsy because of my low self-esteem,” I told her.

“That could have something to do with it, all right,” Eileen said.

I groaned in discouragement, but she told me, “There’s an answer, you know, and when we get a chance I’ll give it to you.”

“Really?”

“Really. I’ve got to go downstairs now,” she added, “so I’ll see you later.”

“Is your mother there?” I asked quickly. “I need to talk to her.”

Eileen was suddenly cautious. “Is this an emergency? Have you said or done something we should know about?”

“No, no. Nothing like that,” I assured her. “I just need to ask your mother some questions.”

Mrs. Duffy came on the phone, gave me her room number, and invited Fran and me to come right up, so we did.

The Duffys’ room wasn’t anything like the suite they’d started out with, but it was large and roomy. There was a grouping of two chairs and a love seat next to the window, and we settled there. Mrs. Duffy brought out two cans of cola and invited us to help ourselves from a large container of chocolate brownies.

“Eileen always brings emergency food for her actors,” she said. “They work awfully hard, and it makes them hungry.”

The way Fran attacked the brownies, I wasn’t too sure there’d be any left for the actors, but I had more important things on my mind. “You said you don’t believe in ghosts,” I told her.

“That’s correct.”

“But you write about them.”

“People like to read about ghosts,” she said, “and besides, writing scary scenes is fun.”

We were coming to the most important question, and I took a deep breath. “All the things that ghosts do and the way they act—do you just make it all up?”

“I make up what happens in my own stories,” she said, “but I base the ghosts’ actions on what I’ve learned about preternatural beings.”

“You research ghosts!” I was getting excited.

“That’s right.”

“Then tell me, please. Do you know how to talk with a ghost and at the same time keep him from swal … from harming you?”

Mrs. Duffy leaned back against her chair and smiled. “
If
there were ghosts, you’d have nothing to fear from them,” she said. “A ghost can’t harm you. It isn’t possible, because you have a physical body, and a ghost hasn’t.”

I shook my head, dissatisfied. “Let me give you an example,” I said. “A ghost is in the room with someone, and he freezes her so that she can’t move and then comes toward her.”

“She freezes herself—with fear,” Mrs. Duffy answered.

“No! His eyes freeze her. She looks into them and
sees these horrible black pits, and the black pits grow bigger and bigger …” I stopped and shivered as I remembered the ghost and his horrible eyes.

“That’s where the girl in your example went wrong,” Mrs. Duffy said. “She did freeze herself with her own fear. That’s without question. But she
never
should have looked the ghost in the eyes. All the responsible authorities on preternatural affairs are adamant about this. Never ever look a ghost in the eyes.”

I practically fell back against the love seat as I let out a long breath of relief.

“You did say she was alone, didn’t you?” Mrs. Duffy asked.

“She was alone. Was there something wrong with that?”

“Oh, no. There was nothing wrong—that is, if she wanted to see the manifestation of a ghost. It probably wouldn’t have shown up if there was anyone with her. From what I’ve read, they’re inclined to appear to only one person, sort of a one-on-one kind of thing. They aren’t fond of groups.”

I slid a glance at Fran. “How about two people?”

“It cuts the chances considerably,” Mrs. Duffy said.

“One thing about ghosts I don’t understand,” Fran said. “Why do they hang around?”

“According to authorities,” Mrs. Duffy explained, “it’s because they haven’t come to a complete ending to their lives. They think they can’t leave this earth until a wrong has been righted.”

“Weird,” Fran said, but I could understand how a
ghost would feel. If you’d been suddenly murdered, you would kind of wonder what happened next.

Mrs. Duffy suddenly startled me by saying, “Now that we’ve finished with hypothetical questions, Mary Elizabeth, why don’t you tell me all about your experience with the ghost in room nineteen twenty-seven?”

The phone interrupted, and Mrs. Duffy took the call. As she put down the receiver she said, “You’ll have to tell me some other time, Mary Elizabeth. There are a number of sleuths in the health club who want to question you, and Eileen asked if you could get down there as quickly as possible.”

We thanked Mrs. Duffy and left her counting the brownies Fran hadn’t eaten. I could hardly wait until we were out in the hall before I grabbed Fran’s hand and said, “We’ve got to find Detective Jarvis! Now that we know how to talk to a ghost, he can question the ghost and find out who killed Mr. Devane!”

Fran shook his head and frowned, and I insisted, “Don’t you see? The ghost’s an eyewitness!”

“Do you really think that Detective Jarvis is going to take your suggestion and go into the real scene of the crime to talk to a ghost?”

“Well,” I said, my excitement ebbing away, “maybe I could talk him into it.”

“Sure,” Fran said. He pressed the elevator button and turned to me. “What’s he going to tell his captain? And the district attorney? ‘I arrested this guy for murder because a ghost saw the whole thing and ratted on him’?”

Fran was right. I leaned against the wall, wishing the
elevator would hurry and come. “Darn!” I said. “I thought it was such a good idea.”

“It is, in a way,” Fran said. “If you could tell Detective Jarvis the name of the murderer, he could at least center his investigation on him and maybe find the evidence that would point to his guilt.”

“Yes,” I said, beginning to feel hopeful again. But something Fran had said suddenly struck me, and I asked, “What do you mean, if
I
could tell Detective Jarvis?”

“Face facts, Liz,” Fran said. “No one else has ever seen the ghost. If anyone’s going to question him, it will have to be you.”

I couldn’t face that ghost again! I absolutely couldn’t! Even if we
never
found out who committed the murder! I answered the sleuths’ questions as well as I could and showed them around the health club, as I was supposed to do; but my mind kept going back to the ghost, and I knew I must seem distracted.

Mrs. Bandini and Mrs. Larabee pulled me aside, after the rest of their team had left.

“Did you do it?” Mrs. Bandini asked.

“Do what?”

“Commit the murder,” Mrs. Larabee said, and threw an impatient glance at her friend. “You’re supposed to say it the right way, like the police do.”

“How do you know so much about what the police do?” Mrs. Bandini shot back.

Mrs. Larabee looked smug. “My hairdresser’s cousin is married to a security guard.”

Mrs. Bandini, somewhat deflated, turned back to me. “Well, did you?” she asked.

“Nobody’s supposed to know until the arrest takes place tomorrow at brunch,” I said. “But I’ll tell you, if you won’t tell anyone.”

They waited with wide eyes, and they looked as though they weren’t breathing.

“I didn’t commit the murder,” I whispered. “It was somebody else.”

“Then why are you looking so guilty?” Mrs. Larabee challenged. “It’s confusing everybody.”

“I didn’t know I was looking guilty.”

“Of course you are. A person asks you a simple question and you stare off into space, and sometimes you kind of jump and look behind you. I mean, your behavior is definitely suspicious.”

“Oh dear,” I said. “I’m sorry. I have something on my mind, and it’s a real problem, but it’s not Mr. Pitts’s murder.”

“There, there,” Mrs. Bandini said, and she gave me a grandmotherly hug. “We’re sorry you have a problem, and no matter what Opal has told you, there is nothing to apologize for. You are a lovely red herring.”

“Thank you,” I said. Another team was approaching, and I steeled myself to keep my mind on what I was doing. I couldn’t ruin the Duffys’ mystery weekend.

The sleuths, who had to come up with the answer of who committed Pitts’s murder and why before midnight, grew relentless. They dropped any attempts at politeness and grilled me unmercifully, asking so many questions my head began to ache. How could they possibly solve the make-believe murder by discovering whether or not any of the suspects had left a Continental
Airlines flight schedule in the dressing rooms? Or the color of the bathing suit Crystal Crane wore in the hot tub? Or if Randolph Hamilton ever mentioned being on a cottage cheese and cucumber diet?

And how could anyone ever solve Frank Devane’s murder by refusing to interrogate the only eyewitness?

Filled with guilt by refusing even to consider going back to room nineteen twenty-seven, I went to the last detective’s meeting of the day, intending to sit in the back row and listen to the actors and not think a single thought.

As I entered the lobby the crowd had thinned, most of them hurrying to the ballroom to get the best seats. Randolph, in conversation with Crystal, was crossing the lobby from the left, but a nondescript man in a dull-looking suit made a beeline toward them from the right. He strode steadily and quickly, and as he approached he slipped his right hand under his open suit jacket and began to withdraw it with something in it. Without stopping to think I ran toward Randolph, not too sure what was happening yet aware that something was not what it should be.

I saw the man’s hand emerging, the shine of metal, and—with a yell—I flung myself at Randolph and Crystal, knocking them to the ground and landing on top of them.

I wasn’t the only one yelling. Footsteps pounded past my head, a gun slammed onto the carpeting near my nose, and something went over with a crash.

“It’s okay, Liz. Everything’s okay. Stop screaming,” I
heard Detective Jarvis say. His hands gripped my shoulders, and he lifted me to my feet.

I dusted myself off and saw that Randolph and Crystal were standing, with no bones broken, Detective Jarvis was now holding the gun, and the officer in the weird clothes had handcuffed the man in the suit and was leading him out of the hotel, accompanied by a couple of uniformed officers who had appeared from nowhere.

“Did that girl try to kill Randolph?” A woman pointed at me.

“No,” Jarvis said. “Liz saved his life.”

Mrs. Bandini beamed at me proudly, but Sherlock Holmes scowled at Jarvis and asked, “Just who are you?”

“I’m a detective from homicide,” Jarvis said.

Eileen made her way through the crowd, and Mrs. Larabee said loudly, “Are you Detective Sharp’s partner? Is that right?”

“That’s right,” Eileen said and gave Jarvis a wink as she stepped to his side. “I’m going to ask Detective Jarvis to tell you what happened. Then we can all go back into the ballroom for our predinner meeting. Some more information has come in regarding our suspects.”

“Like what?” a man asked.

“You’ll find out when the meeting begins,” Eileen told him.

Sherlock Holmes interrupted. “I’d like to know if Martin Jones has put any money into one of those offshore banks in the Cayman Islands.”

That was a weird question. Maybe Sherlock had been reading about that big trial and that’s why the Cayman Island banks had come into his mind. Or maybe Mrs. Duffy had put something about the banks into her plot. I hadn’t been following the story, so I didn’t know.

Eileen’s expression showed that she was surprised too. “As a matter of fact, I’ll be able to give you that information,” she said.

Sherlock turned to one of his teammates and mumbled, “Aha! Laundering money! What did I tell you?”

Eileen said a quick word to Detective Jarvis, who nodded agreement. He looked very uncomfortable as he faced the group, but he said, “Ladies and gentlemen, you want to know what happened here. Okay. The man who was wearing the knit cap was one of our undercover officers who was on stakeout here at the hotel.”

“That was a stupid outfit for a plainclothes officer to wear to the Ridley,” Sherlock said loudly. “He looked like he belonged in an alley.”

“Oh, be quiet!” Mrs. Larabee told him. “I liked the actor’s costume. He looked cute.”

“Actor,” Jarvis said. “Uh—yes, actor. The other actor was a known hit man. He was—uh—after Randolph Hamilton, who had borrowed money from the wrong kind of lending agency and hadn’t repaid it.”

“Oooh! New information!” someone cried, and a number of the sleuths began scribbling in their notebooks.

The tiny woman I’d seen before called out in a loud voice. “Are you telling us there were
two
gamblers? It’s already been established that Martin Jones gambles,
and now you’re saying that Randolph Hamilton gambles too.”