A Cookie Before Dying (17 page)

“Just so we’re clear,” Ida said, “I’m seventy-eight years old, but I’ve still got all the brains I was born with. I raised two kids, nursed a sick husband for ten years, and I traveled around the world after he passed on. I’ve seen a lot. But this . . .” Ida slid her hand into the deep pocket of her diner uniform. At first, Olivia wondered if she was searching for cigarettes, but Ida produced two pieces of hard candy. “Want one?” When Olivia shook her head, Ida said, “When I get nervous, I need butterscotch.”

“I know what you mean.”

Ida unwrapped a candy and popped it into her mouth. Her facial muscles relaxed.

“Ida, do you know something about the murder that happened in the park last night? Because if you do, it’s really Sheriff Del you should be talking to. I can pass information on to him, of course, but he’ll still want to hear it from you.”

Shaking her head, Ida said, “It’s not that simple.” She unwrapped the second butterscotch candy and sucked on it like a drowning person desperate for air. Her hand dove into her pocket and resurfaced with two more wrapped candies.

Olivia began to wonder if she’d get back to The Gingerbread House before closing.

“Ghosts are real, you know.” Ida had spoken with two candies in her mouth, so Olivia wondered if she’d heard right.

“Ida? Did you say . . . ?”

“Ghosts. I said ghosts. You’re kind of young to be hard of hearing.” Ida’s tone had returned to feisty normal. “I know exactly how that sheriff would react if I told him what I’m about to tell you. Oh, he’d pretend to listen and maybe write something in that little notebook of his, only it’d probably be ‘Call the loony bin, Ida’s nuts.’ But I know what I saw, and from the little bit I heard back at the diner, maybe you saw it, too.”

Olivia’s heart picked up speed. “Are you trying to tell me you’ve seen a woman dancing in the park? Because the sheriff would be most interested in hearing about that, believe me.”

Ida inhaled another butterscotch. “I slaw . . .” She paused to swallow. “I saw a
ghost
dancing in the park, is what I’m trying to say.”

“Listen, Ida, if you saw someone in the park last night, you must tell Del. That woman could be a witness to murder.”

“Ghosts can’t witness to anything.” Ida slapped her hands on her thighs, in a gesture of angry frustration. “Don’t know why I bother. Young people today, no imagination. Your mother would listen to me.”

Ida started to stand up, but Olivia grabbed her elbow and pulled her back down onto the bench. “Wait. Ida, I do believe in ghosts.”

“You don’t.”

“Okay, I don’t, but that doesn’t matter. I do want to know what you saw. Because Maddie and I both saw a white figure dancing in the park the night before last, and I’ll agree that she looked ghostlike.”

“She was a ghost.”

“Understood. Have a butterscotch and tell me what you saw. Please?”

“Let go of my arm.”

“Well, okay.” Olivia was half convinced Ida would run for it, but she complied.

Ida did move, but only to put some distance between herself and Olivia. “I wish your mom were here.”

“Me, too,” Olivia said with conviction.

Ida retrieved another candy. “My last one,” she said, slitting her eyes at Olivia. “Don’t interrupt.” When Olivia nodded in assent, Ida nestled the wrapped butterscotch between her palms as if she were warming it, or perhaps drawing comfort from it. “After my husband died,” she said, “I sold the house, cashed out the insurance money, and had me one heck of a trip around the world. Always wanted to do that. I didn’t come back till I ran out of money. Anyway, it was fine while it lasted. Like I said, I’ve seen a lot in my seventy-eight years, and a lot of it was while I was on that trip.” Ida studied Olivia’s face. “You getting bored? Young people these days don’t have much patience for long stories.”

Olivia raised both hands in denial. “Nope. No boredom, none whatsoever.”

“Well, anyway, it was traveling the world that made me understand about ghosts being real. Most other countries are lots older than we are, you know. I saw castles that were maybe a thousand years old and still standing. Mostly, anyway. When a place has been around that long, it collects whole families of ghosts. I met a lot of people who’d seen ghosts, talked to them even.”

Olivia was having trouble following Ida’s logic, but she said nothing.

“I know a ghost when I see one,” Ida said. “And that’s what I saw. More than once, too.”

Olivia nodded and remained mute.

“You see, when I got back from my trip, I had no money and no house, so I figured I’d better get a job. Pete hired me back right away. Pete’s a cranky old cuss, but he’s got a heart. He advanced me enough money to rent a room. I’d planned to save until I had enough to maybe rent a little house, but I got so used to living in one room, I decided to save my money for another trip. I figure I’ll have enough in another year or so.” Ida opened her hands, smiled at her wrapped candy, and closed her hands around it again.

Olivia clenched her teeth to keep herself from checking her watch.

“Pete, bless him, he lets me eat free at the diner during the day and use the kitchen at night. I don’t need much sleep, never did. Some nights I stay in the diner kitchen till maybe three or so in the morning, cooking up some dishes to eat when I’m not working. Then I take them home and heat them up in a microwave. That way I don’t need my own kitchen. And that’s how I came to see that ghost.” Finally, Ida closed her mouth around her last piece of candy and closed her eyes.

Olivia sneaked a peek at her watch. One forty-five. She’d promised to be back in the store by one p.m. She hoped Maddie had asked Bertha to stay. Ellie would be beside herself waiting for Olivia to report to her about Jason.

Ida said, “Pete’s kitchen has a small window looking out on the park. After I put a dish in the oven, I like to turn out the light, sip some coffee, and look out the window at the park in the moonlight.”

Olivia began to relax, realizing that, finally, she was about to hear Ida’s story.

“A few weeks or so ago, I saw something move on the south side of the band shell where the light reaches from the lamp. So I went to the window and kept a close watch. At first, I thought maybe I’d imagined the whole thing, or maybe it was just a stray dog running after a squirrel. Then I saw it again. It looked like swirling smoke—you know, like when a bonfire goes out? Only it didn’t keep going up toward the sky; it swirled up and back down again like . . .”

“Like a dancer?”

“Exactly. A ghost dancer. Because I could see right through it, I knew it couldn’t be a real live dancer.”

Having broken her silence without mishap, Olivia ventured out again. “Could you describe the . . . the ghost to me? Was it wearing anything?”

Deep ridges formed down from the sides of her nose as Ida frowned in concentration. “Something white,” she said. “It was kind of a see-through white, though, like there wasn’t anything inside. Maybe the ghost put on a long veil so it could feel human again. Now I think of it, though, it did seem to have a head.”

“Ida, would you say it was male or female? The ghost, I mean.”

“Oh, it had to have been a girl in life,” Ida said. “She was so graceful, like a real dancer. A boy would be more athletic. Anyway, it makes sense, given where she keeps appearing. I mean, she dances around the band shell like she’s playing peekaboo with a boy, and we both know who that boy would have been.” Ida’s thin gray eyebrows lifted high, sending a wave of wrinkles rippling across her forehead.

“Um. . . .”

“Oh, you young people, with your computers and your pie-phones.”

“I think you might mean iPhones?”

“That’s what I said. You have no sense of history. Didn’t you ever hear the stories about Frederick P. Chatterley? He had an eye for the ladies, you know, especially the pretty young ones. You should hear the stories my grandmother used to tell me, though I had to swear not to tell my mother, of course.”

With a sigh of pleasure, Ida drifted off into her memories. As much as Olivia wanted to hear those stories about the seamier side of the town’s founding father, she wanted more information about the dancer in the park. “Ida, you said the girl ghost keeps appearing. How often did you see her?”

“Oh goodness, I lost count. I stay in the diner to cook maybe two or three times a week. Except some nights I don’t stay late enough. She doesn’t show up before midnight. I think she must be haunting the park because of something that happened to her in the wee hours of the morning. And I’ll bet you anything it has something to do with Frederick P.—”

“How long does she stay?” Olivia could no longer contain her impatience, but it didn’t seem to matter.

“You see, that’s why I’m sure something happened to her in the park, because she starts dancing right after midnight and disappears into the ether by about one thirty in the morning. She simply lifts up and evaporates.” Ida checked her watch and began to gather up her small pile of shiny yellow candy wrappers. “Well, except for that one time, of course,” she said as she walked to the trash bin.

“Wait. What time? What happened?”

Ida dumped her wrappers in the bin and said, “Gotta get back to work.”

“I’ll walk with you.”

“Step on it, then,” Ida said. “I can’t afford to lose this job.” As they walked past the rusty jungle gym, she said, “They ought to take that thing down. A kid could get hurt on it. Not that I’ve seen a kid in this playground since the new school got built.”

“So you were saying . . . about the time the dancer was off schedule?”

“Don’t get a bee in your bonnet, I’m trying to remember. I think it was a week ago, maybe two. I do remember the ghost hadn’t been dancing for very long, so it probably wasn’t even one a.m. yet. She did one of those steps where she kind of leaped and spun in a circle and then balanced on one leg with one arm stretched out. You know what I mean?”

“Sort of.” Olivia vowed to learn more about ballet. Maddie would know. “Then what happened?”

“Something grabbed her. I couldn’t see what it was, but it was dark and strong, probably a demon. The ghost tried to get away. I could see her struggling, but the thing was really strong. It got hold of both her wrists and started dragging her.” Ida chuckled, which so surprised Olivia that she tripped on a section of broken sidewalk. She recovered her balance to find Ida eyeing her with amusement. “You must take after your father,” Ida said.

“I guess I was startled when you laughed just now,” Olivia said, trying to sound curious rather than defensive. In many ways, she did take after her father, whose clumsiness was the stuff of family legend. However, Olivia told herself, she rarely walked into walls. So there.

“Oh that,” Ida said. “I laughed because I was remembering how that little spirit got away. You’d hardly think she could do it without any substance to her, but when the evil thing lifted her off the ground by her shoulders—or what would have been her shoulders, if ghosts had shoulders.... Anyway, she was off the ground when she sort of arched her back and then kicked him so hard he dropped her. She was gone in a flash.”

Olivia grew quiet as they approached Pete’s Diner. She felt uneasy with the thought that Ida had witnessed an attempted assault and hadn’t thought to call the police.

As she opened the diner door, Ida said, “You can tell that sheriff what I’ve told you, but I won’t talk to him about it. He wouldn’t believe me, anyway, and I’ve got enough problems with my kids thinking I’m senile and wanting to put me in a home.”

“Del wouldn’t—”

“Like I said, ghosts can’t be witnesses. Besides, if a powerful demon couldn’t pin down that dancing sprite, no human policeman has a chance.”

“That may be,” Olivia said, “but if you remember anything you haven’t told me about the dancer in the park or the . . . whatever it was that grabbed her, it’s your duty to call the police. A man was killed last night. We need to let the authorities decide what is evidence and what isn’t.”

“Well, they can do it without me.” The door to Pete’s Diner closed with a slam.

“So you’re saying that Ida witnessed an attempted assault and failed to report it?” Del’s irritation came through clearly on Olivia’s cell. She paused on the sidewalk as two men carrying suit bags exited Frederick’s of Chatterley. This was a conversation she wanted to finish before arriving back at her own place of business.

“Del, don’t be too hard on Ida; she’s a total believer in ghosts and goblins. There was no reasoning with her. Besides, I think she has given us some important information, even if we can’t prove it yet. Now we know that the unidentified dancer goes to the park at more or less the same time on a more or less regular basis. Maddie and I saw her after the encounter that Ida described, so we know she wasn’t scared off by it.”

“Which might say more about her sanity than her courage,” Del said.