Ghost in the Wind (16 page)

“You made the deal?” I said, as if I hadn't heard this before. “You acted as her agent?”

Jeremy nodded. “I cowrote seven of the songs and produced the album, too. I can't play an instrument or sing, but I do know music. The people at Vinyl were going to give it a big push. Vanessa would've been on her way.”

“They must have really heard something in those tracks,” I said.

“Hang on.” He opened his car door, sat down and started the engine. This was a very unusual way to flee an interrogation. I did notice, though, that the interior of the car was immaculate. There were even little squares of carpet on the floor, green shag. Hideous, but they didn't have any mud on them at all.

Instead of peeling away in his getaway car, Jeremy pulled a CD out of a door pocket and slid it into his dashboard player. Music began playing almost immediately. “This is Vanessa.”

It was lovely, hypnotic and dreamy. Not the sort of music I would have expected from Vance McTiernan's daughter, so maybe Paul was right about not pigeonholing her. Her
voice was smoky and calm, engaged with expressing, not manufacturing, the emotions her music conveyed. The melody was unexpected, nontraditional. The arrangement was understated but definitely in sync with the songwriter's intentions. It was like sitting in on a late-night session at a blues club after the civilians have all left and the players are just amusing themselves and each other. It was almost too intimate, but never uncomfortable.

“Wow,” I heard myself say.

“That's right.” Jeremy stood up out of the driver's seat and met my eyes. “‘Wow' is right. Now you tell me if you think she was any good.”

“She was amazing,” I said honestly. “You wrote the music with her?”

He tilted his head. “Not all the time. She also worked with her boyfriend, Bill, on a couple of things, but he basically just added a hook or a suggestion.”

Bill Mastrovy? The plot thickens. I listened to more of the music, and Jeremy watched for my reaction. I'm sure the one he got was the one he'd hoped for. “That was terrific,” I said when the song ended.

“Thank you. Nessa wanted to just release it herself, you know. Bypass the record companies. She didn't think she was good enough for wide release. But I convinced her.”

“What do you know about the day she died?” I asked Jeremy.

He looked at his shoes and brushed flecks of the carpet off them. “I wasn't there,” he said. “They told me she might have done it intentionally. I don't believe it.”

“Why not?” The music continued to play, a new song that was more upbeat and pop-ish. I liked it, but it wasn't connecting the same way the first one did.

“Because Nessa wasn't depressed. She was about to sign a great record contract, what she'd wanted all her life. She wasn't crazy about her love life at the moment, over forty
and thinking about kids, maybe, but she wasn't terribly down about it. I think it was just an awful accident. She ate the wrong thing and didn't know it.”

I didn't think not to say it; it just came out of me. “She accidentally drank straight soy sauce?”

Jeremy looked at me, confused. “Soy sauce? That's what did it? She would have known better than that. Where did you hear that?”

“The medical examiner's report. You didn't see it?”

Jeremy's mouth twitched. “I didn't want to talk to the police anytime I didn't have to; I don't like the police. When it first happened, the word from the detective . . . what was her name?”

“McElone.”

He snapped his fingers. “Yes! You're very good. Detective McElone said it was an allergic reaction. I didn't ask anything more than that.” He stared off again.

After a moment, I had to press on. “Can you tell me how to get in touch with your mother?” I asked. Jeremy just shook his head negatively. I pushed on. “Could anyone have wanted to hurt your sister?”

Jeremy looked surprised. “I can't imagine anybody being that mad at Nessa. I've been trying to make sense of it for months. But the thing is, it
doesn't
make sense. There was no reason to want her dead. It doesn't benefit anybody. She didn't leave a will; she had no money. She wasn't cheating on Bill, so he had no reason to be jealous.”

Except maybe I knew something he didn't. “She was still dating Bill Mastrovy when she died?” I asked.

“Yeah. Why?”

“Because his current girlfriend didn't know that.”

Jeremy looked at me again, his head turning at a faster rate of speed than thirty-three and a third revolutions per minute, to be sure. “Bill has a new girlfriend?”

“That's right. And when I saw her yesterday, she was
surprised that he'd been in touch with Vanessa at all.” Paul would hear this interview from my voice recorder, but he'd want me to describe Jeremy's facial expression when he heard that news.

It was one of astonishment.

“Who is she?” he rasped.

“I don't think I should tell you that,” I said. “I don't want to create suspicions until I'm certain of my facts.” But perhaps it was a little too late for that. This whole selected-information-for-selected-people thing was complicated.

Jeremy seemed to think that over, his eyes unfocused as he muddled. Finally, he nodded, once. “That's fair,” he said, “but when you do have your facts straight, I'd like you to tell me what you know.”

“I promise I will.” Time to try again, with a new tack. “Maybe your mother can shed a little light on some of this. Sure you can't give me an address or phone number where I can find her?”

It was becoming a pattern; Jeremy stopped looking me in the face again. “I haven't been in touch with my mother for years,” he said. “She and I argued about my line of work. I wanted to be involved in music and she hated it because of Nessa's dad. She didn't want Nessa in music, either, but knew it was a lost cause. I ended up working at Ace Equipment Rentals and I hate it to this day but I need the money. We had words five years ago. Both of us said things we can't take back. She quit the business two years ago and ended up in the Midwest somewhere without saying a word to us for six months. She didn't even show up for Nessa's funeral. So I don't talk to her anymore.”

“Does she try to get in touch?” I asked. The third song on Vanessa's CD was playing, and it was more in line with the first, but up-tempo. It could have been a swing song from the 1940s, complete with brass section.

“Once in a while. She got my cell number somehow, and
she'll call when she needs something. Last time was probably a year ago, complaining about some tax problems, expecting me to bail her out. I didn't, she screamed at me, and I don't even keep her number in my phone anymore. She calls when she calls, but I don't answer.”

“Well, if she calls you again, just write down her number and give it to me,” I said, handing him one of the investigator cards I had made because I like business cards. “You don't have to talk to her to do that.”

Jeremy took the card. “I'll do that,” he said. “But I wouldn't count on it happening anytime soon.”

“When the album comes out, are you planning on leaving Ace Equipment Rentals?” It would go a ways toward clearing Jeremy—his success hinging on his sister's would mean he'd have no reason to want her dead.

“That was the plan,” he admitted. “Don't know if it'll be possible with no follow-up album, though.”

“I understand,” I said. “Thanks. One last thing.”

“You want a copy of Nessa's songs?” He grinned.

“How did you know?”

“Everybody who hears it wants them. She was going to be a big star.”

I listened to the CD of Vanessa McTiernan that Jeremy Bensinger gave me all the way home, which admittedly wasn't that long. Vanessa didn't have a great voice, but she had a supremely interesting one, a voice that should have been allowed to flourish and grow. Yes, she was forty when she died, but she still should have had a lot of creative years ahead of her. Someone had taken those away and now I wanted to find that person and see them punished.

The detective thing gets to you after a while.

I reported back to Paul after dealing with a couple of guest issues (Tessa wanted a good bakery, and that was easy; Roberta Levine needed a replacement contact lens, which was a little more complicated, but doable) and talking my mother, who had been staying with Liss, into letting me order dinner in that night before the movie. It had taken some doing, given that Mom is virtually a walking food truck, but I wanted her to be fresh for the debut of the movie
room and I thought pizza was a better food for the cinema, anyway. In a burst of magnanimity (and okay, maybe bribery), I'd told all the guests that the guesthouse would provide free pizza to tonight's movie viewers.

I was proud of the way that room had turned out and was anxious to see it in full bloom. Dad was in there now, checking over every finishing nail and every hidden wire in the electronic connections. The man was a perfectionist when he was alive and now he literally had all the time he'd ever need to make sure things were just so.

With only a couple of hours before the movie showing, I went back out for some extra ice and found the ghost with the wagon standing directly outside my house. “Have you found Lester?” she asked. It was like her mantra or something.

“Not yet, but I haven't given up,” I said. The guy across the street walking to his car waved, perhaps thinking I was talking to him.

“Don't,” the ghost said, and started pulling the wagon away. I don't know why she'd reached me so deeply, given her sullen attitude, but every time she showed up I really wanted to find Lester. Instead, I went and found six more bags of ice at the Rite Aid.

When I got back, Paul was anxious to discuss the case.

“He hasn't been in touch with his mother in two years?” Paul said after listening to Jeremy Bensinger say precisely that on my voice recorder. The goatee stroking had made a comeback. “That seems odd. And it was because they had a disagreement over his career?”

“You heard it. Why are you asking me what he said?”

“Alison,” my mother said. She has an odd concept of when I'm being rude.

Paul was pacing, something he likes to do when he's thinking. It doesn't even rate a notice anymore that he's generally doing so in midair. I'm so jaded.

Melissa, whose room we were using for this impromptu meeting, was lying on her bed above the blanket. “He's mulling,” she told me.

“I am reviewing the information to better organize it,” Paul said, not looking at either of us. Maxie, who was suspended from the rafters like a bat (strictly for her own amusement), sniffed a little.

“It's a way to stall because he doesn't have any ideas,” she said.

“Maxine,” my mother said. She has an equal opportunity stance on rudeness.

“Where's Everett?” I asked Maxie. “You're so much more pleasant when he's around.” Mom didn't say anything but I knew what she was thinking.

“He's guarding the Fuel Pit. He'll be here for the movie tonight.” Everett is very protective of the local gas station and his military training is perhaps a bit more effective than even the Army might have desired it to be. He's a lovely man, but a little gung ho.

“The interesting thing is the album of music,” Paul mused. “If Vanessa really was gaining interest in the industry, there could be a motive there.”

“Look,” I said. “There isn't much to plan for the showing tonight, but I want it to be special, so I'm going to be taking a break from any more investigating today. You guys figure out all you need to figure out but I'll be downstairs obsessing over details with Dad, okay?”

“What's the guest list for tonight?” Everyone turned to look toward the door, where floating there was Vance McTiernan. I wasn't looking at Paul but I was willing to bet he was scowling.

“What are you doing up?” I asked Vance. “It's isn't even one in the afternoon yet.”

“I wanted to be sure to talk to you before Morrie Chrichton
returned to sully my name some more,” Vance responded. “That man filled you with lies about me and I could see the whole room start to doubt my good intentions.”

“Your good intentions?” Paul asked. Vance was
definitely
scowling when Paul spoke. “Your intentions seem to change from minute to minute. What are your intentions today?”

Vance gave a smile I recognized from all the publicity photos for the Jingles. It was warm, trustworthy, understanding . . . and, I could now tell, completely insincere. He didn't like Paul and he wasn't especially good at hiding it.

“My intentions are the same as they've always been,” he answered. “I want to find the person who did in my little girl and see to it that justice is done. Is that so hard to understand?”

This was becoming very investigation-y, and that was the very thing I'd just announced I would not be doing today. “Yesterday you said you didn't want me to look into Vanessa's death anymore,” I reminded Vance, for different reasons than I might have had the day before. Now I wanted him to tell me to stop, just so I could do so for today. By tomorrow, he'd have changed his mind and I'd do what I planned to do anyway.

“That was a mistake,” Vance said, and I could see my relaxing day of worrying about the movie room vanish before my eyes, which was more than I could say for Vance. “I need to see this thing through for my little girl.” There was a slight catch in his voice as he said that last part, which I completely would have bought only two days ago. Now it was an irritant. Like the pollen making my eyes water, even with the antihistamine I'd finally bought on the way home. It was worse up here than it had been downstairs.

“I talked to Vanessa's brother, Jeremy,” I told him. “He said you were almost never in touch with Vanessa at all.”

Vance's face changed expression three times in less than a second. Surprise to anger and then concern. The last one seemed the least believable.

“I wouldn't put much stock in what that little git says,” Vance told me. “He's trouble, that one. Poisoned my relationship with my little Vanessa. Told her I wasn't a loving dad, but it wasn't true, love, none of it. He had an agenda and that was making my daughter see him as her whole family.”

Paul coughed, which was clearly an attention-getting device, since he had stopped using his bronchial system a few years earlier. “What possible reason could Jeremy Bensinger have to alienate you from your daughter?” he asked Vance.

Vance's hands went to his hips in a gesture of exasperation. “Why, because he wasn't my son! Couldn't let Vanessa be different from him, so he tried to erase me, that's what it was. The less there was of me, the more he had to bond with her. It was a little unnatural, if you're asking me.”

Before I could answer that I was not, in fact, asking him, Mom stepped in, no doubt aware that I was thinking of saying something she would consider rude. “Mr. McTiernan,” she said, “this isn't about whether you were a good father. I'm sure you would have liked to have been closer to your daughter when you were alive. This is about your behavior for the past couple of days. You've been telling my daughter that you wanted her to find out what happened to Vanessa, and then you said you were over it and didn't want the investigation to go on. Now you're back here saying it's important she do some more asking around. Can you tell us why you've changed your mind so many times?”

That's Mom. She'll find a way to make everything positive even when she knows for a fact that it's not. And she'll do it in a way that you won't see coming, so you feel good about answering her.

And it worked again; Vance smiled warmly at Mom, this time genuinely, from what I could tell. “I've been conflicted,” he said to Mom. “At first I was just angry. I knew that this someone killed my girl, and I wanted to do them harm, I'll admit it. But then I thought Vanessa wouldn't want
that. She wouldn't want someone to suffer for her. So I told Alison here to stop. But Morrie Chrichton being here reminds me of the responsibility to my daughter I never accepted, and I'm ashamed. I know I should have explained better, but I'm not used to trusting people.”

“You should trust Alison,” Mom said. “She'll always tell you the truth.”

Maxie stifled a laugh. Maxie is not the person you want when tact is called for. In case you were wondering.

“I don't understand,” Melissa piped up. She had her smart girl face on and was no doubt about to bring up a point none of us had yet considered. “What does Mr. Chrichton have to do with your daughter dying? I thought he was angry at you about who wrote the songs and things.”

It was a good question. That had gone by a little too fast for me to notice.

This time Vance's expression only changed once. His face hardened and his eyes showed an old, deep anger. But he didn't address Melissa; he looked at me.

“I don't know if I should get into this right now,” he said, his eyes darting back and forth toward Melissa and then to me.

“He means it's something that's too adult for me,” my daughter said with no particular inflection. Just statement of fact, as if she were translating from another language. But she just wanted him to know he wasn't fooling anybody.

“
How
adult?” I asked Vance. I noticed Maxie leaning down a little more, anxious not to miss anything especially juicy. “Melissa's input is usually pretty valuable if it's not something especially outrageous.”

Vance laughed lightly. “Well, I'm clearly up against someone much smarter than I am,” he said, nodding to Liss. “Very well, then, let me see if I can say this delicately. The real reason the Jingles broke up was that Morrie Chrichton and I got into a pretty serious row.”

“About the authorship of your songs?” Paul asked.

Vance didn't look at him; he held my gaze. “No. Over Vanessa.” He glanced at Melissa. “See?”

According to Vance's somewhat carefully worded explanation, he and Morrie Chrichton had been bandmates and friends for years without the least bit of friction (which, having met both men, I found a little hard to believe). Then one summer Vance convinced Claudia Rabinowitz to allow Vanessa to go on tour with the band so he could better get to know his daughter, who was in college at the time and showing an interest in music. It had taken a good deal of cajoling, but Claudia had finally given her consent, and Vanessa joined the Jingles in London after school had let out for a four-week sojourn through Europe with her dad, the rock star.

And his band. And that was the problem.

Vance said Morrie had shown “an unhealthy interest” in Vanessa from the start and that he and Morrie had started to argue about it even before the tour had left England. Vanessa, whom Vance described as “star struck and young, a disease cured by time but not soon enough,” had shown some attraction to Morrie, who was twenty-five years her senior and was, after all, “as old as her dad, yeah?”

Vance had shown what he considered to be reasonable concern and Morrie had laughed in his face, he said. He'd continued flirting with Vance's daughter until they reached Hamburg, where Morrie suddenly told Vanessa that he was no longer interested.

At that point, Vance said, the two men had confronted each other in a hotel room because “that's where rock bands go to bust stuff up.” Vance, relieved that his daughter was no longer involved with his bandmate, was nonetheless incensed with the way Morrie had broken it off with Vanessa, who had immediately flown home. Claudia, Vance said, had then reported to him that their daughter had not left her bedroom for four days.

“We came to blows in Hamburg,” Vance said. “Actually
beating on each other. That's when Morrie started taking credit for everything the band had ever done. Every shake of the maracas had been his idea all of a sudden. And he wanted money for it. There. On the spot. After he'd booted my daughter and broken her heart. I went for him and he didn't run away. We both ended up in the hospital. I don't know who ended up paying for the hotel room. The band was over for all intents and purposes then, and I never saw Morrie alive again. My luck he finds me here in New Jersey when we're both dead.”

I looked over at Paul, hoping for some guidance in how to respond. I got nothing. He was in mid goatee stroke and frozen in that position (albeit tilted a little to the left). Maxie seemed less struck by the moment, doing a few slow somersaults through the air.

My mother instinctively tried to pat Vance on the arm, and her hand went straight through.