MURDER IN RETROSPECT (Allie Griffin Mysteries Book 5) (7 page)

              Dinner with Frank Beauchenne was a complete and total success. One small setback: She'd forgotten to go out and buy ground turkey for the meatballs in the Italian wedding soup. Luckily, she had some leftover soup from when she'd made lunch for Del a week before. She opened the Tupperware and took a sniff. Leftover meatballs never smell good. These smelled delicious.

              She added them to the soup and all was just about perfect.

              And when Beauchenne arrived, smelling sweetly of aftershave and exhibiting all the mannerisms of a man who is comfortable enough in his own skin to be nervous in from of a woman, she served him dinner and fussed over him and refilled his wine glass.

              The conversation was wonderful. For the first time since this began, Allie felt like she could relax and forget the mysteries of the case. What she wanted was to sink in to a dream, one involving Frank Beauchenne, and TV, and snuggling, and falling asleep on his chest.

              "Maybe you can help me," he said.

              "How so?" Again, she was caught in a reverie, and she felt a tiny bit self-conscious.             

              "Alright, you have to promise me you'll listen to the full story."

              "I'm all ears, Sarge," she said, pouring herself another glass of Merlot.

              "Alright. So a guy comes in yesterday. We booked him on solicitation. Silly stuff—he was handing out leaflets outside the supermarket and making a small nuisance of himself. They were brochures for his business. Want to know what it was?"

              "I give."

              "He's a ghost hunter."

              "Get out."

              "No joke. He goes to people's houses and he takes all this equipment and recorders and stuff. And for a fee he'll not only tell you if your house is haunted, but he'll even offer to get rid of the visitors for you."

              "P.T. Barnum said there's one born every minute."

              "Yeah, I know. And I'm not saying I've ever seen a ghost in my life, but I do think that maybe there's stuff out there that we can’t explain."

              "So, you're problem is?"

              "Not my problem—just a little mystery. Maybe you can solve it. Want to give it a try?"

              "Lay it on me, kiddo."

              Beauchenne laughed. "You never fail to put a smile on my face, Allie Griffin."             

              She shot him with her thumb and forefinger and clicked her tongue at him.

              "Ok, so here goes. He said there's this house on Gertner Road, you know that old development? It was all old farmers and half those houses now belong to the county. Ever go driving along that road at night?"

              "Nope."

              "Well, let me tell you, it's pretty scary. All that old farm equipment rusting and rotting in overgrown fields and dilapidated houses. I wouldn’t spend a night in one of those old barns for all the money in the world. Anyway, this guy—this ghost hunter—he says a young couple was driving along Gertner Road and they passed by one of those crusty old barns. The first thing they saw was this dull yellow light in the house adjoining. This couple slowed down, and they swore that they saw someone running through the house with a lantern. So they stopped the car and the guy got out."

              "He got out?"

              "I'm just telling it the way I heard it. He got out because he was like you. Doesn’t trust anything, not even his own eyes."

              "I think I like this guy. Go on."

              "Well, the girl, as you can probably guess, is not like you. And she's telling him to get back in. Well, all of a sudden, they hear this hideous scream. It's something that chills them both to the bone. Freezes the blood. They get in the car and drive off. My guy hasn’t been down there to investigate as of yet, but he says he will, as it's not the first time he's heard of this very same occurrence happening a number of times. Always a variation of the same story, but two things are consistent: A lantern in the window and the bloodcurdling scream. All I know is that I wouldn't want to go to that place at night and see or hear those things. I would lose it."

              Allie waited. "Is that all?"

              "That's all. What do you make of it?"

              She thought for a moment, and a story came to her, one she used to tell all the time back when she and Tom shared this very house.

              "Did you know this house is over a hundred years old?"

              "Really?"

              "1903. There was a woman who lived here all that time ago. Name of Clauswitz. She was a spinster. Never married. She was engaged to a man when she was eighteen years old. Well, the lousy rat cheated on her and then called off the engagement. They say she spent the rest of her life in mourning. What's more, she always kept the place dark. Never had any lights on. Kept all the curtains drawn. Something about the light of love having gone out in her heart so she wanted the world around her to match it. Tragic story. No one should have to go through life like that. And no one should have to die with that weighing on their soul. But that's just what happened. You know, there's a theory about ghosts. They say ghosts are spirits that can't give up on life, because they think it's going to get better, but they don’t know that they aren’t alive anymore, so they're doomed to spend their days in a constant state of waiting. And all the time mourning, and all the time in pain, and in misery, and in want and loneliness."

              "Wow."

              "Wow is right."

              "Is there a happy ending here?"

              "I'm afraid not. But now let me tell you about the night I went to one of Del's shows. Opening performance. Believe it or not, there was a time when Tom and I were trying to get pregnant and I was laying off the booze. So Del and I went out after the show and I had nothing to drink. Absolutely nothing. Bone dry. So there was nothing altering my senses, understand?"

              "Understand."

              "Now, I come into this house, and it's around two in the morning. Not a soul stirring. Or so I think. I come in and the place is pitch black. The lights didn’t work. No storm outside. No reports of a blackout. I figured maybe a fuse blew, who knows? So I turned the lights off. I made sure…and I remember this distinctly:
I turned that light switch off
. Well, I grope my way into the center of the room, and suddenly every light in the room comes on at once. I was nowhere near any switch. Now, before I solve your little mystery, you have to solve mine."

              Beauchenne smiled. "This is a trick."

              Allie shook her head. "No trick."

              "A faulty switch?"

              "Maybe, but the switch was off."

              "Ah yes," he said, "but maybe the internal switch didn’t disconnect properly."

              "Hmm, good guess. But I can tell you with absolute certainty, on a stack of bibles, that switch was not faulty in any way."

              "You think old lady Clauswitz was trying to keep your lights off?"

              "You tell me."

              "Well, what does Sherlock Holmes say? When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, is the solution."

              "Very good, sergeant."

              "Thank you."

              "So, did you solve it?"

              "Yes. It was old lady Clauswitz trying to keep your lights from coming on. Only she failed somehow? I don’t know. I give up."

              "Yeah, that part of the story makes no sense, does it? It never did. I made it up and I'm not that good at fiction. But the thing with the lights really did happen."

              "So what was it?"

              She smiled brightly at him. "Do you really want to know?"

              "Yes, of course!"

              "It was Tom. He was behind me and he turned on the lights. I never said he wasn't there."

              Beauchenne sat back. "Touché."

              "So, you know where this is going?"

              "I think so. But I held up my end of the bargain."

              "Not really. You didn’t solve my mystery."

              "Come on, Allie."             

              "Ok. The answer is this. You have to look at the big picture and ask the right questions. You were taken in by my silly ghost story and that colored your perception of your line of inquiry. What you're not doing in this case, and what your ghostbuster friend isn’t doing, is asking the right questions. And neither one of you is looking at the bigger picture. There are so many steps to go before you assume 'ghost'. Sherlock Holmes's dictum only works when you're asking the right questions. Why, for instance, is the lantern light yellow? Why does the alleged ghost run through the house? Is it all in the same direction? And as far as the scream is concerned, why is it they only hear it when they get out of the car? And why in that area?"

              "So am I to assume there are answers to all these questions?"

              "Yes, you are. You just don’t know them yet. But I do."

              "This I have to hear."

              "The house is old, so the windows are warped. Glass succumbs to gravity, especially glass that hasn’t been tempered well, which the panes in old houses never were. Any light reflecting off them is going to be partially refracted. So the yellow end of the spectrum is what is reflected back. The light appears to be running through the house because it is a reflection of the car's headlights passing in that direction, then slowing down once the driver or drivers get a glimpse of the ghostly yellow appearance."

              "Ok, then what about the scream?"

              "Well, that's easy. The Barred Owl. Indigenous to Canada. Known to migrate into northern parts of the Northeast. Has a screech like that of a woman in pain."

              "Interesting."

              "Now, you realize I've never been there. I can't say for sure whether this is the case or not, but I can be sure that what I have is a pretty good alternative theory. And as long as there's an alternative theory, there's a possibility that such a theory is true. And that, my friend, is a lot more plausible than some ghost running through a house with a lantern. I mean, why a lantern? Why don’t people ask these questions?"

              Beauchenne laughed. "You are one of a kind."

              When it was time to say goodbye, Frank Beauchenne leaned in for a kiss.

              Allie was a tiny bit tipsy from the wine she'd served. Perhaps a bit more due to the nerve-steeling glass she'd had before he’d arrived. That one had done little to steel the nerves, and the glasses she'd had with dinner were just as effective, which is to say they were not.

              Beauchenne leaned in and pressed his lips to hers.

              At that moment, the temporary blob of putty that Doctor Tennyson had used to reconstruct part of her tooth dislodged.

              Allie drew in a breath. And she made a movement with her mouth that may not have been unpleasant, but was certainly foreign to Frank Beauchenne, for he drew away quickly.

              Allie, in her sharp intake of breath, had managed to inhale the putty and began to choke.

              Although she would have admitted to anyone that she was grateful that Sgt. Frank Beauchenne was CPR certified, she nevertheless was able to acknowledge that a tiny part of her would’ve rather choked to death at that very moment. Beauchenne maneuvered himself around her, and with a bear's strength, he hefted up her abdomen, causing the offending piece of dental putty to rocket out of her throat and carom off a sugar bowl.

              The night ended with very little more spoken between them that had to do with Allie's current state of health, and a peck on the cheek.

              And so began a restless night's worth of sleep.

              So she stayed up, and she paced the house. And to take her mind off her lovelorn misery, she immersed herself once again into the problem at hand.

              And in the dead of night, the time when shadows speak, and when the fog of sleeplessness gives way to oracular visions, her eyes ran along the titles on her bookshelf. One title in particular:
The Old Man and the Sea
by Ernest Hemingway.

              And that's what made her realize that there was someone out there who just observant enough that he might have an answer or two.

#

              The last time she'd come to the hospital cafeteria was to meet with Lucy Wainwright, and that was at around six in the evening. It was around six now.

              She entered the cafeteria to the smell of terrible coffee and stale baked goods, and the smell of reheated soup of the day congealing in half-opened pots.