The Ghost and the Dead Deb (10 page)

I unlocked the front door and let Dana out. “Have a great time.”

“Thanks, Pen . . .”

Then Dana paused halfway out the door. “You have my phone number. Please, do me a tremendous favor and ask around about that kid. And give me a call the moment you find out anything.”

With a wave, Dana was gone. I locked the door behind her. But before I faced Bud and my aunt again, I paused. Something told me we were headed for real trouble. And that something was Jack Shepard.

There’s a Chinese angle on these Houdini acts, that’s for square
.

“Chinese angle? You mean you think Dana Wu is somehow involved?”

“You suspect foul play?”

“What do you think is going on, Jack?”

With the dame, it could be like your Miss Wu said
—
our loose-limbed Angel is pitching woo in some hot-sheets love-nest even as we speak. But then why not return calls? Could be someone
—
maybe someone with a beef against Angel
—
did her in or is doing the Lindbergh snatch
—

“A kidnapping!”

It happens . . . The dame’s got cabbage and plenty of it. Or maybe your working-class square-john bumped this Angel for his own reasons. Maybe the loving went sour. Or maybe he’s the snatchster who put the grab on her. Otherwise this Johnny’s just a rube who took a powder and Angel doesn’t fit into this picture at all
—
but I don’t truck with that since she’s out of touch.

“Huh?”

“You’re jumping to some pretty drastic conclusions, Jack,” I scolded. “No doubt due to too many years among the riffraff of the New York streets. Don’t be an alarmist.”

“Well . . . I’ll grant you that I didn’t know Johnny had been in trouble with the law . . . and Dana does seem worried . . . so what should I do?”

“Peeper? Bud’s a nice old guy. He’s no peeper.”

PeepSTER. A witness. Someone who knows the score. Geeze, babe, you read enough of Tim Brennan’s
Jack Shield
dime novels based on my life. The least you could do is glom on to the natural flow of my discourse.

“I guess I should tell Bud about Angel’s disappearance . . . Maybe it would calm his fears a little to know that Johnny probably just ran off for a wild weekend of fun with a literary celebrity.”

“Why?”

Strategy set, I approached Sadie and Bud and cleared my throat.

“Sorry for the interruption,” I began. “There was some . . . business I had to take care of.”

“No, no . . . I should be apologizing,” Bud replied with something of his old demeanor. “Here I am costing you Saturday morning business, and I have to open my hardware store, too. Folks are depending on me . . .”

Bud started to rise, but I gently pushed him back into his seat. “Don’t be silly . . . We never see any real business on Saturdays until well past noon.”

Sadie spoke up. “Bud’s come over here to ask for Mina’s address and phone number. I told him we’d gladly give it to him, but Mina will be here soon anyway, so I told him to wait around.”

“I was hoping Johnny was with her—Mina, I mean,” said Bud.

I sat down between them and folded my arms. “Bud . . . You mentioned something about Johnny violating his parole. But neither Sadie or I knew your nephew was in any kind of trouble.” I looked to my aunt for support. “Isn’t that right?”

Sadie nodded. “That’s right, Penelope. Bud, what can you tell us?”

“Johnny was in just about the worst trouble a kid can get into,” he began, then his voice faltered. “But it’s his business . . . maybe I better not say . . .”

Goose him,
Jack advised in my head.

“What!” I silently replied. “How?”

“Should we call Chief Ciders?” I repeated to Bud.

“Call the chief!?” cried Bud, now visibly alarmed. “Why?”

“Jack?” I silently pleaded.

“So he can file a missing persons report on Johnny Napp,” I told Bud. “If it turns out he isn’t with Mina, I mean.”

Bud’s eyes went wide. “Oh, I wouldn’t want to do that! . . . Oh, dang it . . . I better tell you the truth. The kid’s name isn’t Napp. Johnny’s my late sister Rita’s kid. I told Johnny when he came to Quindicott that it would be better for him if he just used my last name instead of his own . . . so he could fit in better, and avoid any nosy reporters snooping around.”

“Why would a reporter be looking for Johnny?” I asked.

Good, doll,
I heard in my head—and bit my cheek to keep from smiling, even as I lectured myself that being giddy with pride over a possible figment of my imagination was patently ridiculous.

“No, don’t!” I silently reversed. “Just behave, Jack . . . Please.”

Bud, who of course had no idea I had been carrying on a conversation in my head about him with a ghost, rubbed his eyes. “Johnny’s father—my late brother-in-law—was an Italian contractor in Providence. Johnny’s real name is Napoli . . . Giovanni Napoli.”

I recognized the name immediately, and nearly gasped. Bud noted my reaction. Sadie looked at me, then at Bud. She hadn’t made the connection.

“Now you know why I told Johnny to use my name,” said Bud. “Too many people could find him if he used his own.”

“I don’t think I understand,” my aunt declared.

I rose and walked to the New Releases table at the front of the store. I came back with a copy of Angel Stark’s
All My Pretty Friends
and handed it to my aunt. “Index,” I whispered.

“Rita died when Johnny was six or seven,” Bud continued. “I didn’t have much to do with his family after that—I frankly didn’t care for Johnny’s old man—but I heard his grandmother worked hard to raise my nephew right. She made sure he hit the books, and after school she taught him how to cook.

“The grandmother died when Johnny was just starting high school . . . I remember going up to Providence for the funeral. After that, I didn’t see much of him until his father died of a heart attack. I found out at the funeral that Johnny was accepted by the Culinary Institute of Rhode Island. Later I found out that when his old man died, the money for Johnny’s schooling dried up and he couldn’t go.

“But a catering company hired him full-time to work the high-society parties in the area. . . . From what I understand, things were going fine until my nephew hooked up with those rich society types—then everything went to hell.”

“Oh, goodness,” said Aunt Sadie, studying the pages of Angel’s tome. “He’s in this book!”

Bud Napp nodded. “Johnny was the one who the police arrested for the murder of Bethany Banks last year . . . but he was innocent. Probably set up by those rich folks to take the fall, but their plan backfired.”

Stop the presses,
Jack declared.

I silently asked my personal ghost to keep his pucker buttoned while I tried to conjure the memory of the Banks murder coverage on the news, and the arrest that followed. But the only image I could recall was the figure of a young man surrounded by policemen, a jacket pulled up to hide his features.

It’s called a “perp walk,” doll,
said Jack.
The hammers thought they had their patsy.

“I remember the name ‘Napoli’ was in the papers and on television,” I told Bud, “but of course I never connected the name to you—or to Johnny. And I don’t think I ever saw Johnny’s picture at the time.”

“No,” said Bud, “you wouldn’t have. Johnny was still seventeen when he was arrested, and technically a juvenile, so the press never published his photo—thank God.”

“So what finally happened?” I asked as gently as possible. “You said Johnny was on parole. But wasn’t he cleared of the Banks murder?”

“Not
cleared
,” Bud replied. “He was released on a
technicality
—an illegal search and seizure of his locker and car by the local police, who also violated his Miranda rights. They kept him up all night trying to get a confession out of him. He gave them some statements that were somewhat incriminating, but he’d never been apprised of his rights and no lawyer was present, so those were thrown out, too. No other physical evidence could make their case against Johnny—because he was innocent, so that’s no surprise. But the Rhode Island State Police are livid that the local badges didn’t call them in to handle it. I know the Staties think Johnny is their killer, and that they could have convicted based on circumstantial evidence and legally extracted statements. They did go out of their way to nail him on a lesser charge of possession of a controlled substance with intent to sell—that ecstasy stuff.”

“Oh, my,” murmured Sadie.

“Johnny was convicted of that drug charge, but because he was a juvenile and it was a first offense he only got six months in jail before he was paroled for good behavior—though any violation of that parole will get Johnny sent back to jail for five years.”

“I can see why you don’t want to involve the police,” I said.

“Johnny was no saint,” Bud replied. “He’s had a lot of hard knocks and he didn’t take them all well. When his education got sidetracked, he got mixed up with a bad crowd. He got hooked on booze and drugs. But since his arrest and conviction, he’s cleaned up his act and deserves a second chance—which is why I don’t want to go to Chief Ciders. Not yet, anyway.”

“Do you need me to explain Miranda rights to you, Jack? They were before your time.”

Don’t sweat it, honey. I’ve picked it up from some of those TV cop shows me and your boy like to watch. Seems to me even the screwed-up handling of Johnny’s rights serves the locals well
—
it keeps the victim’s family believing Johnny did the deed and got off on a legal technicality. Which means the local badges don’t have to risk angering a community of wealthy families by digging into and exposing their kids’ peccadillos to find the real killer.

Though I dreaded this moment, I knew it was time to tell Bud what really happened to Johnny last night—that he’d hooked up with Angel Stark, and may have left with her after the author appearance and the ugly scene on the street.

“Damn!” Bud yelled when I delivered the bad news. “Johnny should have been smart enough to stay away!”

Just then there came a persistent knocking at the front door. My aunt hurried to answer it, leaving me with the task of calming Bud.

“How could you invite that woman to your store? How could you set up Johnny like that?”

“Bud,” I said evenly. “I didn’t know—you and Johnny were hiding the truth. There’s no way I could have known.”

Bud slumped down in his chair, the wind out of him, his demeanor sunken with defeat. “I’m sorry . . . I don’t really blame you, Pen. It’s just that I don’t know what to do or where to turn. But it sounds to me like Johnny skipped his parole and ran off with the Stark girl.”

I heard a sharp intake of breath behind me, then sobs. I whirled around to see Mina in tears. Obviously she’d heard Bud’s last statement, which did nothing to improve the poor girl’s day.

The revelation that life simply isn’t easy . . . is one of the most distressing aspects of the quarterlife crisis.

—
Quarterlife Crisis: The Unique Challenges of Life in Your Twenties

 

 

 

AFTER MORE TEARS and my aunt’s comforting attentions, Mina wiped her face, brushed her hair, and declared herself fit to face the workday. Bud Napp departed soon after that, already late in opening his hardware store.

“We’ll talk again tonight, at the meeting,” Bud told me at the front door. He was referring to the monthly meeting of the Quindicott Business Owners Association, scheduled to assemble in our store’s Community Events space tonight, right after closing.

“We might actually be laughing about this situation by then,” I said hopefully. “When you find Johnny at the store selling pipe stems, and Angel turns up sipping coffee at the Cooper Family Bakery.”

Bud smiled weakly, but I could see he didn’t share my optimism. With a final wave, he hurried into the bright, blue summer morning. My son soon followed as his ride to day camp pulled up. With a kiss, he was out the door, trilling how he was all ready for his next swimming lesson.