The Ghost and the Dead Deb (15 page)

“My God,” Mina choked. The shock was too much and she broke down. Linda took over the register, and I brought Mina upstairs to privately comfort her with a cup of tea and a shoulder to cry on. I hated having to tell Mina the truth, but I knew it would be better for her to hear it from me than Chief Ciders, when he sought her statement.

Mina didn’t say much, just sipped her tea and said that she couldn’t believe this was happening—that Angel was dead and Johnny was being sought as a likely suspect.

“I admit he was really stupid to go off with Angel like that,” said Mina after blowing her nose, “and I was really angry with him . . . but, Mrs. McClure, I really like Johnny. Up until last night, he’s been the kindest, sweetest guy I’ve ever gone out with.”

I nodded. “I’m glad,” I said, “but I really don’t know Johnny.”

“He spent hours last weekend helping my little brother and his friends build a treehouse, which he knows how to do because for years he’s volunteered his time to Habitat for Humanity to help build low-income houses. He loves his uncle, and I know he cares about me . . . he told me so . . . he’s a good guy, Mrs. McClure, he . . .”

Mina began to cry again. Then she shook her head. “One minute with that
stupid
Stark girl would tell anyone she’s trouble,” murmured Mina, wiping her nose. “I don’t know why he went off with her like that.”

As I poured the last of the tea for Mina, I felt the slightest whisper of a cool breeze on my cheek.
You know this is a frame job, don’t you?
said Jack in my head.

“I want it to be,” I silently told the ghost. “But is it really? How can you be so sure Johnny isn’t guilty? Jack, I’m afraid Johnny just isn’t as ‘nice’ a guy as he wants Mina and his uncle to believe.”

After Mina dried her eyes and insisted on continuing her shift—she said it would help keep her mind off her worries for Johnny—we went back downstairs to the store.

Bud and Sadie were still deep in conversation, and things seemed fairly quiet. I thanked Linda for her help. She went on her way, and Mina took over the register.

“I think we need fresh stock on the new release table,” I told her. “If you cover the counter, I’ll take care of it.”

“No problem,” said Mina, blowing her nose one last time as I headed toward the archway leading to the Community Events space. I crossed the empty room, then strode quickly down the short corridor, past the restrooms. When I got to the storage area, I called to Jack, hoping to continue my communication with the gumshoe from beyond.

“You were saying that someone might be trying to frame Johnny . . . ?”

The storage room was nothing fancy: a plain white box with stacked cartons of books waiting their turn to be placed on the selling floor and an old wooden desk from the store’s early days against one wall—which we now used to hold office supplies. The room felt warm and a little bit stuffy when I’d walked into it, but Jack’s presence had dropped the temperature and the air around me felt comfortably cool. Too bad his ghostly presence couldn’t be constant and in every room, I mused to myself; the store would save a fortune in air-conditioning.

Very funny,
said Jack, overhearing.

“Come on, Jack, don’t get testy.”

The cool air suddenly got decidedly colder. I shivered as a mini whirlwind swirled around my thin sleeveless cotton blouse and bare shoulders, seemed to whisper at my ear.
You remember that dream I gave you last night? There’s a case file in those boxes that’ll finish the story. Look for the file marked “Stendall.”

I shook my head. “I don’t have the time for that right now.”

Jack was right, of course. After his still-unsolved murder here in 1949, one of Jack’s acquaintances, a young reporter named Timothy Brennan, took possession of his files—and created an internationally best-selling series of books featuring the hard-boiled private detective Jack Shield. On every dust jacket, Brennan boasted that the Shield stories were based on Jack Shepard’s case files (a boast Jack wasn’t exactly keen to learn about).

After Brennan was also murdered here a year ago, his son-in-law, who subsequently took over the writing of the still-popular series—and owed me the favor of a lifetime—agreed to let me keep the original files here for him in storage. His only condition was that he first review them himself so he could Xerox “selected files” that interested him. I assumed the ones selected would be precisely the ones his late father-in-law hadn’t yet gotten around to exploiting for his fictional Jack Shield book series.

A week ago, the promised boxes finally arrived, and I had been hoping for the time to go through them—a part of me even fancying the idea that I myself might be able to puzzle out some theories about who might have killed Jack and why. But finalizing the Angel Stark appearance had left me with very little free time to peruse the files. And now that she was dead and Bud’s nephew the prime suspect, I
really
didn’t have the time.

“Couldn’t you just give me the shorthand on that case?” I asked Jack as I gathered and stacked on a handcart an array of hardcovers and paperbacks that made up the most recent releases by various publishers.

The shorthand is that this Johnny was obviously framed for the Bethany Banks murder. Legal technicalities can throw out confessions and incriminating statements, but if he’d really done the deed, there would have been enough physical evidence on the body for the DA to put him on trial. What seems more likely here is the frame didn’t stick
—
the locals didn’t have the stomach to look hard at the sons and daughters of any powerful, well-heeled families and the deb’s real killer got off. Except now your authoress was trying to keep the case alive in the public eye
—
so she gets bumped and once more Johnny gets blamed.

“You’re saying the person who killed Angel also killed Bethany?”

“Who then?” I asked.

“Kiki . . . she was at the reading. And she was staying at Fiona’s inn last night, too, which is where Angel was staying.”

“Let’s see . . .” I grabbed a box cutter from the desk near the door and slit open a carton of
All My Pretty Friends
. I piled five books on the handcart and flipped through the sixth until I got to the color photo insert.

“Angel claims there were plenty of people at the party but only a small circle who had strong motives to kill Bethany. Bethany’s fiancé, Donald Easterbrook, was one . . .”

I studied the photo, which looked like the typical candid shot found in any photo album of a young man hanging out on an athletic field. Sporting jeans, a rugby shirt, and effortless posture, Easterbrook was tall and muscular with short, dark hair, blue eyes, a strong, square jaw, and a broad, easy-going smile. According to the caption, Easterbrook was the offspring of an aristocratic, polo-playing father and a wealthy Brazilian mother. The combination had produced a strikingly handsome young man.

“He’s described in the caption as a ‘young prince of Newport,’ ” I murmured. “Hmm . . . very JFK, Jr.”

“John Kennedy, Jr.?” I replied impatiently.

I winced, realizing to whom I was talking. “Sorry, Jack—before your time. JFK, Jr. was the famously good-looking son of a famously charismatic president who was assassinated in 1963, an event that gave their family legendary status in America ever since. The son died in a tragic small-plane accident—”

“No, he wasn’t instrument rated, but he tried to fly through overcast skies at night anyway. Refused to change plans even though he got a late start and the weather warned of visibility problems. Apparently, he lost his bearings and flew right into the ocean.”

I sighed. “Well it was a national tragedy, I can tell you. JFK, Jr. was a charismatic young man, and the country loved him almost as much as his father . . . It looks to me like Easterbrook has the same features as the late president’s late son, who was very popular with the ladies, too, by the way. Easterbrook’s also engaged to Kiki now,” I noted. “And Kiki is apparently also my cousin, through marriage, but let’s not go there—”

You may not want to go there, doll, because it’s another motive for Kiki to have killed Bethany
—
if she was in love with this super stud Easterbrook and wanted him for herself. Did you see Easterbrook at the reading?

“No. But it doesn’t mean he couldn’t have been around Quindicott.” I flipped another page. “Another of the circle Angel mentions is a young woman, Georgette LaPomeret, but she committed suicide after this book was published.”

“There’s a young man named Hal McConnell.” The photo of Hal depicted a typically preppie young man in a polo shirt and khakis. Brown hair brushed neatly back, good-looking face with regular features, and hazel-green eyes. He was shown laughing with Bethany on the deck of a yacht, an almost tender expression of affection on his face. “I didn’t see him around either.”

“I do believe he was in love with Bethany. Unrequited.” I looked down at the book again to find I’d reached the end of the photo section. “That’s it.”

“You mean Victoria Banks? Bethany’s little sister.”

“Yes . . . Oh! And I forgot to tell you, I learned from Officer Eddie Franzetti, on the way to Fiona’s, that Victoria Banks’s friends reported her missing around midnight. She’d left their motel room for a soda and never came back.”

I flipped through the book some more, went to the index. “No. Nothing on Victoria Banks. What makes you think she might have killed Angel?”

“Don’t call me that.”

Why not? You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of, baby
—
they’re a luscious pair. Aces.

Despite my having been exposed to Jack for some time, my face flamed. “Stop it, Jack.”

Male laughter filled my head and I felt the room’s cool air grow icy for a moment, enough to raise goosebumps. The ghost was playing with me again. “Jack. Stop it.”

He laughed once more, but the chill receded.

Okay, Miss Priss,
he finally said.
Set me straight, then. What’s your big theory on the Banks girl?

“Just that Victoria’s public threat is exactly why I wouldn’t put her at the top of the suspect list. Too many witnesses to her threats. How stupid would she have to be to carry out a murder right on the heels of it?”

“But you said that the person who killed Angel also killed Bethany, and Victoria didn’t kill her own sister.”

First of all, you don’t know Victoria Banks well enough to say that. Second of all, Victoria’s murder of Angel also set up Johnny as the fall guy. If Johnny did kill Bethany, then wouldn’t that be the perfect revenge
—
to set him up with a second chance to be convicted of a second murder while getting rid of the dame that’s dragging your late sister’s rep through the mud?

“I’ll grant you that the theory holds water . . . but Victoria looked too small and frail to have strangled Angel by herself.”

Listen and learn, doll. One thing this business teaches you is, don’t rule out anyone based on size or appearance or the perception that they’re ever too smart or too dumb to inflict the big chill. Everybody who’s sucked in a breath and let it out again is capable of murder, given the right set of circumstances, and rage has been known to send every rational thought out of people’s heads
—
that’s what a crime of passion is. Victoria Banks might be young and delicate looking, but there wasn’t much to Angel, either. Little Vicky may have had her friends help her, too. On the other hand, she may have done the deed alone. She had a loud mouth and a hot temper last night. And, in my experience, mousy exteriors can hide a lot of rat.

For some reason, I thought of Mina, but I didn’t like the thought—

I sighed, remembering the look of hurt and anger on her face the night before when Angel had thrown herself at Johnny, the way she’d violently tossed around those event room chairs after they’d gone off together. Could she have confronted Angel after Johnny had stood her up?

Her roommate picked her up,
Jack pointed out.
So if she confronted Angel, then her roomie probably drove her to the scene to do it. Easy enough to check out. Unless roomie is sworn to secrecy.