A Hard Day’s Fright (4 page)

“I should have. Of course I should have. You’ve certainly proven yourself over and over again, Pepper. You have a way with mysteries. You should have been the first person I asked for help. But really…” A fresh cascade of tears started, and Ella didn’t even try to wipe them away. They trickled down her cheeks and plopped into her mug.

“I wasn’t thinking straight,” she admitted. “I was trying. Oh, I was trying so hard to be logical and unemotional and sensible. But when something like that happens to your baby…” she sobbed. “It took every ounce of strength I had just to make the call to Jeffrey.”

As if I’d just gone one-on-one with a ghost, I froze. “Jeffrey?” I choked out the name. Jeffrey was Ella’s ex, and though she tried her plump-little-sparkly-lady darndest to keep a stiff upper lip when his name came up, I am nobody’s fool when it comes to love. I could read the subtext.

Jeffrey was a schmuck.

“I haven’t talked to him in…oh, at least a year.” Ella put down her mug and plucked at the newspapers on the table with nervous fingers. “There isn’t much I have to say to Jeffrey, not anymore, not after he’s pretty much ignored the girls all these years. What kind of man does that and calls himself a father?” Her voice brimmed with anger. “What kind of man walks out on his family when his girls are just little? Then never calls them on the phone? He can’t even be bothered with birthday cards. And now…” Tears trailed down her cheeks and she burst into tears. “Now they know their mother is just as bad!”

“You’re not. No way.” I hurried over and sat back down again. At least if I kept looking Ella in the eye, it might help bring her back to reality. I did just that and said, “You’ve raised those girls all by yourself, all these years. You’d do anything in the world for them, Ella, and they know it. Just because you thought Ariel was with Rachel and Sarah, that doesn’t mean you’re a bad mother, it just means you’re human. You’re not anything like Jeffrey. What happened wasn’t your fault. It was Ariel’s fault. Ariel’s decision. You can’t blame yourself for that.”

Big points for me, my strategy worked, at least a little. Ella sniffled and gulped. “You’re right. Of course, you’re right, Pepper. I’m sorry. I can’t help but feel a little overdramatic. Worrying about Ariel, then dealing with Jeffrey…well, dealing with Jeffrey always does that to me. And when I finally got ahold of him, do you know what that idiot said to me?”

She didn’t wait for me to answer. Her voice churning with anger, Ella went right on. “He told me he had an important meeting this morning. That I should call him at noon, Seattle time, that he’d be out of his meeting by then, and I could update him about the situation and then he could decide what to do. Decide?”

So much for keeping her grounded.

Ella hopped out of her seat, her cheeks bright with spots of color, her eyes blazing. “If I was in Seattle and someone told me my daughter was missing in Cleveland or any other place on earth, I’d be on the first plane, or the first Greyhound bus, or hell, Pepper, I’d walk if I had to! I’d walk all the hell the way to Ohio, because what the hell! I’d sure as hell want to know what the hell happened to my child!”

I stood, too, and fought to keep from getting caught up in the tidal wave of emotion surging through the kitchen. “Which proves it,” I pointed out. “That proves you’re a good mother. Right?”

She gave me a begrudging smile and a nod, right before all the starch went out of her shoulders.

I put a hand on her arm and pressed her back into the chair.

“So…” I didn’t bother to sit, too. Sure, I’d been doing all I could to calm Ella down, but by this time, my stomach was flip-flopping and my head was spinning. I was already making mental notes about where we could look for Ariel and who we should talk to. Any other time, any other circumstance, I would have put flaming sticks under my fingernails rather than call Quinn Harrison, my former sweetie and a Cleveland Police detective. Yeah, things had ended that badly. For Ella, though? For Ella, I was willing to make an exception.

I went to grab my phone. I had erased Quinn’s number, but no matter, I still remembered it. Damn it.

“I’m sure the Shaker Police are working as hard as they’re able,” I told Ella. “But we’ll call in reinforcements. Quinn’s got pull.”

“Quinn?” Ella’s eyes lit for an instant. But she was back to sobbing the next. “You’d do that? For me? Oh, Pepper!” I’d just started dialing the phone when she popped out of her chair and threw her arms around me. Maybe it was a good thing I didn’t have a chance to connect the call, because the next moment, Ella said, “You don’t need to do that, Pepper. I appreciate it, but really, you don’t need to. Ariel came home last night. She went to school this morning.”

I let go a long breath. That is, right after I disentangled myself from Ella’s arms. That way, I could give her a better why-didn’t-you-tell-me-that-sooner look when I blurted out, “Why didn’t you tell me that sooner?”

She blinked like a surprised owl. “Oh, well…I guess I haven’t been thinking straight. If I told you at the start—”

“I wouldn’t have been worrying my fool head off!”

Ella smiled. She squeezed my hand. “Thank you,” she said.

All the worry and emotion drained out of me, and I plunked back down in the chair.

“She was with a girl named Margot, a friend I don’t know,” Ella said before adding quickly, “That doesn’t forgive what she did, of course. What she put us all through. But it does explain why we couldn’t find her. Even Rachel and Sarah, they didn’t know Ariel was hanging out with Margot. Margot’s parents were spending the weekend out at one of those indoor water parks in Sandusky. They invited Ariel along.”

Anger rushed in to replace all the concern I’d been feeling only moments before. “And Ariel couldn’t have called to tell you this?”

Ella shrugged. “She didn’t think it was any big deal.”

“I hope you grounded her for life.”

Another shrug. “I told her we’d talk after school today.” Ella sighed and her shoulders shook. “These last couple days have really taken the wind out of my sails. I called Jim this morning and told him I wouldn’t be at work today. You can take my car and head to the office. I’ll…” She looked around the kitchen. Her eyes filled with tears and her lower lip trembled. “I’ll just stay here and get things straightened up.”

“Wait until Ariel gets home and make her clean up the kitchen. And relax.” I patted Ella’s arm. “You don’t need to worry anymore. Shouldn’t you be jumping for joy?”

“Of course. I’m as happy as can be.” Ella dissolved into tears, hiccupping out the rest of what she had to say. “I’m relieved that Ariel is OK. And grateful. It’s just…It was like a terrible flashback. All the worry and the wondering and the waiting. It made it all so real again. So real and so horrible. You know, the whole thing about what happened to Lucy Pasternak.”

S
tammering is so not a good look for me!

Good thing Ella and I were the only ones in the kitchen, and Ella was too busy blubbering to notice what I was up to.

Thinking about the ghost on the rapid, I stammered awhile longer before I finally blurted out, “Lucy Pasternak? What…What are you talking about?”

Ella snuffled. She got up, grabbed a paper towel, and wiped her eyes. “Lucy was a friend of mine,” she explained. “She disappeared back in 1966. When Ariel was gone…well, can you blame me? I know it was a long time ago. I know I should be over it by now. I know that sometimes I let my imagination run away with me, but…Of course as soon as I realized Ariel was missing, I thought about Lucy. And Lucy…” She flopped back down into her chair. “After that night, no one ever saw Lucy again.”

Technically not true, but this didn’t seem the moment to point it out.

“Over the years,” Ella said, “I’ve shown the girls old pictures and told them stories about Lucy. She was three years older than me, and we sort of grew up together. Lucy was an only child, and so was I. I guess it was natural that we were both looking for a sister. Lucy was everything I wanted to be. She was beautiful and popular. Her parents were really cool, not uptight and traditional like mine. They let Lucy go to parties, and her mom bought Lucy all the latest fashions. You know, miniskirts and knee-high boots and patterned tights. I idolized Lucy!” Troubled, Ella shook her head. “I would think after all these years and all the times that Ariel’s heard about Lucy and how she disappeared, it would have sunk in. That she would be more responsible, more considerate. But maybe…maybe if she heard the story again? From you?”

This did not sound like a good idea to me, and the why is a no-brainer.

Putting me and Ariel in a room together is like wearing a fetching little White House Black Market black satin dress and finishing off the outfit with shoes from Kmart. I mean, who would, really? But think about it. At first glance, everything might look perfectly fine. But it wouldn’t take long for anyone with half a discerning eye to see that cheap and ugly bring fetching down. Way down. In fact, they’re bound to clash.

Kind of like what happens anytime I’m anywhere near Ariel.

She’s rude and sloppy.

I am unforgiving.

She could actually be pretty if she’d give herself a chance, but she’s so busy getting various bits and pieces of her body pierced (I shivered at the thought) and other, bigger bits and pieces of her body tattooed (a chill ran up my spine), there’s no way anyone could possibly notice.

Oh yeah, Ariel’s got cheap and ugly down pat.

Not that I held it against her or anything. I just cringed at the thought of all that lost potential.

I, of course, could not point this out. Not without putting Ella on the defensive, and Ella had been through enough already. While I was busy keeping my mouth shut, she was busy concocting what apparently sounded like a perfectly good plan to her. That would explain why for the first time since I had walked into the house, her eyes shone with excitement rather than with tears.

“If you could just sort of bring it up…you know, remind her about Lucy and how she disappeared and how we all worried for so long and how we’ve been wondering for so many years…and then you could mention…you know, just sort of in passing…you could mention how when Ariel doesn’t keep in touch…well, like I said, I know it sounds crazy, but that’s because you’ve never been through what I went through with Lucy. I mean, thank goodness. I wouldn’t want anyone—not anyone—to ever have to endure the sleepless nights and the worry and all those times I went to see Lucy’s mom to find out if she’d heard anything and had to face the haunted look in her eyes.” Ella drew in a deep breath. I couldn’t blame her. Just listening to her, I felt as if I needed a hit from an oxygen tank.

Refreshed, she launched right back in. “And then this whole thing with Ariel…I mean, really, Pepper, now that you know about Lucy, you can understand why I just sort of lost it. It brought all those old memories and feelings crashing in on me again. Maybe if Ariel got just a friendly little reminder…maybe if she heard it from you, Pepper, Ariel would listen. She admires you so!”

This wasn’t the moment to quibble.

But it was the perfect time to do a little investigating. Yes, yes, I know I’d told Lucy I couldn’t help her with this whole poor-me-my-body’s-gone-missing scenario. But that was when she couldn’t give me anything to go on, before I knew I might be able to get my hands on a lead.

I swallowed down my misgivings, and because there were so many of them, it took a while before I said, “I think that’s a good idea, talking to Ariel, warning her that the world can be a big, bad place if she’s not careful. I think it would be good if I told her more about Lucy, too. That is, if I knew more.”

“I knew you wouldn’t let me down!”

I hate it when Ella says that. It usually means I’m in for trouble, and I was afraid this time would be no exception. Rather than dwell on the pitfalls, I stuck to the possibilities.

“So what did happen to Lucy?” I asked Ella. “I mean, after she disappeared.”

She shrugged. “Well, that’s just the thing, no one ever found out. Not that there wasn’t a big investigation. There was. The police interviewed everyone connected with Lucy. Her family. The teachers at school. The people at the country club where she worked that summer. And of course, they talked to all of us who were with Lucy that night. We went—”

“To the Beatles concert.”

Ella’s eyes flew open. “Yes! How did you know that? Well, I must have mentioned it before, and isn’t it just like you to remember! A group of us went to the Beatles concert together. Oh, Pepper! It started out being the most wonderful night of my life. I adored the Beatles, and to actually get a chance to see them in person…well, it never would have happened if it wasn’t for Lucy. My parents didn’t want to let me go, you see. They said I wasn’t old enough, and neither of them was willing to go with me. They said the Beatles weren’t singers, that they just made a lot of noise. I pleaded and I cried, but my mom, she said a rock-and-roll concert was no place for a young girl. Then one day Lucy came over. And she said she had an extra ticket for the concert. It wasn’t extra, of course. She’d bought it especially for me. That’s just the kind of girl Lucy was. Then, when she swore she’d keep an eye on me, my parents relented. I was so happy, I thought I’d burst! And you know…” she added, almost as an afterthought, “that just proves how really cool Lucy’s parents were. Lucy had taken a summer school class and she got a really bad grade. An F, I think it was, which was unusual for Lucy. She was a good student. And her parents, they realized the concert was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. They still let her go. They told her they’d worry about that F later.”

Just remembering it, Ella smiled. At least for a moment. Her smile faded away on the end of a sigh. “Now when I think about that night, I don’t even think about how happy I was, or how exciting it was to see the Beatles in person. Every time I hear ‘Yesterday,’ all I can think of is Lucy. About how she simply vanished.”

I knew that part of the story. What I was trying to do was get some sense of what had happened after Lucy took that fateful step off the rapid. Something told me that what happened after the concert might have had something to do with what happened before it.

“Lucy had people who didn’t like her?”

In answer to my question, Ella gurgled out a laugh. “That’s just silly! Everyone loved Lucy. Everyone! I think that’s what the police found so frustrating about the investigation. They never did find one single person who didn’t speak highly of Lucy. Well, really, there was no way they could have. Lucy was perfect.”

Perfectly irritating in a very teenaged girl way.

But this was not the time to bring that up, either.

Instead, I stuck to my questioning. “What about at the concert?” I asked Ella. “Did anything weird or unusual happen there?”

“Well, there was the riot, of course.” She cocked her head, thinking. “Kids rushed the stage after the Beatles came on, and they wouldn’t start the concert again until everybody got back in their seats.” She looked at me out of the corner of her eye. “Lucy was one of the kids who ran across the field. I never told anyone that. I didn’t want Lucy’s parents to get angry at her when they heard she’d done something that crazy. But really, I don’t think that had anything to do with her disappearance, do you?”

I didn’t. But that didn’t help me figure out how she’d ended up in the trunk of that car.

“The two of you went to the concert alone?” I asked.

Ella shook her head. “There was me, and Janice Sherwin, and Lucy, of course. I know it’s hard to explain, but Lucy was the heart and soul of Shaker High. She was pretty and bubbly and funny. But there was more to her than that. She stood up for what she thought was right, but in a quiet, gentle way that made people see her side of things and think they’d thought of it themselves. Janice, she wasn’t anything at all like Lucy, but they were still friends. Janice was pretty in her own way, too, but she was a mover and shaker—very intense, high-powered, and hard-driving. She owns some business here in town these days. Insurance, I think. Or real estate. Something like that. Then there was Darren Andrews.” She managed a laugh, threw back her shoulders, and lifted her chin. “Darren with his airs! Always acting superior to the rest of us. He always wore this gold medal of Saint Andrew because his parents claimed the family was descended from Scottish royalty. I know, I know…” Ella reached over and patted my arm.

“Talking about it now, it all sounds so silly, and you’re thinking that we shouldn’t have fallen for Darren’s hoity-toity attitude. But Darren, he had a way about him. And he was very handsome!” She sighed. “Not that he ever would have noticed a kid like me,” she added quickly. “He wasn’t just out of my league, Darren was out of my universe. He had money and the prestige that went along with it. He’s a highly successful businessman now. He owns tons of property around town. I saw him on the six o’clock news a couple weeks ago talking about some big development project downtown. He’s still very handsome.”

“So the four of you—”

“Oh no, there were six of us at the concert together. Bobby Gideon, he was there, too. I didn’t know Bobby well. Well, really, I didn’t know any of the kids well except for Lucy. They were all older than me, juniors and seniors, and I was just starting high school that year. I bet Lucy caught heck from them for bringing me along. But that was Lucy’s way. Like I said, she didn’t care what other people thought of her. And Bobby…I remember that Bobby was the one always making jokes. Always smiling and laughing and teasing. He’s dead now…” Ella’s voice trailed off.

“And number six?” I asked.

Ella had been lost in thought, but now she hopped out of her chair and scrambled around the table, sliding the newspapers into a neat pile, picking up the mail from the floor. “Number six was Will Margolis,” she said.

I waited for more and didn’t get it, but hey, I wasn’t going to let that stop me. If my experience as detective to the dead had taught me nothing else, it was how to pounce on an opportunity when I saw one. With any luck, the next time I tripped over Lucy Pasternak’s overly dramatic ectoplasm, I’d have the whole thing wrapped up.

“So…” Ella was so busy in cleanup mode that when I spoke, she jumped. “What’s the end of the story? What do I tell Ariel? You know, to scare the pants off her. Where did they end up finding Lucy’s body?”

“Oh, Pepper, don’t say things like that!” Ella pressed a hand to her heart, the gesture very similar to the one I’d recently seen Lucy use. “I didn’t say Lucy was dead, I said she’d disappeared. In fact…” She clutched a pile of papers to her heaving chest. “I keep thinking that someday I’ll be walking down the street and it will be like something out of a movie, that I’ll see her there and she’ll recognize me and run up to me and give me a hug, that she’ll have some really good story about where she’s been and what she’s been up to.”

This, I doubted, and for good reason.

Of course, Ella didn’t know Lucy was a ghost, or that I’d recently talked to her and she’d told me she was murdered the night of the concert. This was obviously a biggie, but I’d deal with it later. For the moment, I wasn’t as concerned with Ella learning the ugly truth as I was with realizing what her not knowing it meant to my investigation.

See, Ella’s continued and unwavering belief in Lucy still being found alive told me two things:

Number one: that no one knew where Lucy’s body was, and it wouldn’t be easy to locate.

Number two: that I still had to try.

After all, Ella did say she and Lucy had considered themselves sisters.

“The police tried so hard to find out what happened to Lucy. They followed every lead.” I snapped out of my thoughts to find Ella shaking her head sadly. “I suppose after all these years, all it is to them is just another cold case.”

Cold?

She had no idea.

M
y lucky stars were shining on me the next day. Not only was my car ready, but the call came telling me about it just as I finished proofreading the latest edition of Ella’s Garden View newsletter. She was so pleased I’d pitched in and helped her out and her mood was so much better since Ariel hadn’t caused her any new grief in the previous twenty-four hours, that she told me I could leave the office early and get my car.

Yes, it meant a trip in the other direction on the rapid. But by this time, that was one trip I was actually looking forward to. And not because I’d changed my mind about the so-called benefits of public transportation.

I didn’t know where else to find Lucy.

Fortunately, Ella drove me to the station so there was no walking (or heaven forbid, riding a bus and transferring) involved. It was early, rush hour hadn’t started yet, and the rapid wasn’t anywhere near full. I settled myself in a seat that I didn’t have to share with anyone who smelled like stale cigars, and took a good look around.

No flash of golden hair.