Gem of a Ghost: A Ghost of Granny Apples Mystery (6 page)

“A couple of weeks later, Max seemed almost his old self. He’d even stopped drinking. Driving over that cliff was the last thing any of us expected.”

Joanna started to take a drink of her coffee but decided against it. “Lainey doesn’t know about the pills, Emma. I’d like to keep it that way. We told her Max had an allergic reaction to something he ate and went into anaphylactic shock. He was horribly allergic to shellfish, so it was an easy sell. Max’s death was difficult enough for her without adding an earlier cover-up.”

Emma got up and went to the edge of the patio to think. It was a large area with several cozy arrangements of outdoor furniture, like a living room without roof or walls. She stood looking down the steps that led to the lower level and its large deck, cabana, and pool house. A few moments later, she returned to the table.

“Close to his daughter or not, you still don’t think Max had anything to do with Lainey’s suicide attempts? It seems too coincidental to me that he doesn’t, especially if he showed up about the same time they started occurring.”

“But you said ghosts can’t hurt us.”

“Not physically,” Emma repeated, “but who knows what other influences they might be capable of. While I don’t want to believe that Max is behind this, Lainey is being tormented by something. She told me each time she tried to kill herself, it felt like someone was telling her to do it.”

Joanna looked aghast. “I didn’t know that.”

Emma fixed the other mother with an accusatory eye. “You would have if you’d taken the time to listen to the poor girl. Haven’t you even checked with her doctors about her progress?”

With shaking hands, Joanna returned her sunglasses to her face. “I didn’t want to know,” she said in a clipped but quiet tone. “I couldn’t bear it, and I had other very serious matters to consider.”

“More serious than your own child?” Emma wanted to slap her.

“Halloooo,” a man called from the house.

Phil and Emma turned toward the sound. Joanna didn’t.

eight

Linwood Reid took the
path from the house down to the patio at a confident clip. He was tall and lanky, dressed in conservatively colored golf apparel. On his head was a white cap from Hilton Head. He came toward them with a tall drink in his hand and a wide smile on his face.

“Hello, dear.” Lin bent down and kissed his wife on her cheek. “I didn’t realize you had company.”

Emma could have sworn she saw Joanna recoil at her husband’s touch. It wasn’t a sharp jerk but a slight turn of her face and shoulders away from his affectionate gesture, an almost imperceptible tic.

“How was your game, Lin?” Joanna asked dutifully.

“Great. Won a whole three dollars from Gains and the boys.” He laughed and winked at Emma and Phil. “High stakes, huh, folks? We each put a dollar in the pot. Winner gets the pot, a free drink, and bragging rights.”

“Lin,” Joanna said, “this is Emma Whitecastle and her friend Phil Bowers.”

Phil stood and reached out a hand to the man. They shook. “I enjoyed that article about you in
Forbes
last month.”

“You in finance, Phil?”

“Tax attorney down in San Diego.”

Lin nodded agreeably and turned to Emma, appraising her physical appearance, fresh and inviting in a pale blue summer sheath. Clearly he liked what he saw. “Whitecastle? You related to that ass on TV?”

Considering both she and Grant had their own TV shows, Emma suppressed the urge to ask which Whitecastle ass Lin meant. Instead she said, “Grant Whitecastle and I divorced almost two years ago.”

“Good for you. Never liked that tacky show of his.”

Lin looked down at the table and noted the coffee for one. “We need to get you folks some refreshments.” He pulled a cell phone from his pocket. “I’ll call Bonita, and she’ll be down here in a jiff. What’ll you have?” He raised his crystal highball glass. “I’m having G & T. Sound good?”

“No, thank you, Lin,” Emma said quickly. “We were just leaving.”

“You sure? Won’t take but a minute.”

“No, thank you,” confirmed Phil. “We need to shove off soon. We have another appointment.”

With a look of disappointment, Lin put away his phone and folded his long body into the empty chair next to his wife, opposite Emma. He put down his drink and took off his cap to wipe his forehead with a white handkerchief pulled from a pocket. “Quite a scorcher on the links today.”

Under his hat, Lin’s hair was a damp mass of short gray waves. His face was tanned and lined with shallow ruts, like bicycle tire grooves in soft earth. Both his lips and nose were thin and irregular. He appeared to be quite a bit older than Joanna.

Lin’s dark eyes were not nearly as congenial as his outward demeanor. Small and alert, like that of a rodent, they measured Emma and Phil as carefully as a fine tailor cutting expensive fabric. “I’ve never met you folks before. You old friends of Joanna’s?”

“From a long time ago,” Emma offered. “When Max was alive and I was married to Grant, we saw each other often. Our girls went to school together and are still great friends.”

“Emma went to visit Lainey at that place.” Joanna stared into her coffee cup when she spoke.

Lin laughed. “You mean that hippy-dippy place in San Clemente?”

“Serenity Place seemed quite lovely to me,” challenged Emma. “And Lainey appeared content. Her doctor told me she’s greatly improved.”

Lin replaced his cap. “We tried to get her into a place that would provide real help, not some touchy-feely summer camp for spoiled brats.”

“Lin, please.” Joanna glanced at her husband. “Lainey wanted to go there, and she did. She’s getting help, and that’s all that matters.”

“Help. Bah! All she’s receiving is reinforcement of her bad behavior.”

Lin turned his gaze from Emma to Phil, looking for confirmation of his opinion. He received none. “My stepdaughter is a drama queen, plain and simple.”

Emma felt her eyes narrow in anger in spite of her attempt to keep her face a blank tablet. “You don’t believe Lainey tried to kill herself?”

He weighed his thoughts like whole coffee beans before letting them spill. “I believe she tried to make it
appear
as if she were killing herself.”

Lin leaned back in his chair and crossed one long leg casually over the opposite knee. “But, come on, we all seem to be reasonably intelligent people here. If someone really wanted to kill themselves, they would eat the barrel of a pistol or something irreversible like that.” He raised his glass to make the point. “The first two attempts were clearly daddy rage, and the last was a joke.” He took a long sip of his cool drink. “Who in the hell tries to stab themself?”

Phil asked dryly, “You’ve never heard of hara-kiri?”

Lin ignored the comment. “Just spoiled, unbalanced baby divas looking for attention, that’s who does things like that.”

Emma wasn’t watching Lin. Her eyes were on Joanna’s hands. While she appeared calm, her fingers were fidgeting with the china coffee cup as if it had a paper label that could be peeled off.

“Did you find that
man as insufferable as I did?” While Emma talked, her fingers were flying, typing out a text message to Kelly on her phone.

At the wheel of Emma’s SUV, Phil chuckled. “He was pretty full of himself, that’s for sure.” He glanced over at Emma. “What are you writing over there, a novel?”

“I’m asking Kelly if she’s ever met Linwood Reid or if Lainey mentioned him to her.”

“Remind me to find that
Forbes
article for you.”

“I’d love to read it.” Emma finished the text off with
xoxox, Mom
and put her phone away. “You didn’t tell me you knew who he was.”

“And you didn’t tell me Joanna was married to Linwood Reid. You only said her last name was now Reid. Being married to him explains that palace of a house, though.”

“Yes, that was pretty amazing. Both you and I live in lovely, large homes, but next to that, we might as well be living under an overpass of the 405 Freeway. Even that monstrosity I shared with Grant is a shack next to the Reid home.”

The GPS in Emma’s car directed Phil to turn left off of Sunset at the edge of the UCLA campus. “So who exactly is Linwood Reid?” she asked.

“He’s some big global money guy. Built a fortune financing a variety of successful high-risk, high-return ventures, anything from treasure hunting to oil expeditions. He’s also a major player in international construction and energy companies.”

“Like Halliburton?”

“Not Halliburton, but companies like it. Although here’s a trivia tidbit for ya.” Phil flashed her a grin. “He’s supposedly a close pal of Dick Cheney.”

“A pal close enough to shoot?”

Phil laughed and turned left at another intersection, following the next instruction called out by the automated voice of the GPS. They were on their way to Lainey’s condominium to see Keith Goldstein.

“Where did he make his seed money? You have to have money to start to turn it into money of his present magnitude.”

“There’s a lot of speculation on that. It’s well known he was one of the pirates in the Enron mess.”

“One of the executives?”

“No, one of the initial investors. One who bailed with a boatload of cash just before it all turned to shit.”

“Just savvy or an inside tip?”

Phil shrugged. “Who knows. It was never proved he knew anything about the internal finances of the company.” He made another turn onto Wilshire Boulevard. “There were also rumors of him being involved in selling guns overseas.”

“What?” Emma nearly snapped her neck as she whipped around to stare at Phil.

“Again, nothing was proved, but the rumors claim he provided financial backing for international gunrunners and made an obscene amount of money.”

“Wow. I may have traded up, but it seems Joanna didn’t, at least not in character.”

Phil blew her a loud, sloppy kiss.

“Speaking of wow.” Phil pulled into a circular drive of a high- rise building on Wilshire Boulevard. “Are you sure this is where Lainey lives?”

“This is the address she gave me.”

After the doorman directed them to visitor parking, they made their way into the marble-encased lobby to face the concierge.

“Yowza!” said the disembodied voice of Granny. “Is this a hotel?”

Emma turned to Phil and pretended to whisper something to him. “Nice time for you to show up, Granny. Max popped in at Joanna’s, then popped out just as quickly.”

“Hey,” the ghost said with annoyance as heavy as her boots. “I’ve been trying to get him for ya, but it’s not like he’s standing around on the other side waiting for me to pick him out of a lineup.”

Knowing this wasn’t the time and place to argue with the cranky ghost, Emma plastered a smile on her face and turned to approach the dark-skinned young man at the desk. He gave her a gracious nod and closed-lipped smile. He was movie-star beautiful, with black slicked hair and intelligent eyes the color of dark roast coffee. His name tag said Shaheen.

“Shaheen, I’m Emma Whitecastle. I believe Elaine Naiman in 1202 called about giving me access to her apartment.” Emma dug out her wallet and presented her ID to the man. He glanced at it, then checked something on the computer recessed into his desktop.

“Yes, Ms. Whitecastle,” Shaheen said in a softly accented voice, “Ms. Naiman called yesterday with instructions. If Mr. Goldstein isn’t at home, we’re to give you a key.”

He picked up a phone and punched in a number. After a few moments, he put the phone down. “It seems Mr. Goldstein is not in.” Shaheen unlocked a cabinet in the desk console and from it plucked out a key and handed it to Emma. “You can take one of the two elevators to your left to the twelfth floor. Unit 1202 is all the way down the hall, an end unit.”

Emma and Phil took the elevator. Granny had taken off again.

“When I was in college,” Phil said during the ride in the
mirror
-walled elevator, “I shared a run-down two-bedroom house with three other guys. Our furniture was hand-me-downs from family, and our tables and bookcases were made from planks of wood and bricks.”

“I know what you mean. My digs weren’t that … um … rustic, but I did share a modest apartment with my cousin Marlene. It wasn’t too far from here, but it was a world apart in amenities.”

“That’s right, you went to UCLA, didn’t you, Fancy Pants?”

“Both Grant and I went there. We met during our junior year.”

When the elevator doors opened, Emma immediately saw Granny. The ghost was in the midst of materializing. She stood just beyond the elevator, patting her foot on the hallway carpet with impatience.

“What’s the matter, Granny?” Emma asked the ghost. “You didn’t want to keep us company?”

“Don’t like those darn contraptions, not one bit. They’re like coffins that move.”

Emma repeated the comment to Phil, who shivered and shook his head. “That’s something to remember for our trip back down.”

“I’m a bit confused,” Phil said as they started walking down the quiet hallway with Granny floating alongside. “Did you tell Lainey you were coming here to interrogate her fiancé?”

“Not exactly.”

Both Phil and Granny stopped and stared after Emma. “What exactly
did
you tell her?” Phil asked.

Emma stopped halfway down the hall. Just as she was about to say something, a door to her right opened and a slight,
middle
-aged man with thick black glasses with circular frames came out carrying a tiny orange Pomeranian. He smiled at Emma, then noticed Phil and nodded to him. The dog noticed Granny and started yipping with excitement.

“Baxter,” the man clucked at the dog. “Shush.” He turned his attention back to Emma and Phil. “Can I help you folks?”

“We’re looking for number 1202,” Emma told him.

He pointed in the direction they had been heading. “All the way down to the end, on your left.”

Phil took Emma’s elbow. “Thanks.” They started back down the hall.

The man put Baxter down on the carpet, and the little dog went nuts, wagging his tail and pulling on his leash to follow Emma and Phil … and Granny.

The man laughed. “Are you folks carrying raw filet in your pockets?”

Granny, sensing she was the problem, disappeared.

Phil chuckled. “The little guy must smell our animals. Between our horses and dogs, we have quite a zoo at home.”

Picking up the excited dog, the man gave them a final smile and headed for the elevator.

Phil tugged gently on Emma’s elbow. “So, what did you tell Lainey?”

“You’re not going to drop this, are you?”

“Nope.”

“I simply asked Lainey if there was anything she wanted from her apartment while I was up in Los Angeles. She was very grateful and gave me a short list of items, mostly makeup and a couple articles of clothing.”

“Uh-huh. But you really wanted to get inside her place and see if you could get a sense of Max’s presence, right?”

“Yes, and this seemed a good way to do it without alarming her.” When they reached the door to 1202, Emma inserted the key. “I couldn’t exactly ask her about her father’s ghost, could I?”

“Lying, threatening folks with blackmail—doesn’t quite sound like you, Fancy Pants.”

She opened the door several inches, then stopped. “I’m sorry, Phil, if you’re disappointed in me, but I did what I felt I had to do to help the girl.”

“Don’t get so defensive, Emma. I’m not disappointed—intrigued, yes. This is a side of you I haven’t seen before. I find it rather fascinating.” He paused long enough to plant a short kiss on her lips. “As long as you don’t use those new talents on me.”

“It’s a deal, Cowboy.”

“Are you two going to moon after each other all day or do some work?”

Emma turned to the ghost. “There you are, Granny. I thought you’d left.”

“I did, but just until that fool dog got out of the way.”

Phil pushed the door open.

“Wow!” exclaimed Phil, stepping inside Lainey’s condominium just behind Emma. “Exactly how rich
is
this girl?”