Ghost in the Wind (28 page)

On the carpet pads protecting the floor of Jeremy Bensinger's car.

I stood straight up like Roy Scheider does in
Jaws
when he sees the shark at close range for the first time. I avoided telling anyone we needed a bigger boat, but looked up at Maxie and Paul and hissed, “
Get Vance
.” They gave each other a confused look, then Maxie headed out toward the movie room. Maybe she knew something I didn't about Vance's whereabouts.

Paul swooped down, questions in his eyes. “What happened, Alison?” he asked.

“Vance who?” Liz asked.

Maureen shook her head. “Vance McTiernan. He plays guitar here.” Then she walked to the beach doors and left.

“Who's Vance McTiernan?” Liz asked, cementing my opinion of her.

Paul's eyes were intent on me. “You know something,” he said. “Tell me.”

“It was Jeremy Bensinger,” I said. “He killed Bill. I'm guessing about Vanessa, but he definitely killed Bill.”

From behind me I heard the very voice I'd been hoping not to hear. “I don't know what you're talking about,” Jeremy said. “I didn't kill anyone.”

“Oh god,” Liz said. “They're all talking about killing again.”

“Him?” Paul asked. “How do you know?”

“It was the carpet in your car, Jeremy,” I said, really answering Paul's question. “You got out of your car after you followed Bill here and when you killed him, and some of the fibers from that carpet landed beneath him.”

Jeremy, dressed for the office and not the beach, had no weapon that I could see. I don't know why, but somehow that didn't make me feel better. “Why would I kill Bill?” he asked, ignoring my remarks. “He was a friend.” He started to walk toward me.

“I'm going to find a cell phone and text the lieutenant,” Dad said. He was out the door before I could fish mine out of my pocket. My father is a problem solver.

“Because once he heard from me that Vanessa was murdered, he put two and two together and figured it was you who did it. And because he wanted his due on the songs he wrote for Vanessa's album but you didn't want to share, did you?” I was prodding Jeremy to keep his focus on the conversation and not the objects moving around the room. Vance and Maxie appeared from the ceiling. Maxie, sizing up the situation, headed for the fireplace to get a poker. Vance just looked shocked.

“Why should I?” Jeremy demanded, getting just to the table where Liz was staring at him as if he were a madman, which might have been the first time Liz was right that evening. “I
was entitled! I worked on every one of those songs, and now they were going to pay off! And he was going to ruin it. I didn't want to kill him but he was going to go to the police and lie to them about what happened with Vanessa.”

I was instinctively circling back away from Jeremy and toward Josh, who is always a source of security. “Lie? You're saying you didn't kill your sister? If you didn't kill Vanessa, who did?” I asked. Not only did I want Jeremy to keep talking, I also wanted to know the answer.

“Vanessa was an accident,” he said defensively. “I didn't know there was soy in her food.”

I shook my head as Maxie circled around him, but Jeremy, even without seeing the poker flying (Maxie had secreted it in her jacket) must have felt the threat because he picked up a knife from the table and reached . . . for Liz.

“You didn't know there was soy in soy sauce?” I asked. Maybe I could lunge toward him; Maxie was positioned badly and would have to float around.

Jeremy pulled up on Liz's chin with the flat end of the knife, and Liz, who was trying to protest, stood without speaking, but she did make a gurgling sound. “Vanessa had a million-dollar voice she wanted to give away for
nothing
!” he shouted. He was sweating heavily through his suit jacket. “Her father had screwed up his fame and fortune and she thought that was the way it was had to be.”

Vance stopped in space, stunned. “Me?” he said. “It was my fault?”

A.J. pushed in through the kitchen door, smiling, then stopped in shock. “What the hell is going on?”

“It's a situation,” I told A.J. “We're going to make sure Liz doesn't get hurt, right, Jeremy?”

But he wasn't necessarily hearing what anyone but he was saying right now. “I had to do what was necessary,” he said. “Vanessa would be heard, and heard more because she'd be dead. I held a gun on her while she drank what she had to
drink. She kept begging me to call the rescue squad, and I
wanted to
but I
couldn't
!”

Maybe sympathy was the way to get through to him. “I totally get that,” I told him. “She was wasting her talent and all you wanted to do was show it off. She was being unreasonable.”

“Don't condescend,” Jeremy said. He shook his head as he pulled back on the knife and tried to maneuver Liz backward with him. She, characteristically, was being stubborn and resisting. But Jeremy was talking directly to me. “You're going to do exactly as I say or your good buddy here gets her throat cut.”

“You're making a huge mistake,” I told him. “I don't even like her.”

“Excuse me?” Liz croaked.

“Huh?” A.J. chimed in. I couldn't tell what that meant.

“It's true,” I told Jeremy. “She's a really annoying know-it-all. She's been getting on my last nerve all night.”

Maxie looked down. “I can't guarantee he won't slit her throat if I hit him,” she said. “Should I hit him?”

I shook my head again. Maxie looked a little disappointed.

“Here's how it's gonna work,” Jeremy said. “You're not going to do anything. I'm going to take your friend here and drive away in your car because I actually had to walk here from the beach. Couldn't let anyone hear me drive up, could I? Then the two of us are going to drive away. If I'm confident no cops are following us, I might let her go in a couple of days. That's how it'll work.”

“No!” Liz protested. “I don't want to go!”

There was only one card left to play. “You can't have my car,” I said.

“What?” Liz stared at me, eyes wide.

Jeremy also stopped and looked, but his eyes were clear and focused. “I'm taking your car.”

“You don't care what he does with
me
but he can't have your
car
?” Liz shouted.

I stole a glance at Josh, who was suppressing a grin. He knew what I was doing.

“I can't let you,” I told Jeremy, buying time. “I need that car.”

“You have insurance,” he suggested. “Mine's too far away.” He was going to reason with me now.

“The thing's too old. They won't give me what it's worth and I won't be able to replace it.”

“Ex
cuse
me?” Liz said. “I'm the one being kidnapped here!”

Jeremy looked at Liz. “I'm starting to see your point about her,” he told me.

A.J. frowned. “Hey.” He took a step forward, but Jeremy held up the knife and A.J., chastised, held his ground.

From the corner of my eye came movement, but I forced myself not to look so Jeremy wouldn't know what was coming. Maxie with a shovel? Dad with a cop? The lady with the wagon looking for Lester? I had no idea.

And that's why it was such a surprise when Vance, launching himself like a projectile at Jeremy, hit him low, below the waist and just about at the knee. He dropped the knife and let go of Liz while letting out an “oof” noise that sounded exactly like the ones in old cartoons; it was perfect.

He struggled, but Vance was unrelenting; he was a machine, automatic and unforgiving, almost suffocating Jeremy with his being, holding him down. He finally passed out, presumably from lack of oxygen.

“You killed my little girl,” Vance said deeply. “You're lucky I didn't kill you.”

I had no time for his triumph. “Get something to tie his hands,” I said to Paul. He started to take the tiebacks off the drapes near him to the right. A.J. watched them fly by and mouthed some words but no sound came out of his mouth.

Liz, having fallen to the floor, slowly propped herself up on one elbow. “What the hell was that?” she demanded.

“I told you, it's a haunted house,” I said. “What did you expect?”

Paul started in on tying Jeremy's hands as Josh moved to my side and A.J. walked—a little casually, I thought—to Liz. He knelt down and asked if she was all right.

“Of
course
I'm not all right!” she wailed. “That nut was holding a
knife
to my throat and Alison told him to go ahead and kill me!”

“I didn't go quite that far,” I muttered. Josh put his arm around me and made a noise that was trying not to be a laugh.

Suddenly the room was a beehive: Dad emerged from the front room, saying he'd found Berthe's cell in the movie room and had texted McElone, who would no doubt be calling me any second.

Morrie floated in from the beach side, hands on hips. “Where the hell'd you go, mate?” he admonished Vance. “I thought we was getting somewhere.”

Melissa showed up in the doorway and assessed the scene: Paul finishing up tying Jeremy's hands, Morrie floating over a smiling Vance, Josh holding me close and A.J. helping Liz off the floor with one hand.

“And I thought Bruce Willis was busy,” she said.

When Lieutenant Anita McElone comes to my house these days, it is with less anxiety than she used to show, but no more joy. Of course, coming to deal with the aftermath of a murder isn't often call for dancing, but McElone seems to take out her irritation on the house. She acknowledges the ghosts, but isn't happy about it.

“So based on the initial interrogation, what I've got is that your Mr. Bensinger forced soy sauce down his sister's throat because she was going to pass on a big money contract,” she said to me while the group of us—me, Dad, Paul, Morrie, Vance, Maxie, Josh and Melissa (since A.J. and Liz had left after McElone okayed it)—sat in the movie room, having once again cut short a screening for the guests, who appeared somewhat discouragingly to be getting used to it.

“Not exactly,” I said. “From what he was saying before you got here, he held a gun on her and made her drink it. Which is somehow even colder.”

McElone nodded at that. “Then he followed Bill Mastrovy from his apartment to here and knifed him because Mastrovy, once he knew Jeremy had killed his sister, was going to turn him in. But he didn't want the cops involved, so he was coming here to tell you. Is that it?”

“That's what I gather,” I answered. “Jeremy thought if he could hold out long enough to get the record money he could fly to some cushy country without an extradition treaty and lie on a beach. On a first album. That's some serious crazy.”

“Did he confess when you arrested him?” Josh asked the lieutenant. McElone shook her head. “He says you all are lying. But I paid a second call this evening to Sammi Fine and she confirms that Bill and Jeremy saw each other the day you went to the club to see Once Again. They argued about the record again and Bill was foolish enough to suggest he knew Jeremy had killed Vanessa McTiernan.”

“Bill said he was in the apartment the day it happened,” I remembered.

“I'm guessing he wasn't there at the actual time of the murder,” McElone said. “He might've tried to stop it, and there was no sign of a struggle in the apartment. But I'm thinking he may have found her and been the one who made the anonymous 911 call.”

“Poor Nessa,” Vance said, his face pained now. “All she wanted to do was get her music out and let her loved ones hear it.”

“Unbelievable.” I shook my head. “I'm having a hard time getting my head around it.”

“Unfortunately, it's not that crazy a story this time,” McElone said. “At least your ghosties didn't have a hand in it.”

There was considerable avoidance of eye contact in the room despite the fact that the people in question couldn't be seen by the lieutenant anyway.

“I guess not,” I told her. “Of course, it was Vance who first told me about Vanessa and started this all rolling.”

McElone's eyes went dull, like she'd heard something she'd like to un-hear. “Right,” she said. Then she said her good nights and headed for the door. “Oh, there was one thing.” She turned back and looked at me.

“What's that?”

“The record company is going to pass on the album,” she said. “They decided a debut album with no chance of a follow-up was a bad business risk. Sammi said she'll see to it that the songs get distributed for free the way Vanessa wanted.

“You see what happens when someone tries to claim they wrote something all by themselves?” Morrie shouted at Vance.

“Are you starting that again, you old swine?”

There was a good deal of shouting as they left at a very high speed.

Melissa, reminded there was school the next day, very reluctantly headed upstairs. Josh stood, telling me what I already knew—that he had to open his store early the next morning. But he kissed me nicely and then we headed for the front door.

“A.J.'s breaking up with Liz,” he said casually when we got there.

“What? I did all that pretending to like her and giving a murderer the wrong impression for nothing?” I pulled him close. “You owe me.”

He was about to lean down and start paying off when I heard the sound of the dog howling again. I turned my head.

“What?” Josh asked. He looked concerned and assessed my face.

“Didn't you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

And then it made sense.

*   *   *

Phyllis had called to do the usual follow-up once she'd heard (“on my police scanner, for goodness sake, Alison”)
about the arrest at my house. I'd told her what I knew (minus Vance because that would make it too complicated), she'd admonished me a few times for not calling her immediately and we'd left it at that.

Jeannie had called to say she'd told Tony about the coming baby and he'd reacted exactly as I'd said he would. He was now calling his family and friends to celebrate. Why she'd ever doubted he would was beyond her comprehension. She never once asked about the murder investigation. Jeannie is among the best in the world at not dealing with things that she'd prefer weren't there.

The next morning I rolled out the coffee and tea urns on my new cart, which I'd lugged home and assembled last night because I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep. It was especially early (see previous comment re: no sleep), and instead of waiting for Melissa to appear downstairs, I went up to her bedroom in the attic to wake her.

I'd taken an allergy pill but was already tearing up by the time I hit the second step. I'd expected it, but that didn't make the feeling any easier to handle.

I found my daughter hanging halfway off her bed, faced away from the stairs I was climbing, as if she were looking for a stray shoe she'd shoved too hard under the bed. I climbed up to floor level and closed the staircase.

“Okay,” I said. “You're busted. Where's the dog?”

“Dog?” The voice came from under the bed, where I also heard a little scratching of clawed feet. “What dog?”

I sneezed. “
That
dog,” I said.

Melissa sat up, resigned to her fate. “Oh.
That
dog.”

From under the bed, a small dog, no bigger than the average beagle but clearly something in the golden retriever family, squirmed out and jumped up next to Liss. He (and it was clearly a he) snuggled up against her and tried to lick her face, but his tongue went through her cheek.

He was a ghost.

“Who's your friend?” I asked my daughter. Then I sneezed again.

“I'm calling him Bonkers,” she said. “Can I keep him?”

“Bonkers?” My throat was scratchy and itchy at the same time. It's not good.

“I don't know. That's the fifth name I've given him. I couldn't think of anything else. Can I keep him?”

The dog ran through Melissa and off the bed. He hovered there for a second, confused, but then lowered to the floor, where he ran in a circle and then lay down. He seemed to have more connection to the material world than most of the human ghosts I'd met.

“I don't know,” I rasped. “Can you hear my voice?”

“I'll keep him up here, Mom, I promise. And he can't shed, or, you know, need to go out or anything. Please?”

I decided to go in another direction. “Where'd you find him?”

“He showed up on the beach on Friday all by himself and he looked scared,” she said. “Maxie thought we should bring him up here and make him feel secure, so she picked him up and brought him in.”

I had figured Maxie was involved. “And you hid him from me because you figured I'd say you couldn't keep him,” I said.

She scrunched up her nose. “Um . . . yeah.”

“Come on,” I said. “I think my head will be clearer outside.”

“Can Bonkers come?”

“That's the idea,” I said. She coaxed the dog out with a tennis ball in the air, which he had not yet figured he could float up and get. We started down to the main floor.

None of the guests—who would be leaving via a noon van—were up yet. Paul was in the front room when Melissa, Bonkers (oy) and I walked out toward the front door. It was impossible for Melissa to leash the dog, but of course there was no danger of him getting hit by a car and besides, he did not seem to want to leave my daughter's side. They had bonded in only a few days. This was going to be tough.

Paul looked guilty. “You've found out about Toby,” he said.

“His name's Bonkers now,” Melissa informed him.

“Oh.”

“Yes, I did,” I told Paul, “and I'm not thrilled that this was kept a secret from me.”

“I tried to argue against it, but Maxie was . . . persuasive.” Paul looked away. Maxie can indeed be persuasive, or intimidating, depending on one's point of view.

Before we got outside, Vance and Morrie appeared in the hallway, floating in from the direction of the movie room. And immediately informed us they were leaving.

“We're getting the band together and taking it on the road,” Morrie said.

I looked at Vance, who surprisingly had become the more reliable source of information. “We have a gig with some of the Grateful Dead in San Francisco in March,” he said.

“March? So you're leaving now?”

“It's a long walk. Look, love, I wanted to thank you for all you did and for putting up with us all this time. It wasn't always exactly like we wanted it to be but in the end we did what we could for Nessa, yeah?”

That reminded me. “Hang on,” I said. I walked to what my mother calls the telephone table despite it having no such instrument on top of it. But it does have a drawer, and I opened it and pulled out a CD in a jewel case. I held it out to Vance.

“What's that?” he asked, taking it. I hadn't marked the disc at all.

“It's music by Vanessa McTiernan,” I said. “Find a player somewhere along the way. I think you'll like it.”

Vance looked like I'd handed him the key to the meaning of life. “Really,” he said quietly.

“Really.”

He looked at me carefully. “You've heard it?”

I nodded. “I burned another copy for myself.”

“Is she good?”

“She's very good.”

Vance punched Morrie on the arm. “Come on, you old tonk,” he said. “We've gotta find ourselves a CD player.” They flew out through the front door and were gone without a look back.

I sneezed again and Bonkers barked. Melissa looked like he'd pulled a gun on me. “Bonkers,” she said.

“It's not his fault,” I said through congestion. “Let's go outside.”

The front porch was better. It was chilly that morning, a preview of coming attractions for the season. I didn't have to rake leaves yet, but that wasn't too far in the future. Then would come the winter and that's the slow season for us Shore businesses.

Bonkers ran out on the lawn when Melissa walked down there. He'd have loved to chase a ball, I'd bet, but we had left it upstairs. I really wanted to tell my daughter I couldn't possibly keep a ghost dog in the house—really a ghost puppy, judging by his size—due to my sinuses. But she looked so happy, and that's always a problem when denying her something. I walked down the steps toward where the dog was circling my daughter.

And that's when I saw the ghost woman with the wagon, standing on the edge of my sidewalk.

“You found Lester!” she said.

It took me a moment. “The dog? Lester is a golden retriever?”

“Sure. Light hair, short, generous mouth, right?” The woman floated a few feet closer and watched the dog with Melissa, who was confused and looking like something bad was going to happen.

Lester ran over and let the woman pet him but then he went back and sat by Melissa.

“I think we have to give Lester back to his friend,” I said to Liss. “She's been looking all over for him.” Then I turned toward the woman. “Haven't you, Claudia?”

“Claudia!” Paul said.

“Claudia?” Melissa asked.

Claudia Rabinowitz looked at me and smiled. “How did you know?”

“Vance McTiernan was here and he said he sensed you nearby. Then it was obvious that Vanessa visited with you just before she died but nobody else saw you. You were already dead. Vanessa used to stare into space and talk to herself, or so people thought. Could she see ghosts?”

Claudia nodded. “Some. Not all. I'm not even sure she knew for a fact what she was seeing. But she saw me, and I could talk to her. It was a real blessing; we worked out our differences. If I'd stayed just a few hours longer, I might have been able to . . .”

“You couldn't have known,” I said. But now there was the business at hand. “Now, about Lester.”

Liss looked like she might cry. Still, she nodded. But I noticed Lester/Bonkers wasn't sticking to his previous mistress and appeared to favor my daughter. “I'm sorry,” Liss told the ghost. “I didn't know he was yours.”

Claudia held up her hand. “No. You keep him.”

Well, there went my easy way out. “Huh?” I'm nothing if not eloquent.