The Ghost and the Dead Deb

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?”

Maybe she didn’t care. You’re forgetting about someone trying to run Angel down right on the street out front. It could have been Victoria and her friends. Don’t you see? She could have killed Angel and fled. That’s why she’s missing.

“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—

Of course you don’t. She’s been a good employee and never gave you a second to doubt her . . . but you wouldn’t be a decent dick if you didn’t consider she had a motive.

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.

“Speaking of secrets,” I said, continuing to fill the handcart with books. “I wish I knew what Bud and Sadie were talking about. They’ve been at it since we got back.”

I got an earful, baby. It’s personal stuff. The old man’s telling your auntie about his wife’s death from cancer a couple of years back, and how he was glad to help out Johnny. He was telling how much he liked the kid and how he can’t believe Johnny’s guilty. Mostly, I think the old guy is feeling lost and betrayed and alone. Little Sadie’s helping him through it just fine . . . I suspect the old girl’s got the eye for Bud, by the way.

“Bud’s a good man . . . but I think you’re mistaken. They’re just friends. So what’s my next move?”

That’s easy. Let the cops handle it.

“I can’t do that, Jack. I’m worried about too many people here. If Johnny’s guilty, I want to know it—as much for Mina’s safety as every other young woman in this town. And if he’s not guilty then I want to help the kid—for Bud’s sake.”

Baby, listen to me. You want to fit yourself with my fedora, but you haven’t learned the angles, not by a long shot.

“Okay, fine. I haven’t learned the angles. So you can teach me along the way. You can help me prove Johnny did it—or find the real killer.”

There was a long silence. The room, which had been comfortably cool, was slowly becoming warm and stuffy again. I felt Jack’s presence receding.

“Jack? Don’t leave me. Come on! You can consider it a pastime. Helping me solve another murder has got to be more interesting than watching a sluggish parade of overheated customers make their beach reading selections.”

The silence was interminable.

“Jack? Listen. I’m going to do it anyway—with or without you.”

Finally, the room cooled again. I felt a whisper of a breeze against my cheek.

One condition, he growled in my head.

“Name it.”

Read my files. Starting with the one marked “Stendall.”

“Fine. Okay, after I . . .”

NOW.

I jumped. “Okay, okay, calm down . . .” I swallowed nervously, hating that Jack’s haunting temper could still rattle me and walked over to the files—eight boxes of them. I lifted the top off the first, hoping to find some part of the alphabet, the M’s through the O’s or the T’s through the W’s. But the files weren’t alphabetical.

“Talbot, Lionetti, Hague, Zika, Walters, Karpinsky,” I recited, reading the typewritten labels on the dusty beige folders. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Jack, what was your filing system?”

Alphabetical, sweetheart. Two things I prided myself on when I was alive— an organized mind and an organized office.

“But these aren’t alphabetical. They’re a big mess is what they are.”

And they’re not the way I left them. What did you expect after fifty years of the biggest a-hole in the world pawing through them, stealing my life to create his best-sellers. And from what I remember about the louse, Timothy Brennan was cheap as a dime store kazoo and orderly as a typhoon. This proves the latter.

With a sigh, I pawed through the first box, then placed the lid back on it and went to the second. I finally found it in the fourth box I opened.

“Stendall! Found it!”

Bravo, baby.

As I pulled the folder free of its dusty confines, a tremendous sneeze shook me, and I nearly dropped the file. In the process, I felt something slip out and fall to the floor with a ding.

“What fell?” I muttered, looking around my feet. The wink of silver caught my eye and I bent down to pick up the coin. “It’s a nickel . . .”

A buffalo nickel, to be precise—a coin minted only from 1913 to 1938, after which it was replaced with the Jefferson nickel. Seymour Tarnish had excitedly brought one in a few months back after one of his ice cream truck customers had passed it to him without noticing.

The profile of a rugged, dignified American Indian’s head was engraved on one side with the word Liberty and the year 1937. I remembered Seymour saying that the artist based his image on a composite of three models: Iron Tail, Two Moons, and Chief John Big Tree. The reverse side displayed an American bison in the center of the coin, United States of America arced over the bison’s head, and Five Cents stretched beneath its hooves.

“Jack?” I whispered, running my fingers over the old coin. “Was this yours?”

“Yeah, baby.”

With my eyes still fixed on the engraved buffalo, I slowly realized that Jack’s answer hadn’t been in my head. The ghost’s voice, for the first time since I’d initially heard it almost a year ago, sounded as if it had been projected from two feet in front of me. Perplexed, I lifted my eyes—and gasped.

“Jack . . . ,” I rasped, “I can . . . see you . . .”

“You’ve seen me before,” he pointed out.

“But not . . . like this . . .”

Over the past year, I’d seen Jack Shepard in my dreams mostly, or in the black-and-white photo on the flap of Timothy Brennan’s Jack Shield books. On very rare occasions, I thought I’d glimpsed him in other ways—as a silhouette or shadow, but nothing more than a flickering blink. This time, Jack appeared before me as real and solid as the stacked brown boxes around me in this storage room.