The Ghost and the Dead Deb

Try.

I clicked off the lamp, lay back on the mattress, hugged a pillow, and sighed. “When you were alive, what did you do to relax?”

Me? Jack laughed. Two ways, baby . . . You want to hear them?

“Sure.”

First way: a bottle of good Scotch—

“I’d prefer white wine.”

Vino works, too . . .

“And the second way?”

Jack laughed again, but this time the sound was deep and low and very male. Close your eyes, he whispered, I’ll show you . . .

The cool kiss of his presence breezed up the length of my thin nightgown, making me shiver in the warm room. “No, Jack.”

Come on, baby, I can give you a dream you’ll never forget.

I blushed. “Jack, please don’t.”

More male laughter.

All right, Miss Priss. Then why don’t you just get your mind off your friend Johnny’s case by putting it on another.

“Another what?”

Another case. When a homicide stumped me, I’d read up on other cases. Where’s that Stendall file you carried up here?

I sat up, clicked on the lamp, shoved on my black-framed glasses, and fished the file out of the nightstand drawer. Inside the dusty beige folder, I found a surprisingly neat and orderly collection of documents. The first was a typewritten list of expenses—dinners, taxis, pay phone calls. Clipped to the back were receipts, yellowed with age but still readable. I rifled through them.

“Little Roma,” I read aloud. “O’Donnell’s Pub, Club Creole, Chop Suey, Pirate’s Cave, The Bar Car, McSorley’s Old Ale House, Le Parisian . . . Looks like you had an awful lot of night’s out with this case.”

Most were the client’s idea, not mine. But you can skip all that, baby. Find my report.

Beneath the log, I found a neatly typed document. I pulled it out and skimmed the first page . .

Jack Shepard

Private Investigations

August 7, 1946

Emily Stendall

Protection and Investigation into Threats

July 19, 1946 - August 5, 1946

On the afternoon of Friday, July 19, 1946, the Client, Miss Emily Stendall of 67 East 65^th Street, entered my office and retained me to provide her with protection. According to Miss Stendall, the Subject, Joey Lubrano, an elevator operator in her building, and residing at 16 East 7^th Street, had made threats to her regarding her safety.

Also according to Miss Stendall, Mr. Lubrano had carried on an affair with her sister, Mrs. Sarah Nolan, also a resident of 67 East 65^th Street. During this affair, Mr. Lubrano took photos of Mrs. Nolan in various states of undress and in lewd poses. Mr. Lubrano had promised these photos would remain private but later used them to blackmail her.

Mrs. Nolan also confided in Miss Stendall that she had arranged an exchange with Mr. Lubrano but the night it was to take place, Mrs. Nolan was found drowned in her bathtub, under the influence of a combination of alcohol and sleeping pills. Mr. Lubrano having had a solid alibi was not held by the police. The death was ruled accidental.

Miss Stendall believed that Mr. Lubrano took the money, kept the photos and negatives, drugged Mrs. Nolan, and drowned her. The police agreed to search Mr. Lubrano’s residence but recovered no evidence and, with no evidence from the medical examiner’s office that her death was a homicide, the case was dropped.

Mr. Lubrano, now in the clear, approached and threatened Miss Stendall. In her words: “He threatened me just the other day, told me to keep my mouth shut from now on or he’d shut it permanently—just like he did my sister’s.”

The Client speculated that Mr. Lubrano still had the incriminating photos and would begin a second blackmailing scheme, this one perpetrated on the deceased’s husband.

After my initial interview of the Client, I dined with her at Little Roma. Afterwards, we took a cab to her 65^th Street apartment. There, I observed Mr. Lubrano operating the elevator, as she had claimed, and I found him to be hostile to her, as she had claimed.

After I physically discouraged the Subject from advancing on my Client, I instructed Miss Stendall, for her own safety, to pack her belongings and leave the premises with me. She agreed to check into the Plaza Hotel and invited me to stay with her. I declined. . . .

I raised an eyebrow at those last lines. “What does it mean that your client invited you to ‘stay with her’ at the Plaza? Did she have a suite with a second bedroom?”

No, baby.

“Then she wanted you to . . .”

Heat up her sheets, do the horizontal tango, go to bed with her, what do you think?

“But you declined, right? It says right here you did.”

That night.

“Excuse me?”

I had work to do that night—putting a tail on Lubrano. But the invitation from Miss Stendall to share her bed became a standing one, and I took her up on it the next night.

“You slept with your client?”

Yeah, baby. And more than twice.

I shook my head. “I just can’t believe you did that.”

Why not?

“Because in the Jack Shield books, Jack never slept with a client, even when tempted. He said it would compromise the investigations and—”

These aren’t Jack Shield’s files you’re reading, baby, these are Jack Shepard’s— the files of a real man, who lived a real life, and made real mistakes.

“So you admit it was a mistake to sleep with Miss Stendall? That it was unethical?”

Technically.

“Then why did you do it?”

She was a knockout and she was hot for me, and I went to bed with her . . . and, boy, but if I didn’t call that one on the money.

“What?”