The Ghost and the Dead Deb

married and start living the good life.”

“But it didn’t work out, did it Joey?” said Jack.

Lubrano sighed, shook his head. “The night before we were supposed to do the trade-off, Mrs. Nolan ended up dead. I don’t know what happened, but I had nothing to do with it.”

“I know,” said Jack. “I talked to enough cops that saw you at McSorley’s, making bets on dart throws.”

“Damn right. I was innocent . . . but Emily was furious. Said it was all screwed up now, that Mrs. Nolan probably offed herself, but we deserved our money and we’d get it, too.”

“By blackmailing her husband?” prompted Jack.

“Exactly. But I was scared and wouldn’t go for it,” said Joey, “I still had the photos and Emily demanded I give them up, but I wouldn’t. I told her we should just go to Miami anyways, me and her, but she got nasty and said she wasn’t going anywhere with a rube who had no cash and no future and unless I agreed to her plan she’d get even with me good.”

“What did you do?” prompted Jack.

“I told her to take a hike, that’s what. That broad was good in the sack, but she was all bad out of it, and I’d had it with her.”

Jack nodded. “That’s why Miss Stendall needed me. She wanted me to get those photos back from you so she could go through with the second phase of the blackmailing scheme—to blackmail Sarah Nolan’s husband. And at the same time, she needed to incriminate you.”

Joey’s eyes narrowed. He leaned forward on the sofa. “Doesn’t she know I’d turn on her? The police didn’t believe her once, but if they ever did, and I knew for sure I was going down, I’d take her with me. I’d tell all the stuff about her sleeping with me and posing for the photos and our planning the blackmailing together.”

“She’d never give you that chance. That’s also why she needed me. My bet is she’s about to stage a situation between us where I’ll kill you.”

Joey blinked, confused. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying Emily Stendall played us. And now it’s our turn to play her.”

Jack turned suddenly and winked at me. “Any questions, doll?”

My eyes widened. “At least a dozen.”

“Let’s take P.I. school somewhere else, then,” he said, rising. “Excuse us, Joey.”

Jack grabbed my hand and kissed it. In an instant, we were no longer in a shabby, two-room walk-up flat. Above us, the chandeliers of Manhattan’s elegant Plaza Hotel shimmered. Jack offered his arm and I took it. We glided across the carpet to a small candle-lit marble table in a remote part of the palm-filled lobby.

As we stepped past a gilded mirror, I saw my attire had become decidedly more feminine—my gray linen suit had been exchanged for a deep-green satin dress with a turned-up collar, daring neckline, and matching pumps. My auburn hair was down, falling in perfect waves around my face and looking sleeker than I’d ever been able to style it in my life.

We sat down at the small marble table, and Jack ordered champagne. It arrived in a silver bucket, poured by a white-gloved, black-jacketed waiter into shallow crystal glasses.

“Okay, shoot,” he said, after enjoying a long swallow. “Not literally, baby.” He winked. “Just ask me what you want to know.”

“First, finish the story. What happened to you and Joey and Emily?”

“I brought Emily Stendall some but not all of the photos. Remember, baby, holding on to some of the evidence is smart insurance in case something goes wrong—like that bullet in Johnny’s car.”

I nodded silently, the champagne going far too easily down my throat.

Jack continued. “Shortly after she got those photos, Miss Stendall began her blackmailing of Mr. Nolan. She also arranged for me to walk in on her and Joey together. She lured Joey to her hotel room in an apparent ploy to make up with him, but once I walked in, she began to pretend he was assaulting her. ‘Let me go. Help, Jack. He’s got a gun!’ and words to that effect.

“But I was wise to the situation. Told her maybe I should use my gun—on her. While she’d been seducing Lubrano, he’d gotten her to admit out loud to everything: the original scheme against Sarah Nolan, and the one against her husband. We’d hidden a microphone in the room, see? The police were next door, listening, with a tape recorder going.”

“Okay, first question: How did you know for sure those photos weren’t really Sarah Nolan? How could you be sure Emily was telling you lies?”

“I’d been sleeping with Emily. I knew she had an hourglass shaped birthmark on her . . .” Jack’s voice trailed off. He glanced around the elegant lobby. “Uh, derriere.”

“Okay, I see. You recognized that same birthmark in the photos?”

“Bingo, sister.”

“Sister,” I murmured, shaking my head. “I never would have suspected Emily, Jack. I never would have thought a woman was capable of perpetuating such a nasty fraud on her own flesh and blood.”

“Then you never would have discovered that Sarah Nolan wasn’t Emily’s flesh and blood.”

“What?”

“She was her sister all right, but only her sorority sister. That’s what clued me in early on. When I saw Mrs. Nolan’s birth date was barely eight months after Emily’s, I got suspicious, started looking into their backgrounds, discovered they’d gone to school together. So what lesson do you deduce from that, sweetheart?”

I blinked. “Uh . . . I don’t know.”

Jack sighed. “When you realize that a person is lying to you—or consciously misrepresenting something—you want to suspect they have more to hide.”

“Oh, sure. Right.” I gulped down my champagne in its entirety. Jack poured more.

“I kept digging and I also discovered that Sarah Nolan’s husband had been Emily’s beau for a time back during their college years.”

“So Emily was jealous?”

“She must have been—and angry, too, very angry. Emily’s own family had disowned her by then and her money was running out. Meanwhile, Sarah had a huge trust fund and a husband with even more loot. Emily obviously came downtown to hire me because she thought she’d find a low-rent dick who’d wouldn’t question the story of a woman like her—with her pedigree and pretty little pout. Especially not after she started sleeping with me, which was, frankly, the first thing that got me thinking I was being played.”

“That’s really why you slept with her? As part of your own investigation technique?”

Jack’s eyebrow arched. “What does your gut tell you, Penelope?”

“That you’re full of it.”

“I’ll tell you what, doll. Emily Stendall made the mistake of thinking that because my office was shabby that my sense of justice was, too. But she thought wrong.”

“You didn’t fall for her, Jack, not even a little bit?”

“Most men stop thinking when a dame’s perfume goes to their head. And I wasn’t completely immune. After we became intimate, I wanted to believe her pitch was innocent . . . I didn’t want to believe she was rotten to the core. But when I was presented with evidence, I let go of what I wanted and faced the music. I did what I had to do. You hearing me, Penelope?”

I swallowed hard, looked down at the dissipating bubbles in the remainder of my champagne. “You’re telling me that Johnny might be innocent like Joey . . . or that he might be as guilty as Emily. And if he is, I have to accept that. Just like you accepted Emily’s guilt.”

“Yeah, you got it.”

I drained my glass. “I don’t know if I can do that.”

“You’re stronger than you think, Penelope.”

“I don’t see how you can say that. I was such a coward out there . . . in the woods . . .”

Jack reached out, and his fingers began to tuck strands of my auburn hair behind my ear. “The woods are where the wolves live, sweetheart . . . a little fear is a smart thing . . . as long as you don’t let it keep you from doing what you need to do . . .”

My eyes met his, and I felt his hand move from my ear to the back of my neck. The light pressure was all it