The Ghost and the Dead Deb

quickly threw on a wrinkled, dirty windbreaker from your car’s trunk after you got back to the parking lot. To hide the scratches?”

“Yes, Mrs. McClure, and why I’m wearing this jacket now.”

“And you knew your skin and blood might be under Angel’s fingernails and on her body. So you threw it into the water hoping to destroy any such evidence.”

“Yes. For all I know, it didn’t,” he admitted.

“For all I know, it did,” I said.

Hope flashed behind Hal McConnell’s stare, followed by suspicion. “Why am I here, then? This is blackmail, isn’t it? You want money, don’t you?”

“Not blackmail,” I said. “Blackmail is impossible. Look up.”

Hal lifted his head. “See that box on the pole behind me, the wires leading out of it, to the bushes over there?”

His eyes traced my map. Hal nodded.

“There’s another security camera up there. If you killed Angel right here, as you said you did, then the murder was caught on camera and that recording is also in the hands of the State Police.”

Hal’s eyes dropped. He reached one hand into the pocket of his sport jacket. “I guess I’ll need this then . . .”

As I watched, Hal drew a bloodstained handgun out of his pocket. Before he could raise the weapon, Seymour Tarnish burst from behind a pile of canvas-covered wood on the site, waving a baseball bat he kept in his ice cream truck and yelling—

“Don’t try it, buster. You might be able to shoot me, but you can’t shoot everyone!”

Milner Logan stepped out from his hiding place behind the chest-high brick foundation, weaponless, though his muscular physique was imposing enough. From behind Hal McConnell, Mr. Koh emerged from his hiding place behind a bush, a long branch in hand. Finally, Fiona Finch, my aunt Sadie, and J. Parker Brainert stumbled out of their own hiding places. Poor Brainert was cursing that he’d stepped his loafers in a pile of goose dung.

Hal McConnell quickly realized that they’d heard every word.

“Yes, Hal. They are all willing to testify to the things you confessed if they have to.”

Hal shrugged, turned the gun handle first and handed it to me. “I wasn’t going to shoot you. There are no bullets in the gun,” he said. “It’s just another piece of evidence I wanted you to have.”

Suddenly, Hal’s face and body seemed to completely relax.

I stared at him, puzzled. “You look relieved.”

“It’s all going to come out now,” he said. “All of it. No more wall. No more code of silence. They’ll never forget Bethany now. Or Victoria . . . and they’ll all pay for hiding the truth.”

I took the gun and he met my eyes.

“But, Hal, the truth won’t set you free,” I said softly. “You’ll have to stand trial.”

“It’s okay, Mrs. McClure. I’m ready. Unlike Angel, I have a conscience.”

EPILOGUE

I have a secret passion for mercy . . . but justice is what keeps happening to people.

—Ross McDonald

“I HAVE A surprise for you, Jack.”

A surprise for a ghost? Don’t that beat all.

It was late Monday evening, chilly for early October, and I was alone in my bedroom, getting ready to turn in. I pulled the combination alarm clock/CD player out of the shopping bag and began struggling to free it from its foam prison.

“It’ll just take a few minutes to put together,” I promised.

Baby, in case you haven’t noticed, time is all I got.

Today, I had finally found the time to drive to All Things Bed & Beautiful. Besides the alarm clock/CD player for myself, I’d gotten Aunt Sadie a new comforter and Spencer a set of Spider-Man sheets. He was sleeping on them now. But Sadie wasn’t under her new comforter. She and Bud Napp were, once again, out on the town— which for Quindicott meant pizza at Franzetti’s and a drink at Donovan’s Pub.

For weeks, Jack had insisted that Sadie and Bud’s nights out were “dates.” I had disagreed, thinking a man of Jack’s time just couldn’t grasp how a man and woman could be platonic friends. But then last week, I caught Bud kissing my aunt by the door, and I finally had to admit that maybe Jack Shepard knew a thing or two more than me about human nature.

Any news yet on the McConnell kid’s fate? asked Jack.

“Yes, as a matter of fact . . .”

After discovery by both sides and much haggling by Hal’s legal team, the district attorney’s office had agreed to let Hal plead guilty to manslaughter. There would be no trial. And the sentencing had just come down earlier this very afternoon—which was probably also why I felt the need to take a drive.

“The judge gave him seven years in a minimum security facility,” I informed Jack, “and he’ll be eligible for parole in four.”

Sounds like a cakewalk.

“Not for somebody who’s used to the freedom wealth brings. Of course, I hear he’ll be doing an independent graduate studies program out of Brown University while he’s in prison. Egyptology, I think—”

You don’t say? Guess that makes sense. I never saw a cell that didn’t have some sort of hieroglyphics scratched into it.

“Don’t make fun, Jack. I feel bad enough as it is.”

Why, for Pete’s sake?

“You know why. Hal McConnell wasn’t really a murderer. He was just trying to protect Victoria that night, and—”

Don’t say Angel drove him to it, doll. Murder is murder. A life was taken and can never be given back.

“But Angel was a murderer herself, two times over.”

That’s what the law is for, baby, to mete out justice. You did what you set out to do, didn’t you? You got your Johnny-boy off.

“I know . . . and Bud is grateful beyond words. So am I, Jack. To you.”

Can the sweet sap, doll. Pour it over your pancakes.

I laughed, then went back to trying to set the right time on the digital display of my new alarm.

“Really, Jack, I mean it. If you hadn’t suggested faking that security camera on the pole that night, I don’t know if I’d have figured out how to get Hal to . . . you know, uh, give up the ghost, so to speak . . . no offense.”

Funny, I never thought I’d see an ice chest get so much mileage in the P.I. game.

“Seymour Tarnish’s ice cream truck came in handy on that score . . . and Milner Logan was great in actually climbing the ladder and getting it up there. Not bad for a bunch of—what did you call them?—cracker-barrel yahoos.”

Yeah, sure. Whatever you say, baby. So what’s happened to that Johnny kid now, anyway? I haven’t seen him around in weeks.

“Oh! That’s right, I never told you. He went to culinary school. Bud’s helping him with some of the tuition, and Fiona is lending him the rest. She said once he graduates, he can work off the loan at her new restaurant— assisting the head chef, which she hasn’t exactly found yet. But I’m sure she will before the Finch Inn restaurant opens for business this Christmas.”