The Ghost and the Dead Man's Library

Believe me, baby, I know how it goes.

“He was right there, next to me. His head was on the pillow, sleeping but alive… and then…and then he was sleeping on the concrete.”

There was nothing you could do.

“I got up to take care of Spencer, start the coffee…I came back and there he was, on the ledge. I called his name, ran to him…”

There was nothing you could do.

“You’ve said that before, Jack, but that’s not how I feel.”

We’ve been over this ground already, baby. Your husband was sick and self-absorbed. He lied to you about seeing his doctor, taking his medication. He verbally abused you, and his family ignored the problem. Then he tried to fly. But the way he treated you, neglected his own son, fired doctors who were trying to help…the man wasn’t even close to getting wings.

“I was right there tonight, too, Jack. And I couldn’t stop it again. I was right there with Mr. Chesley, and I heard that crash upstairs. I knew something was wrong, but I left. I drove away! It was like Calvin all over again. Mr. Chesley was sick. But he was alive. He didn’t deserve to die like that. Nobody does.”

Baby…who do you think you’re talking to?

I squeezed my eyes shut. “Sorry, Jack.”

Forget it.

“But don’t you see?” I tossed and turned again, this time landing on my back. “That’s what I’m trying to do… forget Chesley, and Calvin…forget my brother, my parents. Not the good memories, but the awful pain of missing them, of seeing the life leave their eyes. I keep thinking if enough time goes by, I won’t see them dead anymore…”

There’s no forgetting, honey. Counting my war service, I’ve seen enough corpses to fill ten Books of the Dead, maybe a whole library, like that crumbling depository of Chesley’s Molding Manor.

“Books of the Dead?…You know about those?”

I myself had seen one only once, in a museum collection. There were pages and pages of family corpses, dressed in their Sunday best, propped and posed for their daguerreotypes. Medicine being what it was in the nineteenth century, and disease cutting short so many young lives, there were a heartbreaking number of children in that book—babies, young people, men and women in their prime.

Old-timers still had Books of the Dead in my day, Jack said. Passed on from their parents and grandparents. You know what some of the superstitious rubes believed, don’t you?

“You mean the thing about a photograph of a corpse preserving some part of a person’s soul?”

Funny what people make up about things they don’t understand.

“I don’t suppose you understand why you’re still around?”

The room was only slightly chilly, nothing like the refrigerator it had been last winter. Outside, the wind whipped at the sturdy window frames, as if trying to gain entry at the insulated edges. But we’d had a pretty good year financially and had splurged on new windows for the old building. All of a sudden, I felt a whispery touch on my face, as if a ribbon of air had managed to slip into my bedroom and brush my cheek.

I’m around because of you, baby…

“Because of me?” I repeated, the feathery touch sending prickles of electricity across my skin. “What do you mean?…”

It took a long minute for the ghost to answer.

I don’t want to miss your latest line-up of mooks and grifters.

“Come on, Jack. Don’t make me laugh.”

Why the hell not? Life’s short.

I refluffed my pillows. “Apparently not your afterlife.”

Cheap shots now, huh?

“That’s rich, coming from you.”

Listen, lamb chop, you remember the last case we worked on together, that crazy debutramp with the triple-pierced ears, peddling her glorified true confession tale for the cover price of a decent day’s wage in my time?

“Sure, I remember. Angel Stark and her true crime book. How could I forget?”

Remember when things were dicey, how I got your mind off your troubles?

“Yes, Jack, but I don’t think—”

I got to thinking about those old photos on Chesley’s wall…the ones next to that creep show of a grandfather clock. They reminded me of another photo…it was given to me during a case I worked on back in ’46, a missing persons.”

“A woman?”

A man. His name was Vincent Tattershawe. When I questioned his fiancee, I honestly didn’t have a clue whether the guy had crawled back into a bottle, met with an unfortunate accident, or took a powder with her assets in his pocket. Didn’t matter what I thought, though. I couldn’t let on to the woman—Dorothy Kerns was her name. I needed as many leads as she could dole out, and I’d gotten marching orders from her brother.

“Marching orders? What kind?”

Dorothy wanted a shamus on the case, but it was her brother who’d hired me. He’d invited me up to his gentleman’s club, gave me the once-over, and the okay to get started. Told me he never liked Tattershawe, and he suspected the man hadn’t simply “disappeared,” but instead had run off with his sister’s money. That’s why he wanted him found.

Seems Miss Dorothy Kerns had given Tattershawe some lettuce to invest. Now her brother wanted the money back, so he wanted Tattershawe found, but he didn’t want his sister to know where the man was. I was supposed to find the guy then let Kerns deal with him.

“Okay, I follow. So what did you do?”

First thing: I interviewed the dame. Baxter Kerns warned me that his sis was this weak thing, full of dread. But, after I talked to her, I could see she was made of sterner stuff. All that anxiousness was only on the surface. Beneath it, I found some fairly solid metal…like you, Penelope.

My cheeks warmed. Jack had used my first name and bestowed a compliment—not something he did very often.

“You turning sappy on me, Jack?”

Don’t get fresh, lamb chop. Leave the cracking wise to yours truly.

“Are we going to partner up again?”

Listen, Penny with the copper hair, you got lucky twice now. But you’re still wetter behind the ears than a drowning flounder, so take my advice. Keep your mouth shut and your eyes open…after they shut for the night, that is…I’ve got some things to show you…

Jack’s voice had gotten softer and sweeter, and soon my eyelids felt like velvet Broadway curtains slowly coming down…

New York City

October 18, 1946

Dorothy Kerns lived on Fifth Avenue across from Central Park. Her building had a clean granite facade and an impressive lobby with leather divans, modernistic paintings, and that peculiar scent so pervasive after the war: old and new money mixing together in presumable harmony.

Jack presented Miss Kerns’s calling card to a middle aged doorman in dark blue livery, a diminutive man with a big nose, big hands, and a big attitude. He snapped up the card, as full of himself as the people who strolled Fifth’s wide, exclusive sidewalks.

Jack waited as the doorman phoned Miss Kerns. When he got the all-clear, Jack moved to the elevator. The inside aviator caged him in and took him up three flights. There were only two apartments on Miss Kerns’s expansive floor—but four doors. Each flat had a front door for its residents and their guests and a service door for