A Hard Day's Fright Read online

  Lucy nodded. “I heard that about you,” she said and gave me a wink. “You know, over on the Other Side. People are talking, saying Pepper Martin is one cool chick.”

  After successfully solving six cases, I wasn’t surprised to hear that I was the topic of gossip on the ghostly grapevine, or that the word was that I was good at what I do. After all, it was true.

  “I haven’t seen you before.” She interrupted my thoughts. “You know, here on the rapid.”

  My smile was tight. A kid with that many years behind her should have picked up on the not-so-subtle differences between me and the other, more common-variety rapid rider.

  “I’m more the I-own-a-car-so-I-don’t-use-public-transportation type,” I told her. It was important to make this clear right from the start. If we were going to work together (and once they showed up, it was impossible to get rid of ghosts, so I figured we were), it would be unfair to give her the wrong impression. “I wouldn’t be here at all today except that my car got backed into in the parking lots outside of Saks. It’s in getting repaired way over on the west side.” She was apparently a local girl; I didn’t need to elaborate.

  Cleveland, see, is cut in half, north to south, by the Cuyahoga River. Over the years, a whole east side versus west side mentality has sprung up. The east side is where the old money has always been, and we east siders (yes, I’m one of them) like to think of ourselves as more educated, more discerning, and way more cultured and refined than our west side counterparts. West siders, so I’ve heard, wouldn’t change places with us for all the gulls on Lake Erie, preferring the roots of the working class neighborhoods that have grown and spread into communities with malls every bit as chichi as ours and burbs that might rival ours for net worth, but will never (in my humble opinion) equal ours in pizzazz.

  “I’m heading over to my boss’s house,” I explained. “Fortunately, she lives near the rapid line. She’s going to give me a ride to work.”

  The train bumped to a stop and the doors swooshed open, letting in a blast of damp air, and letting out some of the passengers. With a bit more room to breathe, it would have been easier to relax if I wasn’t so up close and personal with this golden wisp of funky sixties ectoplasm.

  Too excited to sit still, Lucy scooted forward in her seat. “So you want to hear all about it, right? All about the murder and what happened and all? You’re going to help me.”

  I would have liked to point out that my Gift didn’t come with any guarantees. Lucy didn’t give me the chance.

  “I was here on the rapid that night,” she said. “You know, coming home from the Beatles concert.” She looked at me hard. “You do know who the Beatles are, right? I mean, I know you’re old and all, but you’re not that hopelessly square, are you?”

  One look, and she should have known. I, of course, though nowhere near old, was far too mature to get into that sort of one-upmanship so I simply pointed out, “Of course I’ve heard of the Beatles. My parents listened to them in the old days.”

  “Then you can imagine how groovy it was to see them in person.” She shivered at the thought. “I kissed Paul, you know. He was the cute one.”

  “And then you got murdered.”

  “Not at the concert.” Was I that hopelessly dense that I deserved an eye roll?

  I thought not.

  Lucy, apparently, had other ideas. She threw in a second eye roll, just for good measure. “It happened after the concert. After all my friends got off and went home. Then I got to my stop, and I got off the train and was walking home. It was dark. You know, the way a summer night can be.” Again, she tried for the spooky voice. This time I was the one who rolled my eyes. Lucy didn’t notice. She was on her own kind of roll.

  “It was as if each and every shadow held a secret. The stars winked overhead.” She fluttered her fingers, demonstrating. “Crickets chirped out a warning, but I didn’t listen. I mean, I couldn’t have known, could I? I was young and innocent. The world was fresh and held nothing but promise. I had just kissed Paul McCartney, and I knew that somewhere in that deep summer night, he dreamed about the mysterious girl with the golden hair and wondered, as only a star-crossed lover can, if I would ever—”

  “Finish?”

  Lucy made a face, but she wasn’t about to let a little thing like my sensible encouragement cut short her drama queen act. “I stepped off the rapid and took a careful look around.” As if someone as intelligent as me wouldn’t know what this meant, she glanced to her left and her right. “Even I couldn’t have guessed what was lurking in the shadows as dark as ebony and as deep as the most profound abyss.”

  I cleared my throat.

  She didn’t get the message.

  Lucy sat up like a shot, her story spilling out. “Somebody grabbed me from behind! He blindfolded me and threw me into the trunk of a car. It was dark in there.”

  “As dark as ebony and as deep as the most profound abyss?”

  Leave it to a ghost not to pick up on my subtle sarcasm. Lucy nodded, and at the risk of sounding a little too much like my newest ghostly friend, I’ve got to admit, her hair shimmered like a golden shaft of sunlight. I am not in the habit of asking my dead clients for beauty tips, but I planned to do a little research on shampoos in the sixties.

  Lucy went right on with her story. “It wasn’t until later that the car stopped.”

  “How much later?” Yes, the detective side of me kicked in. It was bound to sooner or later, and besides, easing into my investigation was a better option than having to listen to another adjective-laden chapter of Lucy’s story. “How long were you in the car?”

  Thinking, she tipped her head. And shrugged. “I was awfully scared,” she said. “Terrified. You know, like Allison MacKenzie in the second season of Peyton Place. When she got hit by that car.”

  I didn’t know. I didn’t care. Even at this early stage, I knew it would do me no good to point this out, so I simply stuck to trying to find out the facts. “If we knew how long you were in the car, we might know where this creep took you,” I pointed out. “Unless you figured that out for yourself?”

  She didn’t even have to think about it. She shook her head. “All I know,” Lucy continued, “is that it was a while before the car screeched to a halt. Through my tears and the sound of my heartbeat clattering against my ribs, I heard the whisper of trees overhead. A door opened. And then, the footsteps.” Demonstrating, she stomped her feet against the floor of the rapid, but of course, they didn’t make a sound. Too caught up in her own narrative to care, Lucy motioned, as if she were unlocking the trunk of a car, then opening it. “I felt the brush of fresh air against my face.”

  “And the kidnapper was there.”

  She didn’t appreciate the interruption. Lucy threw me a sidelong look. “Well, who else would it be?” she asked. “It’s not like I could see him or anything. I was blindfolded, remember.”

  “And your hands must have been tied, too. Otherwise, you would have taken the blindfold off while you were in the trunk.”

  Lucy’s eyes flew open. They were as blue as the sky outside the rapid wasn’t that morning. “You’re right! I’d forgotten about that. He blindfolded me, and he tied my hands behind my back. But hey, it’s not like I was a wimp or anything. I tried to get my hands untied. You know, when I was in the trunk. Even though I couldn’t see. You know, on account of the blindfold. I groped around.” She moved around in her seat, demonstrating, her hands behind her back. “And I felt something metal. Sharp. I wasn’t sure what it was, but I didn’t care. I got to work.”

  She showed me, sawing her wrists back and forth against the invisible object. “When he opened the trunk, I was almost free. And when he grabbed me—”

  Lucy swung her hands out in front of her. “I was ready for him. I slapped him and I scratched him. I fought as hard as I could.”

  I had no doubt of it, but I wasn’t thinking about that. My brain was still stuck on what Lucy had said earlier. “Which did he do first?” I asked
.

  “Do first? Oh, you mean the blindfold. Or the tying.” Thinking, she wrinkled her nose. “Blindfolded. No, tied. No, blindfolded.” Frustrated, she tossed her head. “I don’t know. What difference does it make?”

  This, I couldn’t say for sure. Not this early in the game. “I just wondered if it was more important for him to keep you still or to keep you from seeing his face. If the blindfold was first, that tells me you might have known your murderer.”

  I didn’t think those big blue eyes could get any bigger. Oh, how wrong I was. Lucy put the back of one hand to her forehead. “A friend who was really a foe? A lover who was really an enemy? Oh, the treachery!”

  Oh, the drama of dealing with a teenaged girl.

  I swallowed what I was going to say, not that I didn’t think she deserved a good dose of common sense, but because I remembered exactly how I would have reacted to a little constructive criticism when I was her age. I didn’t need Lucy to tune me out and turn me off. What I needed was information, so I could solve the case—fast—and get this Little Miss Annoying out of my life.

  “Then what happened?” I asked, bracing myself for her answer.

  Big surprise, she didn’t drag it out. Then again, I guess I couldn’t blame her. It was obvious the story didn’t have a happy ending.

  “He put something over my face,” Lucy said. “A pillow. Or a blanket. Something soft and squishy. I fought back.” She looked at me as if she expected me to dispute this. “I wouldn’t have just laid there like a lump, you know, even though I’m just a girl. I tried to fight him off, but he was too strong for me. He pressed the blanket over my face. He pressed it and pressed it and…” Her golden brows dipped low over eyes that were suddenly bright with tears.

  “Yeah, I get it. Good for you for trying,” I said, and because I couldn’t leave it at that, I was sure to add, “But that only a girl thing? That doesn’t hold much water anymore.”

  “Really?” Lucy sniffed. “Wow! Janice would love that. Janice Sherwin, she wanted to be president of the junior class in the worst way, only the school wouldn’t let her. They said she was—”

  “Only a girl.”

  We finished the sentence in unison, and I breathed a prayer of thanksgiving that, unlike Lucy, I hadn’t grown up in the Stone Ages. We were nearing the stop closest to Ella’s house, and I motioned Lucy to move so that I could step into the aisle.

  I held on to the metal bar on the back of the seat. “You had enemies?” I asked her.

  “Of course not.” Like it was a stupid question, Lucy sloughed it off. “I had friends. Lots of them. I went to the concert with them that night, only they got off the rapid first, and they wanted me to go with them, and I didn’t. I was just a kid. Nobody hated me.”

  As much as I didn’t like it, I am often the one who has to point out the obvious. “Somebody did. And I need to find out who that somebody was so that you can rest in peace.”

  “I wish it was that easy.”

  Outside the rapid window, I recognized Ella’s neighborhood. I stepped toward the door and said, “We’ll talk,” and I didn’t doubt it for one minute. Once they find me, ghosts never give up. “You’ll tell me more and we’ll find out who did it.”

  “It was forty-five years ago.” When I moved toward the doors, Lucy did, too. The rapid bumped to a stop. “It doesn’t matter anymore who killed me,” she said. “I don’t care if you find out. That’s not what I need you to do.”

  I had already stepped out of the rapid and onto the station platform. Lucy was still on the train.

  “I can’t rest in peace, Pepper,” she said. “Not until you find my body and bury it.”

  I whirled around. “You mean you don’t know where—”

  She nodded. “I don’t have a clue.”

  Call me psychic—or maybe I was just living up to my crackerjack detective reputation—in that one moment, I saw the pitfalls and the problems of launching into an investigation when I had pretty much nothing to go on. It was one thing searching for a murderer. People talked, witnesses remembered things they thought they’d forgotten long ago, there are police reports to read and follow, newspaper articles that contain tiny clues. Finding a murderer was a whole different thing from finding a body that had somehow stayed hidden for forty-five years.

  “But you were in the trunk of a car,” I reminded her, and myself, ticking off all the reasons I knew this wasn’t going to work. “You don’t know where the guy took you. And even if you did, that doesn’t mean he left your body where he killed you. He could have left you right there, sure, but he could have driven somewhere else and dumped you. Your body, it could be anywhere.”

  There was that puppy dog look again. Like she actually thought I’d cave?

  OK, I admit, I almost did. It was kind of hard not to when she wailed, “You’ve got to find my body. You’ve got to help me, Pepper!”

  “But you can’t give me anything to go on.”

  “You’re right. I can’t.” She shrugged and sighed. Sighed and shrugged. She hung her head. “That’s why I have to rely on your kindness, and your cleverness. You’re the only one who can help.”

  Yeah, sure. But there was only so much even I could do.

  After all, I’m a detective, not a bloodhound.

  It was a good thing the rapid doors slid shut right then. That way, I didn’t have to disappoint the kid face-to-face when I mumbled, “No way, José!”

  2

  It was a short walk from the rapid station to Ella’s house. Good thing. Though my peep-toe pumps were adorable, they were not meant for hoofing it.

  By the time I arrived at her neat colonial complete with window boxes, daffodils popping up in the flower bed around the oak tree on the lawn, and the cheery wreath on the front door that was a riot of silk flowers and bows in bright spring colors, I was winded. I rang the bell.

  There was no answer.

  I knocked.

  There was no response.

  I stepped back and mumbled to myself, “This is odd.”

  Come to think of it, it wasn’t the only odd thing that had happened that morning. And I am not talking about running into Lucy’s ghost. In my world, that doesn’t even begin to qualify as odd.

  No, what was odd—and I thought about this as I pressed my nose to the glass on the front door—was that Ella hadn’t called me that morning. I had been expecting her to. Oh, she’d pretend it would be just to say hello and how was your weekend and what’s up, but I knew in my heart of hearts what Ella would really be doing, and what Ella would really be doing is checking up on me. She was the community relations director at Garden View Cemetery, where I worked, and she would remind me without actually coming right out and reminding me that a community relations director cannot afford to get to the office late.

  Now that I thought about it, I was surprised she hadn’t called more than once, just to make sure I hadn’t overslept, and that I had made it over to the auto body shop in plenty of time, and that I was actually on the right rapid.

  A mother of three teenaged girls can get carried away like that.

  Frustrated that I couldn’t see beyond the foyer and not as concerned as I was just baffled by a demonstration of irresponsibility that was more my style than Ella’s, I pounded on the door. When there was still no answer, I tromped around to the back of the house and tried the door there. It wasn’t locked. I went right in.

  Just inside the kitchen with its black-and-white-tile floor, white cabinets, and the collection of kitschy cookie jars Ella kept out on the countertop, I stopped dead in my tracks.

  I had been to Ella’s house plenty of times before, and each and every one of those plenty of times, the house had been as neat, orderly, and clean as it’s possible to get with three teenagers running around.

  And now? Truth be told, even my single-girl-who’s-so-busy-fighting-crime-she-doesn’t-always-get-to-clean apartment never looked like this.

  There were newspapers scattered over the kitchen table and
mail piled on the floor. There were dirty dishes in the sink, and the dishwasher was open and empty. There was a pot of something that might have once upon a time been spaghetti sauce on the stove. It was crusted over and had turned an unappetizing rust color.

  Call it detective’s intuition or just the paranoid imaginings of a cemetery tour guide who deals with murder and mayhem far too often. I reached for my cell, not sure who I was going to call, but certain I wasn’t going to wait a second longer to shout for help.

  Before I could, the door to the half bath just off the kitchen swung open and Ella shuffled out.

  At least I thought it was Ella.

  I did a double take, used to seeing my closing-in-onsixty, slightly plump boss in flowy skirts, matching tops, and sparkling beads. She also favored practical, clunky Earth Shoes, and an understated, spiky do that showed off both her red-tinted hair and the dangling earrings she loved to wear.

  This creature had to be her evil twin.

  She was as short as Ella, all right, and probably just as plump, too, though it was hard to tell considering she was wearing shapeless flannel lounge pants that looked like they’d been slept in and a ratty sweatshirt with a drawing of a knight on it right under the words shaker heights high school raiders. There was a smudge of spaghetti sauce across his helmet. One of the bad body double’s shoes was an untied sneaker. The other was a fuzzy bunny slipper.

  Her hair was flat and uncombed, and there were smudges of sleeplessness under her eyes. She stopped outside the bathroom door, took one look at me, and burst into tears.

  “Oh, Pepper,” she whimpered in a very Ella way. “I’m so happy to see you!”

  Call me crazy. This did not look like happy to me. I told Ella so, and approached carefully. Middle-aged woman gone mad. It was not a pretty sight.