A Hard Day's Fright Read online

  This did not sound like a good idea to me, and the why is a no-brainer.

  Putting me and Ariel in a room together is like wearing a fetching little White House Black Market black satin dress and finishing off the outfit with shoes from Kmart. I mean, who would, really? But think about it. At first glance, everything might look perfectly fine. But it wouldn’t take long for anyone with half a discerning eye to see that cheap and ugly bring fetching down. Way down. In fact, they’re bound to clash.

  Kind of like what happens anytime I’m anywhere near Ariel.

  She’s rude and sloppy.

  I am unforgiving.

  She could actually be pretty if she’d give herself a chance, but she’s so busy getting various bits and pieces of her body pierced (I shivered at the thought) and other, bigger bits and pieces of her body tattooed (a chill ran up my spine), there’s no way anyone could possibly notice.

  Oh yeah, Ariel’s got cheap and ugly down pat.

  Not that I held it against her or anything. I just cringed at the thought of all that lost potential.

  I, of course, could not point this out. Not without putting Ella on the defensive, and Ella had been through enough already. While I was busy keeping my mouth shut, she was busy concocting what apparently sounded like a perfectly good plan to her. That would explain why for the first time since I had walked into the house, her eyes shone with excitement rather than with tears.

  “If you could just sort of bring it up…you know, remind her about Lucy and how she disappeared and how we all worried for so long and how we’ve been wondering for so many years…and then you could mention…you know, just sort of in passing…you could mention how when Ariel doesn’t keep in touch…well, like I said, I know it sounds crazy, but that’s because you’ve never been through what I went through with Lucy. I mean, thank goodness. I wouldn’t want anyone—not anyone—to ever have to endure the sleepless nights and the worry and all those times I went to see Lucy’s mom to find out if she’d heard anything and had to face the haunted look in her eyes.” Ella drew in a deep breath. I couldn’t blame her. Just listening to her, I felt as if I needed a hit from an oxygen tank.

  Refreshed, she launched right back in. “And then this whole thing with Ariel…I mean, really, Pepper, now that you know about Lucy, you can understand why I just sort of lost it. It brought all those old memories and feelings crashing in on me again. Maybe if Ariel got just a friendly little reminder…maybe if she heard it from you, Pepper, Ariel would listen. She admires you so!”

  This wasn’t the moment to quibble.

  But it was the perfect time to do a little investigating. Yes, yes, I know I’d told Lucy I couldn’t help her with this whole poor-me-my-body’s-gone-missing scenario. But that was when she couldn’t give me anything to go on, before I knew I might be able to get my hands on a lead.

  I swallowed down my misgivings, and because there were so many of them, it took a while before I said, “I think that’s a good idea, talking to Ariel, warning her that the world can be a big, bad place if she’s not careful. I think it would be good if I told her more about Lucy, too. That is, if I knew more.”

  “I knew you wouldn’t let me down!”

  I hate it when Ella says that. It usually means I’m in for trouble, and I was afraid this time would be no exception. Rather than dwell on the pitfalls, I stuck to the possibilities.

  “So what did happen to Lucy?” I asked Ella. “I mean, after she disappeared.”

  She shrugged. “Well, that’s just the thing, no one ever found out. Not that there wasn’t a big investigation. There was. The police interviewed everyone connected with Lucy. Her family. The teachers at school. The people at the country club where she worked that summer. And of course, they talked to all of us who were with Lucy that night. We went—”

  “To the Beatles concert.”

  Ella’s eyes flew open. “Yes! How did you know that? Well, I must have mentioned it before, and isn’t it just like you to remember! A group of us went to the Beatles concert together. Oh, Pepper! It started out being the most wonderful night of my life. I adored the Beatles, and to actually get a chance to see them in person…well, it never would have happened if it wasn’t for Lucy. My parents didn’t want to let me go, you see. They said I wasn’t old enough, and neither of them was willing to go with me. They said the Beatles weren’t singers, that they just made a lot of noise. I pleaded and I cried, but my mom, she said a rock-and-roll concert was no place for a young girl. Then one day Lucy came over. And she said she had an extra ticket for the concert. It wasn’t extra, of course. She’d bought it especially for me. That’s just the kind of girl Lucy was. Then, when she swore she’d keep an eye on me, my parents relented. I was so happy, I thought I’d burst! And you know…” she added, almost as an afterthought, “that just proves how really cool Lucy’s parents were. Lucy had taken a summer school class and she got a really bad grade. An F, I think it was, which was unusual for Lucy. She was a good student. And her parents, they realized the concert was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. They still let her go. They told her they’d worry about that F later.”

  Just remembering it, Ella smiled. At least for a moment. Her smile faded away on the end of a sigh. “Now when I think about that night, I don’t even think about how happy I was, or how exciting it was to see the Beatles in person. Every time I hear ‘Yesterday,’ all I can think of is Lucy. About how she simply vanished.”

  I knew that part of the story. What I was trying to do was get some sense of what had happened after Lucy took that fateful step off the rapid. Something told me that what happened after the concert might have had something to do with what happened before it.

  “Lucy had people who didn’t like her?”

  In answer to my question, Ella gurgled out a laugh. “That’s just silly! Everyone loved Lucy. Everyone! I think that’s what the police found so frustrating about the investigation. They never did find one single person who didn’t speak highly of Lucy. Well, really, there was no way they could have. Lucy was perfect.”

  Perfectly irritating in a very teenaged girl way.

  But this was not the time to bring that up, either.

  Instead, I stuck to my questioning. “What about at the concert?” I asked Ella. “Did anything weird or unusual happen there?”

  “Well, there was the riot, of course.” She cocked her head, thinking. “Kids rushed the stage after the Beatles came on, and they wouldn’t start the concert again until everybody got back in their seats.” She looked at me out of the corner of her eye. “Lucy was one of the kids who ran across the field. I never told anyone that. I didn’t want Lucy’s parents to get angry at her when they heard she’d done something that crazy. But really, I don’t think that had anything to do with her disappearance, do you?”

  I didn’t. But that didn’t help me figure out how she’d ended up in the trunk of that car.

  “The two of you went to the concert alone?” I asked.

  Ella shook her head. “There was me, and Janice Sherwin, and Lucy, of course. I know it’s hard to explain, but Lucy was the heart and soul of Shaker High. She was pretty and bubbly and funny. But there was more to her than that. She stood up for what she thought was right, but in a quiet, gentle way that made people see her side of things and think they’d thought of it themselves. Janice, she wasn’t anything at all like Lucy, but they were still friends. Janice was pretty in her own way, too, but she was a mover and shaker—very intense, high-powered, and hard-driving. She owns some business here in town these days. Insurance, I think. Or real estate. Something like that. Then there was Darren Andrews.” She managed a laugh, threw back her shoulders, and lifted her chin. “Darren with his airs! Always acting superior to the rest of us. He always wore this gold medal of Saint Andrew because his parents claimed the family was descended from Scottish royalty. I know, I know…” Ella reached over and patted my arm.

  “Talking about it now, it all sounds so silly, and you’re thinking that we
shouldn’t have fallen for Darren’s hoity-toity attitude. But Darren, he had a way about him. And he was very handsome!” She sighed. “Not that he ever would have noticed a kid like me,” she added quickly. “He wasn’t just out of my league, Darren was out of my universe. He had money and the prestige that went along with it. He’s a highly successful businessman now. He owns tons of property around town. I saw him on the six o’clock news a couple weeks ago talking about some big development project downtown. He’s still very handsome.”

  “So the four of you—”

  “Oh no, there were six of us at the concert together. Bobby Gideon, he was there, too. I didn’t know Bobby well. Well, really, I didn’t know any of the kids well except for Lucy. They were all older than me, juniors and seniors, and I was just starting high school that year. I bet Lucy caught heck from them for bringing me along. But that was Lucy’s way. Like I said, she didn’t care what other people thought of her. And Bobby…I remember that Bobby was the one always making jokes. Always smiling and laughing and teasing. He’s dead now…” Ella’s voice trailed off.

  “And number six?” I asked.

  Ella had been lost in thought, but now she hopped out of her chair and scrambled around the table, sliding the newspapers into a neat pile, picking up the mail from the floor. “Number six was Will Margolis,” she said.

  I waited for more and didn’t get it, but hey, I wasn’t going to let that stop me. If my experience as detective to the dead had taught me nothing else, it was how to pounce on an opportunity when I saw one. With any luck, the next time I tripped over Lucy Pasternak’s overly dramatic ectoplasm, I’d have the whole thing wrapped up.

  “So…” Ella was so busy in cleanup mode that when I spoke, she jumped. “What’s the end of the story? What do I tell Ariel? You know, to scare the pants off her. Where did they end up finding Lucy’s body?”

  “Oh, Pepper, don’t say things like that!” Ella pressed a hand to her heart, the gesture very similar to the one I’d recently seen Lucy use. “I didn’t say Lucy was dead, I said she’d disappeared. In fact…” She clutched a pile of papers to her heaving chest. “I keep thinking that someday I’ll be walking down the street and it will be like something out of a movie, that I’ll see her there and she’ll recognize me and run up to me and give me a hug, that she’ll have some really good story about where she’s been and what she’s been up to.”

  This, I doubted, and for good reason.

  Of course, Ella didn’t know Lucy was a ghost, or that I’d recently talked to her and she’d told me she was murdered the night of the concert. This was obviously a biggie, but I’d deal with it later. For the moment, I wasn’t as concerned with Ella learning the ugly truth as I was with realizing what her not knowing it meant to my investigation.

  See, Ella’s continued and unwavering belief in Lucy still being found alive told me two things:

  Number one: that no one knew where Lucy’s body was, and it wouldn’t be easy to locate.

  Number two: that I still had to try.

  After all, Ella did say she and Lucy had considered themselves sisters.

  “The police tried so hard to find out what happened to Lucy. They followed every lead.” I snapped out of my thoughts to find Ella shaking her head sadly. “I suppose after all these years, all it is to them is just another cold case.”

  Cold?

  She had no idea.

  My lucky stars were shining on me the next day. Not only was my car ready, but the call came telling me about it just as I finished proofreading the latest edition of Ella’s Garden View newsletter. She was so pleased I’d pitched in and helped her out and her mood was so much better since Ariel hadn’t caused her any new grief in the previous twenty-four hours, that she told me I could leave the office early and get my car.

  Yes, it meant a trip in the other direction on the rapid. But by this time, that was one trip I was actually looking forward to. And not because I’d changed my mind about the so-called benefits of public transportation.

  I didn’t know where else to find Lucy.

  Fortunately, Ella drove me to the station so there was no walking (or heaven forbid, riding a bus and transferring) involved. It was early, rush hour hadn’t started yet, and the rapid wasn’t anywhere near full. I settled myself in a seat that I didn’t have to share with anyone who smelled like stale cigars, and took a good look around.

  No flash of golden hair.

  No glimmer of golden lipstick.

  No Lucy.

  This wasn’t something I’d anticipated. After all, she was the one who’d come to me for help.

  And I was the one who told her to take a hike.

  My conscience prickled.

  I told it to shut up and drummed my fingers against the empty seat next to me, considering my options. If Lucy were any other ghost, I would have gone to her grave and demanded an audience. It wasn’t always an effective strategy, but when worse comes to worst (and when I investigate, it usually does), it’s worth a try. Of course, since Lucy didn’t have a grave…

  Nobody was more surprised than me to realize that not finding Lucy ticked me off. It wasn’t like I needed another ghostly investigation to keep me busy, thank you very much. My life was rich and full enough. It was exciting and more than satisfying. It was, in fact—

  Duller than dirt.

  It was sad, but true, and sitting there listening to the clickety-clack of the rapid on the rails, watching the scenery whiz by, and not having a ghostly client to talk to, I couldn’t escape it. No matter how hard I tried.

  Ever since my breakup with Quinn, my love life was a big ol’ nothing. Yeah, I’d gone out with an FBI agent from Chicago a couple times, but let’s face it, federal agents are all into their careers, and that eats up not only their business hours but most of their personal lives. There was the whole long-distance thing, too, putting a definite crimp in what Scott and I had of a relationship. Trust me when I say that by relationship, I do not mean we were sleeping together. We weren’t. He was a buddy, a pal. A guy who was fun to be with. Once in a while.

  Besides, what I had with Scott didn’t even begin to fill the void Quinn had left behind. And I’m not just talking about the sex, though, when we were together, I thought that was the only thing Quinn and I had in common. Looking back on it, I guess there was more going on between us.

  That would explain why I felt like there was still a hole in my chest where my heart used to be.

  “Harrumph.” That was me offering my opinion of all the Quinn memories—good and bad—tromping through my head. I crossed my arms over my chest and sat back to settle in and wallow in a little well-deserved self-pity just as the rapid lurched around a corner and under a bridge. The lights flickered and, for a second, went out altogether.

  When they came back on again, Lucy was in the seat next to me.

  “Geez oh Pete!” I jammed one hand against my chest. It was that or risk my heart slamming out of my ribs and going bumping down the aisle. “Can’t you ghosts play some kind of spooky music or something before you show up? You know, like a warning?”

  Lucy’s face was as impassive as if it were carved of stone. Her golden lips were set in a thin, defiant line. She stared at the seat in front of ours when she said, “I figured you didn’t need a warning. After all, you’re the one who didn’t want to be bothered with me.” Her sigh was epic. “As I recall, you said you couldn’t help me.”

  “Yeah, well, that was before.”

  Still refusing to look at me, she lifted her chin and pulled back her shoulders. “Before what?”

  I hate it when the dead play hard to get.

  But not nearly as much as I hate it when I actually care.

  I set the thought aside, not as inconsequential, but as less important than a little revenge.

  Lucy was chilly (I mean emotionally chilly; I’ve already established that, physically, she was way past that stage); I was just as chilly back. The better to catch her off guard when I nonchalantly threw
out the comment, “Before I found out that you were friends with Ella.”

  The Ice Queen thawed in a nanosecond. Her mouth fell open and she turned in her seat. “You know Ella Bender?”

  “Well, her name is Ella Silverman now,” I told her. “And she’s my boss at Garden View Cemetery.”

  Lucy’s eyes sparkled. “Little Ella! I always wondered what happened to her. She’s a boss, huh? I’m not surprised. The kid had brains. Of course, she didn’t know it yet, not back then. She was just a kid. Now Ella, she’s a boss.” A huge smile revealed Lucy’s sparkling white teeth. “Not bad for a girl.”

  We’d already had the I-am-woman-hear-me-roar talk. I wasn’t going to go into it again. Besides, Lucy didn’t give me the chance. She barreled right on.

  “So you talked to Ella about me? She told you about what happened to me, right?”

  “Not exactly. She told me you disappeared. Not that you’re dead.”

  Lucy tipped her head, thinking this over. “You mean nobody knows I’m dead?”

  “Nobody’s been able to prove it. On account of how they’ve never found your body. I’m guessing that, unlike Ella, who’s being the ultimate Queen of Denial, most people are smart enough to know that after forty-five years—”

  Lucy sat up like a shot, a glint in her eyes as icy as her ectoplasm. “Are you saying Ella’s not smart? You take that back! Right now. Ella’s a great little kid.”

  I chose my words carefully, and not just because I couldn’t imagine anyone, anywhere thinking of Ella as a little kid, but because I knew it would be easier to deal with Lucy if she wasn’t angry at me. What I said now would determine if my investigation would go smoothly, or if it would be as full of bumps as a bowl of Ben & Jerry’s Everything But the…