Ghosts

“Are you sure you won’t have one?” she asked.

“Positive.”

“She may be a while, you know.”

“I’m sorry, what…?”

“My sister. I spoke to her half an hour ago.”

“Your sister?”

“Yes.”

“What’s she got to do—?”

“Hillary,” she said.

“Hillary?” he said, and blinked. The lady, as he’d surmised from the very begi

“My twin sister,” she said.

He looked at her. She was smiling over the rim of her glass. He had the feeling she had done this many times before and enjoyed doing it each and every time.

“I see,” he said.

“I’m Denise,” she said. “We look a lot alike, don’t you think?”

“Yes, you do,” he said cautiously, wondering whether there really was a twin sister or whether Hillary was just having a little sport with him at the city’s expense. “You say you spoke to her…”

“Yes, half an hour ago.”

“Where was she?”

“At the office. She was just leaving. But with this snow…”

“Listen,” he said, “are you really…?”

“Denise Scott,” she said, “yes,” and nodded. “Which of us do you think is prettiest?”

“I couldn’t say, Miss Scott.”

“I am,” she said, and giggled, and rose suddenly, and went to the liquor cabinet. He watched as she poured herself another drink. “Are you sure?” she asked, and lifted the glass to him.

“I’m sorry, I can’t.”

“Pity,” she said, and went back to her chair and sat again. She crossed her legs more recklessly this time. The flap of the robe fell open again, and he saw the gartered tops of nylon stockings. He glanced away.

“I have twins myself,” he said.

“Yes, Hillary told me.”

“I never mentioned to her…”

“Psychic, you know,” Denise said, and tapped her temple with her forefinger.

“How about you?” he said.

“No, no, my talents run in other directions,” she said, and smiled at him. “Aren’t you glad garter belts are coming back?” she said.

“I’ve…never much thought about it,” he said.

“Think about it,” she said.

“Miss Scott,” he said, “I know you have an appointment, so if you want to get dressed, I’ll be perfectly all right here.”

“Wouldn’t dream of leaving you alone,” she said, and suddenly bent over the coffee table to spear a cigarette from the container there. The upper half of the robe gapped open over her breasts. She was wearing no bra. She held the pose an instant longer than she needed to, reaching for the cigarette, looking up at him and suddenly smiling.

“Miss Scott,” he said, rising, “I’ll be back in a little while. When your sister gets here, tell her…”

He heard a key turning in the door behind him. The door swung wide, and Hillary Scott came into the room. She was wearing a raccoon coat open over a white blouse and a red skirt. Her dark brown boots were wet. She looked across the room to where Denise was still bent over the coffee table. “Go put on some clothes,” she said, “you’ll catch cold.” To Carella, she said, “I’m sorry I’m late. I had a hell of a time getting a cab.” She looked at her sister again. “Denise?”

“Nice meeting you,” Denise said, and rose, and tucked one flap of the robe over the other, and tightened the belt. He watched her as she left the room. The door to what he assumed was the bedroom whispered shut behind her.

“Didn’t know there were three of us, did you?” Hillary said.

“Three of you?”

“Including your wife.”

“You’ve never met my wife,” Carella said.

“But we resemble each other.”

“Yes.”

“You have twins.”

“Yes.”

“The little girl looks like your wife. She was born in April.”

“No, but that’s her name.”

“Terry. Is it Terry?”

“Teddy.”

“Yes, Teddy. Franklin? Was her maiden name Franklin?”

“Yes,” he said. He was staring at her unbelievingly. “Miss Scott,” he said, “on the phone you told me—”

“Yes, water.”

“What about water?”

“Something to do with water. Did someone mention water to you recently?”

Beyond the bedroom door he heard either a radio or a record player erupting with a rock tune. Hillary turned impatiently toward the door and shouted, “Denise, turn that down!” She waited a moment, the music blaring, and then shouted, “Denise!” just as the music dropped six decibels. Angrily she took a cigarette from the container on the table, put a match to it, and let out a stream of smoke. “We’ll wait till she’s gone,” she said. “It’s impossible to achieve any level of concentration with her here. Would you like a drink?”

“No, thank you.”

“I think I’ll have one,” she said, and went to the cabinet, and poured a hefty shot of whiskey into a tumbler, and drank it almost in one gulp. Carella suddenly remembered the Craig autopsy report.

“Was Craig a heavy drinker?” he asked.

“Why do you want to know?”

“The autopsy report indicated he’d been drinking before his death.”

“I wouldn’t say he was a heavy drinker, no.”

“Social drinker?”

“Two or three before di

“Did he drink while he was working?”

“Never.”

In the next ten minutes, while her sister dressed in the other room, Hillary consumed two more healthy glasses of whiskey, presumably the better to heighten her psychic awareness. Carella wondered what the hell he was doing here. Take a phone call from a crazy lady who claimed to be psychic, link it foolishly to a drowning in Massachusetts that happened three years ago, and then wait around while the clock ticked steadily and the snow kept falling and the whiskey content in the bottle got lower and lower. But she had known his wife’s name without being told it, knew they had twins, almost zeroed in on April. He did not for a moment believe she could actually read minds, but he knew that people with extrasensory perception did possibly exist, and he was not about to dismiss her earlier reference to water. Gregory Craig’s wife had drowned three years ago—and his daughter could not believe it was an accident.

The bedroom door opened.

Denise Scott was wearing a clinging green jersey dress slit outrageously wide over the breasts and held precariously together at the midriff with a diamond clasp the size of Taiwan. The dress was somewhat shorter than was fashionable these days, giving her legs an extraordinarily long and supple look. She was wearing green high-heeled satin pumps; Carella gave them a life expectancy of thirty seconds in the snow outside. She walked to the hall closet without saying a word, took off the pumps, zipped on a pair of black leather boots, took a long black coat from the closet, picked up a black velvet bag from the hall table, tucked the pumps under her arm, opened the door, gri

“Bitch,” Hillary said, and poured herself another drink.

“Go easy on that, okay?” Carella said.

“Tried to take Greg away from me,” she said. “Went to the apartment one afternoon while he was working, pulled the twin-sister routine on him. I found her naked in bed with him.” She shook her head and took a swift swallow of whiskey.

“When was this?” he asked at once. She had just presented him with the best possible motive for murder. In this city, the homicide statistics changed as often as the police changed their underwear, but the swing was back to “personal” murders as opposed to the “impersonal” ones that had screamed across the headlines just several years back. The good old-fashioned slayings were now in vogue again: husbands shooting wives and vice versa, lovers taking axes to rivals, sons stabbing mothers and sisters; your average garden-variety homespun killings. Hillary Scott had found Gregory Craig in bed with her own sister.

“When?” he asked again.