Ghosts

“There’s a back door,” she said.

They trudged through the snow around the side of the house, past a thorny patch of brambles, and then onto a gray wooden porch on the ocean side. The wind here had banked the snow against the storm door. He kicked the snow away with the side of his shoe, yanked open the storm door, and then tried the knob on the i

“Locked,” he said. “Let’s get back to town.”

Hillary reached for the knob. Carella sighed. She held the knob for what seemed an inordinately long time, the wind whistling in over the ocean and lashing the small porch, the storm door banging against the side of the house. When she released the knob, she said, “There’s a key behind the drainpipe.”

Carella played the light over the drainpipe. The spout was perhaps eight inches above the ground. He felt behind it with his hand. Fastened to the back of the spout was one of those magnetic little key holders designed to make entrance by burglars even easier than it had to be. He slid open the lid on the metal container, took out a key, and tried it on the lock. It slid easily into the keyway; when he twisted it, he heard the tumblers fall with a small oiled click. He tried the knob again, and the door opened. Fumbling on the wall to the right of the door, he found a light switch and flicked it on. He took a step into the room; Hillary, behind him, closed the door.

They were standing in a living room furnished in what might have been termed Beach House Haphazard. A sofa covered with floral-patterned slipcovers was on the window wall overlooking the ocean. Two mismatched upholstered easy chairs faced the sofa like ugly suitors petitioning for the hand of a princess. A stained oval braided rug was on the floor between the sofa and the chairs, and a cobbler’s bench coffee table rested on it slightly off-center. An upright piano was on a wall bearing two doors, one leading to the kitchen, the other to a pantry. A flight of steps at the far end of the room led to the upper story of the house.

“This isn’t it,” Hillary said.

“What do you mean?”

“This isn’t the house Greg wrote about.”

“I thought you said…”

“I said it started here. But this isn’t the house in Deadly Shades.”

“How do you know?”

“There are no ghosts in this house,” she said flatly. “There never were any ghosts in this house.”

They went through it top to bottom nonetheless. Hillary’s ma

He felt something almost palpable in that room, but he knew better than to believe he was intuiting whatever Hillary was. His response was hard-nosed, that of a detective in one of the world’s largest cities, compounded of years of experience and miles of empirical deduction, seasoned with a pinch of guesswork and a heaping tablespoon of hope—but hope was the thing with feathers. Stephanie Craig, an expert swimmer, had drowned in the Bight in a calmer sea than anyone could remember that summer. At least one of the witnesses had suggested that she’d been seized from below by a shark or some other kind of fish. In the basement room of the house her former husband, Gregory, had rented for the summer, they had just stumbled upon a diver’s gear. Wasn’t it possible…?

“It was Greg,” Hillary said. “Greg drowned her.”

At the Hampstead Arms they booked a pair of co

“Hi,” he said, “I’m stuck up here.”

“And where’s up there?” Fa

“I asked Cotton to call…”

“He didn’t.”

“I’m in Massachusetts.”

“Ah,” Fa

“Checking out haunted houses.”

“Your Italian sense of humor leaves much to be desired,” Fa

“Tell her I’m all right and I’ll call again in the morning.”

“It won’t mollify her.”

“Then tell her I love her.”

“If you love her, then what the hell are you doing in Massachusetts?”

“Is everything all right there?”

“Everything’s fine and dandy.”

“It hasn’t snowed again, has it?”

“Not a flake.”

“It’s already snowed eight inches up here.”

“Serves you right,” Fa

He dialed Hawes at the squadroom and got him on the third ring.

“You were supposed to call and tell my wife I went to Massachusetts,” he said.

“Shit,” Hawes said.

“You forgot.”

“It was jumping today. Three guys tried to stick up a bank on Culver and Tenth. Locked themselves inside when the alarm went off, tried to hold off the whole damn Police Department. We finally flushed them out about four o’clock.”

“Anybody hurt?”

“One of the tellers had a heart attack. But that was it. I’m glad you called. We got something on the jewelry. A pawnbroker called the squadroom while I was out playing cops and robbers. Runs a shop on Ainsley and Third.”

“Yeah, go ahead.”

“I called him back the minute I got in. Turns out some guy was in there this afternoon trying to hock the diamond pendant. Just a second, here’s the list.” The line went silent. Carella visualized Hawes ru

“What was it valued at?”

“Thirty-five hundred.”

“Who pawned it?”

“Tried to pawn it. The broker offered sixteen hundred, and the guy accepted and then balked when he was asked for identification. They have to get identification, you know, for when they send their list of transactions to us.”

“And the guy refused to show it?”

“All the broker wanted was a driver’s license. The guy said he didn’t have a driver’s license.”

“So what happened?”

“He picked up the pendant and left.”

“Great,” Carella said.

“It’s not all that bad. The minute he left the shop, the broker checked the flyer we sent around and spotted the pendant on it. That’s when he called here. There was a number on the flyer, you remember…”

“Yeah, so what happened?”

“He told me the guy had his hands all over the glass top of the jewelry counter. He figured we could maybe lift some prints from it. He’s a pretty smart old guy.”

“Did you go down there?”

“Just got back, in fact. Left a team there to dust the jewelry counter and the doorknob and anything else the guy may have touched. Dozens of people go in and out of that place every day, Steve, but maybe we’ll get lucky.”

“Yeah, maybe. What’d the guy look like?”

“He fits the description. Young guy with black hair and brown eyes.”