There was a lot of talking over each other for the next few minutes. The snatches I was able to decipher and recall included the following:
Paul: Keith Johnson!
Richard: Yes, I’m quite sure.
Johnson: I said that’s who I was.
Maxie: My laptop! (She snatched it from Josh, who looked at me. I nodded that it was okay.)
Melissa: Okay, everybody quiet down. (Nobody did.)
Paul: Why are you trying to steal files that can help us discover who murdered you?
Everett (to Maxie): You owe Josh some thanks.
Maxie: He can’t hear me.
Josh (to me): I think someone just passed through me. Sort of a cool breeze.
Me: That’s Maxie.
Maxie: Oh.
Melissa: Everybody quiet down! (I was listening but doubted anyone else heard her. Except Josh.)
Penny Desmond (who had wandered in during the brouhaha she couldn’t see or hear): Alison, dear, is there a good ice cream place in town you can recommend?
Me: Stud Muffin actually has good ice cream, Penny, but there’s a soft custard stand about five miles away if you have a car.
Penny: Oh, that won’t be necessary. Thank you, dear. (Penny left.)
Johnson: You can’t make me say anything.
Paul: Why wouldn’t you want—?
Melissa: Quiet! (This time everyone heard, stopped talking, and looked at her.)
She accepted the respect as her due (which she should) and lowered her voice to a more socially acceptable level. I appreciated that in case there were any other guests wandering about the house who might have heard the screaming and assumed someone was being attacked. No one showed up at the entrance to the den, which led me to wonder if I should be relieved or insulted.
“Now,” Melissa said, “let’s all figure out what we want to do right now. Richard is only thinking about clearing Cassidy Van Doren’s name. Paul, you’re trying to find out from Mr. Johnson why he might have been trying to erase some files from Maxie’s computer that have to do with his murder. Maxie is just concerned about keeping her laptop safe, which is understandable. Josh is trying to keep Mom safe but doesn’t know who’s here or where anybody is except me and Mom. Everett is worried about Maxie but also wants to make sure he stands guard over the laptop and any other evidence. And Mom is most worried about me because that’s what she always worries about.”
She turned toward the new ghost in the room. “So that leaves you, Mr. Johnson. What’s your concern here? Why did you come and take Maxie’s laptop and then my mom’s? Are you embarrassed about something we might find in your files?”
Johnson, caught up in the scene, had been watching like a spectator and seemed a bit startled when Melissa addressed him directly. He blinked twice, thinking about her question. “Embarrassed?” he said. “No. I’m not embarrassed by anything I left behind. I don’t know why all you people are making such a fuss. You’ve been upsetting my family, so I came here to tell you to stop. It’s clear what happened. I’ve gotten over it. Why haven’t you?”
“Why haven’t—?” Richard sputtered. Richard was an expert sputterer. It was almost an art form in his . . . mouth. It was a shame I couldn’t draw attention to his art because I’m sure Josh would have found Richard’s sputtering quite amusing. There are some things that we can’t share even with our dearest ones.
Paul spoke over his brother. “It is not in the least bit clear what happened, Mr. Johnson,” he said. “But since you are now here with us, we have the opportunity to get answers for every question we’ve had, so we’re very glad to see you indeed.”
It was an effective shift in Paul’s tone, and at least in the short term, Johnson seemed to accept it and ignore the antagonism he’d been showing just a minute earlier. He looked at Paul, and his eyes didn’t exactly show empathy, but perhaps a touch of understanding.
“I can tell you exactly what happened that afternoon,” he said in a quieter tone. “I checked into the Cranbury Bog and went directly to my room. Hunter came in to talk but only for a minute. We had a rule about not discussing business, so he was asking about a place to go to dinner that night. We usually went to a restaurant nearby, but it had closed since our previous visit. I said I’d look up some possibilities and ask Robin about it later. So Hunter left.
“After that I unpacked my things. I don’t like to live out of a suitcase, and I hadn’t brought much because we were going to stay for only two days. I put pretty much everything I had either in the bathroom or in one drawer in my room’s dresser. Then I got a call on my cell phone that Cassidy was coming up. I didn’t want to see her and told her so.”
I noticed that the visit by Erika Johnson was not included in her father’s narrative. Paul’s eyebrow twitched, which indicated he’d caught that as well. But he didn’t want to contradict Johnson now that he was talking, so he let the ghost speak.
“Cassidy hung up on me and then appeared in my doorway only ten minutes later,” Johnson continued. “We immediately began arguing. She had upset Adrian, my wife and her mother, only the day before, forcing her to visit her father’s grave. I knew Adrian did not want to go; she considered her first husband a piece of her past she’d just as soon forget. But Cassidy had insisted, and Adrian had been agitated the rest of the day.”
“Why didn’t you bring your wife with you if she was so upset?” Melissa asked. “Why not just take her along on your vacation so she could feel better?”
“Hunter and I had agreed never to take our wives along on these trips,” Johnson told her, his tone slightly colder than I would have preferred. You watch the way you talk to my daughter. “Some rules just can’t be broken.” He didn’t add “little girl,” or I would have called my father to come and beat him up.
“What happened when you and Cassidy started to argue?” Paul said, bringing the conversation back to where I was sure he wanted it to be.
“She became violent,” he said, looking away from Paul and not making eye contact with anyone else in the room. That was quite a feat because there was a living person or a ghost in pretty much any other sight line. “She slapped me and said I had been poisoning her mother’s mind against her. I didn’t raise a finger to that girl, and she slapped me.” He sounded like he was asking for sympathy but did not attempt to elicit a reaction directly from anyone. He kept his eyes on a point on the wall where no being of any kind was in view. “And she tried to blackmail me.”
Well, that set off an explosion in the room. “Blackmail?” Paul said. He thought for a moment. “Did she know something about the pyramid scheme you were trying to perpetrate?” It was a calculated risk.
Johnson didn’t go for it; he was a practiced liar, but not an artful one. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.
“Yes you do,” Richard told him. “I saw the files that were missing from your hard drive, and I saw them before they were deleted. Some law enforcement agency is investigating your business and probably finding out things you didn’t want them to know when you were alive.”
“I don’t know anything about that.” Johnson stared at the floor. “All I know is that little ingrate was trying to get me to transfer money into her trust account.”
“What did you do?” Paul asked in an attempt to go with Johnson’s narrative and move the conversation forward. He tried to move into Johnson’s sight, but the new ghost continued to look down at the floor. It would have looked remarkably weird for Paul to have dropped down that low just to make eye contact.
“I asked her to leave, naturally,” Johnson said. “And I do not remember anything after that.”
Paul didn’t stroke his goatee, but he held his hand over it. “I think you do,” he said softly.
Now Johnson raised his head and looked at Paul in disbelief. “I beg your pardon?”
Paul leaned into the stare. “I don’t think you’ve forgotten at all,” he said. “I think you’ve been like this for long enough now that you remember everything that happened that night, but you don’t want to explain it. I think your animosity toward your stepdaughter is so acute that you’d rather have her convicted of killing you than name the person who actually ended your life. That is what I think. Would you like to know why?”
Johnson continued to stare, his mouth slightly open. He did not answer.
But Paul was on a roll. “Because Cassidy Van Doren was seen by numerous rescue and police personnel at the scene of your death, and she was wet only up to her elbows. She had tried to pull you out of that bathtub, not hold you down in it. I think you’re lying because you didn’t mention that your daughter Erika had come to visit you in the Cranbury Bog and left before Cassidy arrived. And surely Erika knew at that point that you had already been siphoning money into Cassidy’s account, money that Erika and her brother, Braden, no doubt believed was rightfully theirs. Your will is still in probate, Mr. Johnson. I’m wondering how that situation will resolve itself. So, yes, I think you’re lying. Would you care to explain why?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Johnson said, but his voice was less than persuasive. “Erika didn’t drown me in that bathtub.”
“Then who did?”
Johnson’s eyes got cold as he assessed Paul. “Do you remember the exact moment you died?” he asked. “That split second when you went from being a breathing human being and became what you are now? I remember fear. I remember being held down, the arms from above the water that wouldn’t let me up. The exact moment? I have no recollection at all.”
Richard stepped forward like the attorney he would constantly remind us he was and put his hands in the pockets of his dress pants. The man had eternity to hang around, and he was wearing a suit. It’s telling, don’t you think?
“I’ve only been in this state for a little over a week,” he said, his voice a low murmur that would no doubt build to a crescendo. “But I remember the moments before I was killed. If I had turned my head just a little, I would be able to tell you who was standing behind me with a deadly instrument. So please, don’t try to intimidate my brother with your questions about his death. He has processed the event. And that means he knows that even if you don’t remember the exact moment you moved into this state of existence, you certainly do recall the minutes leading up to that, when you were confronted by your killer and held under water. So please, just tell us who it was that murdered you, because that might lead to some information about who murdered me.”
“I still want to know about the knife in my wall. Spackle doesn’t grow on trees,” I said. They ignored that. And I was pretty sure Spackle didn’t grow on trees.
Keith Barent Johnson looked Richard straight in the eye with a resentment I had rarely seen in my life. “Cassidy killed me,” he growled.
“No, she didn’t.” Richard countered.
Johnson regarded him for a long moment, and then he just simply wasn’t there anymore. There is no defense for that; the ghosts do it rarely, but it’s extremely effective. They vanish and there is no trace of them afterward.
We all just stood there for a long time. Nobody moved much, nobody spoke. There was a considerable amount of looking around and making very small noises that indicated frustration. Maxie didn’t even leave the room, and I was expecting that first.
Josh looked up from the sofa and caught my eye. “So how is the interrogation going?” he asked.