Chapter 16

In the time since I had told Tiffany I would try to help figure out who had killed her, I had made such little progress that I almost dreaded seeing the girl. She never brought it up. We had struck up quite a friendship, which was a pretty strange thing to say, considering she was dead and I was living.

There was certainly an air of melancholy around Tiffany, an air of sadness that her short life was over, but I liked to think that I helped her with that. Without me, she couldn’t speak with anyone. With me, it was almost like she was alive.

Still, I was failing her. I knew that ghosts were people who were unable or unwilling to move on. I felt awful about the fact that I had nothing to show Tiffany about her murder beyond the fact that her boyfriend was a grade A creep. So it was a relief when Tara called me late at night. I was sleeping, after a long night of worrying about the funeral home and the fact that we needed money. I woke up to my cell phone buzzing, a beeping ringtone and the screen bright. I reached over, blinked away a haze of tiredness and looked at the screen.

“What’s wrong?” I asked groggily. Even in my low-caffeine state I realized that something was wrong since she was calling at a little after one in the morning.

“Nothing,” she said, in a half whisper. “I don’t want to wake up Duncan. Let me go out on the porch.”

“All right.”

I heard her move through her house, and then I heard the screech of the old screen door to the porch. “Hey, Duncan would kill me if he knew I was telling you this, but I thought it would help,” she said. “Duncan told me that they caught out Mrs. Kaplan in a lie.”

My ears perked up. “Mrs. Kaplan? Not Mr. Kaplan?” I asked, doing my best to wake up fully. Mr. Kaplan was Tiffany’s boss. Mrs. Kaplan was the wife he had been cheating on with Tiffany.

“Yes,” Tara said. “They caught her lying in the alibi she’d given her husband. She was covering for him. She said he was here with her all morning, but turns out he was delivering coffee.”

I shook my head. “But isn’t delivering coffee an alibi, too?” I asked.

“Not a clue,” Tara said. “That’s all I know.”

“Thanks for telling me.” I lay in the darkness for some time, staring up at the ceiling. It was interesting that the wife had been lying, but I didn’t see how I could ever do anything about it. Could I speak to her without raising anyone’s suspicion? I couldn’t see how. After ages trying to think of a way to get information from her, I finally fell asleep.

By morning I had made up my mind. I intended go to the café where Tiffany used to work, to spy on Mrs. Kaplan. I had no idea what good that would do, but I had no other leads. I could hardly come out and ask her why she had given her husband a false alibi. I supposed most wives would try to protect their husbands.

As I was driving to the café, I glanced down at my phone and saw I had missed a call from Mom. I called her back on the car Bluetooth, but there was no answer. Next thing, I had a text. I pulled over to read it. ‘Did you call me? This is Mom.’

I called her back. This time, she picked up. “Mom, it’s me. What did you call me about?”

“Who is it?” she screeched.

“Me, Mom. Your daughter. If you check the caller I.D. you will see my name.”

“Oh, Laurel.” She almost sounded disappointed. “What do you want?’

I rolled my eyes. “I’m calling you back because you called me.”

“No, Laurel, you called me just then.” Her tone was exasperated.

“Mom, I only called you as you called me, and I’m calling you back.”

“What’s wrong with you, Laurel? You just called me. If you’re not going to speak, I’m hanging up.” She did just that.

I clenched the steering wheel and let out a groan.

My day seemed to improve when I entered the café. I was the only one there, so I took a seat against the wall. From there, I could see both Mrs. Kaplan and the street. There was no sign of Mr. Kaplan, only a waitress who looked to be the same age as the Kaplans.

When the waitress brought my coffee, I decided to be bold. “It’s a shame about Tiffany,” I said.

She turned to me and nodded. “Yes, it’s very sad. You grew up here, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did,” I said. “I was gone for a while, years really.”

“But you knew Tiffany?”

“Yes,” I said. Of course, I couldn’t explain that I only knew Tiffany after her death, because I spoke to her spirit regularly. “I did her funeral.”

The woman’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, yes! That was where Tiffany was, well, you know, murdered.” She finished her sentence in a whisper, and glanced over her shoulder. “The police keep coming here.”

“How awful,” I said in a conspiratorial tone. “I hope they don’t suspect Mr. or Mrs. Kaplan.”

The waitress sighed. I looked her over for the first time. She was attractive, but had a stressed air about her helped along by the deep wrinkles at her eyes and the corners of her mouth. She had an overdone spray tan. Her hair was dyed blonde, although the roots were beginning to show brown. “I didn’t think the cops would buy the delivery stuff. No one was with him, and there’s no way for them to confirm it.”

“But he actually was doing deliveries at the time, wasn’t he?”

She nodded. “Yes, but still, it wouldn’t have taken any time at all to pop over to the funeral home. It could’ve happened between deliveries.”

I was taken aback. “Do you think Mr. Kaplan killed Tiffany?”

The waitress looked aghast, and shook her head emphatically. “Absolutely not,” she said. “He could never do such a thing.”

I took a sip of my coffee and smiled at her. “I hope they catch whoever did it.”

The waitress shrugged and took her leave, leaving me disappointed. I was no further along with my inquiries.

Tiffany suddenly appeared in front of me, making me gasp and jump. Luckily, no one was in the café.

“What did she say?” she asked.

“I think I want to find out some things about your boss,” I said.

Tiffany shook her head. “You’re looking into the wrong man.”

“I just want to look into everything,” I said. “I want to find out who killed you.”

The dead girl nodded. “You and me both, sister.”