Ghost in the Polka Dot Bikini: A Ghost of Granny Apples Mystery (24 page)

“No, George, she’s not. But the ghost of Margaret Manning is with us. She has been with us for several minutes now. And she’s not happy.”

Manning scoffed and took a drink. “She never was happy, with me or anyone. Figures she’d haunt me.”

“My boy,” the ghost shouted into the face of the senator. “I was happy with my boy until you ruined him!”

“Continue, Senator,” Emma told him. “She can’t hurt you.”

Manning shook his head. “I still think this ghost stuff of yours is B.S., Emma, but maybe George is right. Maybe it is time to talk about it.” He took a big drink.

“The day on the boat went fine,” Manning began, “but maybe we had a bit too much to drink. I know
I
had too much to drink. I made a pass at Tessa. Stuart caught me kissing her. He started yelling at me, calling me names, blaming me for his mother’s misery. Paul tried to calm him down but wasn’t successful. Even Tessa tried.”

Manning started to take another drink, then thought better of it. He put the glass down on the table next to the Scotch bottle and leaned back in his chair to finish the story. The air around them continued to move with agitation.

“Stu became so verbally abusive at one point that I slapped him. Pretty hard, too. He responded by coming at me with the gaff. Tessa stepped in to stop him.” He paused, looking down at his hands. “The rest you know.”

“No, I don’t, Senator,” said Emma in a quiet voice. “Tell me what happened after Tessa hit her head.”

The old politician cleared his voice. Emma noted that George was visibly trembling even though his face remained stern.

“We panicked. It was obvious that Tessa was very bad off. There was a lot of blood coming out of the head wound where the gaff had hit her and where she’d come into contact with the railing. She was drifting in and out of consciousness. I knew my political career would take a serious hit if it got out. If she died, it might even destroy it. And Stu was planning on going into politics himself. Margaret’s people were blue bloods from the East. With my attachments and their influence, and both of our money, there’d be no telling how far he could go.”

“And Paul Feldman went along with this?”

“Paul had his own career to worry about—and his own marriage. His wife would not have been as tolerant as mine of indiscretions.”

“Tolerance had nothing to do with it, you bastard.” Mrs. Manning’s ghost spun around the room one last time before disappearing, returning the air in the room to still and warm.

“Is she gone?” George asked. “Margaret’s ghost, I mean.”

Emma nodded.

The senator studied the abandoned glass of Scotch. After a moment he picked it back up. “What the hell.” He took a healthy drink and clung to the glass like a lifeline as he continued. “Paul and I quickly put together a plan. We loaded Tessa into the dinghy and told Stu that Paul was taking her for help—that the dinghy would be faster. I stayed with Stu. We cleaned the blood off the boat and made our way back to Avalon. Stu was devastated. When Paul caught up to us, he told us that she’d been taken to a hospital on the mainland and would be fine. He said Tessa had a concussion and needed stitches.”

Emma shook her head in disbelief, not understanding how these men she’d thought of as good and decent could do such a heinous thing. “But you knew different, didn’t you, Senator? You knew that in reality, Paul Feldman dumped her in a remote part of the island and took off.”

Worth Manning studied his drink and nodded.

“When they returned to LA, they came to me,” George explained. “Together, we decided how best to proceed.”

Emma looked from George back to Worth Manning. “And what about Stuart?”

Tears started down the senator’s deeply lined face. “To this day, Stu thinks Tessa survived. We convinced him to keep his mouth shut about the accident for everyone’s sake, especially his own. Even his mother talked him into remaining silent. We were never close, but a few years later, when Margaret died, he cut almost all ties with me. After law school, he settled near his mother’s family. His children and grandchildren hardly know me, except by name.”

The sound of a single pair of hands clapping came from the partially open doorway.

“Very nice story,” pronounced Fran Hyland. Behind her was a man Tessa recognized as Mike Kilgore. In his hands was a running video camera. In Fran’s hand was a gun.

Dressed from head to
toe in Ralph Lauren, including her jacket, Fran stepped into the room. “Who knows—maybe one day it might make it to TV. At least it will if I have anything to do with it.” She looked at George. “Audiences love true stories. Isn’t that right, George?”

George Whitecastle was outraged by the intrusion. He grabbed his cane and stood up, ready to defend his home in spite of his frailty. The lap throw fell to the floor in front of him. “How the hell did you get in here?”

Worth Manning also got to his feet. Emma was the only one in the room under sixty and seemed to be the only one with a grasp of the whole picture. Emma answered instead of Fran. “I’m guessing with Helen’s keys.”

Fran flashed Emma a tight smile. “You are such a clever girl. Too bad you didn’t find that bug before we got it all on tape. Or should I say, I’m glad you didn’t.”

“Are you the one who spraypainted my car, too?”

Fran pointed a manicured and ringed finger at the man with the camera. “Actually, Mike here did that. But I suggested it. You see, Emma, when you came to my office, at first I was worried that you might grab the story I’ve been waiting forty years to get. But then I thought, why not let this crazy woman do the footwork for me? You struck me as the type who, when warned off of something, would be even more intrigued to get to the bottom of things.” Again she gave Emma a smile that was anything but friendly. “And I was right.”

Emma hated that this woman had her so pegged. “I was trying to help Tessa, that’s all.”

“Maybe, but admit it: as soon as you found out Tessa was tied in with your in-laws, you couldn’t let it go, no matter what.” Fran Hyland stepped closer, keeping the gun steady. “I still say there was a little bit of revenge mixed in there somewhere.” She gave Emma a sly wink.

Emma wanted to spit in the woman’s face. “There is no need for me to get revenge on the Whitecastles.” Her eyes soaked in Fran’s cold, immaculately made-up face. “If you wanted me to get to the bottom of things, why did you call Grant? It was you, wasn’t it? You knew he’d get riled up and try to stop me.”

Mike Kilgore laughed behind his wife. “That was a stroke of genius.”

Fran smiled sweetly at her husband, then said, “It was Helen who called Grant—at my encouragement, of course.”

Kilgore laughed. “Let’s face it, folks, Grant Whitecastle is the paparazzi’s wet dream.”

Fran took her turn in the doubles game of explanations. “We knew he’d go off on a search and destroy mission if he thought you were bothering his family with all this ghost nonsense, especially if he thought it was upsetting his father. Mike just followed him, waiting for the drama to unfold. Selling that video was like money falling from heaven—like hitting a fair-sized slots jackpot just before you cash in a big winning lotto ticket.”

“And this story,” Worth Manning asked, “this thing with Tessa is the lotto?”

“But of course it is. It’s worth millions to the right people. Surely you understand that.”

Senator Manning started forward, but Fran Hyland stepped back and aimed the gun directly at him. “Not so fast, Worth. We haven’t done business yet.”

George Whitecastle remained standing, supporting himself on his cane. “You’ve drained us for years, Fran. What more do you want?”

“Ah, but George, you boys were paying me for what you
thought
I knew. Now it’s about what I know for sure—what I’ve suspected for years—and that’s that you golden boys killed Tessa and dumped her body.”

“Tessa’s death was an accident,” Worth said, slamming his glass down on the coffee table to emphasize his point.

“Doesn’t matter, though, does it?” Fran said with a smirk. “You still covered it up. It’s still a crime.”

Emma sat in her chair, still and listening, wondering how it would all play out and wishing she hadn’t sent Granny to Catalina. Granny was right. In the event of danger, she could go to Milo for help. Milo wouldn’t have to come running, he could call the cops, sending them to the Whitecastle home.

George stamped the end of his cane against the floor. It hit the carpet with a short staccato of muffled thumps but still managed to get everyone’s attention. “How much more money do you want to keep quiet?” he asked Fran.

Fran and her husband exchanged a quick battery of looks before Fran said, “This isn’t about keeping quiet, George. As Emma said, it’s just a matter of time before the police figure it out, or before they start listening to ghost girl over there.” Fran shot Emma a cynical look as she spoke to George. “I don’t believe in ghosts myself, but one way or another, Emma stumbled upon the truth. I’m sure Denise’s big mouth helped.”

Emma pricked up her ears. “You killed Denise Dowd?”

Fran cackled. “It was an
accident
, dear. I was holding a knife, ready to butter a bagel, and she fell on it.” She turned to Worth Manning. “Rather like being hit in the head by a gaff hook, don’t you think?”

George took a wobbly step forward and raised his cane to strike at Fran, but he didn’t have the strength to travel the short distance between them. He fell backwards into his chair and went into a small fit of coughing. “God damn you,” he said from behind his handkerchief. “Denise never did anything to you.”

“No, but she never did anything for me, either.” Fran shifted from one foot to the other. “I went over there just for a little girl talk, to find out what she told Emma. She suspected my purpose was more serious and clammed up. I offered to pay her for her information, but she said she was going straight to you to let you know I was up to something, even though she didn’t know exactly what. I couldn’t allow that. I didn’t have all the information I needed to put my plan in place.” She studied George with curiosity. “I had no idea you two were an item all these years—another side bonus to my plan, and another forty-year-old murder, depending on which side of the abortion issue you sit.”

George was too undone to speak. Noting his flushed face and continued coughing, Emma went to his side.

“Careful,” Fran warned her.

“I’m just going to help him,” Emma snapped, keeping her eyes on George.

Worth picked up the questioning. “If this isn’t about hush money, Fran, then what is it about?”

“It’s about this.” She reached an arm out and gently patted the video camera. “And it’s about what we have on audio. A lot of people would pay a great deal of money to get their hands on what I have. The great George Whitecastle and the equally great Senator Worth Manning confessing to a murder and cover-up, and implicating the multi-award-winning producer Paul Feldman in the bargain.” Fran laughed. “And now we find out Congressman Stuart Manning was involved. That was definitely a surprise bonus.” She grinned at Manning. “Your son is a personal friend of the president, is he not?”

Senator Manning was so flushed with anger, he looked about to have a stroke. Emma watched him carefully. Between Worth and George, Emma was beginning to feel like an EMT.

When no one responded, Fran Hyland continued. “Maybe the two of you would like to start the bidding to keep it out of the hands of the media.”

Emma stepped away from George and toward Fran, her face twisted in anger and revulsion. “That’s despicable.”

“Careful, Emma,” Fran said, adjusting the gun at Emma’s stomach. “I’m sure with the right editing, we could implicate you, too.”

Emma eyed the gun, noting that it was growing heavy in Fran’s outstretched hand. “And how many of your celebrity clients have you done this to already?”

“Enough to substantially pad our retirement fund.” Fran Hyland acted coy and lowered her voice as if someone might overhear. “Although my clients don’t know about my little sideline. Over the years, Mike and I mostly worked behind the scenes, selling photos and leaking stories to the tabloids and entertainment gossip shows. An employment agency specializing in discreet staffing is a clever cover, don’t you think? We carefully placed our spies, who were happy to get paid from both ends, and waited for something juicy to emerge. And it always did.”

Everyone but Mike Kilgore glared at Fran Hyland—Worth and George with hate, Emma with anger and disbelief.

“So,” Fran said in a chipper voice, “shall we start the bidding at two million?”