How to Marry a Ghost Read online

  And then I heard Shotgun’s voice for the first time. I imagine they could have heard him five miles away in East Hampton, so loudly did he shout at Evan Morrison. But it was not the volume that surprised me. In the few interviews I recalled having watched with Shotgun Marriott, he had always spoken with a rather grating London accent, not really East End Cockney, but going west along the Thames to Isleworth or Twickenham maybe. The voice speaking above me was a rich baritone, smooth and educated and totally without regional intonation. It was raised in anger but without the taunting hostility of Evan Morrison’s voice.

  “Are you seriously suggesting that I killed my own son?”

  “I’m not suggesting anything. I’m merely stating the facts as I have them. Which brings me to the night Bettina Pleshette’s body was found in your woods. Do you own a bow and arrow, Mr. Marriott?”

  I couldn’t hear Shotgun’s reply.

  “Okay, so you do not—as indeed you stated at our last meeting. Did you by any chance have access to hunting equipment of this nature?” Was it my imagination or did Evan Morrison sound as if he were trying to catch Shotgun out in another lie? “Did your son hunt deer, for example?”

  This time I heard Shotgun’s reply. He had raised his voice again. “To the best of my knowledge, my son did not hunt and he certainly did not have a bow and arrow. I used to shoot in England years ago—with my Purdey—and at one time I did indeed have an interest in archery. My wife and I took lessons for a while. Then I had a bow and arrow but it was years ago. Years! I suppose you’re going to say you found one on my property, and that Bettina Pleshette was killed with that.”

  “I am,” I heard Evan Morrison say and I tensed in amazement. “How did you know? She had a wound consistent with an arrow being shot in her back. So you were here Saturday night when Bettina Pleshette was killed in your woods. Were you here alone?”

  I couldn’t hear Shotgun’s reply.

  “Oh,” said Detective Morrison. “You’re saying he was here that night, was he? I find it odd that you would say that, Mr. Marriott, because his mother says he was with her. What does he say? His own story is he can’t remember where he was but he’s a real slippery character. And he owns a bow and arrow, as I’m sure you know.”

  “Oh shit!” said a voice behind me. My body jerked in shock and I almost fell off the steps. Someone had come into the room and crept up behind me with astonishing stealth. I turned my head and saw it was a gangling youth, well over six feet tall. He was wearing denim shorts, a sweatshirt, and his long and extremely hairy legs ended in giant Timberland boots. Tufts of blond hair sprouted from beneath a cap turned back to front framing rosy cheeks and piercing blue eyes. One look at his face told me he was related to Franny Cook. The fine beautiful bone structure of his face was identical to hers.

  “Who are you?” His question was blunt and sounded almost rude.

  “Who are you?” I retaliated.

  “I’m the guy he’s just been talking about. I work for Shotgun. You found that listening hole, huh?” He grinned at me. “Cool, isn’t it? Shotgun had an under-floor hot-air system put in last year and you get this flow-through of sound in quite a few of the rooms. Then he changed the ducts and forgot to fill in the ones in the rooms upstairs. You got to be standing over by the window, though.”

  “Who are you?” I descended the steps slowly. I was angry at being discovered spying by a teenager who seemed to think he had more right to be there than I did.

  “Dumpster.” He wiped his hand on his shorts and held it out to me.

  What kind of a name was that? I shook his hand and smiled. “I’m Lee, and I’m also going to be working for Shotgun Marriott, on his book. What do you do for him?”

  “Caretaker. Chop his wood. Mow his lawns. Check out his trees, blow his leaves, plow his driveway in winter. Plus I fish for him and bring him venison. Poor guy, he’s been in a pretty bad way these last couple of days, let me tell you.”

  “You knew Sean?”

  “Sure. I work here, don’t I? Nice guy. Shy, like a rabbit. Scared of everything.”

  “What do you suppose he was doing out in the woods in the middle of the night he was killed?”

  He hesitated, looking at me with suspicion for a moment but then he shrugged.

  “Taking a walk. One thing he wasn’t scared of was being out in the woods. He knew every inch of them. I’d find him out there all hours, rain or shine, wandering about on his own, reading poetry and shit. Once, when his dad was away, Sean had a guy to stay. He was, like, you know, and the guy was one of his type, and he used to take him out to the woods. I stayed well away. I came across ’em lying on the beach buck naked and I ran a mile. I mean they can do what they want long as they don’t do it to me!”

  “So you’ve got to be related to Franny Cook,” I said. “You look just like her.”

  “You know my mom?” He smiled and seemed to visibly relax.

  I nodded. “Rufus introduced us. She’s a terrific person, and your baby sister.”

  “She’s not my sister,” he said quickly.

  “You have the same mother.”

  “Yeah, we do,” he conceded. “But, like, I’m part of her old family. Eliza’s her new family.”

  I thought I caught a note of resentment in his voice.

  “Were you here those nights—when Sean died, and the other . . . ?”

  “Why do you want to know?” He eyed me warily.

  I shrugged as if to indicate no particular reason. But if he wanted to tell me, I was all ears. I needed to make this kid my friend if he’d been close to the action.

  “Sure I was here,” he said slowly. “Sean had gone to the city the night before he was killed. That’s where he had his real life if you ask me. Out here he was too much in his father’s shadow. He didn’t like being the son of a rock musician, a famous rock musician.”

  “Did they get along?”

  “No, but it was Sean’s fault. I don’t think he took the time to figure out that his father really was a nice guy. He had it fixed in his head that he was never going to measure up to what his father wanted him to be, but Shotgun used to tell me how it was cool with him that Sean was gay. He just wanted Sean to be happy. I tell you, I’d trade Shotgun as my father any day of the week.”

  “So, did Shotgun know Sean was in the city?”

  “Who knows? They didn’t communicate. All I know is that he was expecting this woman who kept calling him about his book to come and see him and then he called and canceled her.”

  I stared at him. “How do you know this?”

  “I was right outside the door, I heard him on the phone with her. He had me putting up more shelves for his cookbooks in the kitchen and I was coming and going from the stables, bringing in the wood. I had so much to do during the day, I couldn’t get to it until the evening and Shotgun doesn’t care if I work at night. Cookbooks! Jesus! Guy fancies himself as a gourmet chef or what?”

  I was about to quiz him further about the night Bettina was killed when I heard movement above us, footsteps crossing the room. Dumpster’s arrival had curtailed my eavesdropping and I realized I’d missed the rest of Detective Morrison’s interview.

  A few seconds later the door opened and Shotgun Marriott walked into the room. He stopped dead, surprised to see Dumpster.

  “The detective’s out there?” Dumpster asked him.

  “It’s okay, he just left,” said Shotgun and then held out his hand to me.

  “Christopher Marriott. How are you? Sorry I’ve kept you waiting.”

  I recognized him from his photographs and the extensive television coverage when the dead groupie had been found in his room—but only just. The curly dirty blond hair that had flopped over his collar fourteen years ago was now shorn and fashionably layered to a crop of almost military severity. His face, lean and somehow rather poetic, had now acquired a certain cragginess and, until I saw it at such close quarters, I hadn’t realized it was such a noble face. He had a long straight nose, s
lightly pointed like a fox, and a very sensuous wide mouth with, I noted, a trace of a mustache snaking above it as if he hadn’t shaved properly. But his eyes were what arrested me the most. They were hooded with perfectly arched eyebrows high above them and they appeared to be mocking me.

  But then he smiled suddenly and the five-o’clock shadow around his jaw line that had given him a sardonic, and faintly piratical, appearance seemed to recede.

  “Dumpster, I despair of you sometimes,” he said. “Couldn’t you even have offered her a cup of tea? You know your way around my kitchen better than I do.”

  “Oh, I didn’t need anything,” I began as Dumpster mumbled an apology and shuffled out of the room, ducking as he went through the door.

  “He always does that,” said Shotgun, “even when he doesn’t need to, I’ve noticed. I think he must have hit his head once too often when the door wasn’t high enough to accommodate him.”

  “He is awfully tall,” I said.

  “He was a basketball star, so I understand—at school, when he lived in New York City. He could just reach up and dunk the ball in the net. Hence the name.”

  I looked blank.

  “Well, okay, it was Dunkster originally.”

  Now I was even more confused.

  “He dunked the ball, you know, slam dunk?” Shotgun raised one of his own long arms in the air and mimed dropping a ball in the net. “So first it was Dunkster and then he told me it got changed to Dumpster when his mother started throwing fits about the state of his bedroom.”

  I finally got it and smiled. “It’s a good nickname. Speaking of names—”

  “What are you going to call me? Don’t worry, everyone has the same problem. I’m Shotgun to the media and always will be but I’m Kip to my friends. ‘Christopher’ is a bit formal. Could you live with ‘Kip’?”

  “If you’ll call me Lee,” I said. “My name’s Nathalie but it’s the same thing—too formal. What did Bettina call you?” I couldn’t resist asking.

  He looked at me in surprise. “She didn’t call me anything. I never met her. Never even spoke to her apart from a few quick phone calls brushing her off.”

  “Oh,” I said, “I heard she’d been around here for a week or two.”

  “Well, yes, I heard that too and she did talk to Sean. He was pretty anxious that I talk to her but the thing is I never liked the sound of her. I hope she wasn’t one of your greatest friends?”

  I shook my head.

  “You see, it wasn’t the first time I’d heard about her. She wanted to do a book with me a few years ago and I checked her out with a few people. She sounded altogether too pushy, not my kind of person—and in any case I didn’t want to do a book then. But even recently—when I started thinking seriously about telling my story—I discounted her. I just didn’t realize how pushy she was. I told my people to rule her out when we were drawing up a list of possible ghostwriters but that didn’t deter her. She kept asking to meet me and then she came out here and started calling me.”

  “Have you told Detective Morrison all this?” I asked Shotgun. Of course, now that he’d suggested I call him Kip, I found I could only think of him as Shotgun.

  “Till I’m blue in the face but he doesn’t believe me. The trouble is I was expecting her the night Sean was killed. I thought if I told her face to face that I didn’t want her to write my book, it might actually sink in and I could get rid of her once and for all.”

  Be careful what you wish for, I thought. Someone had got rid of her once and for all.

  “But I canceled her,” he went on. “I just couldn’t face it. The problem was, for some reason, I never told Detective Morrison that the first time he interviewed me and this left him with the impression that I was waiting for her but she never showed up. Whereas in fact I lied by omission. Purely an oversight. But of course he doesn’t see it that way. Anyway, look, I’m truly sorry you’ve walked into the middle of this.”

  “Listen,” I said quickly, “I’m the one who’s sorry. I’m only here because my agent told me to come. I’m afraid she’s the same agent Bettina had. I couldn’t believe it when she said you still wanted to do the book. I’ll go now.”

  “No.” He was on his feet with his hand out to stop me. “She was right, Miss Ten Percent. I do want to do the book.”

  “It’s fifteen percent actually,” I said.

  “They’ll bleed you white!” he said with a grim smile. “Anyway, now I’ve made up my mind to do it, I shouldn’t let anything get in my way. There’s a story I really want to tell in this book and I’m not getting any younger. If I put it off any longer, I’ll never do it. Besides”—he turned away from me—“it’ll help take my mind off all of this. Every second I’m alone, I start thinking about Sean. I know I have to mourn but I also know that someday I’m going to have to get past this. The truth is, if you’d agree to start work on the book, you’d be helping me”—he hesitated and looked away for a second—“more than you could possibly know.

  “Now what can I get you?” He stood up suddenly and I could see he was embarrassed at having shown me how needy he was. “Nice cup of tea, coffee? I’ve got a secret stash of Bourbon biscuits and Jaffa cakes in the kitchen, or maybe you’d like a Marmite sandwich? We can pretend we’re back in London.”

  “That would be great,” I said, “but there’s something I don’t quite understand.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You’re talking like I already have the job and I know my agent has already been discussing terms but don’t you want to ask me a few questions before you make up your mind?”

  “I’ve already made up my mind,” he said, smiling now. “Don’t worry, I did my homework. They gave me your name and just like with Bettina, I checked you out too. I called a few people back in England and I liked what I heard. You did an old girlfriend of mine.” He mentioned the name of an actress whose lifestyle book I had helped put together a couple of years ago. “She said you’d be perfect, that you’d be very good for me. And as I just said, I want to get on with the book but look, if you’re having second thoughts, I’d understand completely. Wouldn’t blame you for a second.”

  I’d been having second thoughts, all right. And third, fourth, and fifth thoughts. Driving through the woods to his house had terrified me. What if the killer came back one night after the police search had been exhausted and Detective Morrison had pulled his men from the area to work another crime? What if I had to work late here with Shotgun and then drive home alone? Did I really need this job? It wasn’t as if Bettina was still in the running as my rival so what did I have to prove?

  But having met him, I knew that I had to tell Shotgun Marriott’s story for him for a very simple reason.

  I liked him.

  He interested me. I wanted to know how he had managed not to become just another aging rocker, desperately trying to hang on to the image of his glory years. I liked his style. He was wearing a beautiful pale blue linen shirt with the sleeves casually rolled up to the elbow, and a pair of well-cut beige corduroys resting gently on his slim hips with the help of a brown leather belt, Italian and expensive, I guessed, like his shoes. He was a man approaching sixty making no attempt to disguise his age yet he looked both elegant and relaxed.

  I wanted to know about his marriage to the control freak I had met at the Old Stone Market. I wanted to know what his son had been like and why they had led such a separate existence way out here on the East End of Long Island. I wanted to know what had really happened that night a groupie had been found dead in his bedroom and I was sure when he had spoken about “a story” he “really wanted to tell” he was referring to this.

  But most of all I wanted to know about him. I realized with a start, having spent only a few minutes in his company, that I wanted to help him.

  “I’d love to do your book,” I said. “I can start whenever you want.”

  “That’s fabulous!” The slight frown on his face, the only visible sign of the considerable strain
he was under, disappeared for a second and he smiled at me in obvious relief. “That really is incredibly kind. Now, follow me to the kitchen while I go and make us a pot of tea. This way.” He guided me through an archway. “The kitchen’s a bit of a trek, I’m afraid. Thank God, the detective’s gone although I fear he’ll be back—and sooner rather than later, I expect. Do you know what his first question was for me when I’d identified Sean’s body? Why do they call you Shotgun? My son’s in the morgue, killed with a bullet from a shotgun, and he has to ask that.”

  Of course, now that he’d brought it up, I too was curious to know why he was called Shotgun.

  “Well, I’m afraid it was because I was a pretty good shot in my youth and the rest of the band found this out,” he said, reading my mind. “They used to unearth details of what they called my posh background and taunt me with them. So when our then manager said we had to come up with a better name for me than Kip Marriott—too wet and weedy for a hell-raising rock ’n’ roll singer apparently—we went for Shotgun. I liked it because it had a kind of bluesy feel to it, you know, like Sonny Boy Williamson or Muddy Waters but our manager felt it had sexual connotations and there was a good publicity angle there.”

  And did it? I wondered.

  “Anyway, I’m afraid I let Detective Morrison have the sexual version.” He made a face to show what he thought of Evan Morrison. “I rather felt he was the type to appreciate it.”

  We had arrived at the kitchen and I was astonished. It was a bit like standing in a dungeon in which someone had placed an industrial-size stove and state-of-the-art stainless-steel appliances and flooded them with pools of recessed lighting. Hanging above the stove, a row of copper pans cast a reddish-brown metallic glint over the area. Several pewter tankards were lined up on the granite countertop. The floor was old flagstones and the walls behind the rows of glass-fronted cabinets also appeared to be stone. The overall effect may have been a touch gloomy, and I’m never very comfortable in those minimalist kitchens where absolutely nothing is left out on the surface, but it was certainly dramatic. I was wondering where the wooden shelves Dumpster was making were going to go when Shotgun pulled open a tall stainless-steel door to reveal a walk-in larder complete with wall-to-wall pine racking. The way the items were stacked floor-to-ceiling reminded me of Franny’s store. Long planks of pine were propped against the far wall, evidence of Dumpster’s industry.