Dummy of a Ghost (Novella) (Ghost of Granny Apples) Read online

  “Doesn’t he tuck me in nicely?” a disembodied voice said. “Just like I did to him when he was a little boy.”

  Kelly almost answered automatically, but held her tongue. “I’m so excited that your career is taking off, Chris,” she said instead. “How is school going?”

  He looked up from the case, his face slightly flushed. With a hand, he swiped at a lock of hair, but there was none to flick out of the way. It was a nervous habit, Kelly remembered, that he’d had in high school when his strawberry blond hair had been limp and longer.

  “I—” he stammered. “Good. I’m finishing up at UCLA this year.”

  “Are you going to grad school?”

  He shook his head. “My parents want me to go to law school, but I want to pursue show biz. My dad keeps insisting I can combine both and be an entertainment lawyer like him, but that sounds really boring to me.”

  “You seem to be doing well already. My mother has sent me several articles about you that she’s found.” Without thinking, Kelly put out a hand and caressed Shirley’s gray mop of hair.

  “Thank you, sweet girl,” said the ghost. “I can’t feel that, but I’m sure it’s lovely.”

  Kelly took a deep breath and asked Chris, “What gave you the idea for Shirley?”

  “Shirley Pearson was my material grandmother,” he explained. “She died when I was fifteen. My grandfather died a couple of years later. My mother always said Grandpa Doug died of a broken heart.”

  “It was a broken heart,” the ghost confirmed. “But we’re together now.” This last bit of information was said in a voice swelled with contentment.

  “Did your grandmother look like this?”

  “Sort of.” Chris laughed. “Of course, I took a lot of liberties to make the dummy funnier.” He reached into a back pocket, pulled out his wallet, and removed a small photograph. “Here’s a photo of the two of them.” He held out the photo to Kelly. It depicted an older couple, dressed in ill-fitting, dumpy clothes. To Kelly, who grew up around fame and fortune in Southern California, they looked warm and friendly, but corny.

  “She and my grandfather were rather eccentric and not given to caring about fashion, which drove my mother nuts. She’s a regular on Rodeo Drive, and when they’d come to visit, she’d drag my grandmother out shopping, but the fashion lessons never stuck.”

  “You look quite a bit different than when I last saw you,” Kelly noted.

  “Yeah, my mom and dad said if I was going to go onstage, I should at least look like I belonged there. This past Christmas they hired me a personal stylist as my gift.” He shrugged. “I must admit, I do get more gigs now.” He laughed and blushed. “I started working out after I met someone special. I don’t know if that helps bookings or not, but I’m certainly more confident not being a wimp anymore.”

  He looked down at the photo again with affection. “For years, both my grandparents taught at a small college in northern Wisconsin. I used to spend my summers there. I loved it and miss them terribly.” He glanced over at the puppet in its case. “Funny thing, even though they looked hokey, they were quite progressive in their thinking and attitudes and very outspoken about civil issues and politics. They were much less stuffy and were mentally more evolved than my own supposedly sophisticated parents.”

  “His mother was fine until she married that fancy fool with the stick up his butt.”

  Kelly snorted.

  “What?” Chris asked.

  “Nothing,” Kelly fibbed. “I was just remembering some of the lines Shirley said tonight.” She paused. “I mean you said. Great jokes, by the way. Do you write them?”

  “Every word,” he admitted with pride.

  “Did you make Shirley, too? I remember you being funny in school, but not artistic like this.”

  In answer, he pulled a card from his wallet and handed it to her. On it was a telephone number, physical address, and e-mail address for a company called Mayfair Puppetry.

  “This is my company,” Chris said. “Or at least half of it. My partner is Edgar Fairchild—get it? May-Fair.”

  “Very clever,” she said studying the card.

  “Edgar is a master puppet maker. I contacted him when I first had the idea for the Shirley and Doug puppets. He was a referral from another ventriloquist—Judy, who you met tonight. Edgar helped me design them, but was struggling to stay in business, so I invested and we created a new company together. My parents went ballistic, but it was my money. In fact, I made the investment with money I’d inherited from my grandparents and made from my shows.”

  “How long ago was this?” Kelly asked.

  “I met Edgar about a year and a half ago. We set up the new business last summer.”

  “And how is Mayfair doing?” she asked, handing him back the card.

  He took it, pulled a pen from the side pocket of the suitcase, and jotted another number down on the backside of the card, then handed it back to her. “Here, keep it. I put my cell number on the back. Maybe we can get together sometime.” He snapped the lid shut on the puppet case. “Mayfair’s doing well, not gangbusters, but building slowly. The more shows I do, the more Edgar’s work is seen, and the more orders he gets from other ventriloquists. He even gets requests for puppets for TV and film. We have a website and a Facebook presence, and low overhead. We bought a small house out in the valley. Or I should say the company bought the house. It’s a great setup. We live in the house and operate Mayfair Puppetry out of the garage. Edgar builds each puppet from scratch by hand. I sometimes help him with the stuff that’s not artistic or delicate, like building the bodies and limbs and some of the painting.” He paused, then smacked his head. “Listen to me babbling on about this. I’m sorry, Kelly.”

  “No, Chris,” Kelly said, “don’t apologize.” She touched his arm briefly. “I’m very interested. I wish I had your passion for something so specific. I have no idea what I’m going to do when I finish school next year.”

  “Doug and I need your help, Kelly,” the ghost said. She’d been so quiet, Kelly had almost forgotten about her. “Tell him you want to meet Doug.”

  “Um,” started Kelly, not sure what to do. The request for help had thrown her. Although it wasn’t the first time a ghost had wanted help from her, usually her mother was the one spirits came to for assistance. Her mother, Emma Whitecastle, was a medium and famous for hosting The Whitecastle Report, a TV show about the paranormal. Both of her parents were on TV, but her father, Grant Whitecastle, hosted a highly rated talk show spotlighting scandalous actions and distasteful people.

  “Um, do you have the Doug puppet with you?” she asked Chris.

  Chris shook his head. “No, he’s at home. I used him in shows on Thursday and Friday this week, so I thought I’d use Shirley tonight and try out some new material. We have a show later tonight in West Hollywood. The gays love Shirley.”

  “Doug is bushed, let me tell you,” said the ghost of Shirley Pearson.

  “I’d love to see Doug sometime,” Kelly said to Chris. “You performing somewhere else soon?”

  “Not until Tuesday night in a club off Melrose,” Chris told her. “If you’re in town on break, why don’t you come by the house? I’d really like for you to see the setup. Edgar and I will even clean it up for you.” He laughed.

  “I’d like that, although there’s no need to clean up anything.”

  “Oh, yes there is,” said Shirley, her image coming through the closed case.

  “And I can probably get you some passes for the Tuesday show. Judy will even be performing,” Chris continued, oblivious to the other conversation going on.

  “There you are,” said a voice by the door.

  Kelly and Chris turned to find Nate standing there.

  “What are you two gabbing about?” Nate asked.

  Kelly handed Nate the business card. “About Chris’s business. He and another guy own a puppet making business and are doing well with it.”

  “Really?” Nate studied the card, then
looked up and studied his former schoolmate. “Hey, man, this is really cool. You’ve come a long way from being Puppet Boy at school.”

  “And I’ve only just begun,” said Chris with a wide smile as he tapped the closed case. “So, how about buying me a beer?”

  As the two young men walked out of the laundry room, Kelly hung back. She really wanted to try to talk to Shirley alone.

  “You coming, Kel?” Nate asked.

  “I saw a bathroom across the hall,” she told them. “I’ll join you in a minute.” She headed toward an open door that led to a small bathroom.

  When the two were gone, Kelly tiptoed back into the laundry room. “Shirley, you still here?” she whispered.

  The image showed through the case again. “Yes, dear, of course, but I’m afraid my energy is running low.”

  Kelly knew from her mother and Granny Apples, the ghost of a long-dead relative of theirs who popped up all the time, that ghosts could only materialize by gathering heat energy from their environment, and that only lasted a short time. After that they had to disappear for a while before they could materialize again.

  “What kind of help do you and Doug need?” Kelly asked, her words quick and to the point.

  “It’s Chris, dear. Doug and I believe he’s in danger.” The image began fading.

  “What kind of danger?” Kelly asked.

  “We’re not sure, but something’s not right.” The voice was becoming faint.

  “Right about what?” Kelly pressed. “Who or what is threatening him?” She received no answer and the image was gone. She opened the case and looked into it, hoping to find a shred of the shimmering light. Instead, all she saw was an outlandish doll with dull eyes, wearing too much rouge and eye shadow.

  Chapter 3

  “You’re sure it was a ghost?” Elizabeth Miller asked Kelly over breakfast the next morning.

  “Absolutely, Grandma,” Kelly told her grandmother between bites of yogurt. Hovering next to Elizabeth was the ghost of Ish Reynolds, better known as Granny Apples. Granny had lived and died in Julian, California, a small town in the mountains north of San Diego, in the late eighteen hundreds. A few years ago, Emma Whitecastle had built a vacation home on Granny’s old homestead.

  “What ghost?” asked Emma, coming into the kitchen from the back staircase wearing her workout clothes. Greeting her at the bottom of the stairs was Archie, the family’s black Scottish Terrier, his stumpy tail wagging up a storm. Emma stopped to pat the happy dog before pouring herself a cup of coffee and taking a seat at the kitchen table.

  “A ghost Kelly encountered at the Naiman girl’s party last night,” Elizabeth told her daughter.

  “You’d know all about it,” groused Granny, “if you’d get up at a decent hour.”

  “A decent hour?” Emma said with a roll of her eyes. “It’s only nine o’clock and I didn’t get in last night from that concert until after midnight. And you know that, Granny. You were with me off and on in the car on the way home.”

  “Did you have a good time with Tracy and Milo?” Elizabeth asked.

  “We sure did,” answered Granny for the two of them.

  “A wonderful time, Mother,” answered Emma with a smile. “It’s just too bad Phil couldn’t come up and join us.” Phil was Emma’s boyfriend, a rancher and attorney from Julian. Emma took a drink of her coffee and looked around. “Where’s Dad?”

  “Your father’s off playing golf this morning with Dr. Parker,” Elizabeth said. “You remember him, don’t you?”

  “Of course,” Emma said. “He retired from his practice about the same time Dad retired.” She took another sip of coffee and looked at Kelly. “What about this ghost?”

  Kelly gave her mother a recap of what she’d told her grandmother and Granny. “So what do you think, Mom?” she asked when she was finished.

  “The question is,” Emma said, “what do you think you should do? The spirit came to you.”

  “More by default,” Kelly responded, licking the last of the yogurt off her spoon. “I don’t think she knew I would be there.”

  “No,” Emma said, “but you were and she decided to show herself to you. She felt safe with you.”

  “I say we go see what this ghost wants,” said Granny. “We can’t just ignore a ghost who reached out for help.”

  “I agree with Granny, but it would be nice to know more.” Emma turned to her daughter again. “Did this spirit seem in any kind of turmoil or a state of agitation?”

  “Not really,” answered Kelly. “She said that she and the ghost of her dead husband thought Chris might be in danger, but she faded before she could tell me how he was in danger.” Kelly wiped her mouth on a napkin, then said, “Mom, would you go with me to see this ghost?”

  “I’d like to see Chris again,” Emma told her daughter after some thought. “I’m available today through Tuesday.”

  “Great.” Kelly picked up the business card she’d brought to the table that morning and her cell phone. “I’ll call him and see what his schedule is like.”

  “Not so fast, Kelly,” her mother warned her. “It’s Sunday morning and if Chris had a show last night, he’s probably still sleeping.”

  “Unless he’s a churchgoer, that is,” added Granny. “Then he might be up.”

  Kelly put down her phone. “You’re right, Mom. I’ll call in a bit.”

  Emma picked a banana from the fruit bowl in the center of the table and started to peel it. “Did you check to see if his business has a website?”

  “It does, but I didn’t look at it yet,” Kelly admitted.

  “My iPad is on the counter,” Emma said. “Why don’t you check now.”

  Kelly retrieved her mother’s iPad and turned it on. Soon she was navigating the website for Mayfair Puppetry. It was a well-designed site, colorful and fun, with tabs to pages showing finished puppets, ordering information, and bios of the two owners—Christopher May and Edgar Fairchild. Chris’s page had a photo of him holding a puppet, but it wasn’t Shirley. It was an old man puppet, bald with just a fringe of whispery white hair and wire-framed glasses. The puppet wore beige chinos and a cardigan sweater with patches on the elbows and looked remarkably like the photo of his grandfather but with exaggerated features, such as a large nose and big ears. The bio explained how Chris had been fascinated by ventriloquism at an early age and decided to pursue it as a career. The page also gave a listing of his upcoming performances.

  “I’ll bet that puppet is Doug,” said Kelly, pointing at the dummy with Chris. “It looks similar to the photo he showed me of his grandfather.”

  The bio for Edgar Fairchild showed an African American man in his mid to late twenties with a shaved head and a close trimmed beard. Unlike Chris’s open-faced smile aimed at the camera, Edgar’s photo showed him at work, his head bent over a puppet’s head while he concentrated on painting it. His bio was brief, claiming he was a self-taught artist with a focus on sculpture and illustrations.

  “That workshop would be interesting to see,” noted Emma between bites of her banana. “Ghosts or not.”

  “Do you want to go, too, Grandma?” Kelly asked Elizabeth.

  “No thank you, dear,” Elizabeth responded. “Granny is enough ghost for me. I’ll leave you and your mother to the others. Besides, your grandfather and I are going with friends to the Ahmanson Theatre today, then out to an early dinner.”

  Finished with her banana, Emma got up from the table. “I’m going to grab a quick workout, then spend most of the day in my office. Just let me know if you reach Chris.” Emma left out the back door. The Millers had a guesthouse in the back. Half of it served as a home gym. The rest of it Emma had converted into a home office for herself.

  Up in her room, Kelly wondered about the ghost of Shirley Pearson and what kind of danger the ghost could be talking about. She knew from her mother’s run-ins with spirits that sometimes they could be vindictive, and her first thought was that maybe Shirley and Doug weren’t the only ghosts hauntin
g puppets at Mayfair Puppetry.

  “Hey, T,” Kelly said into her cell phone. “It’s me, Kel. Guess what? A ghost asked for my help last night.”

  She’d called Tanisha Costello, her best friend back in Boston. The daughter of a deceased college professor and a famous crime fiction writer, Tanisha was a freelance journalist and herself a budding novelist. She had also recently discovered that she could communicate with spirits. Emma was actively mentoring both Kelly and Tanisha in the use of their talents, although Tanisha was more like Elizabeth Miller, who could converse with spirits and sense their presence, but could not see them.

  “Really? I thought you were going to your friend’s party last night,” T said.

  “I did.” Kelly explained about Doug and Shirley and Chris and Edgar. “I’ll send you the link to their website. It’s pretty cool.” She paused. “I wish you were here to go with me to see the ghosts.”

  Tanisha laughed. “No, thanks. Ghosts are bad enough, but those dummies creep me out—same with clowns—but let me know how it goes.”

  “Is that T?” asked Granny as she materialized next to Kelly.

  Kelly nodded.

  “Tell her hi,” the ghost said, “and let her know I’ll be checking up on her soon.”

  Kelly relayed the message.

  “Oh boy,” Tanisha said with another short laugh. “The last time Granny was here all she wanted to do was watch sports on TV. She kept wanting to know if I knew any of the Patriots.”

  Kelly turned to the ghost. “Granny, T still doesn’t know any of the players for the Patriots, so quit bugging her about it.”

  The ghost put her hands on her bony hips. “And why not? There’s a lot of cute men on that team, and a lot of single ones. Missed opportunities, I’m telling ya. For both of you.”

  Kelly told Tanisha what Granny had said.