Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 44, No. 7 & 8, July/August 1999

“That’s my girl,” beamed Granny. “Go for it.” Instead I took my drink out on the porch. Langston followed — on what pretense, I’m not sine.

He grinned. “I wouldn’t want you to get the wrong impression.”

“Do you think there’s a chance that’ll happen?”

“You’re a possibility thinker. Maybe I picked the wrong sister.” He moved closer.

“You’d best stick to the pretty one.”

“You look pretty good to me.” He moved closer still I backed away. “Aren’t you concerned that I might talk to Savannah?”

“Not especially.” Smugness danced through his eyes and curled up on one side of his lip.

“I guess not,” I said. “You do seem to be one of those critters that can come out lookin’ like a stallion when he’s just acted like a jackass.”

I tinned and headed for my room. From the corner of my eye I saw Langston’s drink jerk and splash him. Granny was getting better.

Traveling across country with a ghost puts a new perspective on everything. First of all, it’s somewhat unnerving to be walking around with someone no one else can see, and it can be embarrassing if anyone catches you talking to thin air. Furthermore, one learns things one might prefer not to — like who had a cardiac on the plane last month and is still flying around looking for his luggage, or who was murdered in the bed you’re sleeping in and doesn’t know she’s dead. I changed rooms twice.

Unlike the sprawling cities of Texas, New York stacks its inhabitants on top of each other. Below, in its concrete canyons, the populace ebbs and flows in rushing rivers of uncertain current. Langston rode those elements smugly buoyed by wealth and power, certain that everything would go his way as usual.

I was getting claustrophobic, and Granny was driving me crazy. “You have to help me, Dallas!”

“I’ve already talked to Savannah. It didn’t do any good. Why don’t you go haunt her instead of me?”

“I tried that. She neither sees nor hears me. Your mother and Nelle think he’s wonderful, and your grandfather’s caught up in the idea of political empires. I thought I raised him better than that.”

“Doesn’t Savannah have a right to make her own mistakes?”

“If she were standing on a track with a freight train coming, wouldn’t you push her out of the way?”

“Probably. Then I’d get hit by the train, and she’d yell at me for mussing her hair and makeup.” I was losing patience, and I had never understood the depth of Granny’s concern. “Why are you so worried about this marriage, anyway? It’s not going to last any longer than her first one, and if you really want to see Langston get what he deserves, just wait and see what Savannah does to him during the divorce.”

Granny disappeared in a puff of black smoke.

I didn’t see much of her for the next couple of hours, but I did find my mascara in the toilet and my red underwear flapping in the breeze from the balcony railing.

St. James Enterprises had just moved into a sparkling new skyscraper. Nana Nelle had already toured that, oohing every step of the way, but she had also taken an interest in the demolition of the old St. James Building. Grandpa wriggled out of taking her to see it by assigning me the task. That shouldn’t have been so bad. I rather like old buildings, but traipsing around one with an unwilling ghost is not my idea of a good time.

The old St. James Building was fenced off from the public, so Nana and I stood on the sidewalk peering through the fence.

Nana stared intently. “Isn’t that interesting?” she remarked as she always does when she hasn’t the foggiest idea what she’s talking about.

I was disappointed. Instead of the stately old edifice I had anticipated, the building was one of those soulless Art Deco monstrosities. Actually it wasn’t exactly soulless.

Granny Grace popped out of the sidewalk. “Dallas, I apologize for questioning your instincts. Monty knows everything about Langston and his cronies.” My instincts? Monty?

I distanced myself from Nana Nelle and everyone else that I could and whispered through my teeth, “What are you talking about?”

It turns out that Monty was an old business associate of Mickey St. James. The grand old patriarch had personally put six slugs into Monty and saved him for posterity by burying him under the foundation of his brand-new office building. Brand-new some seventy years ago.

“Monty just can’t bear to leave without a proper burial, so he’s still here. And guess what else, Miss Smarty?” said Granny. “He said the corpses are still piling up.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then go find out.”

Granny disappeared, and Nana waddled over. “They absolutely will not let us in, Dallas. We might as well go back to the hotel.”

“Uh, not yet, Nana. Come over here and look through this little gap.”

She complied. “What am I supposed to see?”

“Why, the beauty of the stark symmetry. Look at the parallelism of the windows.”

“Oh yes,” she nodded. “That’s very interesting. They’re all so... so...”

“Rectangular,” I supplied.