so he can look in the windows.”
We could do that because the shutters—with fancy little ornamental doodads carved into them—were all open. My mother ran to try the door, and for the moment Liz and I were alone.
“You don’t really think you can see dead people like the kid in that movie, do you, Champ?”
I didn’t care if she believed me or not, but something about her tone—as if this was all a big joke—pissed me off. “Mom told you about Mrs. Burkett’s rings, didn’t she?”
Liz shrugged. “That might have been a lucky guess. You didn’t happen to see any dead folks on the way here, did you?”
I said no, but it can be hard to tell unless you talk to them…or they talk to you. Once when me and Mom were on the bus I saw a girl with cuts in her wrists so deep they looked like red bracelets, and I was pretty sure she was dead, although she was nowhere near as gooshy as the Central Park man. And just that day, as we drove out of the city, I spotted an old woman in a pink bathrobe standing on the corner of Eighth Avenue. When the sign turned to WALK, she just stood there, looking around like a tourist. She had those roller things in her hair. She might have been dead, but she also might have been a live person just wandering around, the way Mom said Uncle Harry used to do sometimes before she had to put him in that first care home. Mom told me that when Uncle Harry started doing that, sometimes in his pj’s, she gave up thinking he might get better.
“Fortune tellers guess lucky all the time,” Liz said. “And there’s an old saying about how even a stopped clock is right twice a day.”
“So you think my mother’s crazy and I’m helping her be crazy?”
She laughed. “That’s called enabling, Champ, and no, I don’t think that. What I think is she’s upset and grasping at straws. Do you know what that means?”
“Yeah. That she’s crazy.”
Liz shook her head again, more emphatically this time. “She’s under a lot of stress. I totally get it. But making things up won’t help her. I hope you get that.”
Mom came back. “No answer, and the door’s locked. I tried it.”
“Okay,” Liz said. “Let’s go window-peeking.”
We walked around the house. I could look in the dining room windows, because they went all the way to the ground, but I was too short for most of the other ones. Liz made a hand-step so I could look into those. I saw a big living room with a wide-screen TV and lots of fancy furniture. I saw a dining room with a table long enough to seat the starting team of the Mets, plus maybe their bullpen pitchers. Which was crazy for a guy who hated company. I saw a room that Mom called the small parlor, and around back was the kitchen. Mr. Thomas wasn’t in any of the rooms.
“Maybe he’s upstairs. I’ve never been up there, but if he died in bed…or in the bathroom…he might still be…”
“I doubt if died on the throne, like Elvis, but I suppose it’s possible.”
That made me laugh, calling the toilet the throne always made me laugh, but I stopped when I saw Mom’s face. This was serious business, and she was losing hope. There was a kitchen door, and she tried the knob, but it was locked, just like the front door.
She turned to Liz. “Maybe we could…”
“Don’t even think about it,” Liz said. “No way are we breaking in, Tee. I’ve got enough problems at the Department without setting off a recently deceased bestselling author’s security system and trying to explain what we’re doing here when the guys from Brinks or ADT show up. Or the local cops. And speaking of the cops…he died alone, right? The housekeeper found him?”
“Yes, Mrs. Quayle. She called me, I told you that—”
“The cops will want to ask her some questions. Probably doing it right now. Or maybe the medical examiner. I don’t know how they do things in Westchester County.”
“Because he’s famous? Because they think someone might have murdered him?”
“Because it’s routine. And yeah, because he’s famous, I suppose. The point is, I’d like for us to be gone when they show up.”
Mom’s shoulders slumped. “Nothing, Jamie? No sign of him?”
I shook my head.
Mom sighed and looked at Liz. “Maybe we should check the garage?”
Liz gave her a shrug