“What’s ‘conscientious’?” Melissa asked.
“Like Grandma.” Alison glanced up at the roof again and looked worried.
I thought about that when I went home that night. Alison told me a few days later that she’d bought the shingles and was planning on climbing up to the roof the next day to begin installing them.
But when she woke up the next day, the roof had been completely repaired.
Epilogue
“It was you, wasn’t it?” I asked Jack now, on our way to Alison’s house for dinner with the girls, the ghosts and Josh Kaplan.
“Of course it was me; you knew it was me,” he said, “sitting” in the passenger seat. I’d had to talk Jack out of putting on his seatbelt, pointing out that there was little harm that could befall him these days. “I wasn’t going to let her climb up there and break her neck.”
“You’re a good dad.”
“Better now than then,” he said.
“Don’t sell yourself short,” I told my deceased husband. “Your heart was in the right place.”
“Technically, my heart is in an urn somewhere, isn’t it?”
I didn’t answer that.
• • •
“You’re still wearing that?” Marilyn Beechman asked. She pointed to the POW bracelet on my left wrist. It was some the worse for wear after four years, but not rusted or dirty. I glanced at it.
We were at her apartment in Matawan, where she’d just moved to be with her boyfriend (later husband, later ex-husband), Roy, and Marilyn was cooking dinner just to prove to me that she could. Chicken Parm. She was sautéing the chicken in preparation for the oven as we spoke.
“You told me I had to wear it until Colonel Mason was found or declared dead,” I said. “I haven’t seen anything that said he was either.”
Since I’d gotten to the apartment and Roy had taken my coat—and then disappeared into the bedroom, saying he wanted to let us have our “girl talk,” a sure sign that he’d eventually be Marilyn’s ex-husband—there had been an incessant banging coming from somewhere in the place, but Marilyn was not acknowledging it.
“They’ve found pretty much everybody,” she answered. “There’s no reason to think he wasn’t among them.”
“I wrote away to the Department of Defense and never got an answer,” I said. The pounding wouldn’t stop. “What is that noise, anyway?”
“Oh, sorry,” Marilyn told me. “The super sent up some guy to fix the ceiling in the bathroom, and he’s been hammering all day. It’s making me crazy, but he’ll leave soon. They shut down at six. You really wrote to the Department of Defense?” Marilyn repeated with a chuckle. “You’re so naïve. They’re never going to tell you the truth. Hasn’t this Watergate thing taught you anything about trusting the government?”
“Well, maybe I should take the bracelet off for good, then,” I said.
“Don’t do that,” said a voice from behind me.
Holding a step stool, a young man in painter’s overalls and a canvas cap was walking out of the bathroom. He looked at Marilyn. “Ceiling’s just about fixed,” he said. “I’ll come back tomorrow to compound and sand it, okay?”
“Sure,” she said, stirring jar marinara sauce in a pot and not looking up.
“Why shouldn’t I take it off?” I asked the super’s assistant. He had a small frame but solid muscles, sort of like John Garfield.
“Because it’s a way of letting the guys who fought know that you understand what they went through, and you want all their buddies to get home safe, even the ones who are still being held prisoner.”
“Vietnam was a mistake,” Marilyn said.
The young man shrugged. “Governments make mistakes. Should we punish the poor guys who had to carry them out? Some friends of mine were there. Some didn’t come back. I don’t care about the politics. I care about my friends. I say you should keep wearing the bracelet, ma’am.”
“Ma’am?” I said.
“Miss?” he asked and smiled.
I decided right then I would keep wearing the bracelet for a while.
And I married the young handyman the following year.
Addendum
Lieutenant Colonel William Henderson Mason was born October 12, 1924, and was lost in Laos on May 22, 1968. His crew included Captain Thomas B. Mitchell, Captain William T. McPhail, Seaman Apprentice Gary Pate, Staff Sergeant Calvin C. Glover, Aircraft Mechanics Melvin D. Rash and John Q. Adam.
The crew departed Ubon carrying passenger Major Jerry L. Chambers. Radio contact was lost and the aircraft did not return to base. There was no further contact. Because Laos did not participate in the Paris Peace Accords, no American held in Laos has ever been released.
Colonel Mason was a 1946 graduate of West Point and was promoted to full colonel while classified as missing.
A group remains burial for the crew, including Colonel Mason, was held on June 10, 2010.
Source: POW Network, 2010, www.pownetwork.org/bios/m/m019.
Photo by E. J. Copperman, taken on the kitchen table, May 2013.
Keep reading for a special excerpt from E. J. Copperman’s next Haunted Guesthouse Mystery . . .
THE THRILL OF THE HAUNT
Available in paperback November 2013 from Berkley Prime Crime!
“Are you the ghost lady?”
I’ve heard the question many times, but I’m not crazy about it, frankly. Living in a large Victorian with my eleven-year-old daughter and two dead people who never took the hint—while trying to make a go of the place as a guesthouse—is difficult enough. But since Harbor Haven, New Jersey, is a small shore town, and everybody knows all about everybody else, the question does come up.
Usually, to be honest, I try to summon up an icy stare that makes the asker back down, but in this case, I did my best to force a small, knowing smile and nod. You had to be nice to Everett.
Everett, as far as I knew, was the only homeless man in Harbor Haven. He was in his mid-fifties now and never bothered anybody. It was rumored that he was a veteran of one war or another, and post-military life had clearly not been kind to him. Even on this fine spring day, he was bundled up with clothing because he couldn’t afford to jettison anything that he wouldn’t be able to replace before winter.
Everett was an oddly beloved figure around town. In a community that liked to flaunt its concern for its own, Everett gave everyone an opportunity to show how understanding we could be; we out-kinded each other when dealing with him. There was a great deal of hypocrisy, of course, as no one really ever tried to know him or tried to help in any substantial way, but that was almost beside the point.
Everett had taken up residence, more or less, outside Stud Muffin, our local pastry shop, which showed a good deal of intelligence on his part. People grabbing a quick snack or a coffee would provide him with spare change, and Jenny Webb, owner of the establishment, might occasionally sneak him a day-old product or two. Even now, with the Stud Muffin still a little shabbier than usual, since what we call “the storm” and the media calls Hurricane Sandy, it wasn’t unusual to see Everett in his Mount Vesuvius of clothing, with shoe soles worn through, eating a raspberry-filled croissant on any given morning.