We arrived on a stone floor that felt cold and damp to the touch. In fact the entire basement had a cold and damp atmosphere and smelled a little musty, and it wouldn’t have surprised me if instead of gold we’d find plenty of fungi and perhaps even a mouse infestation. Not that I could be certain, for the light was off, and not much illumination was granted apart from the little bit of light trickling down the stairs from the doorway.
It was still enough for us to make out that Kingman had indeed been correct in his statement that Wilbur was an amateur hoarder: the place was stacked full of stuff, though in Wilbur’s defense it was all neatly stacked, not simply piled up indiscriminately. There were plenty of wooden racks, and all of them were loaded to capacity. I could detect car tires, an old bicycle, the remnants of a Christmas tree, boxes filled with bottles, bottles filled with strange and mysterioussubstances, and things I didn’t even want to know what they were. In other words, the remnants of a long life as a small-town storeowner.
“So where is this pot of gold?” I asked finally when I’d been following along in Kingman and Dooley’s wake. “And more importantly: where is your ghost, Kingman?”
“Shhh!” both Kingman and Dooley hissed. They were right, of course. Obviously this gold-dispensing ghost of the former owner of the General Store was a very shy individual.
We’d arrived at the back wall of the basement, which was a lot bigger than I’d imagined, and presumably ran the entire length and width of the store, which was pretty big to begin with, and maybe even partly extended underneath Wilbur’s backyard, too.
And that’s when we saw him: a man was seated on a sort of throne, and as we all gasped in shock, the man moaned, and now seemed to sort of uncurl and finally reach the ceiling. He was dressed in a long black overcoat, and it was impossible to see his face. Besides, even though cat eyes are a lot better at detecting things in the semi-darkness than human eyes, we can’t exactly see in the dark, in spite of the popular myth. We still need light, even though only a little bit of it, and since we were now deep into the basement, far removed from a source of light, it was hard to make out the man’s features.
“It’s the ghost!” Dooley whispered. “It’s the ghost of the old woman!”
“I think you’re right, Dooley,” Kingman whispered back. “Ask her about the gold.”
“Why me?” said Dooley. “She’s your ghost, Kingman. You ask her about the gold.”
“Can’t you guys see that it’s a man, not a woman?” I said, but they ignored me.
Kingman cleared his throat.“Um, lady? Can you tell us where the gold is, please?”
No response came apart from a Bob Dylanesque mumble, then the person descended from his throne and strode over in our direction—gliding along the floor like an actual ghost.
“She’s going to show us the gold!” Kingman hissed. “It’s happening, you guys!”
But then suddenly the light in the basement flashed on, and a loud voice called out,“Rudolph? Are you down there?”
It was Wilbur, and as our eyes adjusted to the light, the ghost of the old lady suddenly morphed into that of an unkempt man in a long overcoat, clutching a bottle, and sort of swaying on his feet, clearly not very stable in his footing. And as we watched, he took a swig from the bottle, then bellowed,“How many times do I have to tell you not to disturb me when I’m composing, little brother!”
“Have you been drinking again?”
“No, I haven’t.” He now settled an unfocused gaze on us, and frowned. “Say, Wilbur, how many cats you got?”
“Just the one,” Wilbur called back.
“There’s three down here.”
“That’s because you’re drunk. Stop drinking my stock, you boozer!”
“One… two… three,” said Rudolph as he carefully counted us. “I see a fat one, an even fatter one, and a small one.” He then awarded the bottle in his hand a look of disappointment, placed it on the shelf with meticulous care, and proceeded in the direction of the exit with ginger step, supporting himself on the myriad shelves.
“So where’s your pot of gold?” I asked.
But Kingman was too annoyed to be baited. Instead, he grumbled,“I should have known he was the ghost.”
“He’s the ghost?” asked Dooley, staring at the man in awe.
“Looks like he’s been coming down here,” Kingman said, inspecting the ‘throne’ the man had been sitting on, which was just an old overstuff chair. “He told Wilbur something about working on new material, so this must be where he’s been hiding all this time.”
“Rudolph is staying with you?” I asked.
“Yeah, his wife kicked him out again, and so he’s been crashing on the couch. I hope he doesn’t stick around too long. My delicate senses won’t be able to stand it much longer.”
“He does have a very particular body odor,” I admitted.
Unlike Wilbur himself, Rudolph is one of those people who have trouble holding down a job, or making much headway in life. Instead, he likes to sponge off his brother, and hope Wilbur will pay his way through life. He is harmless, though, and when he’s sober even pretty funny, apt at cracking jokes and generally the life and soul of the party.
“So if I understand you correctly,” I said. “Your ghost is actually Rudolph Vickery?”
Kingman merely glared at me, then headed for those stairs.
“So no ghost?” asked Dooley unhappily.
“No ghost,” I said. “Just a boozer.”
“And no gold?”
“No gold,” I said decidedly, happy that this ghost nonsense was settled. I hurried after Kingman. “Say, Kingman, did you hear about what happened to Dave James?”
“Yeah, I heard,” said Kingman, not too well pleased as we mounted the stairs.
“So have you heard any gossip? Anything that might tell us who killed the guy?”
“Nothing special,” he admitted, which is a rarity for the cat, and which showed me that he wasn’t entirely himself today. Having your human’s relative stay with you and haunt your house at night will do that to a cat, of course. We like our lives orderly and predictable, and don’t appreciate it when strangers suddenly come to call and end up sticking around and upsetting the status quo.
Instead of assuming his usual position at the front of the store, though, Kingman led us into the kitchen, where he proceeded to gobble up half a bowl of kibble, his way of coping with the circumstances that had made his life a little challenging of late. And to show us he had his heart in the right place, he then invited us to partake in this gourmet feast, a gesture for which we both thanked him profusely.
“I heard that Dave James was killed sometime late last night,” he said.
“Yeah, according to Abe Cornwall time of death was between six and eight.”
“One of your uncle Alec’s officers was in here earlier, and said they’ve already arrested his killer. A fine piece of police work, he called it. A young woman named Jayme Ricardo.”
“Jayme Ziccardi,” I corrected him. “Though she claims she didn’t do it.”
“What else is new, Max? Have you ever known a killer to admit he did it?”
“No, but I think she might actually be innocent.”
He shrugged, clearly not in the mood to delve too deep into the Dave James murder case.“According to this officer she stood to inherit a great deal of money.”
“Killers don’t inherit from their victims, Kingman.”
“So? No killer thinks they’ll get caught. No, the way I see it: she thought she could strike now, and get her hands on the guy’s millions, instead of waiting for him to die, which could take years and years. It’s the same old thing, Max: good old-fashioned greed.”
I wasn’t convinced, though. I’d met Jayme, and she didn’t strike me as the murderous type. Though of course Kingman was right: she did have an excellent motive for murder.