Alice Kimberley - The Ghost and the Femme Fatale

The antique telescope was set up for a view of the ocean, which meant I had to kick-slide the heavy tripod across the floor so I could get a better look at the stranger. It was tough work, but by the time the man furtively crossed the trail, I'd gotten my first good view. I'd simply hoped to be able to describe the man to the police at some later date. I didn't expect to recognize him!

It was Dr. Randall Rubino, carrying the same beige canvas backpack over his shoulder that he'd been holding in my bookstore earlier. He was wearing the same clothes, too-only now he was actually wearing his yellow J. Crew jacket, probably to ward off the stiffening wind coming off the ocean.

I took a closer look at his bag. It seemed more stuffed than ever-so stuffed it actually bulged.

I froze with a thought.

I hear you, said Jack. That pack just might be filled with cassette tapes and Dr. Lilly's missing computer and manuscript.

As I spied on the doctor, he crossed the trail and entered the thick woods. He must have found an easy path into the brush, because Rubino quickly vanished from sight, even from my high vantage point.

But I couldn't let him get away. If he was carrying the stolen stuff, I had to catch him red-handed. And this was my chance!

I bolted down the spiral staircase so fast my low heels set the wrought-iron structure to wobbling. Standing near the picture window, Fiona Finch grinned like a proud parent.

"So, how did you like the view? Spectacular, isn't-"

I raced to the front door without a word, thrusting Seymour aside to get there.

"Yo! Pen? What's up?"

"Follow me! Important!" I cried.

In seconds, I was outside and down the flagstone path. Once through the trellis, I ran to the spot where I thought Dr. Rubino had entered the woods.

"Slow down, Pen!" Seymour called, huffing and puffing far behind me.

I found a path immediately, right near one of the Finch Inn's PRIVATE PROPERTY! NO TRESPASSING! signs that were posted all over the area, and followed it for perhaps twenty or thirty yards. Then it forked into two paths leading off in opposite directions.

Stymied by the fork, I looked for footprints, or any sign of Rubino's passing. I saw nothing.

Then I heard Seymour again. "Pen! Where are you?"

"Over here!" I yelled back. "I'm at the fork, just keep following the trail!"

I couldn't wait around for Seymour to catch up. Dr. Rubino already had a good head start. Even if I picked the right path, I'd have a hard time catching up with him.

"I'm going left!" I yelled to Seymour. "you go right!"

Then I took a deep breath and plunged down the left-hand path. I proceeded along for five minutes. It was still, cool, and dark under the canopy of trees-a little too dark, I thought, looking up. Through a break in the leaves, I saw clouds gathering. The wind had picked up, too, swishing the branches over my head.

I pressed on. The path wound around a deep ravine strewn with fallen trees. There was another fork and I thought I saw footprints down the right-hand trail, so I took it.

" Seymour!" I yelled behind me. "If you can hear me, I'm taking the right path on the second fork!"

As I ran forward, I began to hear a rumbling vibration. It was faint at first, but it quickly grew louder. "What's that?"

An engine, dollface, Jack replied in my head. A big one.

I recalled Fiona's complaint about dirt bikers, and realized I was probably smack-dab in the middle of a popular trail. I was stuck here, too. Thick thorn bushes had grown high between rows of giant oaks in this area of the narrow path, so there was nowhere to go but forward, or back. But I couldn't tell which direction the bike was coming from, only that it was getting closer.

Within seconds, the rumble became a roar. Bouncing off the trees, the mechanical growl seemed to come from everywhere.

Get out of the way! Jack yelled in my mind.

Instead of listening, I turned. Eyes wide, I spied a motor-cycle barreling right at me along the path. Like a doe caught in a Hummer's headlamps, I froze, paralyzed!

I said move!

I'm not sure what happened in that final, critical second. But I must have instinctively leaped aside just as the big, Darth Vader of a motorcyclist reached me because I narrowly avoided getting run down. As the bike and the biker roared past me in a cloud of dirt; however, I wasn't able to avoid the stout tree trunk. Slamming headlong into the rough bark, I saw an explosion of searing white light.

After that, everything went blacker than noir.

New York City May 10, 1948

"IT'S SO DARK…"

"There's a good reason for that, baby. We're under the East River."

"What?"

I opened my eyes. My black-framed glasses were gone again, but I could see just fine. Around me was a mass of metal. In front of me stretched a dashboard with big, clunky gauges that looked like something out of the Smithsonian. Above it, a windshield framed a dim roadway, and on the driver's side of the front seat was Jack Shepard-only not in spirit.

The PI's sandy brown hair was neatly trimmed, his iron jaw was freshly shaved, and his broad-shouldered form was draped in what looked like a brand-new, deep blue, double-breasted suit. He even had a matching blue fedora, which rested between us on the seat.

"Where are we again?" I asked Jack's granite profile.

"We're in the new tunnel," he said. "Well, kinda new. They opened it about ten years back. It's the tube that connects Manhattan with Long Island City."

"We're driving through the Queens Midtown Tunnel?"

"Bingo."

I studied the roadway in front of us. The car's headlights were on-and they needed to be. The weak yellow light bulbs that ran along this concrete tube's ceiling gave less illumination than a mausoleum.

"Jack, I don't understand. Why did you bring me down here?"

"Well, gee, for a dime, I could've gotten us both across the river by subway, but where we're going isn't exactly the safest part of town for a dame to hoof it, so I scared up some wheels for us instead."

Slumping back in the monster car's big front seat, I put a hand to my head. "Why do I feel like a truck hit me?"

"Because you should have listened to me, doll, and jumped sooner."

"When?"

"On that wooded trail, which you shouldn't have been on in the first place." Jack's jaw worked a moment. "Dames like you make me crazy. Always trying to be good girls and get along and accommodate and make everybody happy. Then the one time you decide to grow a backbone and dig your heels in, you nearly get yourself run over."

"I don't have the foggiest notion what you're talking about."

Jack's slate gray eyes glanced at me. "I just don't like worrying about you."

"You worry about me?"

"In life, I never worried about anybody's hide but my own. I figured that's the way it'd be for me in death, too." "Guess you figured wrong then." "Guess so."

The tunnel was coming to an end and Jack's gaze returned to the road ahead. He pulled up to a toll booth and paid. Then we were off again, backtracking toward the other side of the East River, only this time above ground. As we drove along, I watched the sun sinking below the Manhattan skyline. Blue twilight was settling over New York 's five boroughs.

"Welcome to Queens, baby. Home of the 1939 World's Fair, the Steinway piano, and Harry Houdini's final resting place."

I'd been to Queens only a few times when I lived in New York City, mainly to travel back and forth to LaGuardia Airport. I'd never been to this part of the borough, so I wasn't altogether sure what Long Island City looked like in my time. In Jack's time, it was obviously a major manufacturing zone. Hundreds of factories were jammed together along the streets. I read the signs as we passed them: machinery parts, paint, shoes, bread, sugar, even spaghetti.