Night of the Living Deed (19 page)

Mom smiled.

“There, now. Was that so hard?”

Paul was eager to see the copies I hadn’t made, Maxie was nowhere to be seen and Jeannie was anxious when I got home. Melissa was supposed to be in bed, but I believed she was upstairs in her room, waiting for the moment she heard the door close and Jeannie’s car leave the driveway.

Mom, of course, insisted on coming inside, which made the scene that much more chaotic. Especially since Jeannie had no intention of leaving just yet.

“Okay, you have a
date
and I have to hear about it from
Melissa
?” she growled before I had both feet inside the house. Then she noticed Mom. “Oh. Hi, Mrs. Kerby.”

“Call me Loretta,” my mother reminded her. “You’re a grown-up now.”

“Loretta,” Jeannie said dutifully, then turned to me. “He’s a teacher? Is he cute?” she asked.

“In a minute, Jeannie.” I sighed. “It’s been a long night.” I sat down on the floor, letting Mom have one of the folding chairs. It was the first time in my life I would have actually killed for a Barcalounger. Paul, hovering near the ceiling, asked, “Where are the files?”

“Your date,” Jeannie continued. “Spill the beans, Alison.”

“The
files
,” Paul insisted. “What did you do with them?”

“I was at Terry Wright’s office,” I told Jeannie (and Paul). “Terry’s dead.”

Paul stopped in mid-gesture. I saw Maxie stick her head in from the ceiling, then withdraw it.

Jeannie stared. “But . . . but you said you were going to a PTSO meeting.”

“She’s dead?” Melissa stood at the bottom of the stairs in her nightdress, eyes wide. I guessed she couldn’t bear the wait any longer and had come down.

After the inevitable brouhaha over Melissa’s arrival (Mom hugging her, Jeannie scolding her for getting up, me just sitting and waiting), I explained that I had discovered Terry’s body at the office, but I left out a few choice details, like the fact that I had broken into the office, that I’d hid from Kerin Murphy and that I had been, at least briefly, a suspect in Terry’s death.

“Turned out she had a heart attack,” I finished up. Jeannie looked stunned.

“That’s so sad,” Melissa said.

“So you didn’t get the files?” Paul asked. I wasn’t sure whether all ghosts were so single-minded, but he certainly had the capacity.

“I know, honey,” I said, pulling Melissa onto my lap and holding her close. “It’s very sad.”

“I can’t
believe
you didn’t get the files,” Paul muttered. I glared at him for a second.

Mom’s eyelids fluttered and she frowned for a moment, then she looked at me. “So what’s the plan of action?”

Everybody, alive and otherwise, looked at me.

“Plan of action?” I asked. “I’m going to bed. I’m exhausted.”

Cries of protest came from every section of the room. I stood up and headed for the stairs.

“But what about your date?” Jeannie asked.

“I’ll call you tomorrow. Thanks for the ride, Mom.”

My mother looked disappointed, but walked to the front door with Jeannie after Melissa delivered the hugs for which she is so deservedly famous. I reached out my arm after they left, and my daughter walked over and let me lean on her.

“You didn’t get . . . ?” Paul started.

“Good night,” I said, and went upstairs. Paul did not come up through the floor to continue the conversation, and I went to sleep.

“So I hear you broke into Terry Wright’s office and killed her last night,” Phyllis Coates said.

She’d called early this morning to flesh out her story, and offered to drive Melissa to school and me to my car when I mentioned my lack of wheels. An exclusive interview for the
Chronicle
was the price of such service, despite the fact that no other media outlet had called. We’d dropped Melissa off, and were now on our way to my Volvo.

“I
did not
,” I insisted.

Phyllis laughed. “Calm down, honey. I don’t really think you killed Terry—it was a heart attack. At least that’s what my friend in the ME’s office says is the official cause of death until the full report comes back. But you
were
there, weren’t you?”

I looked away. “I thought so,” Phyllis crowed.

“You don’t miss a trick, do you?”

“In my business, you can’t,” she answered. “Newspapers—real ones, dailies—are having enough trouble surviving. I’ve got to give people the most local stuff, things they can’t even get online, except when I put it there. So I know everyone and everything that goes on in this town.”

“You’re very good,” I told her honestly.

“Thanks. So tell me what you saw.”

I told her the story (leaving out Kerin Murphy) on the condition that she not mention my name when writing about it, since I could be incriminating myself in print. After I’d gotten through with the tale, we’d reached the police pound where my Volvo was parked.

“I’ve heard them all, and that’s a new one,” Phyllis told me.

“Stick with me, kid,” I said. “I’ll make you a star.” I got out of the car but didn’t close the door. “Thanks for the ride, Phyllis.”

“Thanks for the story, Alison. I’ll let you know when I hear anything from my friend in the ME’s office about Terry. I’ll know before the cops do.”

I shook my head with respect. “That’s some friend you have,” I told her.

She gave me a significant look. “Viva Viagra,” she said.

 

 

“The police took them. What did you want me to do?”

I was expanding the space in one of the guest bedrooms by making one of the closets smaller (people staying for a week don’t need as much storage space as full-time residents), so I was wearing goggles and was, at the moment, mostly covered in dust, but I had framed out the new closet almost completely. I could hang the drywall now and fill in the nail holes with compound and taping later. It’s grueling, tedious work, but it’s not difficult, just time-consuming.

“You saw Kerin Murphy taking something from Terry Wright’s desk that it’s a safe bet to say was not authorized,” he went on. The wheels in his head, although transparent, were always turning. “Tell me again what she did while she was there.”

“She talked to somebody named Neil about a real estate deal, then she went into Terry’s desk and pulled out an address book or something, and then she hung up and called someone else and said something about the property on Seafront—this house.”

“Are you sure?” Paul asked.

“Have you looked outside recently? Everybody else on the block sold out to Adam Morris. This is the only house a real estate agent would have cared about.”

Paul stood back—his right arm actually disappeared into the wall—and thought. “Are you sure it was an address book?” he asked.

“It looked like one,” I said. “But no, I didn’t really get a close look.”

“The first thing they teach you in detective school is not to make assumptions,” Paul told me. “Describe it to me.”

“It was a black book with one of those plastic covers and a spiral binding,” I told him. “Not big enough for a file book. I thought it looked like an address book.”

“Could it have been an appointment book? A calendar?” Paul had a way of asking questions like he already knew the answers.

“I guess so,” I said. “Why?”

“Because that’s the kind of thing that could be most damaging. If someone’s name is listed on a schedule to meet Terry Wright around the time she died, it could be important to get that item out of the office before the police arrived.”

It took me a moment to absorb all that. “You think Kerin Murphy killed Terry?”

“I think it’s more likely she was covering up for someone else, even if she didn’t know that was what she was doing. But we can’t rule her out as a suspect.”

“Do you really think Kerin could get herself involved in a murder?” I asked.

“I have no idea. I’ve only seen her once.”

“What about Maxie? Did she know Kerin . . . before?”

Paul shook his head. “I asked, and she said she didn’t.”

“So, how do we find out what kind of book it was?” I asked Paul. I should’ve known, though, that Paul would have a plan, because he always did, and I rarely enjoyed hearing them.

 

 

“I don’t know how I let you talk me into this one,” I said
out loud as I tailed Kerin Murphy. My cell phone, open, rested on the passenger seat of the Volvo.

I didn’t get an answer, and I didn’t expect one.

Paul had made sure I’d called the house phone, which was finally working since Verizon had visited the week before, and then I answered it myself. I’d put it on speakerphone and then left, leaving my cell phone on and plugged into the charger in the Volvo.

He couldn’t answer me (the ghosts’ voices didn’t make it through telephones), but he could hear what I said. I felt like I was talking to myself, which was only about the seventeenth weirdest thing I’d done today. And it was just two in the afternoon.

“She’s not going to be home, you know,” I’d said to the phone. Paul’s plan—to trail Kerin Murphy and see where she took the book—seemed to have more holes than a Swiss cheese factory. “She probably dropped the stupid book off with someone last night.”

Imaginary Paul in my head said, “She said she couldn’t do that. She said on the phone that she’d have to meet with the other person today.”

I hate it when the imaginary people in my head are right.

It’s very hard to follow someone in a small town, especially if they know you and your car. Paul had instructed me to stay at least two cars behind Kerin, but there weren’t always two cars available, so I did the best I could. I didn’t think she’d seen me, but then, this was my first such endeavor, and I had no idea how you made that determination.

Twice I was tempted to pull over and pretend to park, but there were no parking meters—and therefore no parking—in this area of Harbor Haven. So on I drove, feeling more each second like I was driving a shocking pink Hummer with fireworks shooting out of its roof.

I felt especially lucky when Kerin, who had left her house with a briefcase that might or might not have contained the item in question, pulled into a lot next to Oceanside Park. I waited until she was out of her car and walking away before I parked the Volvo in a space as far from Kerin’s as I could get.

I had a sudden rush of anxiety when a police car drove by, but then I reminded myself that I wasn’t actually doing anything illegal. Still, feeling like I might need to make a quick getaway, I stayed in the car and left the engine running. I observed Kerin walking into the park and toward the playground. She wasn’t carrying her briefcase.

But in her hand was the book.

I watched as Kerin sat down on a bench near the playground equipment, all of which had been carefully selected and designed so as not to be at all dangerous (and therefore not at all fun). The only other occupants of the area were a toddler in a little pink jacket—all the bigger kids were in school or preschool—and her mother, who was so devoted to her daughter that she didn’t even look in Kerin’s direction. I watched as Kerin waited for ten interminable minutes.

Finally, from three blocks away on the other side of the park, another woman walked over. She was blonde and slim, but from this distance I couldn’t make out her face. I relayed all this to Paul, whose imaginary voice chided me for not taking the binoculars like he’d told me to, mostly because the only ones I owned were from Melissa’s toy chest, a remnant of her
Spy Kids
period.

The two women didn’t stay together long, however; in fact, Kerin stood up and walked away almost as soon as the woman sat down on the bench. She seemed in a hurry to get back to her car.

But she left the appointment book on the bench, and the blonde woman picked it up.