Night of the Living Deed (22 page)

“That’s right,” Adam answered. “But I’ll tell you what—if we settle for a price on your property now, we might just be able to let you have one of those homes at our cost. And with what we’re willing to pay for what you own now, you could just about live in it for free. What do you say, Alison?”

It was dizzying—it was almost even attractive. The idea of a brand-new, state-of-the-art (albeit cookie-cutter McMansion) luxury house, in exchange for the toil and marketing nightmare that a guesthouse surrounded by new-construction town houses was going to be—that was pretty enticing. Not having to make mortgage payments. Saving for college. Getting a job back at the HouseCenter and still making ends meet without the headaches of running a full-time business.

Not worrying about the hole in the plaster wall.

Adam Morris must have taken my hesitation for a sign of possible interest, because he added, “Perhaps we could discuss it over dinner.” He smiled very pleasantly. Smooth.

But Paul had told me to make Adam think I had something he wanted, and I was going to see it through, damn it. “I really can’t, Adam,” I said. And then I did my best to smile a cat-post-canary-dinner smile. “I’m afraid I’ve discovered something more valuable in the house as it is.”

Adam Morris’s head swiveled with a velocity usually reserved for Italian sports cars. “Really!” he said. “And what is that?”

“I’m not at liberty to tell you,” I told him, leaving out the truth, which was that I had no idea what I was talking about. “But suffice it to say, I’m not in a position to sell the property until I can realize the value of my finding. And I expect that value to be quite high.” Bluff of the century.

His eyes narrowed to slits, but the smooth nature of his voice never wavered. And he smiled his sharky smile as convincingly as he could.

“Isn’t that good for you,” Adam said.

I left his office grinning like the winner of the Power-ball lottery. And as soon as I cleared the doors from Adam Morris’s suites, I made a beeline for the ladies’ room, went inside and threw up.

 

 

I had barely managed to get myself into presentable shape
(and into my Volvo station wagon) and make it home before I came under siege from an unexpected front.

My mother swept into the house without having mentioned she’d be visiting. “It’s coming together so well!” she said. “You’re a genius.”

“Thanks, Mom. Why are you here?” It wasn’t supposed to come out that fast, but Maxie was changing clothes—literally, different clothing would appear and then be replaced by something else—in the room and otherwise trying to distract me as I polished the brass stair rail.

“Do I need a reason to see what my little girl has been up to?” my mother asked. Maxie actually guffawed. It was not a pretty sight.

I love my mother, but Loretta Kerby has always been able to embarrass me more easily and more deeply than any other person on the planet. I make a daily vow not to do that to Melissa, one I regularly break. But at least I’m aware of it.

“Her
little girl
,” Maxie crooned. “Oh, that’s
wonderful
.”

“I’m not a little girl anymore, Mom,” I said, and to prove it, I put my mask back on and returned to the brass polish. You can’t be too careful.

“No matter how old you get, you’ll always be my little girl,” she answered. This time I couldn’t blame her; I had left that door far too wide-open for her not to walk through. “But I’m actually here to deliver a package that came to my house addressed to you.”

“A package?” I hadn’t lived in my mother’s house for more than twelve years. Who would send me a package there? “Why are you getting packages for me?”

“I don’t know,” she answered. “But it has your name on it.”

Mom reached into her backpack and pulled out a small box covered in brown paper, like it had been wrapped in a paper grocery bag.

It was, indeed, addressed to me, in care of my mother.

Maxie changed from a pair of ripped jeans, thigh-high boots and a t-shirt that read “AC/DC” into a black leather jacket over black tights and a top with black-and-white horizontal stripes. She looked like a French biker mime.

I took off my rubber gloves and Mom handed me the package. I regarded it carefully—it was very light and, as far as I could tell, not ticking. But there was, of course, no return address on the package.

There wasn’t any postage on it, either. It had been hand delivered to her mailbox.

I took a box cutter from the side pocket on my tool belt and slowly cut the tape on one side of the box. Then I raised the flap on the paper wrapping and looked inside. The box was from a local jeweler, Mason Gems.

“Is there something you want to tell me?” Mom asked hopefully. “The teacher?”

I gave her a snide look and tore the rest of the paper off. The box did not appear to be new; it was worn at the corners and the embossed
Mason
on the top flap was almost invisible. I shook it a little, and nothing happened.

The only thing left to do was open it.

The box contained a small, velvet-covered ring case, which probably got Mom’s heart pounding. She hadn’t ever approved of The Swine, and was now letting that hang over me without so much as an “I told you so.” The woman was much more devious than most people would ever imagine.

I opened the ring box. Inside was nothing more than a small piece of paper, about the size of a Post-it note. I unfolded it.

Printed in a nondescript font were the words, “We’ll be in touch.”

But the real message was clear: “We know where your mother lives.”

I must have paled in a hurry, because Mom grabbed my forearm and said, “Ally, are you all right?”

Maxie, now in a teal jumpsuit, had not been able to see the message on the paper. “Ally!” she shouted. “Oh, that’s great! This day keeps getting better and better!”

Mom looked at my face, and hers took on a stern expression. “Alison, you tell me right now what’s going on.”

And then she pivoted, pointed at Maxie and said, “And
you
mind your manners.”

It took a few minutes of hysteria before I could get the yelling under control. But eventually, I calmed down. It just took some adjusting.

“So, how long have you been able to see . . .” I pointed at Maxie. “Her?” I asked my mother, trying very hard to breathe normally and failing.

“Just her, or all the ghosts?” Mom’s innocent expression was so perfect that Dakota Fanning herself would’ve been proud.

Maxie’s hand went to her mouth. She was laughing.

“
All
the ghosts?” I repeated, because coming up with words of my very own seemed as difficult as . . . something really difficult. See what I mean?

“Yes,” Mom answered. “I’ve seen the poor dears for as long as I can remember. I still talk to your aunt Cecilia every now and again.” My father’s sister had died in the back of a 1964 Corvair ten years before I was born. She had not, according to family folklore, been wearing a seat belt. Or underwear. “She’s still just eighteen years old, can you believe it?”

“You . . . Why? How?” One-syllable words were becoming my specialty.

“Well, I don’t know,” my mother said. “I suppose it’s just an inborn talent, you know, like being able to roll your tongue into a circle.” And she did just that, to show what she meant. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Maxie trying, too. She couldn’t do it. Mom looked at me. “You mean you can only see the two here?” she asked.

My head was starting to hurt again. I was having bucket flashbacks. “They’re the only ones I’ve seen,” I confirmed.

“So far,” Maxie interjected. Thanks, Maxie.

“Don’t feel bad, Alison,” Mom said. “I’m sure you’ll see more. There aren’t that many of the poor dears around the Jersey Shore. I’m told there are more in places like Chicago, but those are mostly gangsters.”

“But you never told me,” I said. I was already sitting on the floor, but lying down was starting to look like a really good option. Maxie hovered about halfway between the floor and ceiling. Mom had the lawn chair. That Barcalounger was starting to sound even more attractive.

Mom closed her eyes and raised her eyebrows in an expression that said, “What do you want from me?” “When you were a little girl, I looked for signs that you could see them, too,” she said. “But you couldn’t, so I didn’t want to scare you. And after you got older, well, there didn’t seem to be a point to letting you know. Why make you feel bad?”

“You’ve been here before,” I said. “You’ve stood in this very room, when Maxie and Paul were here, and you didn’t so much as blink.”

Mom pursed her lips. “Well, of course not. I’ve had a lifetime of practicing just acting natural when anyone else was around. When Melissa first told me what she was seeing, she didn’t really understand it, but we agreed it was best not to say anything to you. You know how you are when things are just a little off, Ally. But now you’ve gotten the ability, too! I
knew
you could do it—you’re so smart!” She beamed in Maxie’s direction. “Isn’t she amazing?” my mother asked.

“That’s not the word I’d use,” Maxie answered, hovering up out of my arm’s reach.

But I was just now comprehending what Mom had just told me. “Melissa!” I said. “You knew Melissa could see ghosts, and you didn’t say anything to me?”

Mom looked a little contrite, like a little girl who’d been caught in a white lie. “Well, now, Melissa and I ran into a lovely Civil War veteran when Melissa was just a tiny girl, and I realized she’d inherited the gift. But we both knew you wouldn’t understand.”

“I’m her mother!”

“And if she’d told you then that she could see and talk to ghosts . . .”

I admitted it: “I’d have taken her to a team of therapists.”

“And if I’d told you I could, too?”

“I’d have taken
me
to a team of therapists.”

“Exactly,” Mom agreed, gleeful at my brilliance in picking up her meaning. “So Melissa came to me, and I told her I could see them, too, and what a special thing it could be for us. I thought it had skipped a generation—you know, my mother couldn’t see spirits sitting right next to her on the subway—but now you’ve developed the ability, too. Isn’t that wonderful?”

“It only happened because your close buddy here dropped a bucket of compound on my head,” I told Mom.

Mom took on a stern expression. “Was that you, Maxine? That was very wrong of you, you know. You could have hurt Alison very seriously.”

Maxie, to my amazement, dropped her head in what appeared to be genuine remorse. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Kerby,” she intoned.

But Mom had bigger fish to fry. She turned to face me. “Now, you tell me exactly what’s going on and why someone is sending you strange notes in ring cases to my house.”

So I told her everything—how Paul had asked me to find out who killed him and Maxie (“My goodness!” was my mother’s reaction); why I’d agreed to do so after getting the first threatening e-mail (“Oh, no!”); how I’d broken into Terry Wright’s office and found her body (“Alison, didn’t I bring you up better than that?”); and why I suspected Adam Morris might be involved (“Son of a bitch.”). You don’t mess with my mother’s daughter and expect Loretta to remain ladylike.

“So you think this is someone’s way of threatening you through me?” Mom asked when I’d concluded.

“That’s right.”

Mom smiled a tight, malicious smile. “They don’t know who they’re dealing with, do they?” she said.

I looked at my mother with a different kind of respect than I’d ever had for her before—a fearful kind. “No, ma’am,” I said.

She rubbed her hands together. No, seriously. “We need to mobilize,” she said. “Alison, where is the other ghost—the young man—right now?”

I looked at Maxie. “I’ll find out,” she said, and vanished into the kitchen wall. I was awed at Mom’s ability to command obedience from the otherwise uncontrollable.

Once Maxie vanished, Mom’s tone turned confidential. “She’s a nice girl, but you can’t depend on her,” she told me, gesturing in Maxie’s previous direction. “But the young man, he’s very dependable. And I
was
wondering why you never answered when he spoke to you; it makes sense now. If only you’d known him when he was alive.”

I decided to redirect the conversation before it got even weirder. “The thing we have to do above all else,” I told Mom, “is to make sure Melissa is always safe.”

“You bet,” she answered. And her look told me she’d already thought of that.

Maxie appeared through the floor, dragging Paul behind her. “He was in the basement,” she dutifully reported to Mom.

“I’m tired of looking at the other rooms,” he said. “Hello, Mrs. Kerby. You know, you really should have said something to us before.”

“That would have been impolite to Alison. Paul, is it? Well, listen up,” Mom said. “You’ve gotten my Alison into a very difficult situation, so you bear some responsibility here. You’re going to be in charge of security.”