Night of the Living Deed (23 page)

Paul looked as if he’d been hit in the face unexpectedly—his eyes bulged and his lips retreated into his mouth. “Security?” he asked.

Maxie cocked an eyebrow. “He didn’t do such a hot job for me,” she said.

“Nonetheless, he has the experience and he has the time to devise strategy,” Mom went on, savoring her role as company commander. “Maxine . . .”

I did my best to giggle. “Maxine,” I said.

Maxie glared.

“Max
ine
,” Mom went on, choosing to ignore my juvenile disposition, “you’re going to be watching Melissa when Alison can’t be here. But also . . .”

“Wait a second!” I protested. “I’m the mother here—that’s
my
daughter you’re talking about.
I’ll
decide who watches her. And it’s not going to be
Maxine
!”

“Don’t be petty, Alison,” my mother admonished.

“I’m not being petty,” I said, dropping my tone to a normal conversational level. “Suppose there’s an emergency. What’s Maxie going to do? She can’t call nine-one-one.”

Mom put a finger to her lips. “That’s a good point,” she said.

Maxie’s eyebrows dropped to a V shape “Cell phone,” she said, and held out her hand. I didn’t move, but Mom handed over her own ancient model.

Maxie opened it, and mimed pushing buttons. “Nineone-one,” she said.

“Yeah, and what are you going to do when they answer?” I said. “Even if the police dispatcher has the gift, they’ll hear nothing.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Maxie said. “They send someone out whether they hear you or not.”

Paul, envious, shook his head. “You handle objects so easily,” he said to Maxie. “I’m still trying to pick up coins.”

“What else do I have to do?” Maxie said pointedly. “You’re always working on our ‘case.’ ”

“Very well, then,” said Mom, getting us back on task. “So Maxine will be watching Melissa when necessary. But she’ll also be doing research.”

Maxie looked like something suddenly smelled bad. “Research?”

Mom nodded. “Yes. We need to know about the ownership of this house since it was built, not just from before you, Maxine. It would be good if we knew when Adam Morris began buying up properties around here, to the day. And that would be available to anyone with access to the Internet.” Mom grinned. “Seeing as you’re so good at pushing buttons already.”

“I always did bad on research projects at school,” Maxie protested.

“Here’s your chance to improve,” Mom said, in a modified version of an adage I’d heard from her all my life: “Keep expanding your horizons, and you’ll do well.”

“What’s the point of improving?” Maxie whimpered. “I’m dead.”

“Oh sure, you can complain about the bad break you’ve gotten, or you can rise above it,” my mother told her. “You can moan and groan about your circumstances, or you can find new ways to be useful and happy. So you’re going to contribute, Maxine, and do you know why?”

“Because you’ll drive her crazy until she does,” I offered, ever the pupil with her hand raised high.

“Exactly,” Mom said.

“Okay,” Maxie agreed with a certain tone of inevitability.

Paul smiled and looked in Mom’s direction. “But security—and by that I assume you mean concentrating on keeping Alison and Melissa safe from whoever is behind our deaths—isn’t all I’m good for, Mrs. Kerby,” he said. “I’ve been directing the investigation through Alison, giving her assignments and overseeing her progress.”

“And how’s that been going so far?” Mom asked.

“Actually, fairly well. We don’t know how the puzzle fits together yet, but we have a good number of pieces now.”

“I don’t know . . .” Mom said.

“Mom,” I started. “I appreciate your taking charge, but let’s keep in mind that this is my problem and Paul is helping me solve it. Paul knows his business. Don’t go crazy being General MacArthur here.”

Mom smiled broadly. “You’re so smart,” she said.

“Why didn’t you tell me that Grandma could see Paul and Maxie, too?” I asked Melissa as she tied her left sneaker the next morning. Ned Barnes was taking the class on a field trip to the Thomas Edison National Historical Park (actually the site of Edison’s lab), yes on a Sunday, and we needed to be out the door. Ten minutes ago.

She looked up quickly, worried at being caught and wondering what the punishment was going to be. Salad for lunch every day? Extra leaf raking in the admittedly huge backyard? Or something really awful, like a week without her iPod?

“You’re not in trouble,” I assured her. “I just want to know why, after it was clear I could see Paul and Maxie, you didn’t mention to me that your grandmother and you have been talking to deceased strangers behind my back for years.”

Melissa went back to tying her sneaker. “I was four or five before I could figure out what was going on.”

“And you never told me?” I said. Yes, I was going to inflict guilt if possible. I’m a mother. It’s not so much part of the job as a perk.

“I tried,” she answered. “Remember when I told you there was a man who lived in my bedroom closet in the old house?”

“Well, yeah, but all kids think . . .”

“His name was Albert Henderson, and he was a forklift operator for twenty years before his no-good wife ran off with the dentist down the block and Albert drank himself to death.”

I considered that. “I thought you had a vivid imagination.”

Melissa sent a look my way that spoke encyclopedias. “I was five,” she said.

I shut up. For a moment. “Well, what about Grandma? Just recently? You knew I could see the ghosts, and you knew
she
could see the ghosts, but you didn’t say anything. How about that?”

“Didn’t you teach me that keeping a secret was a sacred trust?”

“Yeah, except when you told half the fourth grade we had ghosts in our house. Now everybody thinks I’m weird.”

She stood up. “Everybody already thought you were weird, Mom,” my daughter told me. “Marlee Murphy’s mom told her to stay away from our house, and I didn’t even invite her here.” Kerin Murphy strikes again.

We got into the station wagon and I pulled out of the driveway. “The thing is, Liss, I’m going to be trying to get people to come stay at our house starting next spring. And it’s going to be bad for business if they think scary ghosts are living there, even if they can’t see them.”

“But Maxie and Paul aren’t scary ghosts.” Sometimes, Melissa doesn’t converse so much as point out how you’re wrong. It’s her father’s genes that make her do that.

“The people renting rooms don’t know that,” I said.

“Maybe you should tell them.”

I drove toward her school in silence for a while. It’s demoralizing to be constantly shown up by a nine-year-old.

Finally I said, “So, what are you going to be for Halloween?” We were only five days away, counting today.

“We’re all going together: Me, Wendy, Clarice, Ron and Marlee.”

“Marlee Murphy? I thought you didn’t like her.”

“I don’t, but Clarice does. So I think our costumes are going to be a theme thing.”

Melissa and her friends had been talking about going trick-or-treating as a group, and now they were going to be dressing as various characters in a story. “Harry Potter?” I guessed.

“I think
Star Trek
.”

“Are you Uhura?”

“Spock.” It figured.

“What do you need for the costume?” I asked.

Melissa put on a show of thinking about it, although I was sure she had it all worked out in her head. “A blue t-shirt, black pants, black hair dye . . .”

“You’re not dying your hair. I’ll find a wig.”

She rolled her eyes in my direction. “Black sneakers and pointy ears.”

“It’s all easy except the ears,” I said. “That’s going to take a little thought. I’ll see what I can come up with. Maybe construction paper or felt.”

“I was thinking we could get some fake ears at the Halloween store,” Melissa said, ending all debate.

When we finally reached the John F. Kennedy Elementary School, I felt lucky to have survived the trip with a shred of self-esteem intact. Melissa got out of the car without giving me a kiss like she would have at home (can’t be seen by the peers, you know) and hefted her little backpack onto her little shoulders. Having kids makes you want to cry at odd moments. But I’m a champ at controlling it.

“Bye, Mom.” And she was off. I wondered if she’d be that nonchalant when it was time to leave for college. Probably. But I’d be bawling my eyes out.

“You’re picturing her leaving for college.” Ned Barnes was leaning in my driver’s side window. “I know the look.”

“Busted,” I said. “But she was a baby only ten minutes ago.”

“That’s how it works. I’ve only been teaching here three years, and some of the kids I used to teach are already taller than me.”

“You’re a history teacher,” I reminded him, because clearly he thought he was a philosopher. “You’re supposed to understand the march of time.”

“Speaking of history,” he said, “I’ve been doing a little research into your house and George Washington’s interest in your property.”

That brought me out of my melancholic reverie. “Ooh, tell me!” I said.

“Uh-uh.”

“Whaddaya mean, uh-uh?” I asked.

Ned smiled a smile that made me warm in a number of interesting places. “I’ll tell you over dinner tonight.”

“Tonight? I thought we were going out Tuesday night.”

“We are,” Ned said, “but this information can’t wait. Besides, my car’s back, and I want to see what you’ve been doing with that house.”

It was a tough choice: sanding floors versus dinner with a very cute guy who could tell me mysterious things about the house I lived in. I’d have to think that one over.

“Sounds good,” I said.

We decided to meet at the house so Ned could finally see it, and then he headed into the school and I pointed my station wagon in the direction of said enormous-drain-on-my-bank-account-that-everybody-seemed-interested-in-but-appeared-to-be-decreasing-in-value-by-the-minute. It was an interesting, if frustrating, contradiction.

I spent some of the morning preparing the floors for sanding and putting up plastic sheeting in the dining room, since I’d be doing that floor first. Maxie watched with mild interest for a while, complaining that she’d prefer a darker stain than the one I was preparing to use, then left to do the research Mom had assigned to her, grumbling all the way.

Paul appeared up through the floor almost immediately after Maxie left. I think they might have been getting on each other’s nerves after so much time cooped up together; they rarely showed up in the same room at the same time anymore.

“Maxie’s been researching Adam Morris on the Internet,” he said as soon as his head was all the way into the room.

“Good morning to you, too,” I responded. “What has she found out?”

“We don’t know why he didn’t buy the house from the Prestons,” Paul said. He was showing an atypical lack of charm this morning. “Maxie says he made an offer to her right after she moved in, but she was adamant, and he didn’t bother again. With the Prestons, we only know what David Preston said, and he’s not a trustworthy witness.”

“So what’s our plan from here?” I asked.

“I don’t know.” That was
it
?

“What’s bugging your deceased butt this morning?” I asked Paul, but he just scowled and remained silent. Fine.

“Nothing,” he said after a very long pause.

“You sound like Melissa.”

“No, I don’t.” Wow, he was going to be a lot of fun today. But I’d learned by now that Paul abhorred silence, and if I waited long enough, he’d eventually say whatever it was on his mind.

“All right,” he finally spit out. “I don’t think you should see this Barnes fellow anymore.”

I spent a good long moment blinking. It didn’t do any good, but I couldn’t think of any other reaction to that outburst. “I’m sorry?” I asked.

“I don’t think he’s trustworthy,” Paul continued. “He seems to be interested in you only because you own this house, and we know that whoever is threatening you has an unusual fixation on this house.”

That was even more preposterous. “You’re saying you think
Ned
is the person behind the threats? You think
he
killed you and Maxie? Did either of you even know him when you were alive?”

Paul turned his head away. “No,” he said. “But I don’t trust his motives.”

Suddenly it dawned on me, and I grinned without meaning to. “You’re jealous,” I told him.

“I am not.” But Paul still wouldn’t look me in the eye.

“You
are
—you’re jealous of Ned. You don’t want me to be interested in him because . . . It’s flattering, really, Paul, but you have to understand, I have my daughter to think about. It’s important that the only men I date are the ones with a pulse.”