Night of the Living Deed (27 page)

Madeline Preston’s head was almost all the way inside the hole. “My goodness,” she said, her voice muffled. “How will you fix this one, dear?”

For a second, I thought she was asking her husband, and that was strange enough. It was even more discomfiting when I realized she was addressing me. “We’re working on a few ideas,” I said. “Maybe a patch.”

“A patch?” David asked. “What’s the point of a patch? This is plaster. And the wall is curved. It’ll never patch right.” A great wit
and
an eternal optimist. All the good ones truly are taken.

“He’s right, dear,” Madeline said to me, again initiating an uncomfortable level of affection. “We had problems with these walls for years. You should save yourself the trouble and take them all down.”

Take my walls down?
All
of them? Was she on drugs?

I didn’t get a chance to ponder that further, or to inform my “guests” that I had no intention of doing anything so destructive, because there was knocking at the front door. Seemed my location was more popular than I realized—good news for my business plan.

Detective Anita McElone stood on my doorstep, straight and tall as always, looking just a little like Wonder Woman in less flamboyant clothing.

McElone looked at me, then at the group behind me, then back at me, and said in a loud, clear voice, “Alison Kerby, you are under arrest for the murder of Teresa L. Wright. You have the right to remain silent . . .”

I didn’t listen to the rest of my rights, since the hand-cuffing and being walked to the police car at the curb distracted me. But I did see to it that the door was locked after McElone ushered the mayor and the Prestons out.

If you’ve never sat handcuffed in the backseat of a police detective’s car, let me tell you, you haven’t missed a thing. Combining the view of the back of McElone’s head and the weight of the handcuffs (metal ones—she hadn’t used those plastic zip strips that seem to be all the rage on
COPS
—but at least they were in front of me and not behind my back), the trip had all the allure of . . . well, a ride to jail.

“This is ridiculous,” I told McElone, who didn’t answer. “What led you to this wacko conclusion?”

Again, no response. She didn’t even turn her head.

“You can hear me, right?” I asked. You never can be sure. But the detective made not a sound, and didn’t even seem to be watching me in the rearview mirror. How did she know I wasn’t going to open the door and flee?

“Look, Detective,” I said. “Maybe we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot. I’m just a single mom trying to make a living. I realize I’ve said some snarky things to you, and maybe I was out of line. But this is really going way over the top, don’t you think?”

Nothing.

“You know, I was just trying to be friendly, Detective. But if you’re too cold and robotic to see where I’m coming from, then fine, arrest me. I didn’t kill anybody; I’m trying to stay out of the killer’s way myself. And as a public employee, someone whose salary we taxpayers subsidize without complaint, you should realize . . .”

McElone sighed loudly, and pulled over to the side of the road. She stopped the car.

“What the hell is this all about?” I asked.

She got up, opened the car door and got out of the car. Then she reached over and opened the door in the back, the one on the driver’s side.

The one where I was sitting.

“Hey, look, if that taxpayer crack was insulting, you have to remember I’m under a certain amount of stress here.”

Without uttering a word, McElone, her face a portrait of irritation, reached for me. I gasped.

Especially when she unlocked my handcuffs and motioned me out of the car.

Rubbing my wrists (more because I had seen it in the movies than out of any actual discomfort), I stayed in my seat and stammered, “Um, Detective, I don’t want to seem rude or anything, but you have a good twenty pounds on me, and you’re probably trained in, you know, martial arts or subduing perpetrators and things like that. I’m not really interested in fighting you. . . .”

“Oh for goodness’s sake, get out of the car,” McElone said.

So I got out of the car.

“You got a cell phone?” she asked.

Baffled, I nodded that I did.

“Do you have someone you can call for a ride?” McElone continued.

What sort of trick was this? “My mother,” I offered. Always lead with a mother when you’re going for sympathy. “Why?”

“Because I’m leaving you here. Call your mother and get a ride. Go anywhere but back to that house, okay? Don’t go home for at least a few hours.”

I narrowed my eyes in the honest belief that I wasn’t seeing what I was seeing or hearing what I was hearing. I would have narrowed my ears, too, but there are limits to being human. “What are you talking about?” I asked.

“I’m releasing you. We have insufficient evidence. Go away. Get your daughter from school. Take her out for a pizza. But don’t go back to your house for a while. Tomorrow would be even better.” McElone closed the car door behind me and turned toward the front.

“What are you
talking
about?” I repeated. “A minute and a half ago I was Public Enemy Number One and now you’re dropping me off on the side of the road? How do you know I’m not a sociopathic killer planning her next strike even as we speak?”

“Let me get this straight,” McElone responded. “You
want
to be arrested?” She had a point. “Get yourself a ride and get out of here.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Why do I need a reason?” she asked, settling into the front seat of her unmarked police car. “I’m the police. Scram.” And she started the car up and drove away onto Oceanedge Avenue.

So I called Mom. “How’d you like to take your daughter and granddaughter out for a pizza?” I asked.

“As long as there’s no hot peppers,” she answered. “You know how they give me heartburn.”

I had time before Mom showed up, so I also called Phyllis, who had been asking when she could send a photographer for a feature she wanted to write about the guesthouse. I fudged and told her it would be a while longer before I could get the place into proper shape. I got the feeling Phyllis wasn’t so much interested in a feature as she was in getting background on me in case I turned up as another victim. But she was too classy to say so.

While I had her on the phone, I also asked her if she’d ever heard this rumor about a George Washington deed, because Phyllis, being a good editor, knows everything that ever happened in Harbor Haven. “Oh, that old story,” Phyllis said. Naturally. “That one’s been going around this town pretty much since Washington left. I don’t know if there’s any truth to it, but if there is, you could be in line for a lot of money.”

“If I live to see it. Tell me, how much of the legend is true?”

“Nobody knows; that’s why it’s a
legend
,” Phyllis answered. “As far as I know, nobody’s laid eyes on the document for at least a century.”

“Did Madeline and Dave Preston know the story?” I asked.

Phyllis snorted her amusement. “
Everybody’s
heard that one, kid,” she said. “But I don’t remember them ever taking much interest, tearing the house apart or anything. They were too busy with the nine kids.”

I felt it was unnecessary to tell her I had a team of ghosts examining every square inch of the place even as we spoke.

“Did you know anybody who was especially interested in the story? Someone who’d ask around about it? Anything like that?” Maybe that would point toward someone desperate enough to kill two people over a two-hundred-year-old piece of paper.

“As a matter of fact, there was someone,” Phyllis said after a minute. “He was
very
interested in the rumors, but it was before you bought the place.”

Finally, a clue! Paul would be thrilled. “Who?” I asked.

“The history teacher, Ned Barnes,” she answered. “Do you know him?”

“A little bit,” I said.

 

 

“So she arrested you, drove you two and a half miles, then
let you go?” Mom’s brow was furrowed. She was thinking hard.

We’d ended up at Dinner in a Pizza, a Harbor Haven pizzeria with what it considered a “novel” gimmick: Each pie was modeled around a traditional multicourse dinner. We’d gotten the chicken-salad-bread combo, which isn’t as odd as you’d think, but couldn’t hold a candle to good old pepperoni, in at least this one diner’s humble opinion. “I can’t explain it,” I told Mom.

Melissa had been listening carefully, but hadn’t said much, which I attributed to confusion over having cucumber slices and chicken on an otherwise normal slice of pizza. But she started chewing on her bottom lip—something she calls “scratching” it—a sure sign that she was thinking deeply.

“Aren’t police officers supposed to protect people?” she asked. It’s so cute what they teach fourth graders.

“Well, yes,” I answered. “That is part of the job. But sometimes when an officer is trying a little too hard . . .”

“How was Detective McElone protecting you by arresting you?” Melissa asked.

“Well, she wasn’t,” I said. “If she thought I was a criminal, then she’d be protecting
other
people by arresting me.”

Mom swallowed a bite of her slice (having removed the cucumbers and carrots, which she said “don’t happen in nature on a pizza”) and broke in. “I don’t think so,” she said. “I think maybe Melissa’s right: The detective
was
trying to protect you.”

“By putting me in handcuffs and shoving me into the back of a police car?” I asked. “Since when are you on
her
side?”

Mom pointed at me with the business end of her pizza slice. “She wanted you out of that house for a few hours. Suppose she thought something dangerous was going to happen there—like a bomb.”

It took keeping every muscle in my face perfectly still not to roll my eyes. “A bomb?” I asked, my voice dropping to James Earl Jones territory.

“A bomb,” Mom repeated. “Or maybe someone coming to search the house for this George Washington thing. Suppose she believes the killer is planning a return visit, and she wants to stake out the scene of the crime.”

“You have been watching
way
too much
CSI
,” I told my mother. “Stake out the scene of the crime? Who are you, David Caruso? McElone doesn’t like me, and she wants me to be guilty of something, but she must have gotten cold feet and realized she doesn’t have enough evidence to hold me, so she let me go.”

“Then why did she tell you to stay away from the house?” Melissa asked. I was being double-teamed by my mother and daughter. We middle-generation children always have it the worst.

“If she was trying to protect us so much, how come she arrested me but not the Prestons or the mayor?” I asked. “Wouldn’t they be in just as much danger at the house?”

Melissa chewed thoughtfully, which isn’t easy for a nine-year-old. “Well, didn’t you say they left the same time as you?” she asked.

“That’s it,” I told my mother and my daughter. “The two of you are splitting the bill. And I’m having dessert.”

“I don’t have any money,” Melissa protested. “I’m a kid.”

“Don’t worry,” her grandmother told her. “Your mom’s just joking.” She was wrong, of course, but it made Melissa feel better.

 

 

“We don’t need to stake out our own house,” I said to
Mom. “Paul and Maxie are already in there. They’ll tell us anything that goes on.”

And yet, here we all were, sitting in the Volvo wagon (Mom considered her 2006 Dodge Viper “too sporty” to be a stakeout vehicle). We were parked on the hill overlooking my colossal investment that would soon be surrounded by luxury condos and gain a reputation as the house where the crazy ghost-seeing lady lived with her equally insane daughter. It was possible I didn’t have the right attitude for the guesthouse business.

“But if the crooks run out past the sidewalk, they won’t be able to chase them,” Mom said. “We’re here as backup.”

Melissa nestled in the backseat. “I’m getting cold,” she said. “Can’t we turn the heat on?”

“If we turn the engine on, we’ll be tipping off the bad guys,” Mom said. “Don’t you have a blanket or something back there?”

“I dunno. I’ll look in the way back.” Melissa turned around and started rummaging through the controlled chaos that is the cargo area of my station wagon. “I have to get up for school tomorrow, you know.”

“If the house isn’t under attack in a little while, we’ll go inside, sweetie,” I said.

“What’ll happen to Maxie and Paul if a bomb goes off in there?” Mom asked.

“They’re already dead,” I reminded her. “The proper question is: What happens to
me
if a bomb goes off. . . . Will you get off this bomb thing, already?”