The Thrill of the Haunt (13 page)

“I haven’t heard from Everett for five years,” said Brenda
Leskanik late the next morning. We were sitting on a deck overlooking Route 18 North in Old Bridge. Brenda, when I called, had said there wasn’t much to tell but agreed to talk to me if I came to her, which I was happy to do. But she didn’t want to meet in her home. “A public place,” she’d said. “Everett is a touchy subject.”

The restaurant where we’d met, Bernardo’s Slice of Heaven, was normally a pizza place with a little twist of new cuisine. But in the late mornings and afternoons, Bernardo’s was essentially a coffee shop, and the patio (really a rooftop) was the outdoor seating area, where she and I were sipping coffees. I was avoiding the thought of a chocolate chip muffin that had been calling to me at the counter when we ordered. The urge to go back downstairs and rescue it from its captivity was strong.

I had decided, after not mentioning the call from Helen to anyone in the house and sleeping on it for a night, that I was under no obligation to follow up on her demand that I investigate Joyce Kinsler’s death. Helen hadn’t hired me for that, and I hadn’t accepted the case. I didn’t have to do it. It felt great.

“Did you know what had happened to him?” I asked. “About his homelessness?”

“I knew,” she said flatly. Brenda was a woman in her forties who had never been beautiful but had a look that elicited respect first. She wasn’t severe, didn’t intimidate, but her military training certainly came through in her every word and gesture. “At first I tried to help out, you know, find out where he was and offer to give him some money, but he wouldn’t take it. Said it was bad enough he couldn’t give me child support.”

“I heard you left the Army because you were pregnant,” I said. “They don’t require that, do they?”

Brenda shook her head, but she clearly wasn’t happy about the question. “No, they can’t do that,” she said. “They just make it clear that it’ll be so much more difficult to raise a baby if you’re in the service, and then they let you make the choice. I made the choice to leave. Frankly, I was ready to get out anyway.”

“Why?”

She shrugged. “Not everyone is a career soldier. I got into it to pay for college, and when I got out, I had enough money for that. I also had a husband and a son. I ended up working a job and studying at night, but I never got to see my son. Left school without the BA, but I had an associate’s degree and that was enough to get me onto a management track at one of the chain stores at the mall. Got me and Randy health benefits, things the Army didn’t offer after I got out.”

“Randy is your son?” I asked.

Brenda closed her eyes for a moment. “Randy
was
my son. He passed away seven years ago.”

Why hadn’t Maxie found that? She’d said something was odd about Randy’s records, but she couldn’t figure out what. “I’m so sorry,” I said.

Brenda shook her head. “There’s no way you could have known. Randy developed a drug problem in high school, left home, didn’t want to have anything to do with us.”

“What happened?”

“Drugs,” she said, “then a motorcycle accident. He ended up at the bottom of a ravine near an offshoot of the Passaic River. The bike was so smashed, they could’ve fit it into the trunk of a car. A small car.”

Brenda looked so shaken, I didn’t have the heart to ask more. “It must be incredibly hard for you.”

She sniffed a little but looked at me with clear eyes. “The fact is, it’s not that much different than when he left. Sometimes I have to remind myself of what happened.”

“What happened to split you and Everett up?” I asked, changing the subject. “You and he met in the Army. He must have been impressive enough for you to marry him. How did he end up homeless?”

“Everett was
very
impressive when I met him,” Brenda told me. “He wasn’t like the other guys in our outfit. Didn’t come across as all kinds of macho frat boy when everybody knew we were all scared to death every single day. He was a real human being, you know? Just happened to be carrying a rifle and dressed in uniform. That made an impression on me over there.”

“It wasn’t the same when you got back?” The wind was picking up, but it didn’t look like it would rain anytime soon. The breeze on the rooftop actually felt good, and the smell from the kitchen, where no doubt more chocolate chip muffins were being baked, was quite wonderful.

“No,” Brenda said. “It wasn’t the same. Well, that’s not true. It was the same—or he was the same—for a while. He was still Everett. He still treated me like a person and not a different species. That happens in the service, you know, women are sized up on the first pass, and they’re either the ones guys want or, you know, not. Everett wasn’t ever like that. He always related to me as Brenda.”

“So what changed?” I was hoping Paul would make sense of all this from the recording I’d informed Brenda I was making. It was just as well she’d agreed to it—the wind up here would have made a secret recording from inside my tote bag pretty much unintelligible.

“I’m not sure. Everett started telling me about people talking to him. People I couldn’t see. People who weren’t there. I figure he’d had a schizophrenic break somewhere along the line, but he was never diagnosed because he refused to go see a doctor.” Brenda was dry-eyed and absolutely steady relating this; she wasn’t happy about what had happened to Everett, but it was so far back in the past that she was no longer shaken by it. He wasn’t her husband any longer, and now he was dead. It was sad, but it wasn’t going to touch her. Not anymore.

“He heard voices?” Suddenly this story was hitting a little too close to home.

Brenda nodded slowly. “He came home one day from work and said he’d heard someone talking to him when no one was there. Said he didn’t understand it, but he figured he’d better listen to the voice, like in that movie where the baseball gods talk to Kevin Costner.”

“Field of Dreams
,
”
I said. Like that was the important part.

“Yeah. And the voice was telling him to quit his job and go follow his dream in life.”

I waited, but that was all Brenda said. “What was his dream in life?” I asked.

“That was just the thing. He didn’t have one.” She shrugged.

“How old was your son then?” I asked. It was a painful subject I was sure, but I knew Paul would ask me later, so I pushed on through.

“Maybe eleven or twelve. It was the last year Everett was living with us, so I guess that’s about right.” Brenda looked off into the distance as if there was something there other than a highway with cars going by. Maybe there was.

“Do you think . . . I’m sorry, but I have no other way to put this . . . do you think that maybe that was when things with Randy started to go in the wrong direction?” I hated myself for asking, but it might lead to something. Okay, so I was grasping at straws, but I really didn’t see Brenda as the killer and I needed a theory.

“Yes,” she answered in choked tones. “It certainly didn’t help. That’s such a pivotal age anyway.”

“Did Everett say whether he ever saw anyone, or was it just a voice? Voices?”

“There was more than one voice, for sure, at least two and maybe more,” Brenda said, still staring into the past and not focusing on me at all.

“Besides telling him to quit his job, what did they say?” I asked.

Brenda blinked, finally seeming to remember I was there, and looked into my eyes. “I guess they told him to leave Randy and me,” she said.

“I bet that made you mad,” I said.

Brenda didn’t acknowledge the implication. “It sure did,” she said.

• • •

“You froze me out,” Paul said.

“I took a little time to gather my thoughts, that’s all,” I told him. “Look, I realize the investigations are very important to you, but the fact is, they can be dangerous to me and there are still things that people can do to hurt me. I try to avoid those whenever possible.”

“And the Dave Boffice case?” he asked. “That’s dangerous?”

“Ask Joyce Kinsler.”

“I’ve tried,” Paul answered. “I haven’t had any luck yet.”

We were in the den, with no guests around at the moment, although at least Cybill would be back after lunch. The two couples were both going on car trips; Tom and Libby Hill to the Seaside boardwalk—what was left of it—and Harry and Beth Rosen to see Lucy the Margate Elephant, one of the few attractions in the area undamaged by the storm: a six-story wooden elephant you have to see to believe. Harry and Beth, in an attempt to believe it, were going to see it.

“I understand it’s scary to see a woman dead like that,” Paul said, doing his best to be reasonable. “But that doesn’t mean you should quit the case.”

“I’m not
quitting
the case,” I said, doing absolutely nothing to appear reasonable. “I’m done with the case because there is no case. Dave Boffice is not cheating on his wife with Joyce Kinsler. I was hired to find out, and I found out. Where do I send the bill?”

“Helen called and said she wanted you to find out what happened to Joyce, and find out quickly,” Paul countered. “If you’re not going to do that, as a
professional,
you should at least call and let her hire someone else.”

“Consider it done,” I said. I even intended to do so.

“All right,” Paul answered, but he didn’t appear to think it was even a little right. “What about Everett Sandheim?”

I probably scowled. I felt like I scowled. “That one’s proving tricky,” I told him honestly. “There are a lot of directions to go in, and I don’t know which one’s best.”

“What about the window?” Paul asked.

“The window?” The answering-with-questions had become a reflex.

“The men’s washroom window at the gas station,” Paul answered. “You were supposed to find out whether it was large enough . . .”

“Why can’t I just measure the window?” I said.

Paul stopped floating, was completely still, and looked at me. “What?”

“Why can’t I just measure the window? Why do I have to go through it?”

Before he could answer, my cell phone vibrated in my pocket, and I pulled it out. The number wasn’t one I recognized, but it was local, so I answered it.

“Ms. Kerby?” the caller said. I knew that voice. From where did I know that voice?

“Who’s calling?” I asked. I’m not admitting to anything until I know whether the person on the other end of the conversation is a raving maniac. It’s a rule I have.

“Detective Sprayne of the Eatontown Police Department.” Oh, yeah.
That
was where I knew that voice.

“What can I do for you, Detective?” I asked.

“I have some more questions about Joyce Kinsler,” he said. “Can we meet for coffee?”

More coffee. So I’d sleep less tonight; what the heck.

He gave me the name of a diner near the Eatontown police station, and I agreed to meet him there in twenty minutes.

“I have to make this quick,” I told Sprayne when I arrived. “I have to pick my daughter up from school in an hour.”

“You have a daughter?”

I was aware he knew that already; he was making small talk. “Quick,” I reminded him.

“Okay,” Sprayne said. “Here’s the thing. We don’t think Kinsler hanged herself.”

I took a breath. “Because there was nothing under her feet. Nothing for her to jump off of.”

Sprayne’s eyes widened, and he tilted his head in respect. “Very good. The only person we’re sure was at the scene anytime around when Kinsler died was your pal Dave Boffice,” Sprayne said. “And you, of course. But I’ve done some checking, and you don’t have a motive for killing Joyce Kinsler.”

“That’s sweet, Detective,” I said. “I feel so much better.” Then it hit me—had he researched me beyond what his iPad had told him at the scene? “What do you mean, you’ve done some checking? On me?”

He pulled a reporter’s notebook from his inside pocket and opened it to a page. “You are the owner of a bed-and-breakfast in Harbor Haven,” he began.

“It’s a guesthouse. I don’t serve breakfast.” It’s become a knee-jerk response at this point.

“Fine. A guesthouse, at 123 Seafront Avenue. There are rumors your guesthouse is haunted. You have an eleven-year-old daughter named Melissa who is in the fifth grade at John F. Kennedy elementary school in Harbor Haven.”

“You were just pretending to be surprised I had a daughter,” I said.

“People like it when you ask about their kids,” he said. “You are . . . let’s say in your late thirties, were once married to a Steven Randell, ended in divorce. You got your private investigator’s license about two and a half years ago but don’t use it much. You’re currently dating a guy who works in a paint store.”

“He owns the paint store, and where did you get
that
from?”

Sprayne smiled. It wasn’t exactly kind, but it had that bad-boy quality that some women (like Maxie, for example) find appealing. “You told me,” he said.

Oh, yeah.

“Great. So you’ve researched me. I appreciate your leaving out my weight and how many times per week I change my sheets.” The irritation in my voice sounded real, but it felt fake. I can’t explain it.

“I can look those up if you want me to,” he said playfully.