The Thrill of the Haunt (4 page)

“So let me get this straight,” Josh Kaplan said. “This woman
wants you to catch her husband cheating so he
won’t
divorce her?”

“That’s about the size of it,” I answered.

Josh and I have known each other since we were kids, but we’d only recently reconnected. We’d lost touch around the time we both graduated high school. That, for me, was two colleges, one marriage, three jobs and a daughter ago. For him, it was one college, one graduate program and then a decision to become his grandfather’s partner in the paint business. A move that had no doubt thrilled his parents, whom I still had not met, because they lived in Arizona.

We began dating in January, and now it was May. We were taking things very,
very
slowly, partly because I have an eleven-year-old daughter, partly because he works absurdly long hours most days and weekends as well, as do I. If I were being honest, I’d been keeping things . . . slow . . . because it felt weird to have a real relationship with someone without telling him about the two sort-of-dead spirits inhabiting my guesthouse.

He knows about the Senior Plus tours and the rumors around town. I’ve never exactly lied to him about the whole ghost thing, but I might have implied that it’s a marketing tool—largely by mentioning the value of a reputation for something different in the house as a business plan, whenever the subject came up.

Dating is complicated when you have dead people in your house.

He also knows I’m a private investigator and finds that part of my work fascinating, although this was the first case I’d taken on in a while.

Josh had been good-natured about my seemingly glacial approach to dating and hadn’t pushed the matter. I hadn’t even been to his apartment, which I was told was on the third floor of a building in Asbury Park and had escaped storm damage. Many others were not as lucky.

We were standing at the entrance to my former game room, looking at the white paneling and the numerous windows. The pool table, not yet discarded (I just didn’t have the heart, and Mom and Liss liked to play occasionally), was covered with a drop cloth from the painting process.

Most of the guests—in fact, all of them except Cybill—were out scouting the town and finding themselves some dinner, in the restaurants I had recommended, I hoped. Cybill was up in her room; I knew because I had asked Maxie to keep an eye on her. That whole exorcist routine had gotten me nervous, so I hadn’t mentioned it to the ghosts, but I made it a point to know when Cybill was nearby. Just to be sure I didn’t act too “ghosty” with people who, to the naked eye, weren’t there.

In fact, my father was hovering near the ceiling right now, tilting his head from side to side to get different perspectives on the room. I half expected him to hold up his hands as a frame, like the directors in old movies used to do. Dad knew his way around a renovation, and he was weighing my options. But it was still weird to see him like this; I’d never known Paul and Maxie when they were alive, so watching them hover around like loose Mylar balloons wasn’t nearly as strange as seeing my dad behave that way. Even after a few months, I wasn’t comfortable with the sight.

“You don’t want a bar,” he said mostly to himself. “It’s too big a room, and besides, you have no liquor license.” All of which was true.

“It would be way too expensive to put in a bowling alley,” Dad said, and then waved a hand at his own thought. “A bowling alley,” he scoffed at himself.

“That’s odd,” Josh said.

Dad looked down at the sound of his voice. Had Josh sensed someone else was in the room? But Dad smiled; he liked Josh. He’d known him from Madison Paint since both Josh and I were in grade school. Our new arrangement was . . . somewhat different. Then again, maybe not that much.

“What’s odd?” I asked.

Josh looked at me funny. Not ha-ha funny. “That she doesn’t want a divorce, but she wants you to track down her husband and the girlfriend.” Oh, yeah.

“Clients want things they want; it’s not my job to make moral judgments.” That was something Paul had told me once, and he had sounded roughly as unconvincing as I did saying it to Josh.

“I’m not making a moral judgment,” he said. “I’m trying to figure out the motivation. He’s having an affair, yet she wants to stay married? Is their marriage really that competitive? That she’d want to have something to hang over his head just so she could control him?”

“True loves takes many different forms,” my father said. Dad thinks of Josh as family and wants me to marry him. Dad is a million wonderful things, but subtle is not one of them. The fact that neither Josh nor I had come within driving distance of the subject was, apparently, irrelevant.

“I won’t know until I start investigating,” I said. “If I have free time tomorrow, I’ll try to follow Dave Boffice on his lunch hour to see if there’s anything fishy.”

“His lunch hour?” Josh asked.

“Helen was very specific. Dave is a creature of habit, and she is convinced that he’s meeting Joyce Kinsler during his lunch hour. So I’ll get in the car and follow him.”

“Ooh,” Josh said. “A stakeout.”

“I hope not,” I said. “They’re really boring, and you have to make sure you don’t need a bathroom.” I read that in a detective novel once.

“Next time you need to be on a stakeout, you should call me,” Josh suggested. “I could watch while you find a ladies’ room.”

“Man, are you romantic,” I said.

He snuggled up a little behind me and kissed my neck. “In my own way.”

I’m not sure if it was weirder that my father was watching or that he seemed pleased. Either way, I was relieved when the doorbell rang. “Gotta go see who that is,” I said. “Probably one of the guests forgot their key.” I headed for the front door, despite Maxie’s hovering around the ceiling and Melissa’s (who has never missed a doorbell ring in her life) getting there ahead of me. Once I saw who it was, though, I wished I had stayed in the game room and let Dad watch Josh kiss my neck. Well, maybe not, but I wasn’t happy.

Kerin Murphy was standing on my doorstep looking less perky than I’d ever seen her. Under normal circumstances, that wouldn’t have bothered me so much—Kerin could use a few less pounds of perky per square inch—but she appeared to have brought half the members of the Harbor Haven PTSO with her. They were all looking just as non-perky as Kerin, and all the anti-perk seemed to be directed at me.

“Mrs. Murphy is here,” Melissa told me.

“No kidding.” It was out before I could stop it.

“Alison.” Apparently Kerin was showing off that she remembered my name. The posse behind her—honestly, they really looked like they should be carrying torches and pitchforks—just glowered.

“Hello, Kerin,” I said as Josh walked in behind me. I saw Paul arrive from the basement, as well. Thank goodness, most of the guests were out; I was starting to feel crowded. “Can I help you ladies with something? Would you like to come in?”

One of the women behind Kerin, whom I recognized as Anabel’s mom, looked positively petrified at the very thought. “I’m not going in,” she muttered. A couple of the others nodded in agreement.

“What’s going on?” Josh said quietly in my right ear.

“It’s the ghost-lady thing,” I groaned back. I took a deep breath and looked at the mob—which to be fair was only about six women—on my front porch. “I’ll come out there, then,” I said and stepped forward. I gave Liss a look indicating that she should stay inside, and she gave me one that indicated she would no doubt hear everything through the window anyway. Plus, Maxie, who was half in/half out of the house, could pass on the action like a play-by-play announcer.

Paul came all the way out with me, as did Josh, who leaned against a porch post, one foot crossed in front of the other, looking casual. I was sure he’d help out if there was trouble, but by his appearance, you’d think he was completely unconcerned and probably not even listening.

Kerin looked at Josh but didn’t ask who he was, and I didn’t volunteer. I knew girls like her in high school, and they were the ones who tended to steal the good boyfriends.

“Is something wrong?” I asked her. The idea was to get the conversation started so it could be over sooner. It’s always best to see the silver lining.

“Yes,” Kerin said. “Something is definitely wrong.”

I waited, but she didn’t elaborate. I guessed that she had planned this conversation in advance, and I was stuck in the role of straight woman, so I supplied her with the appropriate setup, again in the service of getting Kerin and her posse off my porch before the guests started returning. “What’s the problem?” I asked.

“You could have helped him, and you didn’t,” she said. “He asked you for help. I heard him.”

I thought back over the day. I had seen Kerin outside the Stud Muffin with . . . “Everett?” I asked. “You mean when Everett said he had a ghost following him?” That didn’t seem logical, but it was all I could think of; there wasn’t anyone else who had asked me for help around Kerin Murphy recently. Unless she’d been following me around and hiding in the shadows. I wouldn’t put it past her.

“Yes, of course, Everett,” said Anabel’s mom, who appeared to be serving in the capacity of Kerin’s sidekick in this particular melodrama. “You knew who she meant.” That sounded like an accusation, and the tone was starting to irritate me.

“You want me to throw some mud at her?” Maxie asked. “It’s no trouble.” I shook my head in the negative. After a second.

“Okay,” I said, trying to keep the edge off my voice. “I get it that Everett calls me the ghost lady. I know there are rumors around town about my house. I’ll take it from Everett because he has some problems. But I don’t think you ladies should listen to silly rumors. I’d like to think more of you than that.”

Kerin took another step forward, and for a moment, I actually thought she was going to take a swing at me. But what she said was more devastating than a punch (especially from Kerin, whom I seriously thought I could take in a fair fight).

“Everett is dead,” she said. “He was stabbed to death in the men’s room at the Fuel Pit gas station.”

I staggered back a step or two, and for a second I thought Josh was going to have to catch me, but I steadied myself. Paul’s eyes widened—I wasn’t sure if it was in surprise or interest in the crime. I felt the breath push its way out of me, and had to remind myself to inhale.

“That’s awful,” I said when I got my bearings again. “Poor Everett!”

“Sure, now it’s ‘poor Everett,’” said one of the women in the back of the group, which was starting to look more like a mob again. “Where were you when he needed you?”

“Me?”

Josh took a step in my direction. The great protector was going to put himself in harm’s way in the face of a marauding band of . . . soccer moms? It was a nice gesture, anyway.

“Maybe you need something stronger than mud,” Maxie said and ducked into the house before I could stop her.

“Of course, you,” Kerin answered. “You were the only one who could have saved him.”

“How do you figure that?” I asked. “I was nowhere near the men’s room at the Fuel Pit.” It occurred to me to say that I’d never been inside any men’s room, anywhere, but that wasn’t going to make me sound any more noble.

“Neither was anyone else,” Kerin said, and I think she was hiding a little smile at my expense. “He was alone in there.”

Maybe it was me, but I didn’t see how that made me culpable. “What has that got to do with Alison?” Josh asked. He’d clearly had enough of this kangaroo court.

“I said, no one was in the men’s room except Everett,” Kerin said, her tone insinuating that Josh must clearly have an IQ similar to that of shredded wheat. “He didn’t stab himself.”

“So?” I was glad Josh said it; I couldn’t figure the line of logic being pursued either.

“So, it’s obvious to you, isn’t it? A ghost killed him, right?”

That stunned pretty much everybody except Kerin and
her posse. Paul’s brow knit to the point that I thought he might not be able to smooth it out without a hot iron. Josh let out something similar to a laugh. I felt my mouth drop open and quickly closed it again, trying desperately to think of the proper withering response, while all my brain could come up with was “Wha?”

Naturally, that was the moment Maxie decided to zoom out of the house, through the front window, wearing a trench coat. The idea that she needed a trench coat to hide whatever she’d brought was not a pleasant one; for all I knew, Maxie had a submachine gun.

“A ghost?” I said, loudly enough to stop Maxie in her path. “You think a ghost killed Everett in the gas station men’s room?”

Maxie looked surprised and stopped her forward motion. “Whoa!” she said.

Paul’s eyes flickered back to what he approximates as life. “Get her to explain,” he said. “Find out why Everett couldn’t have stabbed himself.”

I bit my tongue for a second, just because what I really wanted to say to Kerin would not have helped the situation at all. Then I said, “That’s a real stretch. A homeless man dies of a stab wound, and you go straight to ghosts? You seriously believe there’s no human explanation for this? That it’s not possible Everett stabbed himself?”

“No,” Kerin answered without a mote of hesitation. “
I
don’t think it was a ghost, but we want answers. Everett was found with knife wounds in the men’s room, which was locked from the inside. But there was no knife. No trace of one.”

I waited, but there was nothing more. “So the only logical assumption based on that was a dead spirit took out some insane vendetta on Everett?”

“Do you have an explanation that makes more sense?” Anabel’s mom challenged me. “You’re the ghost lady.” And there it was.

“No. I am
not
the ghost lady,” I snapped. “I am the victim of vicious rumors around this town by people”—and here I’m afraid I chose to stare directly at Kerin—“who have decided that I’m responsible for their problems. It’s not true.” I searched the area for Senior Plus guests and found none, so I could go on. “There are no ghosts in my house.”

Technically, that was only a little false; while Dad was presumably still inside puzzling over my game room, Maxie and Paul were technically both
outside
the house. Paul frowned, but I couldn’t tell if it was because of what I’d said or because he was concentrating. Paul can be inscrutable.
I
can’t scrute him, anyway.

Josh, perhaps sensing the mood without understanding it, drew a little closer to me but didn’t say anything.

Maxie, however, glared at me. “Oh, own up to it,” she said with an edge in her voice. She stopped, like a thought had suddenly occurred to her. “Are you ashamed of us?” I couldn’t answer.

“Isn’t this the basis of your business?” Paul asked. “Don’t you
want
people to know there are people like us here?” I had no answer for him, either.

Melissa opened the front door and tried to look casual walking out of the house. She knew I’d instructed her to stay inside, but I had no doubt she’d been listening to the conversation. She looked concerned.

I bit my lower lip and gave Maxie a quick glance.

“What’s going on?” Melissa asked, as if she didn’t know.

“It seems that poor Everett passed away today,” I told my daughter, using a tone that she knew was not my natural cadence. I sounded like I was talking to a little kid, not a tween who was, in fact, smarter than me. “These ladies are here to collect for his burial arrangements. Can you bring me my checkbook, please?” Let’s see you squirm out of that one, Liss.

She didn’t get to answer immediately, because Kerin stepped a little closer. Josh stood up straighter but didn’t move. I knew Kerin wasn’t a physical threat so much as an annoyance, so my demeanor kept him from going all macho. I saw Maxie slip back inside the house with an irritated expression.

“We’re not here
just
to ask for money,” Kerin said. Her voice indicated she was playing along “for the sake of the child,” but “the child” wasn’t buying a word of it. People underestimate children all the time; being young doesn’t mean being stupid. “We’re here to ask your mommy for help.” I rest my case on the word
mommy
.

Maxie burst back through the door and floated behind Melissa. The two of them working together was rarely a good thing. “My help?” I asked Kerin. “I honestly don’t see how there’s much I can do beyond a contribution.” I turned back to my daughter. “Go inside and get my checkbook, won’t you?” I asked her again.

But Melissa brought a hand from behind her back and held out the item in question. “I brought your checkbook with me,” she said. “I thought they were collecting for a PTSO bake sale or something.” Nice move, Maxie. Keeping Melissa out here just because you knew I wanted her inside.

I took the checkbook but didn’t open it. Kerin smiled her chilly smile—the one everyone else thinks is ingratiating—and put a hand on her hip. “Before you write a check, Alison, we should come to an agreement. We’re here because we want you to find out who killed Everett.”

If I were a cartoon character, my jaw would have hit the porch floor, and Josh would have had to pick it up and hand it to me. As it was, I just stood there gaping for a moment, and he picked up the thread of conversation. “You want Alison to investigate this man’s death?” he asked. “Why?”

Kerin didn’t take her gaze off me. “Well, she’s a
private investigator
, isn’t she?” she hissed. Sarcasm dripped off her voice and formed a puddle on the floor. “Isn’t that what you’re supposed to ask an investigator to do?”

The others rattled their pitchforks—okay, so they fanned themselves; it was a warm night and they were in close quarters—while I regained the power of speech. “We have a very efficient police department in Harbor Haven,” I told Kerin. “You don’t need a private investigation. The public one will be very thorough, I’m sure.”

Kerin scoffed. “The police? An investigation into the death of a homeless man? I doubt they’ll spend ten minutes on it before they decide he died of exposure on a warm spring night, despite the loss of blood.” I flinched at the gory detail—Kerin had apparently lost sight of the fact that “the child” was here. Or more likely, she’d never actually cared. I knew Liss could handle it, but I took the opportunity to resent Kerin for not being more sensitive anyway. I was making a bid for a plaque in the Resentment Hall of Fame.

My daughter, I’m proud to say, did not flinch. Anabel’s mom, however, put her hand to her mouth as if to suppress the gag reflex.

Paul was looking interested. That was bad.

“Why do you really care?” I said, loud enough for the entire gathering to hear. “Who among you even knows Everett’s last name?”

They exchanged some confused looks, but Kerin didn’t move her eyes from mine. “Why?” she asked innocently. “Did
you
know it?”

Josh took a step closer to Melissa and me with a sly expression on his face. “If you want Alison to investigate professionally, you shouldn’t be asking her for a contribution,” he told Kerin. “You should be negotiating the fee she’s going to charge you.” I’ve liked Josh since the day I met him, when we had a very vigorous discussion on the merits of
Saved by the Bell
versus
The New Mickey Mouse Club
.

Surely the suggestion that the gathered minivan lynch mob pay me for my services would be enough to get them off my back. This group was tight with a buck, as I’d found out back when I’d petitioned the PTSO to subsidize a trip for our fourth-graders to visit the Newark Museum, where I happened to know that a land lease signed by George Washington himself would be on display. You’d have thought I’d asked them to donate all their blood to some Communist vampires (which would be a great band name, by the way). Don’t even get me started on attempts to procure Sandy relief contributions from this crowd—none of
their
homes had been seriously damaged, so they’d assumed the storm was “overhyped.” That’s a direct quote, but I don’t remember from which woman.

Indeed, Kerin looked positively blindsided by the idea. She stopped in mid-gesture, blinked, and opened her mouth without saying anything, which was probably a first since she’d graduated grade school.

During the resulting interim, Paul looked over at me and said, “We’re taking the case, aren’t we?” I practically caused myself a neck spasm not looking toward him. I was already looking into Helen Boffice’s marriage, basically as a favor to Paul. I did not feel obligated to relieve his boredom with a murder case as well, especially not one that would require me to have contact with Kerin Murphy.

So I was somewhat unprepared when Kerin, after looking back at her posse, said, “We’ll give you a thousand dollars.”

Well, that settled . . .
what
? Paul smiled from ear to ear. Josh looked a little confused, worried that he had somehow precipitated this unfortunate turn of events and probably wondering if this would put a complete halt to our glacially moving relationship. Maxie, of course, said, “You should definitely take it,” knowing it meant doing something I didn’t want to do.

Before I could even form a reply, Melissa, standing behind me, said, “Five thousand.”

I looked at her, then back at Kerin, whose eyes narrowed as her ingratiating smile evaporated. “Fifteen hundred,” she said.

From behind me: “Forty-five hundred.” I looked at my daughter again. It was like watching a really well-played tennis match, except I was playing the part of the net.

Kerin realized now that she was competing with a formidable opponent. “Two thousand,” she said. “Final offer.”

“Three thousand,” my daughter countered. “You need us.”

“Two thousand,” Kerin repeated. “Your mother”—
Mommy
now appeared to be a thing of the past—“is not the only investigator in the area.”

I was still watching Melissa, and she shrugged. “Fine,” she said. “Go get yourself one of the other ones. You said a ghost killed Everett. How many private detectives are going to go along with that theory?” Aha, so she
had
been listening from inside!

“I did not say that,” Kerin said. “I said your mother would believe it.”

Melissa didn’t blink. “So go elsewhere,” she said.

Kerin, remembering now that this whole charade was about forcing me into a position that I would find uncomfortable, growled a little in the back of her throat. “Twenty-five hundred,” she rasped.

Melissa, cool as a cucumber. Or any other refrigerated food material. “Three. Thousand.”

Kerin did not consult her coconspirators but made a noise like
uch
before she said, “Fine. Three thousand. But only when we see
proof
.”

“Proof?” I asked. “I’m going on the record saying I’m
not
the ghost lady, there
are
no ghosts, and a ghost
didn’t
kill Everett. What kind of proof is it you want? Do
you
believe in ghosts, Kerin?”

Her attitude couldn’t have been more imperious if she were on the set of
Downton Abbey
. “Of course not,” she said.

“Then what are we talking about?”

“We’re talking about you and your house,” Kerin answered, her voice three decibels short of a hiss. “Weird things happen here, and since you deny you’re housing anything unusual, that must mean you’re doing them yourself. People think there are ghosts in your house. You investigate crimes. I’m betting you’ll come back and say a ghost killed Everett. And if you do, you have to admit you’re the ghost lady.”

A few in the posse actually applauded.

Paul snorted, kind of. “Just because a ghost didn’t kill this man, doesn’t mean there are no such things as ghosts,” he said. I didn’t repeat his words, and he looked confused. “Tell them.”

But I didn’t—couldn’t, especially not with Josh there looking torn between pride in me and bewilderment at the situation. “I’m
not
the ghost lady,” I said slowly. “And I’ll take your case to prove it. For three thousand dollars. Half in advance.”

“No.”

I was looking for the way out of the deal and so was prepared to turn and walk into my house. But my daughter, who knows what college is going to cost, would not be denied. “A third in advance,” she said. “The rest when the case is solved.”

Kerin looked at Melissa, then at me, then back at Liss. “Oh, fine,” she said, reaching into her purse for her checkbook.

Melissa was about to make a large, exaggerated nod to signal her jubilant victory, but Josh caught my eye with a look of desperation. I didn’t want to make him feel worse—after all, I didn’t see a way out of this job, either—and said, “Hang on a moment.”

“Breach of contract,” Kerin said before I could continue. She stopped writing.

“There
is
no contract yet,” I told her. “And there won’t be if you insist that I only get paid if a ghost is discovered to be the killer. I won’t prejudice the investigation that way.” Paul gave me a nod of approval, but I wasn’t in the mood to be nice to him, so I didn’t return it. “You don’t want to pay me until the job is done? Fine. Keep the advance. And you don’t have to pay me if—as I expect—the police wrap up the investigation before I can. But if I investigate and find that a living, breathing person killed Everett, you still have to pony up the three large. Are we clear on that?”