The Thrill of the Haunt (6 page)

“I was afraid we’d missed him,” Mom said, re-buckling her shoulder harness. Once snapped in, she put a hand up to her face in a really awkward attempt to obscure it from view.

I started up the Volvo, which I’d parked far enough away that the inevitable coughing, sputtering and grinding it does wouldn’t attract any attention. “I showed you his car when we drove in,” I reminded her. “Unless he’d decided to walk to his mistress’s place, there was no way we were going to miss him.”

“Do you have to say ‘mistress’?” Mom asked.

I didn’t answer and instead just drove behind Dave as he pulled out of the parking lot, hoping I was being discreet. If Helen’s outline of his daily routine was accurate, we had a ten-minute drive to Joyce Kinsler’s garden apartment in Eatontown.

We took Route 35 south into Eatontown, but we didn’t make the turn at Broad Street that would have been the logical one to get to Joyce’s, according to the British woman who gives directions on my portable GPS box.

“She sounds a little annoyed,” Mom pointed out about the mechanical guide. “Maybe she doesn’t approve of where Dave is going.”

“I don’t think she makes that kind of value judgment.”

Luckily, there was no opportunity to continue our assessment of a person who didn’t exist, because Dave began signaling a right turn.

“He’s pulling into the mall,” Mom said, just in case I hadn’t figured that one out on my own.

The Monmouth Mall is not one of New Jersey’s most prominent (those are all in Bergen County), but it’s pretty big, and if this was indeed where Dave was planning to meet his girlfriend for an afternoon quickie, it was not only an indication that he had some really kinky ideas but also a problem for me, because there would be people everywhere and plenty of places for Dave to elude a tail.

He pulled into a parking space near the movie theater entrance, and since it was a midweek afternoon, it wasn’t difficult for me to find another one fairly nearby. I didn’t have much time to give Mom instructions, because he had just gotten out of his car and started toward the mall.

“I’m going in after him,” I said and didn’t allow her to answer. “You stay here. If I lose him, I’ll call you. You have your cell phone, don’t you?”

“Always. I—”

“If you see anything suspicious, text, don’t call me,” I said, noting that Dave was already starting toward the entrance. She looked a little startled. “And use vowels!” I warned as I opened my car door, leaving the key in the ignition so Mom could listen to the radio if she wanted. Mom’s version of text shorthand consisted of using all consonants, therefore making everything look as if it were written in Cyrillic, which doesn’t make it easier to understand.

It was a warm day but not humid; that wouldn’t come for another month or so if we were lucky. When this kind of day hits us, New Jersey can be a lovely place, particularly down the shore, where a sea breeze can remind you of your childhood, and the sun shows you the deep blue of the sky and the rich green leaves on the trees.

Which is why I couldn’t believe I had to spend it in a shopping mall.

I typically avoid malls like the plague (which I’m pretty sure first gestated in a mall). I’d rather shop at neighborhood stores, certainly in individual stores, than be trapped in an environment where the very air seems manufactured and the population is glassy-eyed and intoxicated with consumption of things I don’t want or can’t afford.

I made sure Dave was far enough ahead of me that I wouldn’t be noticeable, but I couldn’t get too far behind or he’d get lost in the throng. People on the hunt for whatever passes for bargains at a mall, where a pretzel is four dollars, are determined beings and will not yield for a woman simply trying to take pictures of a man cheating on his wife. What has this country come to?

Dave seemed to be on an urgent mission, and I had to really hustle to keep up with him. He sliced his way through the crowd until he reached a bank of escalators and hopped—gingerly, I noticed—onto one. I followed as well as I could without actually gasping for breath.

Once at the top of the escalator, though, I panicked—Dave was nowhere to be seen.

I scanned the area while disgruntled mall patrons (there are no other kind) treated me like the impediment to their progress that I was. Already I was rationalizing: So I didn’t catch Dave
today
. Surely his wife could wait another twenty-four hours before she got the details of the extramarital affair she wasn’t planning to use as grounds for a divorce? She could just hang on for one more rotation of the globe before holding his infidelity over him like the Sword of Damocles, constantly present and usable should he fall out of line again, right?

There are marriages, and there are marriages. Theirs didn’t sound like either one, but who was I to judge?

Wait! I spotted Dave behind a woman with a stroller being pushed by her older child with a younger one sitting inside. He headed away from me again, and I took up the chase once more. I reached into my pocket to ensure that my cell phone, which would double as my camera in this case, was ready. I pulled it out.

Only one bar of power was left. I’d have to make sure I got the shot on the first try.

To be honest, I still wasn’t really sure what I thought I’d be photographing. Clearly Dave and Joyce, if she showed up, were not going to be doing anything scandalous while surrounded by countless mall patrons. But Dave was obviously in a very big hurry, and Helen Boffice had been absolutely sure he was going to be seeing his girlfriend today at lunch. Of course, Helen believed that he saw his girlfriend
every
day at lunch, but my experience has been that men are generally neither that consistent nor that dependable.

Perhaps being married to The Swine hadn’t given me the best basis for comparison.

Doubling my speed, I reached the corner Dave had turned; I took a moment to build up my reserve of nonchalance. Then I let out a breath and casually turned right to look for him.

Dave was in the food court. Which appeared to be his intended destination.

Okay . . . maybe his affair with Joyce consisted of buying food that was bad for them and eating it together? Hardly grounds for divorce, but since Helen didn’t want one anyway, maybe it was a win-win for everybody. I scanned the area for possible Joyce candidates, but I’d left her photograph with my mother, and it was hard to remember her face. Not that it seemed to matter, because no one was approaching Dave, male or female.

He walked past the Salad Works and the Burger King, but stopped at Master Wok and . . . yes! A small blonde woman, somewhat obscured by larger New Jerseyans hustling by her with trays and shopping bags, walked over to him and smiled broadly. Dave reached toward her. If this was going to be a passionate embrace, I was much too far away to photograph it. I started to trot toward them.

But Dave’s hand, which had appeared to be making scandalous advances a moment before, turned out to be merely reaching for a sample on the tray the woman was carrying. The tray bore small cups that no doubt held samples of Master Wok’s most flavorful menu items. Dave tried whatever it was, nodded in appreciation, dropped his toothpick on the young woman’s tray, then turned to move on.

Good: I hadn’t missed the picture. Bad:
Still
no sign of Joyce.

Dave walked to the far end of the court and stopped at Nathan’s Hot Dogs. He walked to the counter and ordered something, and in very little time was eating the first of two franks he’d gotten with a side of fries and a (somewhat ironic) diet soda. He sat—by himself—at a table and wolfed down the whole trayful of food with absolutely no sign of contact with anyone who could be named Joyce, or for that matter anyone who could be named anything.

Not only had I not gotten any incriminating photographs, now I was really hungry. And I couldn’t even buy anything to eat, because Dave, no doubt in a hurry to get back before his lunch hour was over, was already done and practically sprinting out of the mall. I hadn’t eaten, he had, and there had been no sign of an affair with anybody for me to immortalize in pixels. All in all, Dave was easily getting the better end of the deal this afternoon.

I kept him in sight as best I could until we were back out in the parking lot, Dave heading to his sensible Nissan and me to my prehistoric Volvo. Mom started talking even before I’d restarted the car to follow Dave back to his office. “Why didn’t you answer my texts?” she asked.

“My battery was low. What’s the problem?”

“Dad texted me. He says to come home now.”

It transpired on the ride home that Mom had kept Dad’s
cell-phone plan active, despite his having died almost six years before. Ghosts can’t be heard across phone lines, but some of them (apparently like my dad) can text. It had never occurred to me to give him my cell number, but in my family, death is not always an impediment to communication. Anyway, Mom hadn’t asked questions when she’d gotten the text. Dad said to get home; we were on our way.

As I parked the Volvo at home, Dad was already outside, waving his arms at us as if we weren’t going to notice him floating around near the kitchen door. Mom practically leaped out of the car, and although there was nothing on earth that could possibly hurt my father anymore, I understood the impulse. He looked panicked.

“There’s some woman inside threatening to drive all of us out of the house!” he shouted. “She says the house needs to be cleaned, and she doesn’t mean vacuuming the rugs.”

Cybill.

I moaned a tiny bit, involuntarily. “I’ll deal with it, Dad,” I said as I walked past him into the kitchen. I saw Mom out of the corner of my eye, carrying her backpack and looking confused at my lack of concern.

Cybill was indeed setting up what appeared to be incense sticks in a vase I leave on the table in the den, and she was wearing an outfit directly out of 1966. Her long, gauzy dress matched her long, flowing gray hair, and she appeared to be trying to revive Flower Power by sheer force of will. Cybill also seemed to be humming to herself.

Harry and Beth Rosen were nowhere to be seen, but Tom and Libby Hill were watching Cybill from the opposite side of the room with looks of incredulity, mixed with anticipation: Was this part of the planned ghost shows? The Hills were seemingly unwilling to get too close to the crazy lady; Libby was actually standing in the far doorway, looking as if she was gauging the time it would take her to get to the front door if the place caught on fire or was under attack by evil spirits.

“Cybill?” I asked in my most pleasant innkeeper voice. “What’s going on?”

She turned and looked mildly surprised to see me in my own guesthouse. Perhaps I needed to spend more time with the guests. “Why, I’m cleansing the house of spirits,” she said, as if that explained everything. Then she went back to arranging the incense in the vase.

I could vaguely hear Mom and Dad talking in the kitchen, and the fact that only my mother’s voice would be audible to the other living people in the room wasn’t helping my blood pressure much.

“But I said that would be a bad idea right now,” I reminded Cybill. “Remember?” The sugarcoating was starting to rub off my voice.

I saw Maxie appear, headfirst, through the den’s ceiling, possibly attracted by the conversation. It was unusual for her to pay attention to anything going on with the guests. Even if the incense had been lit, she wouldn’t have smelled it, and the next spook show wasn’t scheduled for at least two hours. She only came down if she thought there would be something amusing going on, which usually meant something that would cause me embarrassment.

Again, Cybill looked back over her shoulder. “But you have a small child living here,” she argued. “It’s not safe for her to be existing with these specters.” I saw Libby’s eyes widen at the prospect that the ghosts in the house they’d come specifically to see might be dangerous. (They’re not.)

Now, you can tell me that I’m not a good hostess, and I’ll be a little miffed. You can tell me I don’t know anything about being a detective, and the likelihood is that I’ll agree with you. But nobody on this planet can ever look me in the eye (or over the shoulder) and inform me that I’m a bad mother, particularly when it’s related to Melissa’s safety.

Besides, Maxie let out a
whoooo
and said to me, “I’ll show
her
how dangerous the
specters
are.” And she started toward the fireplace, where there are cast-iron pokers. She was grinning. Paul rose up through the basement and saw what Maxie was doing, flew to her side and started an unnecessarily sotto voce conversation with her about what was and was not all right to do when trying to prove the house was truly haunted.

I wanted to shout out to Maxie to forget the poker, but that would have probably been a move in the wrong direction, given that Cybill had questioned the security of my establishment in front of two other guests. My teeth felt fused together.

Still, I think you’d be proud of the way I pulled in my breath, took a second or two, and said, “It’s really quite safe for Melissa and
everyone in the house
. I can assure you of that.”

Mind you, things probably would have been fine after that if I’d simply stopped talking at that moment. I can see that now. Instead, trying to convince Cybill and the Hills that there was no danger, I said loudly, “You needn’t worry. The ghosts
don’t actually stay here in the house.
They come by to entertain you.”

Maxie, who had barely raised the fireplace poker three inches from its stand, dropped it with a loud clatter, causing everyone in the room to look her way. “We’re here for
what
?” she hissed.

I saw Dad zip in through the kitchen door—and when I say “through the kitchen door,” I mean
through
—with Mom hot on his trail. To the other living people in the room, I’m sure the place looked wide open. To me, it was starting to get overcrowded. “What’s going on?” Dad asked. It seemed to be the question of the day.

“Your daughter seems to think we’re the circus clowns around here,” Maxie huffed. Then she vanished completely, which is something she does when she gets really peeved.

Cybill, who for all her purported abilities with ghosts, appeared not to have seen or heard anything and still looked incredulous. “You
want
there to be deceased spirits in your house?” she asked.

“Absolutely,” I said, giving Paul a reassuring look. “I can control them.” His expression indicated that
control
wasn’t his favorite word, but he didn’t say anything.

“Well,” Cybill said. “If you’re certain . . .”

“Completely certain,” I assured her.

She didn’t answer but nodded slightly and began putting her exorcism equipment back into a canvas bag emblazoned with a five-pointed star, which she had dropped on the floor. Tom Hill looked relieved, and Libby practically collapsed into one of the armchairs. I shuddered to think of what Cybill might have told them in the ramp-up to her attempted act of kindness. I’d have to talk to all the guests later and reassure them of their safety.

I retreated to the kitchen with Mom in tow, to think. Dad and Paul followed. I’m always happy to see my father, but right now, I was sort of ghosted out and really just wanted to regroup.

“I looked that woman in the eye and told her I didn’t want her to ‘cleanse’ my house,” I said, mostly to myself. “Maybe I’m not communicating as well as I should.”

Dad didn’t help matters by telling me, “You might want to work on your people skills,” as we entered the kitchen, and I put on a kettle of water to boil. I wasn’t sure what I wanted, but it was definitely a hot drink.

I looked at him. When Mom’s around, Dad doesn’t hover up near the ceiling or do much that’s especially supernatural. He was right next to her, at the same level, although an inch or so of his feet fell below the plane of the floor. Being a ghost, I’ve observed, is an inexact science. But he does his best, and since he was always a few inches taller than Mom, the sinkage was insignificant.

“My people skills?” I asked. “I just handled a woman who was performing some odd ritual in my house, despite my specifically telling her not to, and without asking me ahead of time, all the while reassuring my other guests of their safety, and you think I need to work on my people skills?”

“In the process, you insulted Maxie and Paul, baby girl.” Dad has always called me that, and I’ve always loved it, except between the ages of fourteen and twenty-five.

“He’s right,” Mom chimed in. They have presented a united front for as long as I can remember, and Dad’s being dead was not changing the rules at all, I’d noticed. “You can’t treat Maxine and Paul like the unpaid help around here.”

Coffee. With extra caffeine. That was what I needed. I turned off the burner with the kettle on it and started getting the coffeemaker prepared. After taking a few seconds to clear my head—which wasn’t really all that clear even now—I looked at Paul. “Did I really hurt your feelings?” I asked him.

Paul didn’t make eye contact. “I knew what you meant,” he said.

“But you didn’t like the way I said it.”

He looked at me sideways and a half-smile forced its way through. “It might not have been my choice of words,” he admitted. “The problem really is Maxie.”

As usual. “I’ll apologize to her when I see her because she won’t show up if I call her now, and I really don’t want the guests to hear me just screaming her name,” I said. “But I apologize to you now, Paul. I really didn’t intend to make you feel bad. I was just trying to keep the guests feeling comfortable here. That’s important.”

Paul nodded. “Yes, it is. And I accept the apology. But keep in mind that Maxie . . .”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t. She was already miffed at you about last night,” Dad said. “She was talking about it before.”

Last night? What happened last night? “Miffed about what?” I asked.

“She said some woman was saying you were the ghost lady and you said there were no ghosts in the house,” Dad reported. “She said you were ashamed of . . . us, I guess.”

Coffee was going to take too long. Did hot chocolate have caffeine? I went to check the box. Why wasn’t there a Dunkin’ Donuts in my kitchen?

“You know that’s not true,” I told Dad. “I spent years hoping you’d come here.”

“That’s me,” he answered. “Maxie thinks you don’t like her.”

I thought we’d settled that some months before. “Maxie isn’t always easy to like,” I told him.

Just then, there was a knock on my back door. While I would have expected Maxie to materialize in the kitchen to show off my bad timing, it was even worse news: Kerin Murphy, looking perky.

I hate perky.

“Here comes a real test of my people skills,” I told Dad.

I walked to the door, considered looking Kerin directly in the face and telling her I wasn’t home, and then decided she wouldn’t get it, so I opened the door. “Kerin,” I said, unable to put the exclamation point she probably expected after her name. “What brings you here?”

Mom, the only other person in the room Kerin could see, exchanged nods with her. But Mom’s eyelids were a little lower than usual. She knew I didn’t like Kerin, knew why and was on my side.

“How are you, Alison?” Kerin said, and then didn’t wait for a reply, indicating that she really didn’t care. “I’m here for a progress report.”

“A progress report? I’ve only had eighteen hours to begin an investigation, Kerin. I’m also working for another client, and I have a house full of guests. Believe me, I’ll let you know when there’s progress to be reported.”

I saw Dad wince at my tone. He was a contractor in life and always exceedingly polite to his customers.

“How are the children, Kerin?” Mom asked, in her usual subtle style of changing the subject.

Kerin nearly rolled her eyes, but she knew better than to diss Mom. “They’re just fine, Loretta,” she said. The expression on Dad’s face indicated he thought “Mrs. Kerby” would have been a more appropriate form of address. “But what I’m really here to do is get a sense of where the investigation into Everett’s murder is going,” she continued, looking back at me with a challenging expression. One-track mind, that woman.

“Well, Kerin, so far I’ve checked in with Lieutenant McElone at the police station,” I said. “Everett’s autopsy report is not available yet. I intend to get over to talk to Marv Winderbrook at the Fuel Pit as soon as I have a chance. Other than that, the case hasn’t progressed much in less than a day. I apologize if you thought these things happened more quickly, but they don’t.”

My attitude probably wasn’t good for business, but then I wasn’t really a PI, so that wasn’t a very high priority for me. I was an innkeeper and would be happy to never have another investigation client as long as I lived.

“This is not what we expected when we agreed to your exorbitant salary demand,” Kerin said.

I shrugged. “So fire me,” I said. Dad shook his head, but he didn’t understand that my business plan was to get out of business as quickly as possible. “Feel free to find yourself another investigator, or as
I
would advise, let the police handle it. Why are you so hot and bothered over Everett’s death anyway? I agree it’s very sad that the poor guy was killed, but I didn’t know him very well. Did you?”

Kerin sniffed. “My estimation of a person’s worth isn’t based on how well I know them,” she said. I considered asking whether she estimated a person’s worth in dollars or negotiable bonds, but instead I noted Maxie floating in from the backyard, looking bored. She perked up when she saw Kerin, though, no doubt recognizing that her presence meant conflict, something Maxie enjoys no matter what her mood. “Everett was a part of this community, he was valued, he was worth caring about.”