The Halloween Haunting

by Kathi Daley

  “He does have a motive,” Bree said.

  “And even if he was at the bowling alley, he could have gone over to the house when he finished for the night,” Tony said.

  “And we found a hat inside the house that he said was not his, but totally could be since it is from his company,” I added.

  “We could test the hat for DNA,” Mike said. “That won’t prove that the person wearing the hat killed Joe, but if Grange is lying about the hat being his, testing it for DNA could at least prove that much. I’ll take a look and see what I can find tomorrow.”

  “In the meantime, we have the second weekend of the haunted house to get through,” I reminded everyone. “I guess we should refocus at least some of our attention on that.”

  Chapter 16

  Friday, October 25

  By the next afternoon, Mike was convinced our theory that Grange was the killer might have merit. None of us wanted to believe it, but after we’d made the points we had the previous evening, Mike began to dig deeper.

  “After we spoke,” Mike said to me after I’d stopped by with his mail, “I pulled the financial records for both Grange Plimpton and Plimpton Construction. Personally, it seems as if Grange is doing okay. He seems to have managed his money well over the years, and I didn’t find any red flags. The company, however, seems to be struggling. In fact, I would go as far as to say that in the past few months, they’ve ventured into a fairly serious financial situation which seems to be further exasperated by the fact that Grange’s brother, Greg, is going through a messy divorce and struggling with his own financial issues. It seems that Greg had been putting pressure on Grange to do something about the fact that Joe has been stealing their business.”

  “So the business is struggling because Joe left?” I asked.

  “It’s hard to say specifically what caused the decline in income, but it does look as if Joe took some of Plimpton Construction’s customers with him.”

  I slid my bag off my shoulder and set it on the floor. Mike and I were talking in his office, and I’d left Tilly out in the reception area with Frank and Leonard. “Grange told me that he held no ill will toward Joe for wanting to do his own thing. At the time, I felt he was being sincere, but if his leaving affected the company’s bottom line in a negative way, that might cause me to take a second look at things.”

  “I know seeing the financial records caused me to take a second look at things,” Mike said. “If you remember, we initially suspected that Joe might have called someone and asked them to meet him at the house.”

  “I remember.”

  “I never found proof of this, so we entertained other theories. It seems as if Joe did send a text that night, but since he didn’t send it from his phone, I didn’t find it in his phone records.”

  “If he didn’t use his cell, how did he send the text?”

  “He used his wife’s phone. I just found this out this morning after she finally decided to return the dozen or so messages I’d left for her while she was at her sister’s. She said she hadn’t initially realized that Joe had used her phone that night, and even when she saw the text, she didn’t think much of it. She remembered Joe complaining that his phone was dead and he needed to charge it, but he’d left it in his truck and didn’t feel like going out to get it. She remembered that she’d left her phone right there on the coffee table, so she figured he just used it since it was convenient.”

  “Who did Joe text?” I asked.

  “Grange Plimpton.”

  I audibly gasped. “Really?”

  Mike nodded. “The text said that he was going to go back to the haunted house to take a look around. It also said that when he was there that day, he’d noticed something he hadn’t noticed before and wanted to check out. As we suspected, he told Grange he’d left one of the windows in the hallway unlatched.”

  “So what did Grange say when you told him that?”

  “He said he never received any such text. He even showed me his phone, and the text and his response were not there.”

  “So he must have deleted them.”

  “That is my theory, although Grange swears that he didn’t delete the text and that he never saw the text. I showed him the response sent to Joe’s wife’s phone from his, which said that he would meet him at the house, but he swears he has no idea how it got there.”

  “He’s lying.”

  “Maybe. But it didn’t seem like he was lying.”

  I blew out a breath. “Okay. So Joe texted Grange, and Grange responded that he would meet him at the house. I assume that Grange is still maintaining that he wasn’t at the house that evening.”

  “He is. He said that he went directly to the bowling alley after work. He was there until about eleven, and then he went home. He admitted that it made perfect sense that Joe would have texted him if he planned to go back to the house that night, and if he’d gotten the text, he probably would have met him there when his bowling league let out, but he also swears that is not what happened. It is possible that someone else saw the text, responded, and then erased the text. Grange did say he leaves his phone in his truck a lot of the time, and that a lot of people know about his habit. He also said that he might have left it right there on the table when he was bowling. He admitted he’s been known to do that as well.”

  “He wasn’t sure which?”

  Mike shook his head. “He said he didn’t really remember.”

  “So if he did leave it lying around somewhere and someone did see the text and respond, they could have deleted the text from his phone, and he might never have known.”

  “Theoretically yes.”

  I paused to think about it. “I guess it could have happened that way.”

  “I guess,” Mike agreed. “But it sort of seems unlikely. Still, all I have at this point are a lot of facts that don’t amount to a smoking gun. I’ll need more for an arrest.”

  “I suppose that even if you could prove that Grange had received the text and responded, that still wouldn’t prove that he’d met up with Joe on the night he died and it certainly wouldn’t prove he’d killed him.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So, what now?” I asked.

  “I guess I’ll keep digging. I really hate to think Grange is our killer, but he does seem to have had a motive if Joe leaving and taking clients has affected his company’s bottom line, and it appears that he knew Joe was going to be at the house, giving him the opportunity to meet him there, and take care of his problem. Additionally, he is a big strong guy, so unlike some of the others with a motive, he seems to have the means to carry out the murder as well. At this point, the only person possessing the perfect trifecta of motive, means, and opportunity is Grange. I hope it’s not him, but it is beginning to look that way.

  Chapter 17

  After Tilly and I left Mike’s office, we continued on our route. It was Friday, which meant I had two days off. Sure, I had to be at the haunted house every afternoon and evening, but I would also be able to sleep in a bit, and enjoy breakfast with Tony and the animals over the weekend. In the past, Tony and I had made our own Halloween plans which always included a spooky movie marathon, but with the fundraiser this year, it looked as if a Halloween Spookathon would have to wait. We could stay up late and watch scary movies on Wednesday night, but I did have to work on Thursday, and Thursday would be a late night being that it was Halloween and the final night of the haunted house, so perhaps that wouldn’t work. Unless…

  I took out my phone and called my supervisor. “Hey, Margie, it’s Tess. I know this is late notice, but I was wondering if there was any way I could take Thursday and Friday off next week. We have the fundraiser on Thursday, and I’ll have clean up the weekend after that. I have a bunch of vacation days saved up, so that won’t be a problem.”

  “I’ll see if I can get coverage. We have some new temps that have been asking for hours, so I don’t anticipate a problem. If I can get a carrier lined up, I should be able to process the last mi
nute request. You’ll still need to do the paperwork to turn into the main office.”

  “I’ll do it when I come in this evening. And thanks. If you can find someone to cover for me, I’ll owe you.”

  “I do like it when my carriers owe me,” Margie chuckled.

  Okay, suddenly things were looking up. I had the haunted house tonight, Saturday, and Sunday night, and I’d have work Monday through Wednesday, but then Tony and I could do the spooky movie thing on Wednesday night if I didn’t have work on Thursday, and if I had Friday off, we could get a head start on the cleanup so we wouldn’t need to devote the entire weekend to tearing down the props that had taken an entire crew a weekend to set up. The haunted house had certainly been a lot more work than a pet parade would have been, but when we opened the residence for hard to place pets, I knew that all the work would seem worth it.

  The last stop on my route today was an antique store owned by a woman named Star Moonwalker. When I’d first met her, I assumed the name was an alias, but it was the name she went by, and it was the name on the certified letter I’d been tasked with delivering. Normally, Star received her mail via a mailbox at the main post office, but it was Friday, and the letter required a signature, so instead of just sticking the letter behind the counter and holding it until Star could come in next week and sign for it, I’d been asked to deliver it and obtain the signature while I was at it.

  “Thank you so much for bringing this by.” Star signed for the letter and then held it in both her hands almost reverently. As you would expect from someone named Star Moonwalker, she had a natural presence, calm manner, and casual style, reminiscent of the flower child look of the sixties.

  “It must be important,” I commented.

  “It might be.” She paused, looked around, and then leaned in a bit as if to share a confidence. “Not a lot of people know this, but I was adopted, and about four years ago, I decided to look for my birth parents. It’s been a rocky road, and things have not turned out the way I hoped, but I still feel committed to seeing this through at this point, and this envelope might contain the information I’ve been waiting for.”

  I turned to leave, but she continued. It seemed as if she wanted to talk about whatever was on her mind, so I waited.

  “My adoptive parents hadn’t wanted me to look for my birth parents. I guess in retrospect, they were right to feel that way.” She let out a noise that sounded like a snort. “If I knew then what I know now, I would have listened to them, but at the time, I was curious, and you know the saying that curiosity killing the cat.”

  I had to wonder where Star was going with this and was about to respond, but she continued.

  “My adoptive mom passed away eight years ago, and my adoptive dad followed three years later. I spent a year struggling with the voice in the back of my mind telling me that now was the time to look for my birth parents before I finally did decide to take the plunge and start the process. I knew it wouldn’t be easy since I’d been left at a church as an infant and didn’t even have a birth certificate, but I still wanted to try.”

  “And?”

  “Three years ago, I hired a man named Sam Denton to find my parents. It took him about a year to track down the nun I’d been surrendered to since I’d actually provided him very little information to work with. The nun told Denton that the man who’d dropped me off had told her that the baby’s mother had died and the baby needed a home. The nun tried to get additional information about the baby and the baby’s parents from the man, but he refused to answer. Once the baby was safely in the nun’s arms, he left. The nun thought the whole thing was odd, but she wanted me to have a safe and happy home, so she found a wonderful couple to adopt me named Sonny and Dharma Moonwalker.”

  “So did you ever get the rest of the story?” I wondered.

  She nodded. “Part of it. Denton did some digging, and eventually found out that on the same date I was dropped off at the church in Great Falls, Montana, a woman was found shot to death in Buffalo, Wyoming. It was noted in the police report filed after her death that the victim had recently given birth. The detective in charge of the case looked for the baby in Wyoming, but he or she was never found. I’m not sure why no one put two and two together at the time, I guess the fact that the man who dropped me at the church crossed state lines might have had something to do with it. It wasn’t until Denton started poking around that it was determined that I was most likely the baby the woman had delivered before she died.”

  “Wow. That’s really sad.”

  Star bowed her head. “It is sad. In fact, once I found out that my mother had been shot and killed shortly after delivering me, I pretty much decided to give up the idea of searching for answers to my past. I thanked Denton for what he’d done, paid him what I owed him, and asked him not to look for my father. I decided to make peace with the fact that I’d been raised by wonderful people who’d never treated me any less than a real daughter and get on with my life.”

  I leaned a hip against a counter. “I’m sensing the story doesn’t end there.”

  “It doesn’t. Denton did drop it when I asked him to, but a couple of years later, another case for another client brought him back into my life.”

  “How?” I asked, being pulled into the story almost against my will.

  “It seems that Denton had been hired to find proof that a man who had been living under an alias for years and everyone believed dead was actually alive.”

  My breath caught in my throat. This was beginning to sound much too familiar.

  “During the course of backtracking to figure out what had really happened to the guy, Denton came across the report filed by the detective who’d been assigned to investigate the murder of the woman who’d been shot in Buffalo on the day I was dropped off at the church in Great Falls. Denton realized immediately that the woman mentioned in the report was the same women he believed had actually been my mother.”

  “Was there new information in the report?” I asked, almost afraid to breathe.

  “There was. It turns out there was a copy of an interview conducted by the detective who investigated at the time of the shooting with the owner of the apartment building his victim had lived in during the final months of her pregnancy.”

  “And?”

  “The apartment owner was able to provide the detective with the names of the couple who’d rented the apartment. Or at least the names they’d given her. She also had a copy of the driver’s license provided by the man who accompanied the woman. It was the impression of the woman who owned the apartment building that the man accompanying the pregnant woman had been the father of the baby, although she did admit to the detective that neither the man nor woman had said as much.”

  “So the man Denton had been hired to find was the same man who’d been traveling with the woman believed to be your mother?”

  “Yes. It looked that way. Denton managed to obtain a copy of the rental agreement from the woman who owned the apartment building since apparently, she has kept every rental agreement she’d ever issued. Anyway, as I mentioned, the agreement on file included a copy of the driver’s license provided by the man who had been with the murder victim. Denton checked it out and found out that the license was a fake and the name on the license had been an alias, but the license did provide a photo of the man, so on a hunch, Denton made a copy of the license and showed the photo to the nun I’d been surrendered to. She verified that the man who’d dropped me off at the church almost forty years earlier was the same man in the photo.”

  “So the man who dropped you at the church was probably your father?”

  “Probably. That is what Denton believed, although there was really no way to know for sure if the man was my father or if he was just traveling with the woman I believed to be my mother for some reason. After a bit of soul searching, I decided that it was likely I’d never know the answer to that question, so once again, I decided to drop it.”

  I looked at the letter in the woman
’s hands. “I’m sensing that wasn’t the end of it.”

  She shook her head. “As it turns out, even though I was no longer paying him to look for my father, Denton’s other client was still paying him to find the truck driver everyone other than Denton’s client seemed to believe was dead. And since the man Denton had been hired to find appeared to have been the same man who dropped me at the church, Denton was actually still looking for my father in a parallel sort of way. This past spring, Denton wrote and told me that he’d managed to track down the man he’d been looking for, and had in fact been able to provide photos of the man to the client who’d hired him.”

  My hand flew to my throat. I really wish I could stop her here, but I also knew I needed to hear the rest. I supposed Star hadn’t noticed my reaction since she continued.

  “As it turned out, while Denton had been hired to find the guy and offer proof of life, he hadn’t been asked to do anything beyond that, so in terms of the client Denton had been working for up to that point, once he had the photos proving the man actually was alive, he was finished. He did, however, have my situation in the back of his mind, so he offered to continue to track the man.”

  “And?” I croaked, barely louder than a whisper.

  “And, I told him I needed a couple of days to think things over. He agreed to continue to follow the guy while I made up my mind. I’d all but decided to let the whole thing go when I found out that Denton had been shot and killed. I’m pretty sure the man who may or may not be my father killed him.” She looked at the envelope. “This is a copy of the file Denton built on the man before his death. He’d given it to a friend for safekeeping. The friend knew about my situation and agreed to send it to me.”