Haunted House Murder

by Leslie Meier

  Mom’s habitually perfect posture became even more perfect as she pulled herself up to her full height, which wasn’t much. “I’m not discussing this with you further, Harley. Go find someone else to bother.”

  Harley reflexively stood taller, too. At six-four, broad-shouldered and paunchy, he loomed over her. But he seemed to grasp that he’d met his match. “I’ll be back,” he vowed. “You’ll come around.”

  “You’ll certainly be welcome back.” Mom smiled and let her arms drop to her sides. “As long as it’s for another purpose.”

  Despite his size, Harley pivoted neatly toward the open front door, nodded as he passed me on the porch, and exited down the steps.

  “What was that about?” I asked as I came through the door.

  Mom, who seemed to be studying the lines on the floor, looked up. “Harley’s shilling for stops for his Halloween Haunted House Tours and he claims we have a ghost.”

  “Here? In town?” My family was widely known to have a ghost, two in fact. But legend had it they resided at Windsholme, the abandoned mansion on the island where our family ran our authentic Maine clambakes during the summer tourist season. But a ghost at the house in town, the old sea captain’s house on Main Street my parents had bought in the 1980s? I had never heard of such a thing.

  “Come into the kitchen,” Mom said. “I have time for another cup of coffee before I leave.”

  My mother was an assistant manager at Linens and Pantries, the big box store in Topsham, Maine. The store had put out its Halloween merchandise two weeks earlier, immediately after Labor Day, and was ramping up for the coming holiday season.

  Mom poured each of us a cup from the coffeemaker on the counter while I fetched milk from the refrigerator. “Harley claims the story goes like this,” she said when we were seated at the kitchen table. “The captain who built this house, Samuel Merriman, was engaged in the China trade, taking kerosene to Canton and returning with loads of tea. The round trip usually took eight months, to make the crossing, leave the cargo in New York or Boston, and finally return here to Busman’s Harbor.”

  Mom pushed a hank of blond hair, only recently tinged with gray, back behind an ear and took a sip of her coffee. People say I look like her. I can’t see it, except for the most obvious things, coloring and stature.

  “One day,” Mom continued, “while Captain Merriman was at sea, a sailor came here to town telling the tale of a Busman’s schooner that had blown sky-high in Canton harbor when the kerosene it carried was somehow ignited. But the sailor had no details. He didn’t know the name of the captain or ship and was vague about the date when the accident had occurred.

  “Samuel’s wife, Sarah, was worried sick when she heard this. As she calculated the dates, her husband and his ship would have been in Canton about when the sailor said the explosion happened.

  “So she went up to the cupola.” My mother’s house had an enclosed cupola on its mansard roof. “And she stayed. She wouldn’t come down. The housekeeper begged her, and then her children did. The cook sent up food that returned only nibbled on. Friends, family, neighbors came, and finally the minister, but she ignored all entreaties.”

  “Was it her husband’s ship that exploded?” Poor Sarah Merriman. I imagined her anxiety in those long-ago days when loved ones went to the other side of the world with scant opportunity to communicate. To think she had walked the same halls of the house I grew up in.

  “At last, a mast was spotted on the horizon, headed to Busman’s Harbor,” Mom continued. “The news spread through town. Now, surely, Mrs. Merriman would come down. But she said no, she’d wait until she saw the ship with her own eyes.

  “Finally, Captain Merriman’s ship sailed into the harbor. When she spotted it, Mrs. Merriman stood up and ran down the stairs, from the cupola to the third floor, from the third to the second, and then from the second to the first. But her legs were weak from disuse and she was running too fast. She tripped on the carpet at the top of the stairs and landed in the front hall, her neck broken. She never saw her husband.”

  We were quiet for a moment. “That is an awful story,” I said.

  “Such piffle,” Mom responded. “Harley needs more stops for the haunted house tour. I’m sure he’s across the street at the Snugg sisters right now telling them some made-up story about what happened at their house.”

  “Probably.” I had to agree with Mom’s likely explanation. The town of Busman’s Harbor had struggled for years with Maine’s pitifully short summer season. Sure, we got leaf-peepers from the end of September until mid-October. And the nearby Maine Coast Botanical Gardens generated a fair amount of business for the town from Thanksgiving to New Year’s with their massive outdoor lighting display. But from the middle of October to Veteran’s Day, tourist dollars remained stubbornly out of reach.

  Until this year, when the tourist bureau had the idea for a weeklong, town-wide Halloween celebration. Why should Salem, Massachusetts, 150 short miles to our south, get all the visitors? We didn’t have witches, that was true, but we did have ghosts, and we had Harley.

  In a town where nearly everyone had to hustle to make a living during tourist season, Harley made the rest of us look like pikers. He and his wife, Myra, owned The Lobsterman’s Wharf Motel on the east side of the harbor, and Kimbel’s Souvenir Shoppe on the west side. All day long, seven days a week, from Memorial Day to Columbus Day, Harley drove his trolley back and forth, picking up passengers at each of the hotels on the east side, depositing them downtown, and then ferrying them back again when their feet hurt and their money was spent. That he happened to pick up and drop off in front of Kimbel’s, the shop he owned, was a mere coincidence. Or so he would have you believe. During the summer, at night, he met groups of tourists downtown who were willing to part with $19.99 apiece ($14.99 for seniors, $9.99 for children under fifteen) to take them on his haunted house tour. That most of the places they toured were not houses, and were also, in most peoples’ opinions, not haunted, was a detail. Everyone had a good time.

  Now, in mid-September, Harley was getting his ducks in a row for the Halloween tour. He couldn’t use some of his usual stops. Herrickson Point Light, for instance. There was no reason to drive people all the way out there in the fall. Even with extended daylight savings time, darkness came early when you were on the eastern edge of the time zone. The tour members wouldn’t be able to see anything and it would be freezing. That’s why he needed Mom’s house. Or someplace like it. A convenient location, a tragic story. But I could tell by the look on Mom’s face as she sipped her coffee, Harley wasn’t going to get it.

  * * *

  “Have you ever heard my Mom’s house is haunted?” I was seated at the counter at Gus’s restaurant, the only person in the place aside from the proprietor. In the off-season, my boyfriend, Chris, and I ran a dinner restaurant in Gus’s space, which we would reopen right after Columbus Day. The idea for the restaurant had been Gus’s. He wanted to give me an incentive to stay in town over the winter, and also to offer a dining space where the community could gather. But the old curmudgeon had never shared his restaurant with anyone and, even as we prepared to open for our second season, he didn’t find it easy. He was dawdling, cleaning the already gleaming coffee machine, reluctant to let go and let us work.

  “Your mother’s place? Of course I’ve heard the stories.”

  Really? “I don’t mean on the island,” I clarified. “I mean, have you ever heard about her place here in town being haunted?”

  Gus shook his white-haired head. “Nope. Can’t say as I have.”

  “Harley wants to put it on his Halloween Haunted House Tour.”

  Gus blew air out through his lips, rattling his jowls. He wasn’t fat. In fact, he was lean and tough like an old buzzard, but his skin was loose with age. “Harley. She might as well give in now. He’s relentless.”

  “She really doesn’t want to do it.” I took my coffee cup to the sink behind the counter and washed it.

  Gus
took off his white apron and walked to the center of the front room, passing me as he did. “This place is haunted.” He gestured, his hands indicating the space.

  “The restaurant?” I squinted at him, trying to decide if he was teasing. “You might have mentioned that, seeing as how I’ve been sleeping upstairs for over a year.” I lived in the large studio apartment over Gus’s place, which was convenient when Chris and I staggered up to bed after a long night of running the restaurant.

  “Ayup. ’Tis. You know the restaurant was used as a warehouse by bootleggers bringing in booze from Canada during Prohibition.”

  I did. The previous fall a desperate man had used the trapdoor in the floor that had been installed by the bootleggers to enter the restaurant.

  “What you don’t know,” Gus continued, “is one of ’em was killed here. Gunned down in cold blood.”

  “Again, you might have mentioned—”

  Gus ignored me, warming to the story. “The demand for real, honest-to-goodness hard liquor with the labels still on it was intense up and down the east coast of the United States during Prohibition. Canada had it, both made on its soil and imported from Scotland and Ireland and everyone wanted it.

  “Booze came over by car and in trucks, but as that proved increasingly difficult, it came by ships. Big ships working for the Canadian distilleries and distributorships anchored out at sea just over the three-mile mark, in international waters. It was called the rum line. The old-timers said it was like a city out there; there were so many lights. Smaller boats would head out from the New England ports to buy the liquor and bring it back. In the beginning, the smugglers’ boats were faster than anything the U.S. Coast Guard owned. They could outrun the authorities every time. That’s why they were called rumrunners.”

  “Wait. The boats were called rumrunners, or the people who ran them?”

  “First the boats, and then the men who captained them. The most famous rumrunner in Busman’s Harbor was Ned Calhoun. Distribution of the liquor once it came ashore was almost exclusively the province of organized crime, but a few of the rumrunners were freelancers. Ned was a local lad, a fisherman, thirty years old and devilishly handsome. He was fast and daring, a legend. He made plenty of money for his services and he spread it around, buying from town merchants, giving to the Widows and Orphans Fund. He was regarded as a bit of a local Robin Hood. And when he fell in love with Sweet Sue, the prettiest flapper in town—”

  “Okay, now I know you’re kidding. Sweet Sue? Come on.”

  Gus put one hand up, oath-taking style. His eyes opened wide and his formidable white eyebrows flew up his forehead in a look of pure innocence. “Suzanne Kinney, from the Kinney family. They’re still here in town. You can check it out.”

  I chuckled. “Okay.” Then I nodded for him to go on.

  “Where was I? Yes. Ned decided, why simply be the transport? He was leaving the booze around the harbor in warehouses that belonged to the gangsters. Their crews would pick it up and take it to the cities where it would change hands once again. Ned didn’t see why he couldn’t get in on this piece of the business, too. So when he’d go out to the rum line, he’d buy the booze his gangster masters wanted, but he’d also use his own ill-gotten gains to buy a few cases for himself. He sold it along the coast from here as far down as Portland. Demand increased. The money increased and pretty soon Ned had enough business, he didn’t have to work for the gangsters anymore. He rented this place.” Again, Gus gestured around his warehouse-turned-restaurant. As warehouses went, it was on the small side. It was easy to see why Ned would have chosen it to get his start.

  “Things went okay for a while,” Gus continued. “Ned and Sweet Sue were living high on the hog. They had a car, something practically nobody in town did except the doctor, the postman, and the merchants for deliveries. They bought a big sea captain’s house on Main Street.”

  “Please, not my mother’s house,” I interrupted. “I’m trying to get Harley off her back, not give him a new tale.”

  “Not your mother’s house. Down at the other end. The Fogged Inn.”

  “Whew.” The Fogged Inn was a B and B in an old sea captain’s home on the far end of Main Street. It had recently changed hands. I didn’t know the new owners well enough to guess whether they’d be up for hosting a haunted house tour.

  “But, since this is a ghost story,” Gus continued the tale, “you’ve probably guessed, it didn’t work out. Ned and Sue attracted too much attention. The gangsters couldn’t allow this local yokel to get rich off the alcohol trade; too many others might try the same thing, destroying their monopoly. So one night, when Ned sailed back from the rum line and entered his warehouse through that trapdoor right there—” Gus pointed to the door in the floor of the restaurant, which was, in fact, not visible because it was behind the bar, which somewhat undercut his gesture. “When he came through the door, Al Capone’s men were waiting with their Tommy guns, and rat-tat-tat-tat. They shot him.”

  Gus paused so I could take it in, but since I’d been expecting this dramatic turn of events, I motioned for him to speed up the story. He looked disappointed but went on. “He managed to gasp out his dying words. ‘My only aim was to help my fellow citizens of Busman’s Harbor. Tell Sweet Sue I’ll always love her.’ And then he died. Right here, on the floor.

  “Sweet Sue never recovered. She never married. They say she sat in the window of that big old house, wearing her wedding dress every day for the rest of her long life.”

  “Now I know you’re kidding.” Really, bringing Miss Havisham into it.

  “Every word is true. At least, as the story was told to me. I didn’t arrive here in town until thirty years later.”

  “So who’s the ghost? Ned Calhoun, or Sweet Sue, or . . .” If it was Sweet Sue, I could send Harley after the new, and hopefully naïve, proprietors of the Fogged Inn.

  “Ned, of course. A handsome, young man like that, cut down in his prime. He became more brave, a better captain, and more charitable with every retelling of his story. And then people started seeing him.”

  “In this restaurant?”

  Gus nodded. “Right here in this restaurant.”

  “Gus, I’ve been coming here since I sat in a high chair. For the last year I’ve lived here and worked here. And I have never, ever heard this story.”

  “What story?” My boyfriend, Chris, walked through the kitchen door, ready to continue the work of setting up our restaurant.

  “The story of Ned Calhoun,” I answered.

  “The rumrunner?”

  “You know about him?”

  Chris shrugged. “Of course. You don’t?”

  “Not until five minutes ago.”

  Gus took his red and black plaid shirt-jacket off the hook by the door. “I can see my work here is done. I’m going to skedaddle.”

  And then he did.

  * * *

  The next morning I was hard at work in the clambake office on the second story of my mother’s house. The office had been my dad’s when he ran the Snowden Family Clambake Company, and the big, old mahogany desk, the olive green metal file cabinets, and the prints of sailing ships made me feel comfortable and protected, like Dad was watching over me. Le Roi, the big Maine coon cat who ruled our island in the summertime, sat on my desk, purring. He was staying at Mom’s for the off-season and gave no sign that the change from outdoor cat with an entire island to rule over to indoor cat perturbed him in the slightest.

  The doorbell rang. I looked out the window into the street. Harley’s trolley was stopped at the curb in front of the house. Mom was at work, thank goodness. I went downstairs and opened the door.

  “Julia.”

  “Harley.”

  “May I come in? I’ll only take a moment of your time.”

  I stepped aside so he could enter the front hall.

  Harley cleared his throat. “I was hoping you might help me persuade your mother to let me add her house to the Halloween Haunted House Tour.” He looke
d me in the eyes, but warily. He knew it was a big ask.

  “Harley, I’m sorry, but Mom’s a firm no. It’s getting into her busy season at the store. She’s a private person. She doesn’t want trolley-loads of people trooping through her house.” I should have stopped there. I should have known better. When you’ve said what you have to say, shut up. But instead, I kept going. “Besides, Harley, my parents bought this house thirty years ago. None of us had ever heard about Captain Merriman’s wife falling down the stairs until you showed up yesterday. And I guarantee we’ve never seen her.”

  “Oh, really.” Harley’s eyes traveled to a spot on the front hall floor, where I noticed for the first time during our conversation, that the upstairs hall rug was sitting, doubled over on itself near the archway between the hall and the living room, exactly where Harley had indicated Sarah Merriman had landed and broken her neck. I’d come in the kitchen door and gone up the back stairs. I couldn’t swear the rug was in the upstairs hall when I’d gone by it, or even walked over it, earlier that morning. I’d been on autopilot. That trek was my morning commute.

  “Did you know Gus’s place is haunted?” It was an absolutely transparent ploy of changing the subject.

  Harley stepped back, brow furrowed in concentration. “Ned Calhoun!” he said at last. “Ned Calhoun and Sweet Sue. How could I have forgotten about them? You’re right. I’ll talk to Gus right away.”

  What had I done? “What about the Fogged Inn?” I tried to divert him. “That’s where the ghost of Sweet Sue hangs out.”

  “You’re right! I’ll add them, too. As soon as I talk to Gus.”

  I swallowed. “I’ll talk to Gus. The venue belongs to me and Chris at night.”

  “I can see it now.” Harley bounced on the balls of his feet with enthusiasm, a little-boy movement that looked ridiculous for such a big man. “We’ll act out the scene. You can be Sweet Sue and Chris and Gus can be Capone’s men. We’ll have to recruit at least one other guy. Then you and Chris can serve hot cider and some kind of cookies or something. It will be a nice break on the tour. We’ll put you right in the middle. The best slot.”