Haunted House Murder

by Leslie Meier

  As I passed the Snuggles on my way to Gus’s I spotted Will sitting alone on the front porch. He sat on the top step, his feet resting two steps down. He held his phone in both hands in front of him, but he wasn’t looking at it. He stared off into space. I waved as I walked by, but he didn’t respond.

  “Will! Will!” I called.

  He snapped to it and managed a small smile.

  I walked down the sidewalk. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

  “Sure.” He scooched over, making more room for me next to him.

  “How’s it going?” A neutral question.

  “Better now that Scott’s here. Mom’s been crying a lot. I don’t like that.”

  “Your mom is sad about your dad.”

  He rolled his shoulders in an exaggerated movement. “I guess.” He was silent for a moment. “But I don’t think that’s why she’s crying. I think she’s scared.”

  My stomach clenched into a tight little ball. “Why do you think she’s scared, Will?”

  He turned to look me full in the face, bathing me with his warm, brown eyes. “She’s scared I shot my dad.”

  His declaration took my breath away. I was afraid to ask the next question, but afraid not to ask it. “Did you? Did you shoot your dad, Will?”

  His mouth dropped open and his brows flew up, opening his eyes wide. He was genuinely shocked I’d asked him directly, even though he’d been the one to bring it up. “No way!”

  I tried to match his agitation and surprise with my calmness. “Have you told your mom it wasn’t you?”

  He shook his head. “She hasn’t exactly asked me the question. I said she’s scared I did it and she’s afraid to ask. I don’t want to freak her out by even bringing it up. We have to talk to that state police detective again. It was supposed to be today, but now it may be later or even tomorrow because he had to go out of town. The detective’s going to talk to me and Kieran separately. My mom will be with me, and there’s going to be a lawyer there, too. Mom says I have to tell the truth.” He said it solemnly, like he was repeating something a grown-up had told him was Very Important.

  “Why do you think your mother is scared you did it?” I asked.

  “Two reasons. It was my idea to come on this trip. She thinks I knew my dad was going to be here.”

  “Did you?”

  “Yes.” He didn’t hesitate, but he didn’t elaborate.

  “How did you know he was here?”

  “I got a call that told me he was.”

  Again, it felt like an honest answer, but the barest bones of one.

  “A call from your dad?”

  “No, from a lady. She didn’t tell me her name. She said, ‘Your dad is going to be in Busman’s Harbor, Maine, working on the haunted house tour from October twenty-fifth to the thirty-first. He told me to tell you he wants to see you.’ ”

  “Was this on your cell phone or your home phone?”

  “Cell, but the number was blocked. I already thought of that.”

  The police would be able to find out the number, once Will told them what had happened. “Did you recognize the voice?”

  “No.”

  “Would you recognize it if you heard it again?”

  “Yes. No. Maybe. I don’t know.” He sagged in on himself. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault. You didn’t know what was going to happen. Anyway, after you got the call, you decided to come to see your dad.”

  “I hadn’t seen him in like three years. If he wanted to see me, I couldn’t take the chance—” Will’s voice, deeper than a little boy’s but still not an adult’s, was husky with emotion.

  “So you came up with this trip?”

  “Yeah. I thought about sneaking off, maybe taking the train, but I knew Mom would lose her mind if I ran away.”

  The trip from Will’s house would involve at least three trains, all leaving from different stations than the previous one had arrived at, and finally a bus to reach Busman’s Harbor. The odds he could have gotten away with it, particularly once his absence was discovered, were slim.

  “Then I thought maybe I would tell her that Kieran and I were going to see Dad; maybe she would allow that. But I knew she’d want to talk to Dad and ask a hundred questions about where we were staying and stuff. I had no way to reach Dad and I knew she didn’t either because she was always complaining about it.”

  He shifted his bottom on the step. “So that’s when I came up with the idea for the trip. I got all excited about it, and that got Mom excited about it. I heard her say to Scott, ‘I don’t know how many of these we have left with just the three of us.’ Because they’re getting married,” he explained. “The hard part was getting Kieran to come. He thought the haunted house tour was a dumb idea, and he wanted to stay home with Scott.” Will studied his shoe. “So I had to tell him. I had to tell him Dad would be here.”

  We sat quietly for a moment after that, each with our own thoughts.

  “You said there were two reasons your mother was scared you’d shot your dad. What was the other one?”

  “Her gun was stolen.”

  I feigned surprise. “Her gun was stolen? When?”

  He shrugged. “Nobody knows. It’s kept locked up in a box in her closet. She’s been way too busy to go to the range, for, like, a long time. Years, maybe. About a month ago, she was getting out her fall clothes and she moved the box and she could tell there was nothing in it. Right away she asked me and Kieran and Scott if any of us had taken it. None of us had, so she and Scott reported it stolen to the cops.”

  “But you think your mother suspects you took it.”

  “She’s scared I took it.”

  “The lock on this box, did it need a key or a combination?”

  “Combination.”

  “Do you know it?”

  “No—I swear. I didn’t take it.”

  “Did Kieran take it?” Sometimes siblings knew things parents didn’t.

  “He wouldn’t. I know he wouldn’t.”

  “Do you keep your house locked?”

  “Yeah, all the time.”

  In a dense metropolitan suburb, they would. Of course, I thought everyone should, not that I’d ever be able to convince my mother. “Did your dad still have keys to the house?”

  “I guess. It wouldn’t matter if Mom made him give them back; anybody could get in who knew the garage code. That’s never been changed since we moved there when I was a little kid.”

  I nodded. It was a comforting thought for Will, that anybody could have taken the gun. But they’d have to know where it was in the house and what the combination was to the box. The Montclair police had undoubtedly concluded it was an inside job.

  “My dad didn’t steal my mom’s gun to kill himself.” Will said. “He wouldn’t have that lady call me to come and watch him do it. He wasn’t a great dad, but he wasn’t a psycho.”

  The ballistics report hadn’t indicated suicide. It said Spencer Jones had been shot by someone sitting near me. Someone on the tour.

  “You’re right,” I reassured him. “The police don’t think your dad’s death was a suicide.”

  He let out a long breath, as if he hadn’t exhaled fully since the murder.

  I got up and walked down the steps, turning back so I could look Will directly in the eyes. “Tomorrow, or whenever this interview with Sergeant Flynn happens, tell the truth. Tell it like you told me here. Your mom won’t be mad, I promise. It will all work out.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  His eagerness broke my heart. “Yes,” I said. “I do.”

  * * *

  I was surprised when Flynn walked into the restaurant that evening just before we finished dinner service. He often ate with us if he was staying overnight in town. We were the only place open weeknights during the off-season besides the dining room at the Bellevue Inn, where he never could have eaten under the limits of his expense account. I was surprised he was back from Virginia.

 
“That was quick,” I said as he took his accustomed seat, solo at the bar.

  “I only interviewed one witness.”

  “Is she . . . back here in Maine?” I had no reason to suspect Carla Santiler of killing Spencer Jones, except that she ran and kept running.

  “No. I questioned her and let her go on her way. I asked her not to leave her home in Saint Petersburg.” He shrugged. “We’ll see. It’s not enforceable.”

  I gave him a glass of seltzer without him asking. No ice, no lemon, no lime. “Is she a suspect?”

  “She’s definitely a person of interest.” He hunched over the bar, shortening the distance between us. “And for the most unbelievable reason. You will never guess it in a million years.”

  I picked up the gauntlet. “She’s a suspect because she’s a famous sharpshooter.”

  He laughed. “Guess again. Although she does have a concealed weapon license in Florida, so maybe.”

  “She’s a suspect because she’s a hired assassin who travels from town to town killing actors in local holiday celebrations.”

  “I have to admit, that’s unbelievable,” he conceded. “Guess again.”

  I went for the most obvious. “She’s a suspect because she had an affair with Spencer Jones.” He spent five months a year doing regional theatre in Florida.

  “Warmer,” Flynn encouraged, still keeping his voice low.

  “I give up.”

  His eyes flashed in triumph. “She’s a suspect because she and the victim are married.”

  “No!” I shouted, causing heads in the dining room to turn in our direction.

  “Shush.” He grinned in spite of his warning. “I swear. I haven’t seen the documents yet. She’s going to produce them, but Ms. Santiler firmly believes that she is Mrs. Spencer Jones.”

  My mouth flew open. I was as shocked as Flynn had hoped I’d be. He chortled in response to the look on my face. I had a hundred questions. “How long have they been married? Did she know about Joyce Bayer? Why was she in Busman’s Harbor? Why did she run? She must have known it would make her look guilty.”

  “She and Jones had been married for seven years. The marriage was breaking down, and one of the issues was not only his nomadic lifestyle but also the fact that, for the last three years at least, he didn’t communicate well when he was gone. Didn’t call, text, or e-mail, or even respond to such. Ms. Santiler claims she didn’t know a thing about Joyce Bayer until a week ago when she got a mysterious phone call from a woman who told her about Ms. Bayer and the kids.”

  Another mysterious phone call. “She had no idea?”

  “Jones had told her he was previously married, no kids.”

  “No kids means there’s no reason to keep in touch with the ex-wife, a clean break.”

  “Exactly. No messy connections. The caller told her if she wanted to catch Jones in the act to come to Busman’s Harbor and take the haunted house tour on its first night.”

  “So she did.” I had wondered why she’d taken the tour on her own. The answer was one I couldn’t have imagined.

  “So she claims. The decision was spur of the moment, which is why she drove all the way from Florida. She did it in two days, and told herself every mile of the way she could turn around. But she didn’t.”

  “It’s a strong motive.” I couldn’t imagine the anger and hurt Carla Santiler must have felt to have been deceived in that way. And to have found out the way she did, from an anonymous phone call. I had no doubt the caller was the same one who had told Will Jones where to find his father. Flynn didn’t know about that call yet, but he would hear about it firsthand in the morning.

  “Ms. Santiler has a strong motive,” Flynn agreed. “And she ran. But she also turned herself in. And she did none of the things you would do if you were planning a premeditated murder. She registered at the Bellevue under her own name. She didn’t take Jones’s name after they married,” he told me as an aside. “And she paid for the ticket for the tour with her credit card. She easily could have paid Harley cash and we’d never have known who she was.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t premeditated. Maybe when she saw him she got so mad, she—”

  “Shot him with Joyce Bayer’s gun?” Flynn chuckled. “I don’t think so. Whoever did this knew five weeks ago what they were going to do.”

  I had to agree.

  “Carla Santiler may have motive,” Flynn continued. “But her existence gives even more motive to Joyce Bayer, especially if she learned her husband was a bigamist as recently as Carla Santiler did.”

  “I suppose.” It gave even more motive to Will or Kieran too. Had Will told me everything he’d learned in the mysterious phone call?

  I took Flynn’s order. He always ordered fresh fish (haddock tonight), an undressed salad, and a vegetable. Then I got busy and Flynn ate, watching Monday Night Football on the television over the bar.

  As I refreshed drinks, delivered desserts, and cleared tables, I thought about the two mysterious phone calls, one to Will Jones and the other to Carla Santiler. Someone was determined they should meet. If each of them was telling the truth about the call. Carla could be claiming she got a call when she’d actually plotted the murder and called Will. Will hadn’t mentioned his caller had an accent. I was sure he had received a call, but I wasn’t sure he’d told me everything about it.

  When Flynn was finished he asked for the check.

  “Are you sure I can’t tempt you with dessert? Livvie-made specials—bread pudding with caramel sauce or coconut cake.” I knew it was pointless to ask, which made me all the more determined to do so.

  “No, thanks. I’m headed back to the Fogged Inn. I didn’t want to stay at the Snuggles with Mrs. Bayer and her kids there. I’m talking to them all again in the morning.”

  When Will would tell about the mysterious call he received.

  Chapter Twelve

  In the morning I woke up thinking about the mystery calls to Will Jones and Carla Santiler. The caller, if I assumed it was the same caller—and I did, because one anonymous caller was weird enough, much less two—had been cunning and manipulative. In the Bayer-Jones household she had targeted the youngest member, the one most likely to have a burning desire to see his absent father. With Carla Santiler, the mystery caller had played to anger, instead of longing. Carla was already mad at her husband for his lack of communication during his long absences. She was probably near the end of her rope. The caller had taken a knife, cut off the rope, and sent Carla into free fall.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about it as I worked in the clambake office. The sky was gray and the weather had turned colder. My mother had a strict policy against turning on the heat before November first, and I shivered as I worked. It was Tuesday, a short day for me because, at Chris’s insistence, the restaurant was closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. “What part of ‘off-season’ don’t you get?” he’d asked me back when the schedule was set. “I need the time to fix up my cabin, fix up my boat, get my deer.”

  At nine-thirty I heard voices from across the street and looked out of the window. Joyce Bayer and her boys headed toward her boyfriend’s car. I felt better when I spied the roly-poly figure of Cuthie Cuthbertson accompanying the four of them down the front walk. Despite his harmless appearance, Cuthie was a brilliant defense lawyer and I was glad he and Joyce had found each other. The Snugg sisters must have made the connection. Cuthie got in his own car and both vehicles drove away. They would all be in for a long morning, full of questions about the theft of the gun and the mystery phone call.

  I returned to my desk but couldn’t concentrate. There were some important things about the mystery caller. How she’d targeted each household was important. So was the timing. Whoever it was had known for some time that Spencer Jones would be starring in our little show at Gus’s place at the end of October. I was in the scene with Spencer and I hadn’t known who he was until the day of the dress rehearsal.

  Who did know? Harley did. And presumably Myra. Try as I might, I c
ouldn’t think of any reason either one of them would want to kill Spencer Jones. Who else knew? People Jones had told. That was the only answer.

  I thought about the other people on the tour. The shot had come from our section of the restaurant. In that group, were there any more people with hidden connections to Spencer Jones?

  I dismissed the two teenage couples immediately. Their motivation for taking the tour was to fool around and goof on Harley.

  Clyde Merkin was a professional-grade know-it-all. It had seemed in character to me that he would want to know all about the haunted house tour and would have taken it on the first day. That way he could clear up Harley’s “misapprehensions” and be able to tell everyone around town he’d been on the tour, what they’d be seeing, and what was wrong about it.

  Harley had said he met Spencer downtown during the summer and became friends with him over a series of conversations. That certainly might have been true for Clyde as well. But if Clyde was friends with Spencer, that moved him even more to the center of the drama, and he couldn’t have resisted talking about that. Unless he was the killer. It seemed like a long shot.

  That left Marge Handey and her daughter, Elizabeth. I wasn’t sure how they could have known Spencer, but it was worth figuring out. I found an address for a Mrs. Orville Handey in Brunswick, the only Handey listed. I assumed that was Marge. There was no address for Elizabeth Handey. Perhaps she lived with her mother.

  No longer able to sit at my desk, I went to my mother’s garage where I kept my maroon Subaru, pulled out, and pointed its nose toward Brunswick.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Marge Handey lived in a two-family house on a large corner lot in a neighborhood near Bowdoin College. The gray clapboards needed a coat of paint, but they still contrasted nicely with the dark blue trim around the windows and on the porch rail. I parked on the street and approached the house.

  There was only one doorbell and I pushed it. Over the doorbell, there were two mailboxes, one over the other. The bottom one said HANDEY in big, block letters. The top one said JONES, equally bold.

  My heart beat faster. Was this the place Spencer Jones rented when he played at the Barnhouse Theater in the summer? Did he rent seasonally? The name on the mailbox might indicate a more permanent residency. Maybe he rented the place year-round. Which might mean he had planned to stay here during his performances for the haunted house tour. Maybe he even called his landlady in advance and told Marge he would be in town. I had discovered a connection between the Handeys and Spencer. It hadn’t even been difficult.