Haunted House Murder

by Leslie Meier

  I thought about fleeing down the walk. If Marge Handey was Spencer Jones’s landlady, this visit was better left to Sergeant Flynn. But at that moment, the front door flew open and Marge stood there. “Julia,” she said, “what brings you here?”

  I took a deep breath. In for a penny, in for a pound. “I’m still getting over what happened the other night.” Of course I was; it had only been three days. It’s not every day that you see someone gunned down in front of you. “I wondered how you and Elizabeth were doing.”

  “How kind of you to be concerned.” Marge’s mouth said “kind,” but her eyes did not. She squinted at me, assessing. “I would say we’re doing about as you might expect.” She pulled her sweater tighter around her. “It’s raw today. Come in.”

  All my instincts told me I shouldn’t go inside. I stepped over the threshold into the front hall the two apartments shared, but left the door open behind me and went no farther. “Is Elizabeth here?”

  Marge glanced at the staircase that led to the second floor. “She’s got her own place, upstairs. I’m not sure if she’s home. She works at Renys department store and her schedule changes all the time.”

  Elizabeth lived upstairs? The mailbox said JONES. Instinctively, I stepped back toward the open door. As I did, my eye fell on a small pile of envelopes on the narrow table in the hall. The top one was from the electric company. MRS. SPENCER JONES, the address read. APT #2.

  My stomach dropped. Elizabeth Handey was Mrs. Spencer Jones! Of course she was. Jones had a wife for every town and every season, Joyce Bayer for New York, Carla Santiler for Florida, and Elizabeth for Maine.

  My feet, which had momentarily frozen, moved again. I took another step back, but not quickly enough. Marge’s gaze followed my own, spotting the pile of envelopes. Before I could react, she lunged at me, grabbing me by the throat and squeezing tight. My hands flew to my neck where I tried to pry hers away, grabbing at her hands, then her fingers. She kept up the pressure relentlessly. I couldn’t breathe! I was afraid I would pass out. Then what would she do to me? My heart hammered against my rib cage.

  “He ruined my daughter, deceived her! He was going to break her heart. He deserved what happened to him, every bit of it.”

  Marge was my height and considerably heavier, but I was younger and in better shape. I shook my body violently from side to side, trying to shake her off, but it only tightened her grip. I put both hands on her chest and pushed against her with all my might, trying to break her grip.

  “Wheeze, gurgle, burg!” I rasped.

  “Who knows you came here?” She looked deep into my terrified eyes. “No one, as I suspected. We’ll hide your body and destroy your phone. We’ll hide your car, like we did Spencer’s. No one will ever know!”

  I fought her in earnest then, overcoming any inhibitions caused by her age. I pushed, I slapped, I kicked, but she was surprisingly strong. Neither of us was getting anywhere.

  Blam! A sound like a thunder crack caused us both to jump. Bits of plaster rained down around us.

  “Mother, enough!” Elizabeth Jones stood on the stairs from her apartment, a hunting rifle in her hands, pointed at the ceiling. “This has gone far enough.”

  It was the first time I had heard her speak.

  Marge Handey squeezed my neck one more time for good measure, but then dropped her hands.

  “Get out of here,” Elizabeth directed me, her tone deadly calm. “I’ll take care of this.”

  I ran to my car and squealed away from the curb. I pulled around the corner, called 911, and told the Brunswick police what was happening. “She had a gun. She said she would take care of it. I don’t know what she meant.” My voice shook so hard, I worried the dispatcher wouldn’t understand me. “Please don’t hurt her,” I begged. “She saved my life.” Then I began to cry.

  Before I was off the line, I heard sirens. Grasping the wheel and taking deep breaths to steady myself, I slowly backed up my car so I could see what was happening down the street. Time stood still. I could hardly breathe. “Don’t hurt her, don’t hurt her, don’t hurt her,” I mumbled.

  Then, both Marge and Elizabeth came down the front walk with their hands up, followed by a half-dozen police officers. I was so relieved, I cried again.

  I called Flynn and sobbed out what had happened. He practically threw me off the phone so he could get in touch with the Brunswick PD and fill them in. “Are you all right?” he asked. “Can you drive?”

  “I think so.” My voice didn’t sound as confident as the words.

  “Go immediately to the Brunswick police station,” he commanded. Then, more gently, “They’ll need to talk to you. I’ll need to talk to you. Everyone will need to talk to you.”

  * * *

  It was much later in the afternoon when Chris drove me to Mom’s house. He’d rushed to the Brunswick police station immediately when I called him. I’d been so relieved to see him, I cried again. We’d left my car in Brunswick. The adrenaline had drained out of me and I was too shaky to drive.

  Mom ran to greet me as soon as I came through the front door, hugging me, asking me questions and then hugging me again.

  “Julia, what were you thinking?” Mom asked. The same question Flynn had asked me, though he’d been a lot louder and redder in the face. The same question Chris had asked on the ride home.

  I answered them all the same way. “I didn’t realize what was going on until I got to their house and saw the name Jones on the mailbox.”

  “Was it both of them? Were they in it together?” Mom asked.

  “Flynn is still sorting through it. Marge and Elizabeth are season ticket holders at the Barnhouse Theater. Spencer and Elizabeth met at the opening reception three years ago. They dated and he proposed. He moved into her apartment at her mother’s house.”

  “Of course he did,” Chris interjected.

  “Last summer, Marge became suspicious something wasn’t right. She hired a private investigator and learned about the other two Mrs. Joneses. She confronted Jones, who confessed. He begged her not to tell Elizabeth and swore he was in the process of divorcing the other women. She agreed. Then she engaged him in a series of conversations where he revealed to her the phone numbers for Will and Carla, the garage code for the house in Montclair, the location of Joyce’s gun, the combination for the gun box, and I’m sure a whole bunch of other stuff. Apparently, all this information was extracted as a form of blackmail. Marge threatened she would tell Elizabeth everything if he didn’t provide the information she sought. Marge told Flynn that Jones seemed relieved to finally tell the whole story, to have someone who knew about his life. Marge tucked the knowledge away for later.

  “When Labor Day came, Spencer did his usual disappearing act to New York. Marge suspected he’d made no moves to divorce the other Mrs. Joneses. Then he called, completely unexpectedly, six weeks ago, to tell Elizabeth he’d be back in Maine for a week at the end of October.

  “Marge was furious. She believed Jones had ‘ruined’ her daughter and she wanted revenge. She went to New Jersey, stole Joyce’s gun, and made the calls to Will and Carla. She hoped Joyce or even Carla would be blamed, most likely Joyce because of the gun. Marge didn’t know Joyce had discovered it was missing and reported it stolen.”

  “And then she shot him in cold blood?” Chris’s brow was creased.

  “I’m not sure Flynn is buying her story. I think he’s convinced Elizabeth was in on it, though both mother and daughter claim otherwise.” As I said this, I remembered Marge had said, “We’ll hide your body . . . We’ll hide your car, just like we did Spencer’s.”

  “I’m sure Elizabeth was involved,” I said. “At a minimum, she’s an accessory after the fact. Spencer had driven them all to Busman’s Harbor the night of the murder. Elizabeth had an extra set of keys to Spencer’s car. When everyone ran out of the restaurant after the shooting, one of them, Marge or Elizabeth, threw the gun into the water. They could have ditched it anywhere on the way home, but Marge wanted
it to be found. She wanted the murder pinned on Joyce. Then they walked calmly to his car and drove home. No one was looking for the car then. No one even knew it existed. They caravanned out to the woods later and ditched it there.”

  “Isn’t it easy, the question of who pulled the trigger?” Chris said. “Which one was the crackerjack shot?”

  That shot, directly to the middle of the forehead, hitting someone who was climbing stairs, in the dark, was remarkable.

  “They both belong to a gun club,” I said. “Flynn will interview the members to see which of the two was more likely to have the ability.”

  My own feelings were complicated. Elizabeth was certainly involved, but I hoped she wasn’t the shooter and hadn’t known of Marge’s plan ahead of time. Elizabeth had saved my life.

  What would I do if my own beloved mother killed someone right in front of me? Help her hide the evidence? I would be sorely tempted, especially in the heat of such a moment. And I had more resources, more personal strength, and more independence than Elizabeth Jones. Though she’d had the strength she’d needed to end the murder spree, to stop the killing at one.

  “Flynn will figure it out,” Mom said. “He’ll make them tell the truth.”

  “Either way, Joyce Bayer and her boys are off the hook,” I said. That was one good thing about this awful turn of events.

  Mom looked from me to Chris and back again. “My goodness, we’re so into the story, we haven’t moved from the hall. Come into the kitchen and have something to drink.”

  Just then, there was a terrific scrabbling in the hall upstairs, the thumps of four feet running at top speed. All three of us looked up in time to see Le Roi take a running leap onto the hall carpet, launching it over the stairs. The big Maine coon rode the carpet with a silly grin of supreme self-satisfaction as he traveled through the air, hanging above the stairs for a few seconds before both cat and carpet landed in a noisy heap on the front hall floor.

  We all stared as Le Roi got up, shook himself, and strolled calmly toward the kitchen.

  Mom laughed, and then I did, too, feeling the tension leave my body for the first time since the murder. Soon we were all hanging on one another, tears in our eyes, grateful for the relief, grateful for the touch, and grateful for answers.

  RECIPE

  Livvie’s Pumpkin Bread

  In the story, Julia’s sister, Livvie, makes this pumpkin bread for the people on the Halloween Haunted House tour. In reality, it’s a recipe I often made in the fall for my children when they were young. Made with canned pumpkin, it is simple and practically foolproof.

  Ingredients

  2 eggs

  ½ cup sugar

  ½ cup oil

  ⅔ cup canned pumpkin

  1 cup whole-wheat flour

  ¾ cup white flour

  ⅓ cup molasses

  ½ teaspoon baking soda

  ½ teaspoon baking powder

  ½ teaspoon nutmeg

  ½ teaspoon cinnamon

  1 teaspoon ginger

  ¼ teaspoon cloves

  Instructions

  Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees. Beat eggs and sugar together. Add oil and pumpkin. Mix well. Add rest of ingredients and mix until well blended. Pour into greased 9x5x3 loaf pan. Bake for 50 minutes.

  Dear Readers:

  I hope you enjoyed meeting or revisiting Julia Snowden, her friends, and family in Hallowed Out. If you’d like to read more about them, there are seven Maine Clambake Mysteries and two previous novella collections, Eggnog Murder and Yule Log Murder. Both also include stories by Leslie Meier and Lee Hollis.

  I was thrilled when Kensington asked me to write a Halloween-themed novella for Haunted House Murder. The question wasn’t whether or not there were ghosts in Busman’s Harbor, it was which story to tell. I had already written about one of the ghosts haunting Windsholme, the abandoned mansion on the private island where the Snowden family runs their authentic clambakes, in Stowed Away, the sixth Maine Clambake Mystery.

  I found, writing about the off-season, I was more attracted to the ghosts to be found in town. I imagined, like most old resorts I’ve been to, Busman’s Harbor offered an evening ghost tour. That’s how Harley and Myra Prendergast appeared in my imagination. I already knew Gus’s restaurant had been used by rumrunners during Prohibition from the fourth Maine Clambake Mystery, Fogged Inn. I was off to the races!

  I hope you have enjoyed “Hallowed Out.” I’m always happy to hear from readers. You can write to me at barbara ross@maineclambakemysteries.com, or find me via my Web site at www.maineclambakemysteries.com, on Twitter@barbross, on Facebook www.facebook.com/barbaraannross, on Pinterest www.pinterest.com/barbaraannross and on Instagram http://www.instagram.com/maineclambake.

  I wish a happy Halloween to all our readers. May you have jack-o’-lanterns, corn mazes, hayrides, apple cider—and not a single, solitary murder to spoil your wonderful night.

  Very sincerely,

  Barbara Ross

  Portland, Maine