Old Haunts

by E. J. Copperman

  I kept walking and was suddenly aware that I was walking alone. I stopped and turned around to see Phyllis and Jeannie staring at me with the same expression on both faces—amazement.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Are you holding out on me?” Phyllis demanded. “You getting back into the PI business? Are you investigating this case?”

  “Me? What? No!”

  “Then how did you know all that?” Jeannie chimed in. Thanks a heap, Jeannie.

  “I read it in the paper,” I said.

  “But I haven’t run a story about it yet,” Phyllis said. They started to walk again, more slowly, something for which I was grateful. It was getting hot out, even at only nine in the morning.

  “I don’t want to hurt your feelings,” I told Phyllis, “but the Chronicle is not the only newspaper I read.”

  “I’m crushed,” she answered.

  “Don’t be. It’s just there are six days of the week when you don’t publish.”

  “So what caught your eye about this case that you did so much reading?” she asked. Phyllis’s reporter’s mind is rarely at rest, and she never accepts the easiest answer to any question without some skepticism.

  “Nothing special,” I tried. “I just noticed the story on a newspaper when I was hanging some wallboard in the attic, and the headline got me.” That was sort of close to the truth—it had been Maxie who’d noticed the headline, but I was there.

  “What about it?” Phyllis probed. She’d do whatever she needed to do to improve her headlines and get more people to read them.

  “Just the subject, I guess,” I answered. “You know, people do just read articles casually once in a while.”

  “Bite your tongue.”

  We arrived at Veg Out, which was bustling on this July day. An open-air section (normally part of the parking lot) was devoted to the latest from local farms, and both Harbor Havenites and some vacationers—and after spending enough years in town, you knew which was which—picked through the Jersey corn and tomatoes, and even the occasional peach.

  I started my quest for vegetables I’d theoretically put in a salad for dinner tonight, knowing full well that I almost never cooked and would probably end up ordering a pizza. But I’d made a New Year’s resolution to reverse that trend, and it was only seven months into the year. Time to begin.

  “I see watermelon,” Jeannie said, and before I could suggest that lugging one around might be problematical, since she was pretty much already smuggling one under her belt, she was off to check out the possibilities.

  “I guess it’s just you and me,” I told Phyllis.

  “Sorry,” she replied. “I was just out for the walk. Gotta get back to the office. Stop in sometime, and bring in Melissa. She’s almost ready to start delivering papers.” And she, too, vanished before I could protest. I was starting to wonder if I had properly showered that morning.

  I started looking at some bunches of broccoli. That’s a good vegetable—green, with vitamins and beta-carotene and things like that. High intake of broccoli is also said to lower the risk of some aggressive cancers.

  See? Wikipedia is good for some stuff after all.

  The problem was, I would be making a salad for just Melissa and myself, and these heads of broccoli were tied together in bunches of two, and each one was quite large. This was, in short, more broccoli than I would probably need in the next six months. But the ties were strong, and I wasn’t sure that Mrs. Pak, the grocer, would mind if I removed them.

  But my dilemma was eclipsed when I heard a deep voice very close to my left ear. “I have a knife,” it said.

  I drew in a deep breath and tried to remember if under such circumstances it was better to scream or to fall to the floor in a dead faint. Unconsciousness was definitely leading when I turned to see a man next to me. A large man.

  A very large man. In a black leather biker jacket and dark sunglasses. And a mustache, which was both a little retro and a little menacing at the moment. I summoned what little voice I could find, but decided not to scream. A man with a knife could move before anyone could get to me in this crowd.

  “I beg your pardon?” I squeaked. Oh, like you would have come up with something more defiant.

  “I have a knife,” the man repeated. He raised what looked like a very effective blade attached to a black handle. “If you want me to cut through the bands on that broccoli.”

  “Oh. Oh!” The idea that my life was in fact not in immediate danger was just starting to leak through to my reasoning center. “Is it okay to do that?”

  The man took the broccoli from my hand, rather gently I thought, and severed the thick ties on the vegetable with what appeared to be no effort at all. “They want to sell the broccoli,” he said. “Are they going to argue with a paying customer?”

  “You’re clearly from out of town,” I told him. “Mrs. Pak is not to be reckoned with.”

  “Trust me,” he said.

  Sure enough, when I brought the newly liberated broccoli to the cash register, which Mrs. Pak herself was operating, there was absolutely no drama at all. “Two fifty,” she said. I provided the cash, she provided a bag, and everyone’s view of the transaction appeared to be favorable.

  “Thanks for the help,” I told the man, who was no longer brandishing his lethal-looking knife.

  “No problem.” He extended a hand. “I’m Luther Mason.”

  I took his hand. “Alison Kerby.”

  Luther nodded. “I know.”

  “You know?” What the hell did that mean?

  “I’ve been following you since you left the Chronicle office,” he said. Suddenly, my new friend seemed menacing again.

  “Look, don’t take this the wrong way,” I said, “but you’re scaring the living daylights out of me. Why would you follow me to the greengrocer?”

  Luther’s eyes seemed to squint a bit behind the dark glasses. “You don’t need to be scared,” he said. “It’s just that I heard you talking about the body they found in Seaside Heights.”

  That had an ominous ring to it. “So?”

  “So, Big Bob was a friend of mine. We rode together.”

  This was coming at me too fast. “You…rode together?”

  Luther nodded. “Yeah. On our hogs. Big Bob was in my bike club.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “We rode motorcycles together,” Luther said, speaking slowly as if to a relatively stable mental patient.

  “No, I get that. I don’t understand how that adds up to you following me.”

  He smiled. For a man who looked like he could tear Mount Rainier in half with his bare hands, he had a gentle smile. “It’s simple,” he said. “I heard your friend say that you’re a private detective, and I want to hire you to find out who killed Big Bob.”

  I felt my bottom teeth come up to bite my upper lip. “Are you sure you wouldn’t just settle for some broccoli?” I asked.

  Five

  In the end, I invited Luther back to my house. For one thing, I wanted Maxie to vouch for his story—I wanted to make sure she’d seen this guy before—and to hear what he had to say.

  But it was all I could do to convince my seven-months-pregnant best friend that she should not hop on the back of a motorcycle with a man we had just met.

  “It’s perfectly safe,” Jeannie protested. “I’ve done it before.”

  “Then you won’t mind missing out on this chance,” I countered. “I’m not explaining to your husband why you and your unborn baby were seen tooling down Ocean Avenue on the back of a hog with a stranger.”

  “You’re no fun anymore,” Jeannie pouted.

  “I never really was,” I said.

  It was that way the whole drive back to the guesthouse. With Steven and Melissa out of the house, I could meet Luther by myself. I explained to him that the kitchen, being a sort of off-limits area for the guests, was our best place to speak privately, but I didn’t notice either ghost lurking about on the way inside, which wa
s unusual. And a little worrisome, since I had also insisted on Jeannie going home to protect her, in case my instincts about Luther turned out to be mistaken.

  “You don’t want me to investigate Big Bob’s death,” I told him as soon as we sat down and I put the broccoli in the fridge, where it looked lonely. “I’m really not a professional investigator. I just sort of got my license on a lark.”

  “But you have it,” he answered. “You can do stuff the cops aren’t going to do. Look. I knew Big Bob. I knew his ex-wife Maxie Malone, and I’d heard she bought a house in Harbor Haven. So I was going to the newspaper office to see what I could find out about Maxie when I overheard someone say you were a PI. I need a PI. It’s kismet.”

  “It’s crazy, is what it is,” I countered. “You don’t know me at all. I’m not a real investigator. And I’m sorry to tell you, but I knew Maxie, I was helping her fix up this house, and she died about a year and a half ago. I bought the place out of respect for her.” (I’d used this line on people before, and preposterous though it sounds, given Maxie’s temperament, it never failed to convince people.)

  This time was no exception. Luther nodded. “I found that out this morning. When I couldn’t find Maxie, I went to see her mom.”

  “I know Kitty,” I told him. “So she must have told you that Maxie was dead. Why come all the way from her house in Avon to Harbor Haven when you knew that?”

  Luther shrugged. “I don’t know. It threw me. Maxie was dead—she’d been murdered, like Big Bob, and not that long after him. I started to wonder if there was a connection. The only mention I could find of Maxie’s death was online, an article from the local paper here, so I came to the newspaper office to talk to the reporter, but the office was closed.”

  I knew there was no connection, but explaining that without mentioning that Maxie was available for corroboration would be tricky. “Maxie’s murderer was caught,” I told Luther. “It had nothing to do with Big Bob.” Okay, maybe not so tricky.

  Paul stuck his head down through the kitchen ceiling and looked confused. Glad to see him, I mouthed the name “Maxie” at him. He nodded, and vanished back up through the ceiling.

  “Are you okay?” Luther asked. “Does your jaw hurt or something?”

  “I had something stuck in my teeth,” I told him. I had to stall just a little so Maxie and Paul could hear the whole conversation.

  Mrs. Spassky stuck her head in through the swinging kitchen door. “Sorry to bother you, Alison dear,” she said.

  “No bother, Mrs. Spassky. Do you need something?” Keep talking until Paul and Maxie get here, okay? Nice guest.

  “The name of a store where we can get salt-water taffy. My sister says you can’t vacation at the beach and not bring home salt-water taffy.” Mrs. Spassky’s eyes rolled just a bit; she clearly thought Mrs. Fischer was being silly. Then she caught sight of Luther, and examined him closely. No doubt she was comparing him to Steven, whom she still saw as my husband.

  “I know just the place,” I told her. “Sweet Tooth, at the corner of Harbor Avenue and North Haven.”

  Mrs. Spassky gave Luther a few more ogles and nodded without making eye contact. “Thank you, dear.” She left the kitchen just as Paul and Maxie appeared through the kitchen wall. Paul still had a quizzical look on his face, but Maxie stopped in what would have been her tracks if she’d been walking. Her hand went to her mouth.

  “Luther,” she whispered.

  Luther’s head turned a little, as if he’d heard his name spoken. But he just blinked, and looked back at me.

  “You came here to talk to Phyllis at the Chronicle,” I said, to distract Luther. Didn’t want him thinking he might have heard a voice. “How did that lead to your looking for a detective?”

  “I wasn’t looking for a detective,” Luther said. “It hadn’t occurred to me before your friend mentioned you had a license, and then it seemed the logical thing—you have a mystery; you hire a detective.”

  “There are plenty in the phone book,” I said. “I’ll recommend one.” I didn’t actually know any, but I could pick a name out of the Yellow Pages as well or better than most.

  “No, it has to be someone who cares. You told me before a little bit about your connection. Maxie owned this house, and now you own it. That’s too huge to be a coincidence. It’s magic, or luck, or Maxie’s spirit, or something.”

  Maxie grinned at me and mouthed the word spirit. She clearly found that hilarious.

  “It’s just a coincidence,” I said.

  Luther shook his head. “I saw Big Bob just before he disappeared. He said he was coming here to Harbor Haven.” Luther still looked a little spooked (pardon the expression), but was focusing again on my question. “Something about visiting his ex-wife.”

  Maxie gasped.

  “Why?” I asked.

  Luther nodded, and took off his dark sunglasses. His eyes were narrow, as if constantly squinting into the sun. And he was facing away from the window. “I’m not sure,” he said, “but he always felt bad about the way it ended. He’d just found out Maxie was here, and he said he was going to go see her, maybe he could make things right.”

  Maxie was listening with an expression of incredulity. She appeared to be crying, although there were no tears falling from her eyes.

  “He wanted to reconcile with his wife?” I asked. That had seemed the way Luther’s story was headed.

  “I don’t know,” he answered. “He said it was all about just making it up to her about the way they’d split, but he might have wanted to start back up again. He really loved Maxie. If you knew her, you’d understand.”

  “I’ll bet,” I said before I thought about it.

  “Bet your ass,” Maxie retorted, her voice scratchy.

  Luther looked at me. “You don’t believe me?” he asked.

  Snap back, Alison. The man doesn’t know Maxie’s here in the room with you. “Oh, I believe you, Luther,” I said. “But I’m still not the person you want investigating Big Bob’s murder. The police are really good at that sort of thing.”

  Luther stood up, as if being burdened by the chair was now far too limiting a condition for him. “The cops don’t care about some biker getting himself beat to death,” he said. “To them, it’s like a gang killing. One less biker to worry about. They’ll pay lip service to it, stuff it in the cold case file, and nothing will ever happen. I need someone who won’t give up on it.”

  Maxie nodded her head—yes, that was the way it would be.

  “That’s not me,” I argued to both of them, noting that Paul, standing a foot or so off the kitchen floor in one corner and stroking his goatee, wasn’t being any help. “I have to run this guesthouse. I have paying guests here.”

  “You’ve done it for people you barely knew,” Maxie said quietly.

  Luther didn’t react to her voice this time. “Just take a look,” he said. “Spend an afternoon on it. I’ll pay you.”

  Senior Plus had booked a number of rooms during the summer, and there had been some money when a low-budget reality-TV show called Down the Shore had shot its second season in the house, but my guesthouse was still far from being a gold mine. I had expenses, not the least of which was my mortgage on the house. I had to save for Melissa’s education. And The Swine’s child-support payments were, let’s say, sporadic. A paying job was not something I could turn down flat without a really good reason.

  “I’m afraid of violent people,” I told Luther (and by extension, Maxie). I thought that was a really good reason. “And I’m not interested in getting someone who has already killed a great big man mad at me. I don’t have that kind of dedication, Luther.” For some reason, Luther smiled at the words “great big man.” “You don’t want someone like me investigating a violent crime.”

  “I’m not asking you to catch them, just to find out,” he argued. “It happened two years ago. Whoever did it is probably long gone. But I need to know what happened. The man was a friend of mine. A good friend. Can you underst
and what it’s like to have someone like that just vanish?”

  It probably was unfair of me to think of The Swine, but I nodded.

  “Then certainly you can understand how I feel,” Luther said.

  “Maybe I do, but that doesn’t make me the right person for the job. I’m not a great investigator, Luther; I’ll tell you the truth. And if I take on this job for you, I’m more than likely to mess it up. It means too much to you to allow that. Don’t ask me.”

  Paul, who had raised his eyebrows at the phrase “not a great investigator,” shook his head and said, “You’re not being fair, Alison.”

  Luther’s voice was surprisingly gentle when he said, “But I am asking you. Please, Alison. Spend a day, an afternoon, and see what you can find out. If it’s nothing, then it’s nothing, and I’ll move on. But if there’s a chance I could know what happened to Big Bob, it’s worth taking.”

  “You have to,” Maxie said. She wasn’t looking at me. “You just have to.”

  “Do I have to say it again?” I asked. “I’m afraid, okay? I don’t want to do this. I’ve done things like it before, and I ended up terrified. I don’t want that again. Please.”

  I walked out of the kitchen and into the den—which I had converted from a dining room to discourage any thought of food being served here—where all five of my Senior Plus Tours guests were presently gathered.

  Mrs. Fischer and Mrs. Spassky were just heading out the door on their taffy expedition. Mr. and Mrs. Westen, who had insisted I call them Albert and Francie, were sitting on the sofa, reading. She had the latest Harlan Coben thriller, and he was reading The Bridges of Madison County. Don Petrone sat looking elegant in his blazer and long pants (and not sweating, which was remarkable even in the air-conditioning). The man should have been wearing a captain’s hat.