Old Haunts

by E. J. Copperman

  “Uh-huh.”

  “What do you mean, ‘uh-huh’?”

  “Let’s say a friend of yours disappeared one day, and then resurfaced, literally, in Seaside Heights two years later with a great big bash in the back of the head. You hear some ladies on the street talking, and one of them says she has a PI license. Is that how you’d pick a person to discover the culprit and lay your friend’s memory to rest?” McElone’s point was not lost on me; I’d been asking myself the same question since Luther had approached me at the greengrocer. Which reminded me to make a mental note to do something with that broccoli tonight.

  “All right, there’s more, but you’re not going to like it,” I told her. I was being completely honest with the lieutenant. The next part of the story was not going to be her favorite.

  McElone could see it coming; her eyes took on a feral quality, and she sat back in her chair as if pushed. “This isn’t going to be another one of your ghost stories, is it?” she asked quietly.

  I nodded. “I’m afraid so. See, Big Bob was married—very briefly—to Maxie Malone. Now you’ll remember—”

  She cut me off. “Maxine Malone was the woman who owned the Victorian immediately before you. The one you said showed up in your house as a ghost and told you she was murdered.”

  “Well, you arrested the killer, didn’t you? After the department had filed the two deaths away as suicides for a year.” I’ll admit it; that was designed just a little to get under McElone’s skin.

  “You know that happened before I got here,” she said. Good. It had worked.

  “Well, Maxie and Big Bob had a quick Vegas wedding—and got divorced a couple of days later. But Luther said that just before he disappeared,” I told her, “Big Bob had been planning to come to Harbor Haven to find Maxie, maybe reconcile with her. That’s why Luther said he came here, to see if he could find out something about Maxie’s death.”

  McElone, in full cop mode now, was already tapping something out on her computer keyboard, no doubt calling up the file on Maxie’s and Paul’s murders, or the dispatch she’d gotten from the county on Big Bob’s. “You don’t think the same killer who got Malone and—what was it, Harrison?—also killed Big Bob, do you?”

  “No, of course not.”

  I couldn’t see McElone’s computer screen, but she seemed very intent on it. “Well, the county doesn’t have much on your pal Big Bob. In fact, he barely registers as having existed.” She gave me a significant look. “I don’t suppose the ghost of his ex-wife told you what happened?” That was sarcasm—McElone doesn’t believe in the spirits in my house, and if I were her, I wouldn’t believe in them, either. But she’s seen enough at my guesthouse to know unusual things go on there. Or as she often puts it, “Your place is freaky.”

  “No, Maxie doesn’t know what happened,” I reported. “She hadn’t heard from Big Bob for a while before they both died.”

  “Uh-huh,” the lieutenant repeated.

  “Is there anything the county told you that can help? Anything that wasn’t in the papers?” I asked.

  “There isn’t much,” McElone admitted. “You have to keep in mind this is a two-year-old case, and nobody’s been looking for him for quite some time.”

  “And he was a biker,” I said, remembering what Luther had told me.

  McElone looked up sharply. “What is that supposed to mean?” she asked.

  “Luther said the cops weren’t going to care too much about one dead biker. They’d figure it was just some random violence between two transients who wouldn’t be missed.”

  She scowled. “Luther is wrong,” she said. “The county cops and the Seaside Heights cops are both going over this thing with a fine-toothed comb. They can’t help it if nobody found the body for two years. There’s been complete decomposition; there’s been all sorts of environmental factors; there’s been enough time for the killer to move to Mars if he felt like it. The police aren’t indifferent, and we don’t choose which crimes we investigate, but the body’s been there two years.”

  I had gotten the very reaction I’d been hoping for, so I decided to use it. “And I’ll bet that when Big Bob disappeared two years ago, a code-red alert went out, and the state police were mobilized to search, right?”

  Now, I have received many a dismissive look from Lieutenant McElone in the short time I’ve known her. But this one clearly took the Dismissive Derby. “Maybe they would have,” she said, “if somebody had reported him missing.”

  That didn’t add up. “Nobody filed a missing-persons report on Bob Benicio two years ago?” I asked.

  McElone shook her head. “Nobody. The only reason they were able to identify him was because he’d been busted for possession four years prior to his death, and there were fingerprints and dental records on file from when he’d been in the service. So if your pal Luther was so concerned about his close personal friend, how come he never bothered to tell the cops that someone was missing?”

  That was a good question. I’d have to ask Luther tonight when he came by for a progress report. And dinner.

  Seven

  “Who’s this guy Luther, and why is he coming to dinner?” Steven wanted to know. “I thought we could make it just us and Melissa.”

  “It’s touching that you’re jealous, Steven, but Luther is a client, and he’s coming by for a progress report on the case I’m investigating for him.” I had decided that since there would be company for dinner, it was a poor choice for me to cook, so I was searching through the take-out menus I keep in a kitchen drawer, hoping to be inspired to make the appropriate phone call.

  “A client.” The Swine rolled his eyes. “And how is it you became a…what? A private eye? And never told me?”

  “Our divorce settlement doesn’t require my telling you when I start a new business,” I told him. “No more than you had to tell me when you got dumped by the dye job.”

  “I didn’t get…” He looked exasperated. “That’s not what we’re talking about. But a private investigator? You?”

  “Me. You want to see the license again?”

  “It just doesn’t make sense.” That had been the point he’d been making for fifteen minutes now.

  “A lot of things don’t make sense. For example, you believing that everything on your girlfriend is the original equipment doesn’t make sense. But the bottom line is: I have the license, I need the money, and I take on clients. Luther is one of them.” I left out the part about him being my first flesh-and-blood client.

  After leaving McElone’s office, I had spent a little while searching through the phone book (it’s a big paper thing, children, that has the names and phone numbers of all the people who live in your town) for Julia MacKenzie, the apparent love of Paul’s life, who had been living in the area when Paul and Maxie died. She was not listed, and a call to Information (it’s this number you can call to…Never mind) showed no phone number, listed or not, under that name. Yeah, I’m old school.

  Twenty years ago, that might have been definitive proof that Julia had left the area, but in an age when people give up their landlines entirely for cell-phone service, it meant a grand total of nothing. And since she could have been listed with any of at least twelve possible service providers in New Jersey, my PI license was going to get me bubkes in tracking down Julia’s phone number.

  I would have to ask Paul more about his almost-fiancée, which, given his emotional outburst the last time we’d discussed it, was not an exciting prospect.

  “Fine,” my ex answered, “you go ahead and pretend you’re Nancy Drew, but we haven’t yet sat down as a family for a meal since I’ve been back.”

  “That’s because we’re not a family anymore,” I reminded him. “We’re a single mom and her daughter, and you’re the guy who left. We’ve spent a long time and done a lot of hard work to accept that. You don’t get to change it because the dye job you were dating decided to trade you in for a newer model.” I didn’t know that was what had happened, but payback, desp
ite the common expression, can be quite enjoyable.

  “Amee does not dye her hair,” The Swine said. Was that the best he could do? “But I realize you’re still sore about my leaving. That’s my fault, and I get that. I could apologize from now until the end of time, and it wouldn’t change anything. All I want is for you to accept that I really am sorry, and whether or not that makes a difference to you, it’s the truth.” Okay, so that hadn’t been the best he could do.

  I rejected the usual pizza place and the Chinese takeout because we always use those, and Melissa wasn’t a big fan of Chinese, although that started to change when she discovered the power of the lo mein noodle. Was I actually looking for something special because Luther was coming for dinner? I’d have to stop and think about that at some point. I probably should have asked him what kind of food he liked, too. Well, he hadn’t asked what we’d be eating. I decided that gave me free rein.

  “I believe you’re sorry,” I told Steven. “But that doesn’t make us a family again.”

  He was about to answer when the kitchen door swung open. “Who’s not a family?” I heard from the doorway.

  My mother stopped dead in her tracks at the sight of her ex-son-in-law standing next to me by the kitchen sink. You have to understand: Mom has believed that everything I’ve done in my life—absolutely everything—has been brilliant, beyond question, always amazing, never anything less than genius.

  Except marrying The Swine.

  Although Mom hadn’t ever expressed disapproval of my marriage—that’s just not her style—she had never told me what a wonderful choice I’d made or how Steven was exactly the son-in-law she’d always wanted. From Mom, that was close to being a declaration of war.

  Steven had done his best to charm both my parents, and had failed miserably in both cases. It should be noted that my father had not held back the way Mom did, and frequently referred to my husband as a “bum,” despite the fact that Steven was (very) gainfully employed doing some financial thing I didn’t understand pretty much the whole time we were married. Dad, gone five years now, had not valued a man based on his checking-account balance.

  “Steven,” my mother said now, her voice dropping almost to the kind of gasp you hear in horror movies when a person realizes she’s in the same room as a psychopathic killer.

  “Loretta!” The Swine gushed, walking to Mom and spreading his arms for a hug, which my mother stood still for, but did not reciprocate. “It’s been such a long time!”

  “Yeah,” Mom said. She waited until he ended the embrace, then walked toward me, taking off the little backpack she uses in lieu of a real purse. She put it down on the table, eyeing me with questions the whole time. “How long have you been back?” she asked Steven.

  “Since the day before yesterday,” The Swine admitted, thereby ratting me out as a daughter who doesn’t keep her mother sufficiently informed. Granted, he had no idea I hadn’t told Mom, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t blame him for her disappointment in me.

  “It’s been really busy since then,” I jumped in. “Haven’t had a minute to myself, honestly.”

  “I’ll bet,” Mom said. “So what brings you back, Steven?”

  My ex smiled his most convincing smile—he almost had me fooled, even—and told Mom all about how he had just wanted to reconnect with his family and see his little girl again. She smiled throughout his spiel, nodding occasionally, and did not so much as glance in my direction, giving The Swine her full attention.

  He stopped, finally, to take a breath after this dissertation on the power of family ties and lost chances, and Mom said, “No, really. Why are you here?”

  The Swine shook his head a little and used Smile Number Forty-Two, the sad and misunderstood one I’d seen quite often during the last year we were married. “I can see you’re just as hard to convince as your daughter, Loretta. Well, I’ll have to work twice as hard to win your trust, just like Alison’s. But you’ll see; the old Steven is gone forever. The man you see before you is the new Steven. I’m a changed person.”

  Mom turned to me without missing a beat and asked, “What’s for dinner?”

  In the end—after a short lecture from Mom about inviting people over for takeout—we decided on Thai food for the evening. The small talk after I called in our order was excruciating, as Steven was desperate to show off what a wonderful father he was (anybody can be good at something he only has to do every couple of years), so he called Melissa down. She, also wanting to present her dad in a positive light, was on behavior so impeccable I strongly considered the possibility that aliens had stolen my daughter and replaced her with a cyborg replica programmed for good manners. I wasn’t complaining, but it was odd. Then she remembered a computer game she hadn’t finished in her room and went back upstairs, saying she’d only be a minute. It had been a lovely show.

  Every once in a while, Paul would stick his head into the room, but he scowled whenever he saw The Swine, and retreated before I could acknowledge his presence. Mom, who can both see and hear more ghosts than I can, knew better than to speak to him with Steven in the room, anyway.

  Luther arrived before the delivery guy, and introductions were made all around. We went out into the den, where only Mrs. Fischer and Mrs. Spassky were sitting, the other guests no doubt in town to find some supper.

  “I haven’t found out much yet,” I told my client. “Big Bob was dead almost two years, and nobody ever even reported him missing to the cops.” I let the question go unasked.

  Luther answered it anyway, as I’d hoped he would. “At first, we figured Big Bob had just gone off to find his wife, and maybe they were getting back together.” On cue, Maxie rose up from the basement and floated into the center of the room, where she could get the best view of Luther. “By the time anybody started looking for him, not only was Big Bob still missing, but Maxie was nowhere to be found. Turned out she was here in this house, but none of the guys knew it. And now I hear she died just a few months after Big Bob. It’s a lot to take in.”

  “Tell him,” Maxie said forcefully. “You tell him what really happened.”

  I had intended to do so anyway, so I filled Luther in on the real story behind Maxie’s and Paul’s deaths (though I left out the part about their afterlives, because frankly I didn’t see any value in telling Luther about that, and I didn’t want Steven to know either) and the investigation that ensued after I took over the house. To his credit, The Swine did wince at the proper times in the narrative, and at one point commented that I should have called him, despite the fact that the voice answering his telephone probably would have been considerably higher pitched.

  Luther listened carefully, asked the occasional question, and lowered his head while thinking, as if the weight of the thoughts made it harder to hold it up. When I finished the story, he said, “I wish I’d known that then.”

  “Nobody knew it then,” I assured him. “Even the police didn’t know. This all happened less than a year ago.”

  “It’s fascinating!” Mrs. Spassky piped up from the sofa. “What an exciting story!” I hadn’t intended for them to hear it, but at least my guests were enjoying themselves, and that’s what a good hostess wants, isn’t it?

  Steven, his eyes agog, seemed incapable of speech. He stared at me for a good thirty seconds without speaking, which was probably a new record for him.

  There was a knock at the front door, and before I could move, Melissa appeared at the top of the stairs and launched herself down to reach the door first. It is this way whenever food is present. I’m not sure how she does it (although her bedroom window does face the street), but it doesn’t make much difference, since I’m still the one who has to pay the delivery guy.

  We retreated once again to the kitchen, where Mom had been busy setting the table—somebody in this family had manners, as it turned out—and began passing various containers around.

  “Is there anything without meat?” Luther asked. “I forgot to mention I’m a vegetarian.”
>
  Luckily, there was some pad see ew puck, which I’d gotten simply to have the thick rice noodles Melissa and I favor. Yeah, I’m loading my kid up on carbs. Call the nutrition police. I passed it to Luther.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t think to ask,” I told him.

  He waved a hand. “Not important,” he said. “It doesn’t really fit the rest of the image, I guess. Bikers are supposed to hunt and eat venison, right?” He chuckled to himself.

  “You’re not a biker all the time, are you?” Steven asked. “How do you make a living?”

  “I work at a bike shop,” Luther told him. “It’s what I know best.”

  Maxie was unusually silent, watching Luther from her perch near the cereal cabinet. She was wearing a T-shirt bearing the legend “More Than You Think” and an expression of something very much resembling wistful sadness.

  She never took her eyes off Luther.

  We ate in relative silence for a while, asking for items to be passed and discussing the food itself. Then Luther asked me what the next step in the investigation might be. I looked toward the oven, where Paul was “sitting.”

  “You need to make contact with the Seaside Heights police or the county unit,” Paul said. “And see if you can get a copy of the medical examiner’s report.”

  I passed that on to Luther as if it was my own idea, adding that I might be able to get some of the ME’s information through Phyllis at the Chronicle, who had a special “friend” in that office from whom she got certain news leaks in exchange for…activities it was better for me not to think about.

  “What do you think you’ll find out?” Melissa asked.

  I shrugged. “Can’t say. You ask questions. When you get the answers, then you know what you’ll find out.” Paul nodded proudly—I was an apt pupil.

  The Swine shook his head as if to wake up from a bad dream. “A private detective,” he mumbled. I ignored him, something I was very good at doing.