Night of the Living Deed

by E. J. Copperman

  By the time I’d gotten the door on the third cabinet free of paint, Maxie’s singing had brought me to the breaking point. On her thirty-fourth chorus, she caught me glaring in her direction, and smiled beatifically.

  Just when I was looking at the scraper and considering using it on myself, there was a knock on the back door. I hadn’t even heard a car in the driveway.

  The singing went on and on. It was maddening.

  I flung open the back door and threw my arms open. “Mom!” I shouted. “Am I glad to see you!”

  My mother smiled at the welcome, and accepted my embrace, but looked confused. At least she did until I got my arms around her and held on like I hadn’t since she’d tried to put me on the bus for the first day of kindergarten. Family lore has it that she’d finally ended up driving me to school and sitting in the back of the room all day. But only for the first week.

  “Alison,” she said now. “Are you all right?” She dropped her backpack (Mom carries a backpack, as if she were in the ninth grade) and held on. I didn’t let her go for a while.

  I made her stay in the kitchen for the rest of the day until Melissa got home.

  When I got up the next morning, the cabinets had all been painted a shocking pink.

  Nine

  It went on like that for the next ten days. Every morning I’d go downstairs to work on the house and find that some new vandalism had taken place overnight. Paul would spend his time moping in one corner, mooning at me, and Maxie would glare daggers at me and do something—anything—guaranteed to drive me insane.

  When I turned up my iPod to drown out her singing, Maxie would throw my tools and supplies into the garbage. When I put them in a locked tool case, she would pick up whatever I had been using from the floor and do damage with it. The day she got hold of a screwdriver and started taking down all the interior doors in the house was an especially jolly one, I can tell you.

  It was becoming increasingly difficult to believe that none of this was happening, and I was considering a visit to Dr. Walker—because if this wasn’t happening, there was something very wrong with me.

  Meanwhile, Melissa was absolutely livid with me for, as she put it, “hitting on” her favorite teacher. I tried to explain that Mr. Barnes had asked me about seeing the house, but she wouldn’t hear of it. Strangely, however, no note came home about a visit, and I started to wonder if I would have found small bits of torn paper at the bottom of her backpack if I’d bothered to look.

  But I didn’t have time to worry about that. I was still under siege by the two spirits, who appeared to be real and were growing more insistent with each day. Paul emerged from his dark corner to make another impassioned plea while I was steaming wallpaper off the walls of Melissa’s bedroom. “I’m a detective,” he said. “How will it look if my own death goes unsolved?”

  “I honestly don’t think it’ll hurt your business that much,” I told him. “It’s possible your reputation isn’t a huge issue anymore.”

  “You don’t understand,” Paul told me for what had to be the six-thousandth time. Yet, I was fairly sure I understood perfectly. “I can’t spend eternity wondering what happened to us. I’m not asking you to do anything dangerous. All you have to do is a little legwork, a little research, so I can figure out what it all means.”

  “No sale,” I answered. “I have a nine-year-old daughter to think about. I don’t want to get involved with people who might be inclined to make her an orphan.”

  “She has a father.” Maxie, standing in the doorway, puffed up her lips. “I’ll bet he’s hot, too, because the kid’s a lot better-looking than you are.”

  “He’s a swine,” I said. “But if you want to look him up, he’s in California. I can give you an address. Tell him I said hi. Spend a couple of months.”

  In response, Maxie started to sing the Beatles’ upbeat ditty about a serial killer, “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” but changed the name to match her own.

  “Nobody’s going to hurt you,” Paul went on, ignoring her. “I’ll be watching the whole time.”

  “Yeah, ‘the whole time’ in this house or its yard,” I answered. “I’m not feeling tremendously confident.”

  This had the capacity to go on quite literally forever, but I had to have the house ready for business by April at the latest, and Maxie’s hilarious “pranks” were setting back my timetable considerably.

  “Enough,” I said. “You’ve made your point.”

  “So you’ll help?” Paul asked, eyes wide.

  “No. But you’ve made your point. Now, leave me alone while I check my e-mail.” I set down the steamer, unplugged it, and reached into my canvas bag for the ancient laptop I keep there. The wireless connection had finally been activated in the house, so I could communicate with the outside world, particularly with Melissa’s school when necessary.

  By the time the elderly iBook was powered up (it has a “Little Engine That Could” quality that would be really endearing if it could stay powered for more than ten minutes at a time), Maxie had changed her tune, literally. She was on to “Baby Let’s Play House,” a Buddy Holly tune whose last line she kept repeating.

  “I’d rather see you dead, little girl.”

  Then she vanished downstairs, just lowering through the floor. I turned on my e-mail program and checked the grand total of three messages that had come in to me since the night before—I’m remarkably popular.

  One was an ad for a weight-loss program guaranteed to make me stop looking like I had “saddlebags.” I deleted that. Another was for Viagra. I deleted that, too.

  But the third e-mail, whose sender was listed as 78.394.051, was something else entirely. Normally, I wouldn’t even open such a thing, but my spam filter had cleared it, the subject line read “Alison,” and I was stupidly intrigued.

  Big mistake.

  The message read: “Get out of the house or you’ll be dead in a month.”

  I chewed my lip for a moment, and I must have blanched. Paul looked over at me and seemed genuinely concerned.

  “Is something wrong, Alison?” he asked.

  My voice sounded scratchy. “Tell me again what you want me to do,” I said.

  Ten

  It took a few moments for my heart to stop pounding, but when it did, Paul was already talking. He didn’t leave me any time to be terrified. It was the first nice thing Paul had done for me.

  “Here’s our situation: Maxie was trying to get the planning board to reject the development plan that would have torn down this house. So all the people who wanted the plan to pass were at the board meeting, and the only one on Maxie’s side was Maxie.”

  “And you.” I was trying to concentrate on what Paul was saying. It wasn’t easy; I hadn’t ever gotten a death threat before. I was catching about every second sentence, but I was trying.

  “I was just the bodyguard,” he reminded me. “I wasn’t advocating for her. She’d only called me two days before, said she’d found my name online and she liked my picture.”

  “So what happened at the meeting?”

  Paul reached into his pocket and pulled out a reporter’s notebook that was just as transparent as he. He flipped a few pages until he found the one he wanted. “The developer is a man named Morris. Adam Morris. He spoke about the benefits to the town if this development went through—construction jobs, increased tax revenue, retail businesses moving in, an influx of tourists . . .”

  “I’m starting to want them to condemn the property,” I said.

  “And I think the board was going to go that way. The mayor was there. Do you know the mayor?” Paul’s feet were about six inches off the floor. He wasn’t paying attention to his appearance. His shoes changed color three times.

  “Bridget Bostero? I’ve seen her around town a couple of times, but I don’t think we’ve ever spoken to each other.” If I remembered correctly, the mayor was a former beautician who had taken on the party’s candidate and won on a “Beautify Harbor Haven” campaign. You ha
ve to love New Jersey.

  “Well, she was very much in favor of the plan until Maxie started talking about the parking problems, the increased traffic, the need for road improvements, sewer improvements, utility upgrades, beach erosion prevention . . .”

  “Wow. Now I don’t want them to pass it.” Maxie must have been really persuasive at that meeting. I wouldn’t have thought she had it in her.

  Paul looked at his notes again. “And neither did anyone else. Including the chairman of the planning board, and three of the four members.” Paul closed his eyes, thinking.

  “How did Adam Morris take the news?”

  “Well, considering,” Paul said. “He told the board he thought they had made a mistake, but thanked them for their time and left.”

  “So that leaves us with a whole board full of prospects,” I said. I sat flat on the floor. This was going to be harder than I’d thought.

  “We haven’t even scratched the surface,” Paul went on. “After the meeting we went out for dinner at Café Linguine. Every member of the planning board was there, as well as the mayor, again. I think that’s when someone must have poisoned us.”

  “Why?”

  “Maxie and I both collapsed at about the same time, as soon as we got back here,” Paul said, but I’m not sure he was talking to me. “There was something in our food—or in the wine, maybe—and that’s what killed us.”

  I took a deep breath. “All right. So let’s say—strictly for the sake of argument—that I’m going to help you with this investigation. How—hypothetically—would that work?” I confess, I knew that I was getting myself into it by asking the question. There’d be no backing out now.

  Paul recognized the moment, too. His eyes lit up almost to the point of physical depth. He grinned and rubbed his hands together. No, really.

  “You’d be doing the legwork. I’m the investigator, but I’m not physically able to interrogate suspects or to view a scene, unless it’s here in the house or on the grounds.” Paul had obviously been giving this a lot of thought. After all, what else did he have to do all day? “You’d have to go out and ask the questions anytime we couldn’t get the witness or suspect to come here, which I’m afraid would be much of the time. You’d have to take notes or record the interviews. I want you to take pictures with a camera or your phone when you can. And this is really important: You’d have to do exactly what I tell you to do. You’re my eyes, my ears and my legs. But I’m the brain in this investigation. I have the experience, and you don’t. You can’t start believing you’re Miss Marple and taking dangerous chances. Understand?”

  “Understood,” I said. “I have absolutely no desire to take chances. But I have some rules of my own, and unless you agree to them, I’m nothing more than the owner and renovator of this guesthouse. Do you understand?”

  He put on a face that he clearly thought was suave and so wasn’t; the attempt was kind of adorable. “State your terms,” he said.

  “I have to get this house in shape, and on time, too. So I’m not making the PI game my full-time profession. I’ll do it when I can, but I won’t when I can’t. Any further little pranks on the part of anybody who . . . exists in this house will just set me back and make the investigation drag on.”

  “Agreed,” Paul said.

  “Hold on; I’m just warming up. Next, I’m investigating your deaths, but I’m also trying to find out who’s threatening me, and that’s going to take priority. No offense, but I’m still alive, and I’d like to stay that way. So if it comes down to a choice between your situation and mine, I’m going to opt for mine.”

  “That’s reasonable,” Paul said, but he didn’t look as happy as before.

  “Third—and without question, most important—I will not allow this project of yours to endanger my daughter in any way, shape or form. The first time there’s the slightest suggestion that Melissa could be in harm’s way, I’m finished gumshoeing. That is an absolute deal breaker. Okay?” I looked up at Paul, who was suspended just over the fireplace.

  “The last thing I’d want is to put Melissa in danger, Alison. Believe me.” But I could see Paul didn’t like the idea of anything causing an automatic cancellation of my services. He folded his hands across his chest.

  So did I. “I’ll believe you when you say you agree,” I told him.

  “Alison. There will never be any danger to Melissa in connection to this investigation. I won’t stand for it.”

  I nodded. “Now say that you agree to my terms.” He still hadn’t committed to the last one. “Say, ‘I agree.’ ”

  “You understand perfectly that I have Melissa’s welfare . . .”

  “Say. ‘I. Agree.’ ”

  “I agree,” he said.

  “Okay.” I nodded. “What’s my first assignment, boss?”

  “They weren’t murdered; they committed suicide.” Detective Lieutenant Anita McElone (pronounced “Mack e-LONE-ee,” I’d been told), five-foot-eight and sturdy, hadn’t smiled when I’d introduced myself and was looking even less happy now. “And frankly, I don’t see why it’s any business of yours,” McElone said, barely looking up from her paperwork.

  “Are you always this sympathetic, or did I catch you on an especially sensitive day?” I asked.

  She looked up. I guessed she’d been operating on cop autopilot before, and this was the first thing I’d said that had captured her attention. “How well did you know these two people?” she asked.

  “I didn’t know them at all. I own the house that they died in.”

  “So why do you care what happened to them?” McElone asked. Her face indicated concentration.

  I reached into my canvas tote bag and pulled out the laptop computer. “Can I show you something?” I asked her.

  “I’m here until five.” She sighed.

  I hit the power button on the computer and waited the usual eternity until it booted up. I have the same affinity for technology that antelopes have for screwdrivers.

  Hand tools, I can use. Electric ones, battery-operated ones, cordless screwdrivers (has there ever been a corded screwdriver?). Dad taught me all about hand tools. I can hear him now, patiently saying, “It’s sharp, baby girl. Don’t ever think you can treat it casually.” So I knew about tools. Things where you push a button and it turns or heats up. Sure.

  But “smart” machines? We have a relationship that is something less than friendly but just short of adversarial. We simply don’t understand each other. Much like with every man I’ve ever dated.

  During the wait, McElone had enough time to finish whatever paperwork she’d been working on, clean off her desk and check a mirror to see if her makeup was smeared (it wasn’t). Then she killed some more time getting a new pen out of her desk drawer.

  It’s possible my laptop is a little old and slow.

  When it finally did show signs of life, I clicked—after a little effort—on the e-mail program. And, on cue, the word processor opened. I have a hard time figuring out which little box is supposed to be which.

  McElone gave me a withering look and took the computer out of my hands.

  “What exactly is it I’m supposed to see?” she asked.

  “It’s the last e-mail I received,” I told her, properly mortified by my lack of techno-skill.

  In roughly four seconds, McElone had managed to pull up the proper information and see the threatening message. Her eyes looked concerned, but her voice betrayed no such emotion.

  “I don’t suppose you recognize the sender’s e-mail address?” she asked.

  “Yeah. Let’s go to his house and arrest him, okay?”

  “So you don’t have any idea who might be sending you this.” She ignored my sarcasm. “Is this the only such message you’ve received?” Again, no emotion in her voice.

  I nodded. “But Maxie Malone, the previous homeowner, was getting the same kind of threats before she and Paul Harrison, the private detective, were killed.”

  McElone raised an eyebrow. “How do you kn
ow?”

  Luckily, Paul had anticipated that question for me. “I found Maxie’s laptop in the attic,” I said. I’d actually found it there because Maxie had directed me to it, saying she “used to go up there to think.” (And I believed she still went there occasionally—both of the ghosts would vanish for periods of time, and then return without explanation.) I pulled it out of the tote bag and handed it over to McElone.

  “I wish you’d worn gloves,” she said. I left it to her to get the second computer working properly. It took a lot less time to warm up than my weathered old laptop.

  McElone clicked quickly here and there and came up with Maxie’s inbox. “Aha,” she said quietly.

  “You see what I mean?” I knew, both because I’d looked and because the Dead Duo had told me, that Maxie had received at least eight threatening e-mails in the two weeks before she and Paul had died.

  “Yes,” McElone said. She consulted the file in front of her. “But the medical examiner’s report indicated they’d each taken at least twenty sleeping pills. You can’t exactly sneak a dosage that large into someone’s food or drink.”

  “Did anyone come asking when you notified their next of kin?” I asked. Paul had told me he had a brother in Toronto, and Maxie had mumbled something about it being none of my business. But they had no idea if anyone had come to claim their remains.

  “May I see your badge?” McElone asked.

  “My what?”

  “Your badge. You see, I only have to answer questions like that when they’re asked by my superiors in the police force or someone from the prosecutor’s office. So if you show me your badge, I’ll be happy to reply.”

  “There’s no need to be huffy about it,” I said, more to myself than to the detective.

  “Sure there is.” McElone scowled at me. “Look, Ms. Kerby—I’m still new here. I’ve only been a detective on this force for two months. You’re wasting my time over two suicides that have already been cleared by my predecessor, Detective Westmoreland, a man everyone in this building adored.”