Night of the Living Deed

by E. J. Copperman

  Tony began by making marks around the hole, using the T-square on the level to assure the lines were straight. He set out to make a square just large enough to touch the studs on either side (to make installing the patch easier) out of what was a jagged oval hole. I didn’t say anything while Tony worked.

  “Okay, so what’s bothering you?” he asked after a minute.

  “What do you mean, what’s bothering me? I don’t want a gigantic hole in my living room wall.”

  “That’s not what I mean, and you know it,” Tony answered. And it wasn’t, and I did.

  “Nothing’s bothering me,” I said, not even convincing myself.

  Tony’s head was inside the wall again, so his voice had an interesting echo to it. “Who do you think you’re talking to?” he asked.

  “Go ahead, tell him,” Maxie sneered. “Tell the beefcake that you’re seeing ghosts. And make sure you tell him what I look like.”

  “Why?” I asked her. I had to stop doing that.

  “Because I know you well enough to tell when something’s eating at you,” Tony answered.

  “Tell him,” Maxie repeated. “He’s your friend. If you can’t tell him, who can you tell?” Now she was beginning to sound rational, and I knew that couldn’t be good.

  “Did you know that the woman who owned this house before me died here?” I said. At least I’d be able to talk to Tony about the murders, I figured.

  “Yeah, you told me about that,” he answered. He picked up the saw. “Hold that level right there, okay? I don’t want to go over the lines at all if I can help it.” I did as he asked. “Is that what’s bothering you? Do you think the house is haunted or something? Are you still seeing things?”

  “You should be so haunted, big guy,” Maxie murmured.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said in her direction. “It just bothers me that I’m coming into a place—you know, a place I’m staking a lot of my life on—and it has bad karma.”

  Tony began to saw, carefully and slowly, on the line he’d drawn. That he can maintain that concentration and hold a conversation at the same time has always astonished me. “Bad karma? If I recall, the woman and her boyfriend killed themselves with sleeping pills or something, right?”

  “Boyfriend!” Maxie said. “Tell him I don’t have a boyfriend—at the moment.”

  “That’s the thing,” I told Tony. “It wasn’t her boyfriend; he was a private investigator she’d hired to look into some threatening messages she’s gotten. And they didn’t commit suicide—somebody killed them.”

  Tony had made it all the way down the left side and was starting on the right. “How do you know?” he asked. “They pop out of the walls one night, rattle their chains and tell you their sad story?”

  “I found her laptop and saw the e-mails. I’ve been getting the threatening messages, too,” I said.

  He almost cut outside the line. Almost. “What?” Tony stopped sawing. “Someone’s threatening you? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I’ve been getting crank e-mails,” I said. “I didn’t think it was serious until I found the messages that had been left for Maxie.”

  “Maxie? That the private dick?”

  Maxie’s eyes widened and her mouth dropped open in disappointment. She actually stammered. I have to admit to a certain enjoyment.

  “No, that was the woman. Maxie Malone. The PI was Paul Harrison.”

  “Some great PI if they both got killed on his watch.”

  “I don’t think she told him enough to help,” I answered. Maxie sneered. As usual.

  “You really have been looking into this, haven’t you?” Tony asked.

  “Sure. If somebody told you that you were going to die if you didn’t leave your brand-new house-slash-business, wouldn’t you look into it?”

  Tony had been lining up the saw again, but now stopped cold. “You got an e-mail saying you’d die if you don’t get out of the house?”

  “I believe I just said that.”

  “Alison. That’s more than just a little prank. You’ve got to call the police.”

  And I would have told him—I swear, I would have—but my cell phone rang at that very moment. Tony put down the saw as I pulled it out of my jeans pocket.

  “Ms. Kerby, this is Detective McElone of the Harbor Haven Police Department.” Good to know I wasn’t getting calls from Detective McElone of the local Carvel.

  “Is my laptop ready to pick up?” I asked.

  “As a matter of fact, it is,” she said. “And I have a few questions to ask you.”

  “Me? I don’t like the way that sounds, Detective.”

  Tony shot a look at me when he heard that. I nodded. Yes, I did call the cops. Happy now?

  “Well, you should know that I traced the source of those e-mails you’ve been getting.” McElone sounded . . . I don’t know. Triumphant, maybe? I didn’t like it.

  “Really? That’s great! Have you arrested the guy yet?”

  “No. And it’s not a guy.”

  A woman was sending me threatening e-mails? Could Terry Wright really have been hiding that much?

  “I’m confused, Detective,” I said. “Who’s been sending me threatening e-mails?”

  “Apparently,” McElone said, “you have.”

  Sixteen

  The Harbor Haven Police Department’s conference room took on an eerie quality once the sun went down, I discovered. It wasn’t so much because of the windows—the room didn’t have any. It was because this time, I was being treated like a suspect. Sort of.

  After giving me back my laptop (but refusing to return Maxie’s, which I guess I couldn’t argue with, as it was never mine to begin with), then dealing with Tony’s relatively heated suggestions that the Harbor Haven police weren’t doing enough to protect me, the detective got down to business.

  “The e-mail addresses that sent the threatening messages—both on your laptop and on Maxine Malone’s, came from public computers,” Detective Anita McElone said. “These came from the Harbor Haven Free Public Library.”

  “So there’s a homicidal librarian stalking me after getting Maxie Malone and Paul Harrison?” I asked.

  “The cops wouldn’t know if they were,” Tony mumbled. “To serve and protect. Huh!” McElone wrinkled her brow at him.

  Jeannie extended her arm, holding a slice of pizza. “You want this, Alison?” she asked.

  Tony and I had run into Jeannie and Melissa, pizza in hand, as we left the house—hurriedly—to come to the police station. So we told them where we were going, packed into my 1999 Volvo station wagon and went off together. When McElone had tried to keep my entourage outside in the waiting area, I had refused to budge without them. Rather than charge me with resisting arrest (especially since she wasn’t arresting me—yet), McElone gave up and let us all in.

  I shook my head, letting Jeannie know I’d had enough pizza. She then offered the slice to McElone, practically shoving it into her face.

  “Whoa!” The detective waved her hand. “Somebody went heavy on the garlic!”

  “We like garlic,” Melissa said. “It’s good for your heart.” McElone declined the pizza anyway, and Jeannie started in on it herself.

  My cell phone rang and indicated my mother was calling, presumably to ask if my head hurt. I decided this wasn’t the time.

  “The library,” I reminded McElone.

  “Yes. The library. They have public computers with Internet access. You go in and sign on and you can do pretty much anything you want. A favorite of pervs, the unemployed and kids who don’t have a computer at home, but have homework that requires Internet research.”

  “What’s a perv?” Melissa asked, and McElone looked embarrassed. Good.

  I ignored my daughter’s question. “That’s a fascinating civics lesson,” I told McElone, taking a swig of the Diet Coke I’d scored off the police department vending machine. “But how does it lead to me sending bloodthirsty e-mails to myself?”

  “You can’t get access
to the computers without getting a librarian to swipe your library card. And on each occasion when you were sent one of these supposedly threatening e-mails, the library records clearly show that the library card used was your own.” McElone studied my face closely, no doubt to see if I’d make some telltale mistake that would betray my guilt. I squelched a burp from the soda.

  “That’s insane,” I said. “I haven’t had a Harbor Haven library card since high school. I haven’t had time to get a new one since I moved back here from Red Bank.”

  “The library records show one was opened for you about six weeks ago, just about the time you closed on your house. Your public accommodations license was used as a form of identification.”

  In the back of the room, Tony cleared his throat. “What about the e-mails on Maxie Malone’s computer?” he asked McElone. “Even if Alison got a library card six weeks ago, she couldn’t have sent those from the library last year.”

  “No,” McElone admitted. “Those were all sent from the Bagel Nook Internet Café in Sea Haven, where you don’t need ID, just money, to get access.”

  “My mom doesn’t go to Sea Haven,” Melissa said, trying to stand up for me. Bless her heart.

  “You don’t know what she does when you’re in school,” McElone said, in what I assume was her “gentle” tone. It sounded more like cast iron being sanded, but it was an attempt, I suppose.

  “Neither do you,” Melissa shot back. That kid was getting ice cream for dessert tonight. And if she didn’t want me to flirt with her history teacher, I wouldn’t. A mother’s bond with her daughter is sacred. Don’t tell my mother I said that.

  “I don’t think I should say anything else unless you want to arrest me,” I said. “And if you do, I want to talk to my lawyer.”

  “I’m not arresting you,” McElone said. “Not yet.”

  “Why not?” Melissa asked, downgrading her dessert to frozen yogurt.

  “Because I don’t have anything except the e-mails.” Give McElone credit: She treated Melissa like a person. Most grown-ups talk to kids as if they’re mentally challenged trained chimpanzees. “I still think those two people committed suicide, and sending yourself threatening e-mails is crazy, but it isn’t a crime. Besides”—she gestured for Melissa to lean in closer, and my daughter did so—“I don’t think she did it.”

  “You don’t?” Melissa was now down to Tofutti, and headed toward a brussels sprout sundae.

  “No. She bought the old Preston place to turn into a B and . . . a guesthouse.”

  “So?” Melissa asked, having no impact on her after-dinner options.

  “Anyone who’d buy that place isn’t smart enough to pull this off.”

  “That’s not a very nice thing to say,” Melissa told her. We headed to the ice cream parlor as soon as McElone let us go.

  Seventeen

  “They think you killed us?” Paul asked the next afternoon.

  He was standing in the living room, but his feet, up to the ankles, were sunk into the floor. I got the impression that Paul and Maxie hadn’t entirely mastered the art of being ghosts over the past year.

  Which was just as well, since they’d have plenty of time to perfect it.

  “No,” I answered. “They—or at least Detective McElone—still think you killed yourselves.”

  “That’s absurd,” he said, shaking his head. “We barely knew each other. Why would we both decide to commit suicide on the same night?”

  I rolled my eyes to indicate that I’d already made that point to McElone. Then I got a roll of masking tape out of my tote bag and reached into my jacket pocket for the paint color cards I’d picked up that morning. I started taping them to the walls in strategically selected spots.

  Paul looked puzzled.

  “I’m trying to decide on a color for this room,” I explained. “You tape the cards up to see what the paint color looks like from a distance and in different lights.” He nodded.

  Maxie’s head thrust itself through the living room ceiling. She took a quick look around the room and sneered. “Man, you’re boring!” she snorted.

  I peeled my stomach off the floor—I’m still not used to heads appearing from the ceiling—and scowled up at her. “What do you mean, boring?” I asked.

  “That’s, like, eight different shades of white. How white do you want your front room to be?”

  “They’re not eight different shades of white. They’re almond, chalk, beige, cream, tan, flax . . .”

  “Booooooooorrrriiiiiiinnngggg.” From upstairs, I heard a giggle.

  “Is Melissa up there with you?” The last thing I needed was for Maxie to become a role model for my nine-year-old.

  “Melissa who?” My daughter’s voice came from the upstairs bedrooms. Then she laughed again.

  “Melissa Jane Kerby, you get down here this minute!” Suddenly, I sounded like the mother on Father Knows Best. Nick at Nite must have been leaking into my brain.

  “Oh, Mom!” That was it—this was 1953, and I should have been in a cocktail dress with pearls while I sanded down the windowsills.

  “All right, stay up there, but don’t listen to a word that . . . spirit says to you!”

  Paul looked sincerely amused.

  “Eight shades of white,” Maxie taunted.

  “I suppose you have a better idea? A woman who painted her walls the color of blood?”

  “I was going for a different effect.”

  She floated down all the way through the ceiling as I heard Melissa protest. “Maxie!” The ghost put her hand to her chin, clearly appraising the room and its configuration.

  “Every two-bit B and B down the shore does the coral and turquoise,” she said. “It’s all so beachy. You want to go with white walls? Fine. Make a statement—paint the walls bright white and the molding bright red. No. Blue. Navy blue.”

  I curled my lip. Who was this ghost to tell me how to decorate my own . . .

  Wait a minute. She was right. That would be different and classy.

  Damn it!

  “I don’t know . . .” I said, to save face. “I’ll have to think about it.”

  From behind me, I heard Paul stifle a laugh. “You’re not helping,” I told him.

  Maxie took on a look of absolute smugness, said nothing and retreated back to the upstairs. I heard Melissa hoot with laughter a few moments later.

  I started taking the color cards down off the walls, purposely avoiding eye contact with Paul. But he went on as if nothing had happened.

  “How can we convince them that Maxie and I were murdered?” he said.

  “Why don’t you go haunt Detective McElone?” I suggested.

  “Don’t you think I would if I could?”

  I got some sandpaper out of the toolbox in the corner and wrapped it around a block. Some of the molding needed sanding before I could repaint it, and it was too delicate a job for an electric sander. I sat on the floor. I would have to work around the window seat, with its grillwork front that housed the radiator.

  “Suppose I wrote you a note?” Paul asked.

  I looked at him. “You can do that?”

  He nodded. “Well, I’m not great at it. It takes me a lot of time and concentration and, frankly, I’m exhausted afterward. But Maxie’s quite good at manipulating physical objects.”

  “Like she did with the rubber mallet and the bucket of compound,” I said. “Among other things.”

  Paul looked sheepish. “Maxie’s a lot better at it than I am,” he said again.

  “What would the note say? Something like, ‘I was murdered’ might be a little suspect.”

  He pursed his lips. “Good point. Suppose . . . suppose . . .”

  “Paul,” I interrupted. “Who do you think killed you?”

  “That’s the thing,” he said after a moment. “It could have been anybody.”

  I spent the rest of the day in the basement, wrestling with the furnace. Maxie stood over my shoulder, self-satisfied. Now that I’d clearly decided to ta
ke her suggestion for a color scheme, she wanted to talk about every detail. I just wanted to replace the thermostat and see if that made my house warmer.

  “What are you going to do about window treatments in the front room?” she asked as a drop of sweat fell on my nose. I’d turned the furnace off for this repair, but the work was still hot. “You don’t want to go too dark in there—let the windows do their job.”

  “Thank you, Ms. Stewart,” I said. “Or may I call you Martha? I’m not there yet. Let me get the walls in shape first. And since when are you the authority on interior design?”

  She pouted. Seriously. Her lower lip actually rolled down over itself, and she frowned. “It’s what I was going to do,” she said.

  I rubbed the drop off my nose and got back to work. “You weren’t going to turn this place into a business?” I asked. “I didn’t figure you’d live here all alone. I read your . . . an article about you.”

  “My obituary,” Maxie said without inflection. “What did it say? Can you get a copy online? I want to see it.” So much for my attempt at being discreet to protect her feelings.

  “I’ll try to find it. It said you were a graphic artist and that you are survived by your mother in Ocean Township and a brother in Enid, Oklahoma.”

  “Yeah,” was all Maxie said.

  Time to switch gears again. “So, why did you need all this house?”

  “I was going to flip it,” she explained.

  “Flip it? You bought it to fix it up and sell it again?” I just wanted to show her that I knew what flip meant.

  “Yeah. I figured even in this economy I could make some money with a beachfront property.” Maxie stared out the window at the wraparound porch on the house across the street. “I guess this house was valuable enough for someone to kill me for it.”

  “If you just wanted the money, why not sell to Adam Morris?”

  Maxie stared at me as if I were suggesting she set the Louvre on fire. “He was going to knock it down,” she said.

  After investing so much of my time building up a healthy dislike for Maxie, this was hardly the way I wanted the conversation to go—the last thing I needed was to sympathize with her. The worst thing I could do was care.