Night of the Living Deed

by E. J. Copperman

  “We were surprised to hear from you,” Madeline said.

  Her husband, David, walked in and immediately picked up a chocolate chip cookie before I could introduce myself. When he held out his hand to shake, I got a smear of chocolate on my thumb.

  “A pleasure,” he mumbled through a bite.

  Before either of them could start asking questions, I sailed right in. “I’ve been wondering about why you sold the house,” I said. The two of them sat staring at me for a few seconds, and I realized I hadn’t phrased my opening in the form of a question. “So, why did you sell the house?” I asked.

  “The children had all grown up and moved away,” Madeline said politely, but her expression clearly said, Why did this nosy person drive all this way—(it was actually only a twenty-minute drive from Harbor Haven to Eatontown, but I was projecting)—to ask why we’ve moved out of the house she bought? “The place was just too big and too quiet. And David was tired of all the maintenance the house required.”

  “Are we starting this again?” her husband said. “I dug up the well for you; I must have dug fifty other holes in that backyard in the last two years. What else did you want?”

  I was going to interject, but Madeline just went on. “It wasn’t just the gardening,” she told me. “It was the painting, and the cracks in the walls, and the kitchen. You know how old houses are.”

  “I’m finding out,” I agreed.

  “It’s different when you’re not in your thirties anymore.” David tried to defend himself. “I’m not a young man, and all that digging . . .”

  “Oh, enough, David.” Madeline scowled. “Poor Alison will think we didn’t like the house.”

  Poor Alison?

  “I understand,” I said, although the opposite was true. “I’m just getting used to the burdens of homeownership. I’m sure it got difficult for you after all those years.” That’s right, Alison, butter them up by calling them old. Nice work.

  “We didn’t even know the house had been sold again,” Madeline said. “We sold it to a young woman on her own named Maxie.” She smiled, indicating she thought Maxie was a cute name.

  “Yes, I was wondering—I heard that Adam Morris had wanted to buy the house. I hope you don’t mind my asking, but why didn’t you sell it to him?”

  It was David who spoke up, with a grumpy look on his face. “Morris came in a month after we’d sold it. We could have made a lot more.” He looked distraught over that last part, and consoled himself with another cookie.

  “Well, I’m sure you heard about what happened to the woman who bought it from you,” I answered, half hoping Madeline would rise to the bait and confess.

  “No, what happened?” she said, looking concerned.

  Swell. I told her about Maxie’s death, and Madeline looked positively stricken.

  “David,” Madeline said, “that’s just awful. Can you believe that poor girl killed herself in the house?” She said the house in a way that obviously referred only to one house, the one she clearly still thought of as “home.”

  “That’s awful,” David agreed through a bite of oatmeal raisin. If his voice had any more inflection, it would have had inflection.

  “I’m not sure she did,” I said. “It’s possible something else happened.”

  “You think it was an accident?” Madeline asked.

  “No.”

  Madeline’s eyes took on an expression of absolute clarity, and registered FEAR in bright neon letters that could probably be seen from space.

  “You think she was killed?” she asked.

  “I really can’t say,” I answered. Because you would think I was nuts.

  Madeline shot a glance toward her husband, who was eyeing the rest of the cookies and did not return it. Suffice it to say that she didn’t appear pleased, neither with my answer nor with David’s cookie fetish.

  It was my cue to go on. “I was just asking because I’m doing some renovations now, and I’ve found a few things that were, I dunno, odd, I guess.” Like dead people who still hang out in the house.

  “Odd?” Madeline asked as David threw caution to the wind and dove on a peanut butter-chocolate chip. “Odd in what way?”

  Luckily, Paul had coached me on what to say here. “I get the feeling there have been other renovations on the house, and I’m trying to pinpoint when they were made.”

  David was chewing his cookie, so after replying, he had to repeat himself: “Of course there were renovations. The house is more than a hundred years old.”

  “For example,” I went on, trying not to look at his mouth while he spoke and ate, “the kitchen was obviously redone, but I can’t tell when. Did you do the upgrade?” You learn words like upgrade when you’re researching how to open a guesthouse.

  “Yes,” Madeline said proudly. As if the kitchen I’d just gutted had been a legitimate source of pride. “We did the entire room from the ceiling down in the seventies, sometime. New cabinets, new countertop and new appliances. I think we even did the floor in there, didn’t we, David?”

  David made a noise, but I think it was more related to digestion than renovation.

  “If I might be so bold,” Madeline said, “I’d like to ask you a question, Alison.”

  “Sure.”

  “We heard from the real estate agent, Terry Wright, and she mentioned something about you finding some old documents in a kitchen drawer.”

  I could feel my face flush. “I’m sorry about that, Madeline,” I said. “I have to admit, I misled Terry because I wanted to come meet you myself; I didn’t want her just answering my questions for me.”

  Madeline’s face took on an intensity that hadn’t been there before—she was interrogating me, rather than having a conversation. “So you didn’t find any documents?”

  I felt like she was standing over me, but she was still seated on the couch. “No, nothing,” I stammered, almost adding Your Honor, but catching myself at the last second. “Should I have found something?”

  Madeline’s eyes closed off communication with me. “Of course not,” she said.

  There wasn’t time to get in another question—and Paul had wanted me to ask who they’d bought the house from themselves, and what kind of condition it had been in then. It was clear that the house was the center of the matter, the reason he and Maxie had been murdered and why I was getting threatening e-mails. So I was ready to jump in on that line of questioning.

  I would have, too, except that the phone rang.

  Now, I’ve seen people who are startled by a noise in the room, even one as familiar as a phone ringing. I’ve seen people who are alarmed at any sudden noise, no matter its source. I’ve even seen people who would rather screen all their calls than answer a ringing telephone, especially when entertaining company in the house.

  But Madeline wasn’t startled, surprised or worried about my opinion of her as a hostess. She was absolutely frightened beyond all reason.

  “Don’t answer it!” she yelled at David when he turned his head in the direction of the phone. “Don’t you dare answer that phone!”

  David stood up, and Madeline’s pale complexion went absolutely white. “No, David, please,” she pleaded. “It’s them!”

  “Just calm down, Maddie,” he said. “You don’t know who’s calling.”

  “What’s wrong?” I asked Madeline, ignoring her husband entirely. “Who’s calling that has you so—”

  “It’s nothing,” David jumped in. Great. Before, I couldn’t get him to open his mouth, and now he was answering questions that weren’t directed at him. I shot him an unkind look, but he went on. “Madeline believes someone is stalking her.” He practically guffawed.

  The phone kept ringing. Did these people not own an answering device?

  “They are,” Madeline moaned. She turned to me, her momentary ally. “People have been threatening us— threatening me. And if you want to know the truth, that’s why we sold the house. Because of that!”

  “Maddie!” David sho
ok his head in disbelief that she’d told me something they had clearly held in confidence. “We haven’t gotten one of those calls since we moved. Calm down.”

  Finally, the ringing stopped, and in the next room I could hear David’s voice on an answering machine say, “It’s David and Madeline. Please leave a message after the beep.”

  Madeline’s eyes widened to the size of hubcaps in the second between David’s message and the tone indicating the caller should speak. She drew in her breath.

  And the caller said, clearly, “This is Monica’s Tailor Shop. Your pants are ready. We’re open until five.” And hung up.

  Madeline Preston deflated in front of my eyes. She seemed to become smaller, flatter and weaker in the time it would take most people to blink. And then she did the weirdest thing I could have imagined she’d do.

  She smiled at me.

  “So, dear,” Madeline said. “Was there anything else you wanted to ask?”

  Twenty-one

  A kitchen is like a jigsaw puzzle.

  No, it’s not.

  A kitchen is like a house of cards: You pull out one wrong piece and the whole thing collapses.

  No, that’s not it, either.

  A kitchen, when all is said and done, is like a kitchen. But it has so many functions, so many stations, so many moving parts and systems that it’s not like any other room in a house.

  The sad truth is: A kitchen is a pain in the ass.

  And in the interest of full disclosure, I hadn’t done much work in the kitchen since the day I’d been conked on the head by a maliciously dropped bucket of wall compound. That had led to me seeing ghosts; if anything else were to go wrong in there, I might start seeing vampires or werewolves, and I honestly didn’t think I could handle that.

  The two ghosts I could see watched me fasten new doors on the refinished cabinets (and even Maxie had agreed they looked wonderful—all right, she hadn’t made any disparaging comments, which to Maxie is the same thing as saying they looked wonderful). The next step would be to hang the cabinets back up on the “new” (meaning with cracks filled and freshly painted) walls, but that would require other people to help, and would necessitate getting on a ladder, something I was not yet ready to do in Maxie’s presence.

  “So the Prestons said that they’d gotten some threatening phone calls, and then she asked if you wanted a cookie?” Paul was all business, as usual. Why did that bother me?

  “Not exactly, but the change was just about that abrupt, and then she pretty much shooed me out of the house. What do you suppose it was all about?” I was nearly done with the doors, and then I would have to decide what problem to tackle next.

  “Well, from what you’ve told me, it seems they were as much under siege as you and Maxie have been. Interesting, though, that the Prestons were contacted by phone and not e-mail.” Paul stroked his chin in thought.

  “Madeline told me they don’t have a computer at home, so I guess that would account for the phone calls,” I told him. “David said they’re not getting calls anymore, but I don’t know if I believe him. This one wasn’t threatening, though—it was about pants.”

  “What’s really confusing is why the Prestons are still alive and we’re not.” Paul seemed to be speaking to Maxie.

  “I don’t see the point,” she replied. “Even if you figure this out, we’ll still be dead.”

  “Obviously, you seemed to be more of an obstacle to the killer’s plans,” Paul told Maxie.

  I finished the last door and stood back to admire my work. Not bad at all, if I had to say so myself.

  “Why would Maxie be more of an obstacle than the Prestons?” I asked Paul.

  “I’m formulating an opinion,” Paul said. “I think whoever is behind the threats is after something, and Maxie was closer to finding it, or getting it, or doing it, than the Prestons were.”

  I put the good Phillips-head screwdriver (the one with the wooden handle, which I’d inherited from my grandfather) back in my toolbox and thought about that. “Terry Wright practically salivated when I suggested that I’d found some old papers in a kitchen drawer, and so did Madeline Preston,” I said. “You think whoever is behind this is looking for something like that?”

  “I don’t know,” he answered. “I don’t have enough facts yet. Alison—”

  I didn’t like where I thought he was going. “I don’t want to question anyone else, Paul,” I whined. “Can’t I take the rest of the case off?”

  He grinned, and I had learned by now that was when I should be most afraid.

  “You don’t have to question anyone, Alison,” he said. “Just do a little breaking and entering.”

  “Why couldn’t I just call Terry up and ask her whatever it is that Paul wants to know?” I said—quietly—into my cell phone.

  “Paul says that if Terry finds something missing, she won’t be able to prove you took it,” Melissa said. She was relaying the messages back and forth from the house. I don’t know how she managed to get Jeannie out of the room (it was Tony’s bowling night, and Jeannie was babysitting), but my daughter can be really sneaky when necessary. “He says you’re safer this way.”

  “You’re just doing this to me because I have a date with your history teacher tomorrow night,” I suggested.

  “Paul says to think about the task, not your date,” Melissa said, icicles forming on her voice.

  “I’ll bet it wasn’t Paul saying that,” I muttered.

  I hadn’t planned on telling Melissa about this particular part of my escapades. A quick B and E isn’t exactly fabulous role-model material. But we’d determined through trial and error that Paul’s and Maxie’s voices didn’t carry over telephone lines, so my fear of being alone in this endeavor, without Paul’s help every step of the way, won out over maternal responsibility. My character, tested, came up flawed—as usual.

  I was standing at the back door to Terry Wright’s office, a converted home on Breaker Street with six parking spaces in the back. Paul had given me instructions on how to get through a security system’s keypad. I was sure I was screwing it up and that the cops would be coming within sixty seconds.

  “And tell the judge that Grandma can’t raise you if I’m in jail,” I added. “It has to be Tony and Jeannie.”

  “You don’t say stuff like that to a nine-year-old,” my nine-year-old scolded me. “I could have nightmares. And Paul says you should just get to work. Tell me everything you’re doing in detail. And hurry it up. Jeannie’s going to come back with ice cream in a couple of minutes.”

  “Ice cream! Who said you could have . . .”

  “You said I should get her out of the room.”

  I sighed. I was being outmaneuvered by a fourth grader and the sad part was, this was the norm, not the exception. I began working at the keypad, and no, I’m not going to tell you how I did it—that would be encouraging others to commit a crime. I’m not even really admitting I did it. It’s hypothetical, like that O. J. Simpson book. If I Broke into Terry Wright’s Office, by Alison Kerby.

  Suffice it to say that after a few eternities, a good deal of tense hissing and passed-along instructions from Paul, the following things happened:

  1. I got the door open without tripping an alarm;

  2. Jeannie came back into the room (Melissa had been lucky that the ice cream had been hard as a rock, and had taken longer to serve);

  3. Melissa hung up the phone (the better to stuff herself with Rocky Road, which would undoubtedly lead to her getting sick just about the time I got home), so I was on my own;

  4. I was free to “explore” Terry’s office.

  The idea was this: Terry had answered vaguely when I’d asked her about the house and its history. She’d acted suspiciously when I’d mentioned the fictitious documents I had not, in fact, found in a kitchen drawer. There had been an equally odd reaction by Madeline Preston regarding the same fake documents. So it was possible that Terry had concealed some truth about a document that could be hidden in the
house.

  Paul had led me to his conclusion by invoking that rarest of elements, common sense.

  “You don’t know yet who was responsible for the e-mail messages to you, do you?” Paul had asked. “Well, consider this: The library card they used was obtained using your public accommodations license, right?”

  “That’s what Detective McElone said,” I’d admitted.

  “Who has ever had that license in their hands besides you?” Paul asked.

  “Nobody. Except . . .”

  Paul’s eyes had widened in encouragement. “Who?” “Terry Wright. She picked up the license the day of the closing on the house and brought it to me.”

  “So Terry could easily be the one sending you threatening messages.” Paul smiled.

  “It doesn’t make sense. First of all, why would she want me out of the house? She just sold it to me! And how could she get a library card in my name? Everybody in town must know Terry.”

  “She could have said she was picking it up for you, just like the license. Or, in a town of eight thousand people, maybe the librarians don’t actually know everybody. But the why is the really intriguing question.”

  “Intriguing to you, maybe. Frightening to me.”

  “Okay, what about this: What kind of a document would a real estate agent find so intriguing about a house?” Paul had asked rhetorically. “The kind of thing that would be worth killing two innocent people over? Especially in a house that had been sought feverishly by a real estate developer? That would have to be a real estate document. Like perhaps the title to the house. If there’s something hinky about that, it could be the very thing we’ve been searching for.”

  “Hinky?” I’d said.

  He hadn’t answered, and now here I was, searching Terry Wright’s office for a copy of the title to my own house.

  There had to be something wrong with that, but the logic behind everything that had happened since I’d gotten hit on the head was so twisted that there was no chance I’d ever be able to sort it all out. Better to follow orders blindly.