Night of the Living Deed

by E. J. Copperman

  I shivered, and not just because it was cold. “I’ve been trying not to think about it,” I admitted. “I’ve been joking about it, pretending it isn’t real. I keep thinking something will happen, and I’ll wake up and this will have been an odd dream. I won’t have seen . . .” Oops. He didn’t know about my boarders.

  Ned stopped and looked at me. “You won’t have seen what?” he asked.

  “Seemed,” I “corrected” him. “I won’t have seemed like a hysterical maniac to you.”

  But Ned wasn’t buying: His eyes narrowed, and he grabbed me gently by the upper arms. “Alison, don’t play games with this,” he said, pleading. I couldn’t figure out what he meant. “If you’ve found that Washington document, you should just give it to these people.”

  That was what he meant? He thought I was holding on to the deed out of . . . what? Greed? Stubbornness?

  “I don’t have the deed,” I told him, maybe a little too harshly. “I haven’t the vaguest idea where it is or if it even exists.”

  Ned didn’t let go of my arms, and his voice got thick. “I’m trying to save your life here, Alison,” he said. “Tell me where the deed is, and let’s hand it over right now, before another minute goes by.”

  There was something about his manner—okay, it was everything about his manner—that was frightening me. I shoved his hands off my arms. “I don’t have the deed!” I repeated. “What’s gotten into you?”

  He covered his tracks well. He put up his hands in a conciliatory gesture and smiled. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I’m worried about you. I don’t want you to be facing this thing.” He held out his hand for me to take. “Forgive me?” he asked.

  “Sure,” I said, but I didn’t take his hand. We walked the rest of the boardwalk in silence, and then Ned drove me home.

  I’d left Melissa at the house with Jeannie, and I wasn’t in much of a mood to talk when I got back, so it was even worse that Tony had joined her there, and because we’d come back so early, Melissa was still awake. So I had three people wondering what the hell my problem was when I’d just been out to the boardwalk with an attractive man. (Although Melissa was barely hiding her glee that my date with her teacher hadn’t gone well.)

  Their subtle probing of my mood (Jeannie: “What the hell is your problem?” Tony: “Did he do anything,” looking in Melissa’s direction, “you know, that I need to talk to him about?” Melissa: “Are you sure I can’t shave just half of my eyebrows?”) didn’t last very long, as they could see I didn’t feel like talking about it. I changed the subject to the new plaster mold. Luckily, Tony bit.

  He immediately got to his feet with enthusiasm. “I still think it’ll work,” he said. “The screw holes are in line to attach to the studs, and once the seams are dry, you can cover them up so that nobody will ever know they were there.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” I said. “You’re a genius, as usual.”

  “I’ve got it in the truck,” Tony said, sounding as young as a classmate of Melissa’s. “You want to try it now?”

  And that was how he and I ended up working on the wall at ten that evening.

  Tony and I carried the mold—it wasn’t all that heavy, but it required both of us because it was bulky—into the house and through the kitchen door to the hallway that needed the repair.

  I was hoping the two spectral squatters in my house wouldn’t notice the noise, or would be out haunting the backyard for a while. The last thing I needed was a replay of Maxie’s spectacular whoosh through the wall the last time we’d tried to install a piece of wall filler.

  No sign of them yet, and we were in place in front of the hole. I held my breath.

  “Okay,” Tony said. “Let’s just rest it on the frame right now and steady it there. Don’t let go.” So we moved the mold, which had holes drilled into its four corners at well-measured spots, to the wall, and rested its base on the lower end of the hole. I did not take my hands off the left side, and Tony held the right in place with one hand.

  “Very carefully,” he said, “take my side. I’m going to get the cordless screwdriver and we’ll secure this thing to the studs.”

  “I’ve got one in the toolbox in the kitchen,” I told him, moving over to cover both sides of the mold. I was essentially holding the mold up with my body at that moment.

  And naturally, that was when Maxie showed up, sticking her head through the ceiling right above my head. “What is your problem?” she demanded. “Why are you hugging the wall?”

  Tony hustled back to my side with some drywall screws and the cordless screwdriver. “Okay,” he said. “I’m going to work top right first. Move your hand.”

  “Oh, look who’s here,” Maxie drawled, and I had to suppress an urge to tell her once again that Tony was not only married, but alive, which made him more than off-limits to her.

  I moved my hand, glaring in Maxie’s direction whenever Tony wasn’t looking as he got the top two screws into place quickly.

  “You can breathe a little now,” Tony told me. “But don’t let go entirely until I get all four in. I can’t tighten them all the way, or they’ll go through the plaster and straight into the stud.”

  “That sounds dirty,” Maxie commented from above, now with her entire “body” visible near the ceiling. “Of course, everything that guy says sounds dirty.” I gritted my teeth at her, and she laughed.

  Tony got the other two screws through the plaster mold and, grabbing the studs, told me I could step back. I was reluctant to do so, even though I knew the mold wouldn’t fall out now. Sometimes, what your brain knows doesn’t match up with what your heart really and truly believes.

  I stepped back, and Tony and I admired our (his) handiwork. It was splendid—the hole was completely covered in real plaster, and the gaps around each edge were minimal. I’d be able to fill them with compound, fill in the screw holes, and paint the whole wall after it was sanded down. The patch would be virtually invisible.

  “You’re a wizard,” I told Tony.

  “He’s not bad at fixing walls, either,” Maxie drooled.

  I growled a little, way back in my throat. Tony looked over at me and said, “Are you okay?” I nodded.

  “Something went down the wrong way,” I told him.

  “Look at the way those jeans fit,” Maxie went on. She descended from the ceiling and started—how can I describe it—swirling around Tony, a completely demented grin on her face.

  Tony turned toward me with an expression that combined puzzlement with a growing sense of comprehension (yes, I know that sounds contradictory, but it’s true). “Alison,” he started. “You’re starting to scare . . .”

  He didn’t get the time to finish his sentence, because Maxie, apparently unable to control herself, came to a soft landing directly in front of him, took a deep “breath,” and threw her arms around him. She kissed him square on the lips.

  Now, if you’ve never seen a ghost kiss your mentor-slash-best friend’s husband (and I’m willing to bet you haven’t), rest assured that it is one of the most bizarre sights imaginable. Standing behind them, I could see not only Maxie’s back, but through her body to Tony, who looked absolutely astonished.

  When she let him go and Tony breathed again, he continued to stare straight ahead, mostly because I was directly in his line of sight. “What the hell was that?” he asked when he could.

  “What the hell was what?” When in doubt, deny, deny, deny.

  “I felt . . . I felt . . .”

  “Wait, Tony, don’t,” I said.

  “Somebody . . . something . . . kissed me,” Tony said. “And you know about it, don’t you?”

  Jeannie and Melissa, drawn by loud voices, came into the hallway. Jeannie stared at her husband. “Who kissed you?” she demanded.

  Melissa, for the first time I’d noticed, looked disapprovingly at Maxie, who seemed not to notice in the euphoria of her moment.

  “When I kiss ’em, they stay kissed,” Maxie hooted, back on the ceili
ng again. Then she looked down at Jeannie. “He married her?” she chortled.

  I looked up with fire in my eyes, and Tony noticed. “You can see her, can’t you?” Then he stopped, his eyes widened a little, and he said, “It was a her, wasn’t it?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I told him.

  “I’ve been wanting to do that for weeks,” Maxie gloated. “Damn, that felt good!”

  “It was horrible,” Tony said, and Maxie stopped dead (pardon the expression) in what would have been her tracks. “I don’t know what it was, but it was like being kissed by a hungry animal.”

  “That was the good part,” Maxie protested.

  “What the hell is going on?” Jeannie said.

  Melissa sighed. “It was Maxie,” she told Jeannie.

  Tony dropped down into a sitting position. “Oh Lord,” he said. “It was a guy.”

  “No, no—Maxie is the girl.” The girl who, at the moment, was looking at Tony with a murderous rage in her eyes.

  “What girl?” Jeannie asked, her eyes narrowing. “Alison, did you kiss Tony?”

  “What? No!” I looked at Melissa. “We have to tell Jeannie.”

  “Tell Jeannie?” Jeannie repeated. “Tell Jeannie what?”

  Melissa—as always, disturbingly calm under pressure—looked Jeannie in the face. “We have two ghosts in the house,” she said very matter-of-factly.

  Jeannie looked at her for a moment, then blinked. “Of course you do, Liss,” she said.

  “No,” I told her. “Really. There are two ghosts in this house, and one of them just kissed Tony.”

  Tony was still searching the ceiling and breathing hard. “They live in the house?” he asked.

  “If you call it living.”

  “Oh, come on,” Jeannie said, scanning our faces. “What’s the gag?”

  “No gag,” I said. “Ghosts.” I pointed at Maxie, who was scowling at Jeannie and shaking her head.

  “I guess he didn’t marry her for her mind,” Maxie said.

  “Oh, cut it out,” Jeannie said, and walked out toward the kitchen, shaking her head.

  I looked up at Maxie, who huffed and flew up into the ceiling, vanishing from sight.

  “Okay.” Tony set his jaw. “I’m . . . listening. Now, tell me all about these ghosts.”

  So I did. Tony listened intently, stopping to ask questions only when I didn’t explain something quickly enough for his taste. Occasionally Melissa would add something (like the unfortunate moment she felt it was necessary to mention that Maxie was “really pretty”). When we’d gotten through the whole sordid story, Tony’s mouth was more or less puckered, and twisted to the left side of his face.

  That meant he was thinking.

  “So you think maybe it’s one of those ‘unfinished business’ things? If you find this George Washington thing, they’ll be able to move on to Heaven, or something?”

  I shrugged. “For all I know, nothing will happen. Or maybe their next stop from here is a body shop in Indianapolis. But either way, I have to find that deed before Thursday night, or rumor has it I’ll be joining Paul and Maxie in haunting this place.”

  Tony’s teeth clenched. “Nothing’s going to happen to you,” he promised. “I fixed the wall, and I’ll fix this. Jeannie and I are on it twenty-four/seven as of right now.”

  It took a lot of convincing, but Tony deemphasized the afterlife angle and emphasized the immediate-danger-to-Alison angle and, ghosts or not, Jeannie agreed we needed guarding. The two of them got sleeping bags out of Tony’s truck (he’s always prepared) and announced their intention to camp out in the upstairs bedrooms. “We’ll be your first guests!” Jeannie said, pretending nobody had mentioned dead people in the room or a specter kissing her husband. She’s a trouper. But her eyes were still suspicious.

  I was too tired and spent for paranoia, however, so I went upstairs, where I saw no dead people, and went to bed after making sure Melissa did the same.

  And when I came downstairs in the morning, the patch on the wall had been smashed in. I looked up at the ceiling and screamed.

  “Maaaaaxiiiiiieeee!”

  Forty

  “It wasn’t me,” Maxie said for the seventeenth time. “Why won’t you believe me?”

  My eyebrows met in the middle. “What reason have you ever given me to believe you about anything?” I asked the ghost.

  Maxie stamped her foot, but she was three feet in the air. “I’m telling the truth!”

  Melissa rubbed her eyes as she walked into the hallway. “What’s going on now?” she asked. Just another day in Spook House.

  I exhaled, and looked at Maxie. “Face it. You didn’t like the way Tony reacted to your kiss. You got mad, and as soon as we went upstairs, you picked up the mallet”—I pointed to the rubber mallet left lying on the floor next to the once-again-gaping hole—“and you punched in the patch we’d been working on so hard. Just admit it.”

  Paul, standing in a corner with his arms folded, shook his head. “Not this time, Alison. I saw Maxie when you two left, and she didn’t come down here. She was busy upstairs . . .”

  Maxie looked at him threateningly. “Don’t you dare,” she said.

  “I have to,” Paul answered her. “She was crying,” he told me.

  If there was one thing I didn’t want to do, it was admit that Maxie hadn’t done anything wrong. “All right, fine,” I said, defiantly. “If Maxie didn’t break the wall, who did? How come you guys didn’t hear someone smashing in my wall?”

  Paul gave Maxie a glance, and she turned her head away from him. “We went outside to get a change of scenery,” he said. “We were at the limit of the property in the back, almost an acre away. I didn’t see anyone drive up, and we didn’t hear anything in the house. Why didn’t you hear it?”

  I didn’t answer. Paul looked at the floor. Maxie dropped through it.

  “You know, you should give Maxie a break.” Paul raised his head and looked me straight in the eye.

  I told Melissa to go shower and get ready for school. She protested (“This is going to be the good part”), but she went.

  I turned toward Paul once Liss had gone. “You want me to be nice to Maxie? After everything she’s—”

  Paul cut me off. “She’s had about as bad a turn as a girl can get. She’s dead. Is it really that much to ask that you two lighten up on her?” he said.

  I couldn’t answer that.

  Paul shook his head. “There’s no time for this bickering now. We need to focus on finding that deed, Alison. That seems to be the only way to save you.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  “Let’s think about this.” Paul closed his eyes. His lips didn’t exactly pucker, but they tightened around his teeth. This was deep consideration. “I don’t think it’s an outrageous assumption that whoever is after this deed is the same person—or people—who killed Maxie and me.”

  “Agreed,” I said. It seemed appropriate at the time.

  “So let’s consider who that could be.” Paul opened his eyes and looked at me. “We’ve been going about this the wrong way.”

  “Obviously.”

  “We’ve been spending so much time on the house, on the motive, that we’ve completely ignored opportunity. We can assume, based on the information you got from the newspaper editor, that the poison had to be administered at some point during our dinner at Café Linguine.”

  “Right. So who was there that night who might have wanted you two out of the way?”

  “That’s the problem. Almost everyone.” Paul wrinkled his forehead. It was adorable. “After the planning board meeting ended, the whole board, the mayor—and even Adam Morris, as I recall—came to the restaurant. Morris or the mayor might have been upset about the vote going against the new construction.”

  “Was Kerin Murphy there?” I asked hopefully. I was holding out for Kerin being evil.

  “I don’t remember seeing her there,” Paul answered. “But I ha
dn’t seen her then, so it’s possible she was.”

  “That’s grasping at straws,” I pointed out.

  “We haven’t got much. The point is, it would have been easy enough for any of them to slip something into our wine.”

  I gave him a look. “How?” I asked. “I’ve seen the restaurant. The bar is right near the entrance to the kitchen. The wine comes from the bar to your table, and then the glasses are sitting right in front of the two of you the whole time.”

  Paul nodded in agreement. “So the poison had to be put in the glasses either at the bar, or on the way from the bar to the table.”

  “Did you see anyone in that area?” I asked him.

  Paul twisted up his mouth again. “I didn’t pay close attention to the wine. I wasn’t expecting to be poisoned.”

  I would have patted him on the shoulder, if it had actually been there. “It wasn’t your fault. So few of us expect that. Believe me, I’ll be watching everything I eat and drink for, essentially, the rest of my life. But if you didn’t notice, who might have? Who was your server that night, do you remember?”

  Paul’s face relaxed; he was happy to have the right answer to a question. “Yes, I remember because he had such an interesting name. Rudolfo.”

  “I think I’m going back to Café Linguine to talk to Ralphie,” I said.

  Paul frowned again. “Who’s Ralphie?”

  I didn’t get the chance to answer because my cell phone started creating havoc in my pocket. I dug it out and opened it, noting only that the incoming call screen read, “Out of Area.”

  “You’ve found it, haven’t you?” a voice said. It was muffled. Either the person on the other end was whispering or holding a cloth over the mouthpiece or both.

  “What? Who is this?” I put the cell phone on speaker, and Paul bent over my shoulder to hear. There was the usual feeling of a warm breeze when he leaned a little too close.

  “You know who it is,” the voice answered. “You have it, and you’re going to hand it over.”

  “I don’t have it,” I said. “I have no idea where—”