The Hostess With the Ghostess

by E. J. Copperman

  “You’re right,” I told the lieutenant. “I could have looked up some of this stuff on the Internet. But I know you and I trust you and I’m sure that if there’s something in the report that’s strange or wrong, you would be much more likely to catch it than me. I’m relying on you for your expertise.” I actually meant a lot of that, but McElone did not look especially flattered. She curled her lip on the right side.

  “Does that work with other cops?” she asked.

  “I never go to other cops with my problems,” I told her. “You’re the only one I’m not afraid of.”

  Somehow that didn’t make her appreciate me more. In another minute I’d have to remind McElone that I’d saved her life once. Then she’d remind me that she’d saved mine more than once and we’d be right back where we were now, so I skipped it. “What am I doing wrong?” she asked, but she was already working her keyboard to find the files on Richard Harrison’s murder.

  “Richard was the attorney working on a murder case in Cranbury,” I explained. “I think he was killed because he was getting close to proving that the woman charged with the murder didn’t do it.”

  “Lawyers don’t investigate the crime,” McElone said almost by rote. “They try the case based on the evidence they have. The police and the county investigators do the detective work.”

  “I understand that, but in this case, whatever evidence there was seemed to be showing that the wrong person was on trial, and I think whoever the right person was found out he was going to expose them and decided to do some quick ironing on his head.” When you hang around with a cop, you start to talk like cops. There’s a gallows humor that I’m told helps them cope with the misery they see on a regular basis.

  “How do you know that?” McElone asked. “How do you know what the lawyer was working on when he died?”

  That was a tricky question; it would be somewhat inconvenient to explain that the victim had told me what he’d been doing just before he died because he was the brother of one of my house ghosts come to visit. McElone knows about the ghosts and is, in fact, a little afraid to set foot inside my house. But above all she knows that anything I tell her based on my conversations with ghosts is not going to be admissible in court and is therefore not at all helpful to anything she might ever want to do. So I try to refer to the ghosts as little as possible in her presence.

  “He left a very slight trail on his laptop computer,” I said, which was at least true-adjacent.

  McElone’s eyebrow raised a bit. From her this was a sign of intense interest. “And how did you happen to get hold of his laptop?” she asked. “I’d think that would have been confiscated by the county prosecutor as evidence.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t say his laptop, exactly,” I said. “Files from his laptop. I have access to some of those.”

  McElone studied me a moment. “I’m probably better off not asking what I want to ask. You said this guy was defending a murder that took place in Cranbury?”

  “That’s right.”

  Her face took on what I would assume for McElone was an expression of amusement. “The guy who drowned in the bathtub?” she asked.

  I nodded. “Keith Barent Johnson.”

  McElone bit her lower lip, I think to keep from busting out in a most uncharacteristic chuckle. “The guy who drowned in his bathtub in his clothes,” she said.

  “I think we’ve covered this ground.”

  The lieutenant, to her credit, managed to contain herself and recapture her sense of authority. Her face went back to being impassive. “So your theory is that Harrison was finding things he thought pointed to a suspect other than the one who the cops and the prosecutor charged with the crime.”

  “It does occasionally happen,” I said. “You guys are good, but you’re not infallible.”

  “Don’t look at me,” McElone warned. “Harbor Haven had nothing to do with that investigation.”

  “Of course you didn’t. I’m just saying, it’s not a given that every person ever brought to trial has to be guilty. That’s why we have a court system.”

  “Go on. So Harrison finds evidence to acquit his client. Why doesn’t it show up in court? As far as I know, that trial is ongoing.”

  I stretched my neck a little bit because I was feeling some stress and just let my head fall forward. McElone, apparently not concerned that I might be having some kind of medical seizure, did not comment. When I looked back up at her, she was punching keys and looking at her screen. “The trial is on recess because the second chair for the defense has been murdered,” I told her. “And I’m guessing the reason the evidence never made it to court is that the second chair for the defense has been murdered.”

  Of course, I knew the real reason was that Richard had not actually made the connection from the files he’d examined to an actual suspect he believed was the real killer, unless something really important was going on at my house right at this moment, but I’d guess that Josh, Liss, or Paul would have texted if there was that kind of breakthrough.

  “Okay,” McElone said, taking out a pair of readers from her top drawer (which was impeccably neat, naturally) and putting them on. She looked at her screen. “From what the ME is saying, the cause of death with Richard Harrison was seven blows to the head with a heavy object, in this case a hand steam iron that was found on the scene when one of the housekeeping personnel down the hall heard a scuffle and looked into the room. She called nine-one-one.”

  “She didn’t see anyone leaving the room?” I asked.

  “No, she didn’t exactly come running because she didn’t think it was that big a deal based on what she heard, according to the initial report from the New Brunswick PD. But the iron was there, and no, there were no fingerprints found on it, and I’m sure they searched very thoroughly.” As often happens, McElone had started out acting completely uninterested in the case I brought to her attention, but now her cop curiosity had sprung into action, and she was intent on the document she was reading on her screen.

  “So what physical evidence was found at the crime scene?” I asked. I had already activated the voice recorder I carry with me and put it on McElone’s bare desk. She had noted it silently.

  “Well, there was the body. The ME says the guy was an otherwise healthy specimen in his forties who probably hadn’t even turned toward the killer when the first blow was struck.” McElone’s lips pursed and twitched back and forth. “That means the killer was unusually quiet. Angle of the blows indicates someone not especially tall, right-handed, and not unbelievably strong. It took a few shots to kill him even with the pointy end of the iron.”

  “How did the killer get into the room?” I asked.

  “There was an extra key card found on the bed, no fingerprints on it, in addition to the one the victim had in his pocket. Maybe it was someone the victim knew who was staying in the room with him, a wife or a colleague, someone he gave a card. They talked to his wife, and she said she wasn’t there, but then, what would she say? The first chair in the case lives in the area and didn’t need a hotel room.”

  I was getting more questions to ask than I was getting answered. “Was there anything unusual on the iron or in the room?” I asked McElone.

  “If by unusual you mean hair, bone, and blood, then yeah, those were on the iron. If you mean anything you wouldn’t otherwise expect to be in a room where a guy got himself beaten to death with a laundry appliance, not really. His wallet was intact in his jacket pocket. The jacket was hung on the back of the desk chair where he’d apparently been working. Nothing appeared to have been stolen. The laptop was left there and, yes, was taken by the county prosecutor’s major crimes division for analysis. It wasn’t a pretty sight, as you’d expect. The maid hasn’t been back to work since then, and no, she’s not a suspect.”

  “Before she went on leave, did she report whether there was a spare iron missing from her cart?” I asked.

  “The question was asked once they found the other iron in the closet,” McElo
ne answered. “But no, everything that was supposed to be on her cart and all the other carts was there. Which led to the question, where did the murder weapon come from? And the next day, with the housekeeping staff alerted to make an inventory, it got answered.”

  “So where did the iron come from?” I asked.

  “It was a Sunbeam Classic 1,200-watt iron like all the others in the hotel, which they buy in bulk, as you might expect,” McElone said. “And the only one in the facility that was not accounted for should have been in room 407, three floors away from where Richard Harrison’s body was found.”

  This seemed like a simple equation. “And who was registered in that room?” I asked.

  “Thomas P. Zink, a pharmaceutical representative from Ames, Iowa,” McElone said, reading off her screen. “They couldn’t find any reason he might have brained Harrison.”

  “So did the . . .”

  McElone nodded vigorously. “The county investigators got in touch with Mr. Zink back in Ames because he was only here for the one night,” she said. “He had no connection to the victim or anyone involved in the trial and had no idea how the iron from his hotel closet might have ended up in Richard Harrison’s head. Said he never even realized there was an iron in the closet—or in this case, that there wasn’t.”

  “So do we believe him?” I asked her.

  She shrugged. “No reason not to. He’s not a professional assassin. There aren’t nearly as many of those as the movies would like you to think, and besides, an iron is a rough way to kill a guy. A pro doesn’t do that. And he’s left Iowa a grand total of three times in the past ten years. Seems like a bad way to make a living.”

  “So where does that leave us?” I felt like all this had left me with less than I had coming in.

  “Leaves me with the same workload I had when you got here,” McElone said. “I have no idea where it leaves you.”

  I thanked her and left. Hopefully Paul had gotten better results at home. In a hopeful mood, I picked up a pizza on the way back to the guesthouse.

  Chapter 23

  “We haven’t found out anything,” Paul said.

  I hadn’t even made it all the way through the door. One foot was still outside in the warmth of the June evening and already I was being hit with the news I didn’t want. It was a lot like having CNN on whenever you came home.

  Carrying the pizza I’d bought in town—a five-minute drive from here and it was already starting to cool—I assessed the situation in my kitchen: Paul and Richard were floating near the door, which didn’t stop my progress but made it weirder. Josh and Melissa were nowhere to be seen, but Gregory Lewis was lurking just outside the swinging kitchen door, visible in his attempts to be inconspicuous. He was calling in from the den, “Alison? I’m sorry; is that Alison?”

  It was in fact me, so I ignored Paul and his bleak report to put the pizza down on the island and went to the kitchen door. I opened it gingerly to avoid hitting Mr. Lewis in the face.

  “Anything I can help you with, Greg?” I remembered he’d asked me to call him Greg.

  “Just a quick question. I don’t want to be a pest,” Mr. Lewis said. He was trying out for the title of Most Timid Man in the World and wanted to start in my house. That was my best guess.

  “You’re not at all,” I assured him. “Please, come in.” It’s best to show the guests they can come into the kitchen even if I do like to use it as a ghost-safe space. They chose to come to a vacation spot called the Haunted Guesthouse, after all. I felt it was important to own the idea. I gestured to Mr. Lewis to walk into the kitchen, and he followed my lead. “How can I help you?”

  “Do you know how to make a mix tape?” Mr. Lewis asked.

  “Oh, for the love of—” Richard felt that my business, the one that actually kept food and clothing coming for my daughter (although things had been easier since I’d married a man with a going business), was not as important as my listening to his story of how they hadn’t found out anything of significance. I’ve never had a sibling, so I was starting to wonder what strange bond there was that made Paul tolerate his brother.

  “A mix tape? What do you need done exactly, Greg?” Because although I was sure Melissa could no doubt create whatever it was he needed in a matter of minutes, I have some ethical questions about people taking music or other copyrighted material without paying for it—not that that was what he was asking, but I wanted to make sure.

  “I wanted to take a recording I have and make a disc that would best showcase it,” he said, telling me virtually nothing I needed to know. “Do you know how to do that?”

  “I don’t, but I’m sure Melissa does,” I said. “But I have to make one caveat: I will not reproduce something that violates an artist’s copyright. I think those people need to be paid for their work, and so does everyone who helps them create the music we love.”

  Mr. Lewis tightened his mouth a little and shook his head the smallest amount possible while still creating a visible motion. “Oh, I wouldn’t ask you to do anything like that, Alison. I completely agree with you. I just need to copy some recordings I’ve made myself. Do you think that would be possible? I assure you, it’s not infringing on anyone’s rights but my own, and I don’t really mind.” I think that was Mr. Lewis attempting a joke.

  “Well, then, I think we can help you, but it will be important to know what format you’re using for your recording. I’ll tell you what: I’m about to call Melissa in for dinner, and when she comes downstairs, you can give her an idea of what you need. How’s that?”

  Mr. Lewis seemed quite pleased and not a little relieved. He thanked me and left the kitchen, saying he’d be in his room but that I could text him after I’d spoken to Liss about his audio conversion, whatever that was going to turn out to be.

  Once alone—at least technically—in the kitchen, I looked up at the two deceased brothers populating the upper reaches of the room. Paul was hovering in the area of the stove, his favorite for reasons I don’t understand, and Richard was at the center of the room, arms folded with frustrated impatience.

  “Have you completed your innkeeper duties for the time being?” he asked. Some haughtiness dropped off his lower lip and formed a pool on the floor.

  “Unless something else comes up,” I countered. “Keep in mind, Richard, that this is my business, and it’s going to take priority at all times.”

  “There has already been one attempt on Cassidy’s life, and there will probably be more,” Richard said. “There is no time for mix tapes.”

  I saw no point in continuing this discussion since I was going to act as I saw fit and Richard had remarkably little he could do about it, but I did say, “I spoke to Cassidy briefly this morning, and she said she’d rehired the security firm that had been working with her. You don’t have to worry.”

  “It’s not worry,” Richard sniffed. “It’s concern.” Of course it was.

  “Let’s try to keep our focus on what we can do,” Paul interjected. I’d noticed him being just the least bit more assertive about his investigation skills since I’d spoken to him about his relationship with Richard.

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to do,” Richard said, glaring at me.

  “Of course,” Paul said. Look back; you’ll see I did say it was the least bit more assertive. Don’t expect miracles.

  “You said you didn’t learn anything,” I reminded him. I decided I would be petty and not talk to Richard until I had to.

  “Not about the computer thief,” Paul said. “We ran through that whole scenario and made sure we were audible all over the house, but after Maxie put the laptop down on the counter, right there, we stayed and watched. Nothing happened, and we gave it plenty of time.”

  We all looked at the laptop, which I noted was mine and not Maxie’s—she wasn’t taking any more chances—like it was going to tell us something. It didn’t. But I only gave it a quick glance.

  I was busy texting Melissa and Josh that dinner, such as it was, had arrive
d. In a house the size of mine, going to each person to deliver the news is time consuming and rough on the feet.

  “We aren’t distracting you, are we?” Richard was in an especially prickly mood. I stuck with my resolution and did not respond.

  Instead I looked at Paul. “So you weren’t any more successful than I was.” I filled him in on my conversation with McElone and gave him the voice recorder so he could listen to it later and determine that what I had encapsulated for him in twenty seconds was indeed true by listening to it for fifteen minutes. Paul’s philosophy of time, based on the fact that he’s not going anywhere anytime in the next few millennia, is somewhat different from mine.

  “It sounds like you did have some success,” he said when I was done. “You found out about the iron and about Thomas Zink in Ames, Iowa. I think it might be worth getting in touch with him.”

  Thomas Zink? He was the person I’d decided was least interesting in this whole story. “You think this Zink guy killed Richard?” I asked.

  “I never heard of the man in my life,” Richard said. That was verifiably true. But I didn’t answer him.

  “Nonetheless,” Paul said. “I don’t believe he was the killer by any means, but the iron that was in his hotel room was the one that killed Richard.”

  “I’m right here in the room,” Richard noted. Apparently he felt he wasn’t getting enough attention.

  That was going to compound itself because Josh walked through the swinging door and gave me a kiss. “Thanks for picking up dinner,” he said and then set about putting out plates and utensils (we’d need the plates; the utensils were just because Josh can’t stand not putting them out) for our meal.

  Paul was plowing on despite the conspicuous display of domesticity going on directly in front of his eyes. “I don’t think Thomas Zink killed Richard, but I doubt parts of his story and think they might be significant to our investigation.”