Spouse on Haunted Hill

by E. J. Copperman

  There was no choice. No matter how much I wanted to keep things as they were, no matter how much I wanted to deny the situation around me, it was too clear. I was not being given any option, so I did exactly what I did not want to do.

  I opened my eyes.

  Sure enough, Maxie was hovering over near Liss but not engaging her. Paul was squinting in my direction, his brow so furrowed a family of moles could have taken up residence in it. My daughter, back to me, did not appear to have moved, not even when Maxie had asked what was wrong with me.

  “Okay,” I said aloud. “We have work to do.”

  Paul’s eyes gave up squinting, but they still seemed to be boring into me. “Do you mean what I think?” he asked. People ask you that without telling you what they’re thinking. They do it because what they’re thinking is so in-your-face that they’re showing off exactly how foolish they are by asking such a ridiculous question.

  I chose, diplomatically, to ignore that because I was going to need Paul very badly for the foreseeable future.

  “Yes,” I said. “We’re going to investigate Maurice DuBois’s murder and try to prove that Steven didn’t kill him.”

  My daughter stood up, walked over to me and gave me a hug.

  Sometimes there are benefits to be had even from stupid decisions you make.

  Ten

  “I haven’t heard from Steven and I wouldn’t tell you if I had.”

  My ex-mother-in-law, Constance Rendell, has eyes like those in a shark. They’re black and emotionless. Stare just at her eyes and you can easily see her eating Robert Shaw in Jaws. Concentrate on the rest of her face and you’ll think she’s just lovely.

  I’ll tell you what happened and you can judge her character yourself.

  For the record, I didn’t really think Steven would come home to his mother for cover after finding out Maurice DuBois had been killed, or after finding out the cops were after him for killing Maurice DuBois. Either way, it seemed unlikely he’d go to the Edison home in which he’d grown up, where his parents still lived.

  The place was not the least bit run-down or shabby-looking. Constance would allow for no such thing. She ran a tight ship and probably would have made an excellent commandant. She had always disdained my housekeeping, which I thought was perfectly adequate even before I started asking people to stay in the house I was maintaining. She once told Steven—and he relayed it to me as if an amusing anecdote—that she thought I should hire someone to clean after I had finished cleaning just to point out all the things I’d missed. No doubt she would have applied for the job and then stolen from my liquor cabinet.

  Steven’s father, Harry Rendell, was nowhere to be seen when I arrived on the family doorstep. The sun reflected off the front windows, making it impossible to see inside. Constance, whom I had not called ahead because I didn’t want to give The Swine any notice in the extremely unlikely event that he was lying low in the compound (a split-level on a quiet street leading to Route 27, which I was counting on to take me back to the Garden State Parkway and my shore home), said her husband was out running errands. Apparently that ran in the family. Harry had retired from almost four decades of work for a local car dealer in the service department, doing endless oil changes and tune-ups mostly because staying home with his wife was a considerably less pleasant prospect.

  I liked Harry. He had treated me like the daughter he’d never had despite having a daughter, Steven’s sister, Melba (you think I’m making that up, but I’m not), who had caused considerable consternation during her teenage years, which had only gotten worse once she hit her twenties. She had been through four rehabs by my last count and I had divorced The Swine some years earlier, so my news updates had been sparse. Melba now lived in Arizona. But it’s a dry heat.

  So it was my luck to get Constance and not Harry when I’d rung the doorbell. Mentally I cursed Paul for making me drive up here on a fool’s errand. Guess who was the fool.

  “I was just asking because Melissa wanted to see her father and I didn’t know where he was,” I told my ex-mother-in-law, who had arrived at the door at nine on a frigid Sunday morning wearing a short-sleeved pantsuit and in full makeup. I was still in the jeans and snow pants from having “shoveled” my front walk.

  “You are not,” Constance said. I’d like to point out that she had not yet asked me in. We stood on the front step and even with my jacket and her in short sleeves, I was the one whose teeth were chattering. It helps if, like Constance, you don’t have a nervous system. “Melissa just spent almost a week with Steven in California. It’s not like she’s pining away for her daddy.”

  Constance treats my daughter like the mistake she clearly believes Melissa to be. That’s enough for me, but there’s so much more to enjoy in her personality. Sarcasm. The National Language of New Jersey.

  “She has something she wants to tell him about their trip and Steven isn’t answering his phone,” I countered. “Is there some reason he doesn’t want his daughter to get in touch with him?” I was operating on the assumption that Constance had heard from my ex-husband. When we were first married he used to call her every time we went out to dinner. Just in case she called the apartment and didn’t get an answer. And he had a cell phone.

  “I have no idea why he wouldn’t want to hear from her.” Constance sniffed. “Maybe he’s finally realized how you turned that girl against him.” It was not a new refrain.

  I wasn’t taking the bait. “Do you know where he is, Constance? It’s important and I’m cold.”

  “It’s because you don’t eat right,” my ex-mother-in-law pronounced. Constance is great at making pronouncements. She’s like the Queen of England, only without the total lack of real power.

  “Steven won’t get in touch with Melissa because I don’t eat right?”

  “You’re cold because you don’t eat right,” she snorted.

  “No, I’m cold because this side of the Earth is turned away from the sun this time of year. We humans call it ‘winter.’ Now, why don’t you tell me where my daughter’s father is so I can get into my car and turn on the heater?” Like that heater would do any good. There was a block of coffee-flavored ice in a cup sitting on my dashboard as we spoke.

  “I don’t know where he is and I don’t understand why you drove up here instead of calling me first.” Constance’s eyes darted suddenly to the left, then back at me. Could Steven have been hiding in the house after all?

  “May I come in, Constance? I’d like to get the feeling back in my toes before April.”

  She waved a hand dismissively. “If you’d take in a little more fiber you wouldn’t have that problem.”

  “I don’t really have time for a pot of beans while I stand here. Can I come in?”

  “You’re rude and uncouth.”

  “That doesn’t answer the question,” I pointed out. “Not to mention, ‘rude’ and ‘uncouth’ mean the same thing.” They don’t, really, but I needed to get back a little of my own.

  “Oh, fine.” Constance stepped to the side, allowing me a path into the house. It was not what I’d expected and it probably meant Steven was not, in fact, here.

  I stepped inside and was immediately struck with the lack of warmth. Not in temperature; the absence of a subzero wind was the very definition of relief. But as I’d noted every other time I’d stepped into Constance Rendell’s house, this could have been a model home for the developer of this neighborhood. Nothing out of place, no family photographs in evidence, no sign that anyone other than Mr. and Mrs. Generic had ever lived here. The furniture was clean and arranged tastefully. The carpet had been vacuumed, probably within the last hour. There were books on the shelves that probably had never been opened. There was no television. The coffee table had not a crumb on it, just a very attractive arrangement of flowers that were in all likelihood fabric.

  My first thought was to look to the right, which was
the direction in which Constance had stolen her giveaway glance. There was nothing but domestic perfection there, either. The dining room, in which I had never dined, was immaculate. I had often wondered if this was just the house the Rendells showed people and perhaps they had another more ramshackle one on the next block where they really lived.

  “Thanks,” I said, although Constance hadn’t done anything but take a step to her left. “That feels better.” I rubbed my gloved hands on my arms just to illustrate exactly how cold I had been outdoors.

  “Fiber,” she muttered.

  As welcome as the indoor environment was, my fervent goal was still to get the hell out of here as quickly as possible and try to coax a tiny bit of warmth out of the Volvo’s alleged heater on my way back to Harbor Haven. We had a Sunday spook show scheduled for eleven, and even though Liss could certainly handle my end of it if I wasn’t there, she’d had enough to deal with for the past day or so and I felt it best to make it back in time.

  “Look, Constance,” I began. “Steven’s gotten himself in trouble again. It’s going to be worse for him if I don’t find him than if I do. So if you have any idea where he might be hiding out, your best bet is at the very least to tell him to get in touch with me so we can work this out. Okay?”

  “What do you mean, he’s gotten himself in trouble again?” my ex’s mother asked. “Has he married someone else?” That was her version of the worst thing her son could do—entangle himself with someone like me.

  I didn’t ask to sit down. Part of it was that I wanted to bolt for the Volvo. Part of it was that I was actually unsure whether Constance would allow me to park myself on one of her wrinkle-free sofa cushions and didn’t want to find out. “I mean he’s made yet another in a series of shady business deals, he’s gotten called on it and now a man has been found dead in an alley next to a bar and Steven is currently the prime suspect. That’s what I mean by trouble. So where is he, Constance?”

  I have on rare occasions met people meaner than Constance Rendell. I’ve met people who are actually more rigid, although not many. I’ve even run into one or two who might have been more disapproving. Maybe one, anyway. My third-grade teacher was kind of harsh.

  But never in my life have I encountered anyone as absolutely unmovable as my ex-mother-in-law. “I have no idea,” she said. Her voice didn’t even quaver, not a tiny bit.

  I hadn’t slept much in the past two nights. I was worried about my daughter’s state of mind. I had concerns about my business bouncing back from a truly awful winter season. My ex-husband was on the same side of the continent as I am, and that’s never a good thing. Not to mention the guy in the alley with the bullet in his head. I just wasn’t in the mood for Constance.

  “Yes, you do,” I said. “You know exactly where he is. You didn’t look the tiniest bit surprised when I told you what was going on. You didn’t flinch when I showed up at your door unannounced and unexpected.” I started to circle back toward the dining room, where I’d noticed a floor-to-ceiling drape that was fluttering just a bit when I could be sure the windows weren’t open. “And you took a quick glance over in this direction when I asked you where your son might be hiding.”

  I had backed Constance up away from the dining room entrance just by placing myself in her way. She saw where I was going and suddenly her face tensed even more than usual. “Don’t,” she began.

  “I don’t have a choice,” I said, and strode purposefully into the dining room. Once there I rushed to the wall with the quivering drape and headed for the pull cord on the right side.

  “You mustn’t,” Constance said, her voice actually cracking in something like terror as she followed me into the room. “You don’t understand.”

  “No, you don’t understand,” I told her. It was fun being self-righteous; maybe I should try it more often. “This is a matter of life and death!” And I pulled hard on the cord that opened the very tasteful heavy green drapery and flung it open.

  Standing behind the drape was a man in his sixties with thinning gray hair parted in a conspicuous comb-over that was fooling nobody. He was thin, with a white mustache and skinny legs, wearing socks with actual garters.

  I know that last part because the man was wearing no trousers. He was, and I am grateful to this day, wearing plaid boxer shorts. It’s not the plaid part I’m grateful for.

  “Oh, hello,” he said.

  Speechless, I turned back to face Constance.

  “I can explain,” she said.

  “Oh, I would love to hear you try,” I told her. “Truly I would.”

  “The reverend came to discuss some church business—” she began.

  This just kept getting better. “The reverend!” I said. I turned toward the man inside the drapes, who was no longer inside the drapes. On Sunday? “Tell me, Reverend, do you always conduct church business without your pants?”

  “Alison!” Constance would never be too mortified to resist scolding me. “You’re talking to a man of the cloth.”

  “From the waist up, anyway.”

  Constance, who has made a part-time career of ignoring anything I say, continued to do so. “The reverend came to discuss church business and we were having a cup of coffee. He spilled some on his trousers, so I offered to put them in my dryer for a few minutes.”

  There were holes in this story large enough to pilot the starship Enterprise through. Not the least of them was the fact that the man had found his pants behind a dining room chair and was now putting them back on.

  “Uh-huh,” I said. “So he decided to hide behind the drapes when the doorbell rang because he was afraid his coffee stains weren’t properly dried yet?” I turned toward the reverend again. “You know your butt was facing right into that window the whole time you were back there, right?” He looked behind where he was standing, and his hands went to his face. He hadn’t buttoned his trousers, so they fell to the floor again.

  Constance looked away. “Don’t tell Harry,” she said quietly. “Please. If you have any decency in you, don’t tell Harry.”

  I had very little interest in getting involved with The Swine’s parents’ marital issues. But for the first time possibly in my life, I had some leverage over Constance Rendell and I was going to use it.

  “Fine,” I said. “If my phone rings in the next two hours and your son is on the other end, I won’t be making a phone call to your husband. If it doesn’t, I won’t be held responsible. How’s that?”

  I headed toward the door. Even then, Constance was doing her level best not to ever break character.

  “I don’t know where he is,” she said. Her voice was aiming at defiant and coming down somewhere around whimpering.

  “Find out,” I said, and left.

  It was still unbelievably cold outside, but somehow I didn’t feel it as I walked to the Volvo. Maybe I wouldn’t need the heater on the way home after all.

  All right, you have the facts. Now I ask you: Was I wrong about my ex-mother-in-law?

  Eleven

  My phone actually rang before I made it back to the Garden State Parkway (and I’m giving you the whole name now because you might be from out of state—we just call it “The Parkway”). Luckily I have installed a Bluetooth device on my sun visor to keep from being pulled over by the New Jersey State Police (“Troopers”) so I could answer hands free.

  “What did you say to my mother?” The Swine.

  “Since you called me back, I don’t have to tell you,” I answered. The logic was convoluted, I’ll grant you, but then I really wasn’t interested in telling him anything. I needed him to tell me something. “Where are you?”

  He chuckled. “Like I’d tell you.”

  “I’m the best person for you to tell. The cops are after you. I’m guessing Lou Maroni is still after you, only now he’s mad. If I decide to report how often you’ve paid child support in the past six months, I ca
n probably get the Ocean County Sheriff after you. So I’m the person you want to talk to because maybe I can help you figure a way out of this mess.”

  The guy in the monstrous SUV in front of me clearly believed the road was his and his alone; he was wobbling between lanes like a child at Toys R Us trying to decide between the action figures (“dolls”) and a video game. Nah, the video game would always win. Never mind. I stayed back because even though it was just past ten on a Sunday morning there was no guarantee SUV Guy was not drunk.

  “I don’t need your help,” Steven answered. “I’ve got it all figured out.”

  “You had it figured out when Maurice DuBois showed up at my door yesterday morning,” I reminded him. “You were going to get me to sell my house so you could get six hundred thousand dollars when you only needed to pay Maroni back four.”

  “You knew about that? That was just something I told Maurice. I didn’t really think . . . You knew about that?”

  “Yeah. Maybe you’re not the slick operator you think you are, Steven. I know the detective on the case. Lieutenant McElone is reasonable and she’s good. She’ll find out what happened. Come back and we’ll go there together. You can tell her your story.”

  The SUV cut across two lanes to get to a right turn, causing me to hit my brakes with some authority. I couldn’t even blame SUV Guy, because when it went by I could see the stupid thing was being driven by a woman. Some days just don’t go the way you want them to.

  “You think I’m going to the cops?” my ex snorted at me through my sun visor. “That’s your plan?”

  “Why? What’s yours? Arrange for Melissa to come see you on visiting day? You know orange was never a good color for you.” Glad as I was to be rid of my SUV nemesis, the thrill of having caught Constance in . . . what I’d caught her in had worn off and the reality of the Volvo’s terrible heating system was reasserting itself on my consciousness. In other words, my feet were freezing.