Spouse on Haunted Hill

by E. J. Copperman

  “I’m not going to jail, Alison, and I’m not going to the cops. Thanks for getting in touch by threatening my mother, but I’ve fulfilled my obligation now, so I think I’ll be hanging up.” But no click followed. The Swine was waiting for my next move.

  That almost convinced me not to make one, but then I pictured Melissa’s dazed expression the night before and reminded myself that this wasn’t about me. Totally.

  “You’re bluffing, Steven. I know your voice. You’ve got nothing. You’re in over your head and you’ve decided, as usual, that you can just pretend there’s a plan and that’s the same thing as having one. It doesn’t work that way. This time you have to deal with reality and you have to come to grips with the idea that someone depends on you. Since you just spent almost a week with her, I think maybe you understand that a little. Now, do you care about your daughter or not?” It was mean, playing the Melissa card, but sometimes one has to be cruel to be kind, in the right measure. It’s a Nick Lowe song; look it up.

  I’d made it onto the Parkway now, and since the Volvo had warmed up in the fifteen minutes that had taken, it was blowing something other than frigid air onto my feet. It wasn’t much, but it was something. Meanwhile, I was having an argument with the thing that’s supposed to keep the sun out of my eyes and it was just a touch surreal, frankly.

  It took a long moment for The Swine to digest what I’d said. I decided that the quaver in his voice when he spoke again was genuine, because while he might be a swine, he does love his daughter. “I’m not going to the cops, Alison. You show me another way to get out of this mess and not hurt Melissa, and I’ll be happy to go along. But I’m not going to the cops.”

  Okay, that was probably the best I could have hoped for. I wished Paul were here to suggest a plan of action, but even Maxie had begged off this trip, saying she was going to visit her boyfriend, Everett, at the gas station he haunts. I took a cleansing breath, which just made my lungs cold.

  “Okay, you don’t have to go to the police,” I told my ex. “But we do need to sit down and plan strategy. Come to the guesthouse this afternoon and be prepared to do something you’ve never done before in your life.”

  “What’s that?” The Swine asked.

  “Tell me the truth.”

  He moaned in what I was sure he believed was justified exasperation. “You’ve got to learn to trust me,” he said.

  “I will the very first time you do something trustworthy. Now, are you coming to my house today or do I drop a dime on your mom?”

  “What have you got against my mother?” he actually asked me.

  “It’s only a one-hour drive, Steven. We don’t have that kind of time. Will I see you later?”

  He was stalling because he needed a better angle; I knew the way his mind worked. “Okay, but not at your house.”

  It’s all about power and control with the Rendells. “Why not?” I asked.

  “Because you know the cop and the cop knows you. She’s probably got somebody watching the house in case I come back. I’m not coming back.”

  “You could just tell me your whole story now,” I suggested. “Save you the trip.” I reached for the voice recorder I use when I’m doing private investigator stuff. I keep it to record interviews so I can take them back to Paul and he can tell me how I messed up.

  “Not on the phone.” Why do people say that? How is talking on the phone different from talking in person? Did he think my cell phone was tapped?

  “All right, you want to meet but not at the house. So where?”

  I expected him to take time to think and was unnerved when he came right back with an answer. “You remember that coffeehouse in Point Pleasant? The dark one where we used to meet when your parents were telling you not to see me anymore?” Another area in which I should have listened to my parents, but then there’d be no Melissa. One must sacrifice for the greater good.

  “The Old Bean? Yeah.”

  “Is it still there?” It had been sixteen years.

  “Amazingly I think it is,” I answered. “Why do you want to meet there?” It would have been so much easier at the house, where Paul could observe and advise and I know where all the sharp objects are kept.

  “Because I don’t want it to be in Harbor Haven. The cops may not be looking for me everywhere yet. Because I know the area and I know the place. And because, as I might have mentioned before, it’s dark. Right now that’s a good thing for me.”

  All that made sense, which caused me to think it was a setup of some kind. That’s how you have to think when you’re dealing with my ex-husband. I know; gives you a lot of confidence in my judgment, doesn’t it?

  “What if it’s not there? What if I check when I get home and I find out the Old Bean went out of business? Are you going to start answering the phone when I call you?” I was arguing just because I felt that doing exactly what Steven wanted was somehow a mistake. I can’t imagine where I got that idea.

  “I just checked on Google. It’s open until eight tonight. I’ll see you there at two.”

  And he hung up.

  So I did the only logical thing under the circumstances. I made a decision to go see Detective Lieutenant Anita McElone right after the spook show.

  * * *

  The show, it should be noted, was something of a lackluster affair. With three guests in the house, only two of whom (Anne and Yoko) were in attendance, the ghosts were hardly inspired. Maxie complained of having to leave Everett “just for this.”

  Melissa, who was scheduled to do her “flying girl” bit (Paul or Maxie carries her down the stairs in a horizontal position facing forward), did not appear from her room. That was troubling. She loved the looks on the guests’ faces when she soared over their heads and had never missed a chance to do so before.

  I needed to get Steven’s troubles worked out, and quickly. It was three hours until we were to meet. I was going to confer with Paul about strategy as soon as the show was over.

  He “juggled” some apples by simply moving them around in a circular motion. Maxie took some rubber cement from her sleeve and made the walls “ooze.” I took a few questions from the guests for the ghosts (“What does it feel like to be dead?” “I don’t recommend it.”), and Paul did his power interruption thing by sticking his finger into an electrical socket, which made the lights flicker. The audience couldn’t see the finger, so it lost some of its wow factor, but we were giving it the old college try, and both Anne and Yoko were smiling when they left the den after we declared the performance complete.

  I flopped back into an easy chair and considered my options. I didn’t have any. My daughter hated me, my ex-husband was going to try to con me, my supply of guests was dwindling and I didn’t even have a reason to convert the basement into living space. It was barely worth getting up in the morning.

  Eyes closed, I couldn’t see if the ghosts were still there. Maxie might very well have fled the second the show was over—she was starting to complain about “being your dancing monkey”—but Paul would stick around, no doubt eager to discuss the case.

  “I know what you’re going to say, but I’m exhausted,” I told him, resting my eyes because it actually felt good. “I don’t think I can persuade Steven to turn himself in to McElone. I’m going to go over to the police station in a minute and tell her where I’m meeting him so she can pick him up. Melissa will resent me forever because I’m getting her father imprisoned, but there’s no other way. So don’t try to talk me out of it, Paul.”

  “He’s not here,” Maxie said. “He went into the basement as soon as we were done. But it was a nice speech.”

  My eyes flew open. Maxie was floating near the ceiling doing her Cleopatra-on-a-barge thing, not moving very fast, which meant she wasn’t terribly agitated. “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “I’m here all the time.”

  “You’re here
and Paul left? What alternate universe is this?” I stood up. This was the time I was supposed to be unburdening myself to Paul and he was supposed to listen and offer sage advice. That was his job. Didn’t he know that?

  “I dunno. He said something interesting was going on with the energy stuff and he wanted to go try something out.” She picked at her fingernail as if it was chipped and she needed to polish it. She could easily change the color anytime she wanted through the power of . . . ghostiness, or something.

  “That’s weird.” Maybe I should go into the basement and talk to him. I looked toward the kitchen, where the basement door was located. Paul was serious about this energy theory of his and thought it could get him to another plane of existence, but turning his back on a case? That couldn’t ever happen.

  “Don’t you want to know what I think?” Maxie asked. She did one quick revolution around the perimeter of the den ceiling, which was not small. Her energy level, at least, was on the rise.

  “About what?” On the other hand, Paul could be cranky when you distracted him from something he had focused upon; if I went downstairs and he was in that kind of mood, it wouldn’t help and he might be snippy for the rest of the day. I had a feeling I’d be needing him after the meeting with Steven, especially if I went through with my McElone plan. Maybe it was best to leave him alone now. I looked at Maxie. Ghosts can be such drama queens.

  “About your little plan to rat out your ex-husband to the lady cop,” Maxie said. People think there is a “Jersey accent,” and Maxie was exaggerating her tones to make it sound like that. The inflection is closer to Brooklyn than New Brunswick and besides, there are at least three accents from New Jersey, largely depending on the speaker’s proximity to New York or Philadelphia.

  Oh, right, she had heard me spill my guts—presumably to Paul—about my guilt over planning to talk to McElone. If she went blabbing about that to Melissa, it was close to a guarantee that my daughter would not speak to me again for at least a year. It was clearly best to placate the dizzy spirit now.

  “Okay. What do you think?” I braced myself for the five-minute lecture I was about to receive on loyalty, decency and never talking to the police, but I was still glancing toward the basement door.

  “I think it’s the right thing to do,” Maxie said. She maneuvered herself into a vertical position and drifted down a little from the ceiling. “It’s practical and it protects Melissa. You can’t let some goon come around here looking for your ex and put your daughter in trouble, right?”

  This was an alternate universe. Maxie was agreeing with me, basically parroting my words back to me. Paul was cutting out early after a spook show to work on his exit from my house and perhaps my dimension. Melissa was upstairs, having missed her first spook show because her father was looking at a murder charge.

  Could I depend on my usual rule of thumb, which was that if Maxie thought something was a good idea I should never do that? Did I need a second opinion from Paul, or Mom, or Dad, or Murray Feldner, the guy who plows my walk when real snow happens? Probably not Murray. We went to high school together. He used to copy off me on tests.

  “You think I should go talk to McElone?” I said, to Maxie but really not. “Don’t you usually say to avoid the cops at all costs?”

  Maxie gave a half nod. “I used to be scared of the military, too. Then I met Everett and he’s taught me stuff.” Her boyfriend, Everett, was in the army for the better part of his life and now appeared as a ghost in his fatigues most of the time.

  This was really unsettling: Maxie was making sense.

  “I have to get out of here,” I said.

  Twelve

  My ex-husband has more faults than could fit into the San Fernando Valley. But one thing that has never been a point of irritation is Steven’s punctuality. He’s always on time.

  In fact, he was already seated at a table in the Old Bean—which wasn’t nearly as adorable a coffeehouse as it thought it was—when I arrived, and I was ten minutes early. He was sitting casually, a man without a care in the world, with a large mug of cinnamon-infused Colombian, black, steaming in front of him. When I showed up he was reading a copy of the Wall Street Journal. He was wearing a pair of dark khakis and a pressed denim work shirt that I could only assume he had bought the day before, in between leaving my house and either killing or not killing Maurice DuBois.

  He was going to be a big hit in prison.

  The Swine stood and smiled ingratiatingly when he saw me approach. I recognized the smile; it was the very one he had flashed on our first date. Which led to our second date. Which, if you wanted to trace a timeline past a number of other dates, led to Melissa.

  I knew now not to trust that smile, so I sat down in the chair opposite the one Steven was holding out for me. He could always be a gentleman when he wanted something from you.

  “So,” he said with an odd humor, “what shall we talk about?”

  A waitress came to take my order, which was for another hot chocolate. Coffee is a drug, a medication, for me. Hot chocolate is a recreational beverage. This time I even got whipped cream. Hang the expense! (It was no extra charge.)

  Once Monica—the waitress told us her name and that she’d be taking care of us, which was a comfort—walked away, I turned back toward The Swine. “Oh, I don’t know,” I answered. “How about those Mets?”

  “It’s basketball season,” my ex countered. Even when being sarcastic he could never turn down a chance to correct me on something. But he was always on time, and I needed to remind myself of that. “Why don’t we discuss Maurice DuBois?”

  That seemed like a decent idea, given that I didn’t want to talk to him about anything else, ever again. “What can you tell me that I can pass on to the police?” I asked.

  Steven looked amused. “That you can pass on to the police?” he echoed. “Nothing. I prefer to stay out of jail, thanks.”

  Wait. What? Did that mean what I thought it meant? The Swine had killed DuBois? Monica brought my hot chocolate and I wasn’t even sure I wanted it anymore—though I did eat the whipped cream. I mean, it wasn’t like I hadn’t fantasized about him going away for a long time. I tried not to consider Melissa for a moment.

  “Well, that’s not encouraging,” I said.

  “Look, you were there. You knew there was someone demanding I give him money I couldn’t possibly get in time.” He sipped his coffee and sat back. “It was going to be him or me. I prefer it not to be me.”

  “That was the only option?” I definitely didn’t want the hot chocolate now. Just one small sip. Wow, that was good. “There was no way to negotiate?”

  “You don’t negotiate with those guys, Ally,” he said.

  I couldn’t muster enough energy to look annoyed at him; my mind was racing too fast.

  “They come after you. It’s the Wild West with these dudes. I don’t have a lot of options.”

  “Well, what are you going to do now?” I said. “DuBois was just the messenger. Lou Maroni is the one who wants four hundred grand from you, and he’s not going to give up because you got rid of poor old Maurice.”

  “I have to keep running. That’s why I agreed to see you here. I’m saying good-bye, Alison. You won’t see me again.”

  Those were words I’d longed to hear (although to be fair I’d heard them once before when I wasn’t prepared for them and spent a year in therapy afterward), and now I was horribly alarmed. “Steven. You can say good-bye to me whenever you want, but you can’t disappear from your daughter’s life. What are you going to tell Melissa?”

  “I’m not going to tell her anything. Leaving that little girl is the hardest thing I’ll ever do. I’m not sure I could ever explain it to her in a way that wouldn’t guarantee she’d hate me forever. So I won’t. I’ll let someone who’s much better at explaining the hard parts of life tell her, someone who’s done it for Melissa before.”

&
nbsp; There were bars going up around me, iron bars that wouldn’t possibly be movable or bendable. There was a door in front of me, but it was locked and it was just as heavy as the bars. I knew a trap when I heard one.

  “You can’t leave this to me,” I said in a voice barely more than a whisper. “You can’t always be the fun parent and ask me to deliver the bad news when this is your screwup. You can’t possibly make me look that girl in the face and tell her that her father isn’t ever going to be in touch with her again. She’ll associate it with me for the rest of her life.”

  “Better you than me,” The Swine said. And he was never more a swine than in that moment. He stood up, grabbed his coat from the back of his chair, pulled a scarf from its sleeve and put it on as he walked toward the door of the coffeehouse. He was completely suited up for the cold, gloves and all, when he opened the door.

  There he found Detective Lieutenant McElone.

  I didn’t see Steven’s face, but I saw the lieutenant’s. She was not smiling. “Steven Rendell,” she said. “You are being held for questioning in connection with the homicide of Maurice DuBois.” Behind McElone were two uniformed officers who took over the handcuffing of my ex-husband and turned him around while McElone explained to Steven that this was not an arrest. Yet. When they did that, he was looking directly at me.

  I’d never seen Steven look quite that angry. His face was a combination of astonishment, pain and rage that almost distorted it beyond recognition as the man to whom I’d once been married. He stared me down to the point that having half stood, I sat back down at the table, speechless.

  But he was not. “You,” he said. “You called the cops and set me up. You’re the last person I would have expected to betray me like this, Alison. And you’re going to have to tell Melissa what you did. She can associate that with you for the rest of her life.”