Spouse on Haunted Hill

by E. J. Copperman

  “I told her I was innocent.” That was the best he could do? The man who had once gotten seven Orthodox Jews to invest in a casino by convincing them the Sioux Nation was one of the lost tribes of Israel?

  “Everybody tells her they’re innocent,” I answered. “I know at least three people still in jail who told her they were innocent. How come she believed you?”

  “Because I am innocent,” The Swine said. He had so much nothing it was a little sad.

  “Dad.” Melissa could get to Steven in ways I would never dream about. “Tell us for real. What evidence did you give the lieutenant that made her let you go?”

  “I gave her my alibi for the time the man died, honey,” her father said. Right to her face. “Once that checked out, she had to release me.”

  “What alibi?” Dad demanded. “We don’t even know what time the guy was shot.”

  I passed that along to The Swine as my own observation. “I told them I was with your boyfriend, Alison,” he crooned. “They called him and he confirmed it.”

  “You told them—” My phone was out of my pocket faster than Wyatt Earp could have drawn his Colt .45, assuming that was what Wyatt was packing. What do I know about guns? I pushed the button for Josh and waited for him to pick up.

  “Hey, I was going to call you,” he began. “I got this call from—”

  “From Lieutenant McElone,” I finished for him. “She wanted you to confirm The . . . Steven’s alibi?” Melissa frowned. Her father didn’t appear to have caught my near slip.

  “Yeah. I didn’t even know he was in custody. But I guess he didn’t do it, right? Because he was with me at the time the lieutenant asked about.”

  “He was?”

  “Sure. You remember. He was there at your house when I got there, and I brought him back here, however briefly.” Josh seemed to think I didn’t recall the situation. What he didn’t realize was that I remembered it, but I didn’t believe it had happened the way it appeared to have happened. They’re two different things, and they often collide when The Swine is in town.

  “That I get. What time did she ask you about?” I didn’t like the cat-versus-canary grin on my ex-husband’s face. He had played the system and gained some sort of temporary get-out-of-jail-free pass.

  “About ten o’clock,” Josh answered, sounding just a little confused. “So he was at your house when it happened.”

  That made no sense. “Then why didn’t she call me to confirm it?” I wondered aloud.

  The Swine held up a hand. “They asked for one name of a person I was with. I gave them one name. No sense to bring this into the family.”

  I made a mental note to send him a Christmas card with cyanide in it this year.

  Luckily Josh hadn’t heard him. “I have no idea,” he said. “We still on for dinner tonight?” We rarely went out for dinner while I had guests, but this was the lowest-maintenance group since the time I had a grand total of one guest during a hurricane one year. So we’d made plans before Steven showed up to have what Melissa called “Date Night” this evening.

  “I don’t see why not,” I answered. After the age of twelve it is legal to leave a child alone in the house. There is no provision in the law—I checked—for leaving a child with two ghosts and her unreliable father. I figured Liss could handle it. Then I remembered. “But my mom brought a whole load of food.”

  My mother waved her hand. “That’s for tomorrow,” she said. “I just brought it today because we were coming for an emergency.”

  Steven looked “concerned.” He tries. “What emergency?” he asked.

  “You.” Mom, Dad and I pointed at him. He didn’t see Dad, but I think he got the point.

  The Swine laughed. “You people don’t give me enough credit.”

  Melissa looked up from her phone before I could make a comment on how much credit her father might be due, and how getting credit had led to his current troubles to begin with. “Let’s go up to my room, Dad,” she said. “I have some pictures I found from when I was little.” She and Steven walked out while I was trying to decide if she really liked him better than me or was just attempting to get her father out of harm’s way. Because my mother did not look happy.

  “That guy.” Maxie shook her head. “There’s something about him.”

  “Yeah. It’s called acid reflux,” I said. I reached into a cabinet for a container of Tums I kept there. Orange is best.

  Josh, blissfully unaware of most of what was going on in my house, said he’d come by to get me around seven, when the guests were often out getting dinner for themselves. I cooed a little discreetly at him and we ended the call.

  Paul looked down at me with a look of true consideration and deep thought. I looked up hopefully. Paul has a way of clarifying a situation and creating a plan of action that makes me optimistic in a crisis.

  “Do you think you could do without this?” he asked. He pointed to the microwave oven sitting on a countertop and looked positively avaricious.

  The microwave? I used that to heat up coffee and thaw out frozen . . . Wait. “No!” I shouted at him. “You can’t have my microwave. What is this all about?”

  “Are we staying with Melissa tonight?” my father interjected. “I saw a loose piece of molding in the library and thought I might be able to shore that up for you.” Dad was a handyman in life and really hasn’t given it up despite dying seven years ago.

  “We’re happy to,” Mom chimed in. She was still looking at the door as if wondering whether that awful man who had left with Melissa could be trusted.

  He couldn’t, except with Melissa.

  “If you want,” I said. “Check with Liss and see if you’ll be intruding on a father/daughter moment.” Far be it from me to break up that burgeoning friendship. I was just the mother, after all.

  Dad flew up through the ceiling, but Mom said she wanted to go up there anyway—probably to check on The Swine—and started for the stairs, which I knew wasn’t easy for her.

  My mother doesn’t care much for my ex-husband, in case you were wondering.

  Maxie looked at Paul, then at me, said something about looking for Everett and hightailed it out through the back wall toward the beach. Paul scowled a little. It always bothers him that Maxie has free run of the planet and he’s stuck within my property lines.

  “Okay, what’s going on?” I said as he drifted slowly down toward my eye level. “I get that you’re looking into your theory of energy and I get that it’s a little dull around here sometimes so you need to do your experiments. But we have what you’d call a case to investigate now, one that could impact me and my daughter, and you’re distracted by things like my microwave oven. What’s all that electrical stuff in the basement? What are you planning to do that’s so important? Specifically, please.”

  Paul stopped and considered. He looked me right in the eye. “I’m trying to move on to the next level of existence,” he said.

  Fourteen

  Josh looked over his menu at me. “Paul thinks he can go to heaven or something if he electrocutes himself?” He shook his head. “Why?”

  I was deciding between the fettucine Alfredo and the gnocchi Bolognese. “That’s not exactly it, but you’re close,” I said. Bolognese. I put down the menu and looked at Josh. “What he said was that he thought a surge in the amount of energy that flowed through him might nudge him into the next level of existence. He thinks maybe he’s made of energy, but his level is just too low to get where he wants to go. With this great big surge he might be able to move on.”

  Josh scanned the menu, but I knew he was getting the chicken marsala and so did he. “And where does he think all this extra energy is going to come from?” he asked.

  “Um . . .” This was the tricky part I’d have preferred not to discuss. “Paul says he can harvest the energy—that’s his word, ‘harvest’—by attaching this contrap
tion he’s building to a lightning rod on the roof.”

  Josh put down his menu. “A lightning rod. On your roof.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “And how does this not end with your house being without power and/or burning down?”

  “Paul is sure it’s safe,” I reported. He had actually said “fairly sure,” but why quibble?

  “And you’re okay with this?” Josh looked at me. I usually love the way he looks at me, but this level of concern was stirring up my own unsure feelings about Paul’s nutty crusade.

  “Well, okay might be going a little too far,” I admitted. “But how can I deny him after all this time the chance to move to another plane of existence? It’s all he thinks about and it’s . . .” I was going to say “It’s killing him to stay like this,” but that would have been an obvious misstatement. “It’s really important to him. The man has probably saved my life more than once. How can I tell him no?”

  Josh is not a didactic boyfriend. He’s not threatened by the presence of my ex-husband, at least not nearly as much as that threatens me when Steven spends time with Melissa. He hasn’t raised an issue about me living with two dead people in my house. He doesn’t complain that I can’t take vacations or even frequent nights off like this one. He is amazingly understanding. So it didn’t surprise me when he said, “I understand,” nodding just a little bit. “How about this: Can Tony and I be there when he tries this, so we can help you deal with it if something goes wrong?”

  I exhaled. “I was hoping you’d say that. I’ll buy some extra fire extinguishers.”

  The server, who was careful to tell us her name was Julia, took our orders, gave us a smile to indicate we had done well (do people order badly at restaurants, drawing snarls from the waitstaff?) and took our menus back with her. I felt so validated by her approval of my Bolognese that I was emboldened to look my boyfriend in the eye. I could see by his expression he was still mulling over the logistics of Paul’s scheme in his head.

  “When is he planning on trying this?” he asked. He looked at his watch, as if it might be any minute.

  “Probably not for a while. There has to be lightning, see, and we are in the middle of winter.”

  Josh smiled. “Yeah. I heard about that on Twitter. Cold, right? And snow?”

  “You’re so up-to-date.” I reached my hand over and placed it on his. I don’t know what I was doing right the day we re-met, but someone somewhere had been smiling on me.

  “That’s me, Mr. Tech. I own a paint store.” Josh looked at his watch again. It was thirty seconds later than the last time. He didn’t seem especially nervous, but I was starting to wonder if he had a late appointment with his hypnotherapist or something. (He doesn’t really have a hypnotherapist.) “So, what’s the latest on your ex’s legal issues?”

  I filled him in on The Swine Saga as well as I understood it. “He’s up to something, but I can’t figure out what,” I concluded. “With Steven there’s always an angle. To get released from custody when McElone was certain enough to bring him in must have taken some pretty serious tap dancing. She’s not easily convinced. Of anything. Ever.”

  “Maybe he’s really innocent,” Josh suggested. He managed to do so without checking the time again, but I could tell he wanted to.

  “He might not be guilty, but he’s far from innocent,” I answered. “I don’t really think Steven killed this DuBois guy, but I do think he’s involved in something that resulted in the man being shot, and he’s probably in over his head, which is his natural state. There’s no question in my mind he’s hiding something.”

  Josh put up his hands in a pyramid and rested them under his chin. “Well, if this was an investigation, what would you do with a suspect like him?”

  It was a good question. “Probably stakeout,” I said. “Watch and see who he’s associating with, that sort of thing. But I can’t do that with Steven.”

  “Why not?”

  I gave him a look. “He does sort of know what I look like.”

  He twisted his lips around in a “thinking” face. “I suppose he does. But you know people he won’t recognize. Or even see.”

  My boyfriend is down with the ghosts. “Hey, that’s not bad. I can get Dad to tail him and report back on his movements. You’re a genius.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t like to brag.” Josh checked his watch again.

  I couldn’t let that one go by. “Okay, what’s going on?”

  His expression was trying for surprise but landed on mild panic. “What do you mean?”

  “You’re looking at your watch like you’re trying to time the contractions. Do you need to be somewhere else?” Julia brought our drinks, which killed the conversation for a short time.

  “No, of course not. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” This time he conspicuously avoided looking at his watch but did glance toward the restaurant’s entrance, which was behind me.

  “You do so. I’m a licensed detective, Josh. I know when something is up.” I’m a bad licensed detective, but there was no need to mention that just now.

  “Well, your Spidey sense is off this time, Sherlock. Nothing’s going on.”

  “Something sure is. You’re mixing your pop culture metaphors.”

  But this time he was smiling and before I knew it, there was a man in a suit standing next to our table. He didn’t exactly look formal, but professional, and he was carrying an envelope.

  “Are you Alison Kerby?” he asked. Me.

  Josh was grinning like the Cheshire Cat, so this couldn’t be an awful thing, but his smile had a tense pull at its corners.

  I admitted to being myself, and the man offered me the envelope.

  “Telegram,” he said.

  Telegram? Was I living in some alternative 1954? Weren’t telegrams always bad news? I looked up at the man in the suit. “For me?” I asked. It was a stupid question, but a placeholder while I thought.

  “If you’re Alison Kerby.”

  I was undeniably Alison Kerby, so I took the envelope from his hand. I didn’t know telegrams came in envelopes. In the movies they’re always just free sheets of paper that are snatched from the kid in a uniform with a cap at the door who, depending on what the screenwriter wants us to think about the recipient of the message, does or doesn’t get a tip. This, apparently, was no longer how such things were done.

  Josh still had that odd look on his face that made me think he was going to either bust out laughing or curl into the fetal position under the table. I figured it had something to do with the telegram, which he somehow had known was coming, so the best way to end this surreal scene was to read the wire and deal with what it said.

  I extracted the paper inside, which was yellow not because it was old but because that was the color it was intended to be by the company sending the telegram. I read the words and let them sink in:

  LET’S PLAY COLOR QUIZ FOREVER. STOP (It actually said STOP. I thought that had gone the way of the delivery boy with the cap.) WILL YOU PLEASE MARRY ME? STOP.

  Underneath it read JOSH.

  Whoa.

  Instinctively I looked up from the paper and saw Josh’s gleeful/tense face and now I understood why it looked that way. He was wondering if I was going to say yes or no.

  A thousand thoughts flashed through my mind in a millisecond. Shouldn’t he know what I was feeling, and so not be worried? Would he move to the guesthouse, because I couldn’t live anywhere else and keep my business? Should I sell the house and move in with him? Was it necessary to ask Melissa’s permission if I said yes? Who sends a telegram to propose? Was it a way of asking without asking? Did that mean Josh was torn on the subject? What did WILL YOU PLEASE MARRY ME? STOP mean, anyway? Sort of sending a mixed message, wasn’t it?

  “Yes,” I said.

  Josh grinned with relief, I think, and stood up. I stood up, too,
so that by the time he got to me, we could embrace and kiss without the awkward one-person-in-a-chair scenario. I was vaguely aware of other people in the restaurant applauding as Josh kissed me, which meant they must have known what happened. It was sort of like when people get engaged on the Jumbotron at a sports arena, but less horrifying. A little less horrifying.

  But I felt his arms around me and I knew it was the right decision. This was the guy.

  We didn’t spend a huge amount of time kissing because of the whole Jumbotron analogy, so once we were finished, Josh looked at me and said, “You’re sure?”

  I understood. I’d hesitated. A guy doesn’t want to see that when proposing. “I’m sure,” I said. “It was just so out of the blue.”

  “You have no idea. I’ve been trying to figure out when to do this for months.” He did not reach into his pocket. “I didn’t get a ring. I figured you would want to help pick it out. Was I wrong?”

  And that reminded me once again that I definitely had the right guy. I hugged him close. “You’re never wrong,” I said.

  “Can I get that in writing?”

  * * *

  I didn’t remember much about the rest of the dinner. No, let me be clear—I didn’t remember anything about the rest of the dinner. I did recall telling Josh the only way my acceptance was revocable would be if Melissa disapproved, and I estimated a less than one percent chance of that happening. Especially after I texted her and asked, “Is it okay if I marry Josh?” and she texted back, “YAY!!!”

  I was pretty sure that was not disapproval.

  Josh and I talked about plans. Not a big wedding, we agreed. He’d move into the guesthouse and give up his Asbury Park apartment. It would be something of a commute to his store, but he didn’t mind getting up even earlier in the morning to make it work.

  I offered to sell the guesthouse and give up my business. Josh looked at me as if I had suggested I would sprout wings and fly to Jupiter. “I really don’t think that’s a good idea,” was what he said.