Spouse on Haunted Hill

by E. J. Copperman

  In fact, she was in the farthest reaches of the minivan, sticking her feet out the rear hatch as we sat outside a coffee shop in Belmar. We’d followed The Swine here from his temporary digs at ten thirty a.m. Steven was not an early riser when he wasn’t required to be.

  “You sure you’re engaged?” Jeannie asked. “I don’t know if it’s official if you don’t have a ring.”

  “It’s official,” I said. “As official as it can get. I mean, nothing’s legally official until you’re actually married.”

  “No ring?” Maxie marveled from the back. “I bet he’s just leaving his options open.”

  I made a face, which Jeannie thought was aimed at her. “I was just asking,” she said.

  “I’m not mad at you. How long has he been in there?” If Jeannie weren’t present I could ask Maxie to go into the coffee place and see who Steven was talking to, listen in on the conversation. But of course Maxie had shown up in Jeannie’s car five minutes after she picked me up at the house, so talking to her would be problematic. The fact was, I could probably do that anyway and Jeannie would think I was being hilarious.

  “Thirteen minutes by my watch,” Jeannie answered. “What are we looking for? I mean, does his taste in muffins really have much to do with whether he killed somebody?” There was a snort from behind me, which I had naturally assumed was Maxie being a pain, but instead it turned out to be Oliver waking up from what for him must have been a surprise nap.

  Most days Jeannie drops her children off at day care, something that would have seemed impossible to imagine before Molly was born. Let’s just say Jeannie was a little less relaxed when she had one small child than she is now with two. Mostly because that level of micromanagement aimed at two little ones probably would have killed Jeannie. Or Tony would have.

  But today the day care center was closed because of an infestation of bedbugs that required some serious insecticides, and that meant no children in the building. It was about forty degrees too cold to keep the kids outside, so Ollie and Molly were in the backseat of the minivan in car seats, Molly sleeping and Oliver, until a moment ago, following her lead. Now he was announcing his intention to become awake and impatient.

  “We want to see if he’s meeting anybody,” I said. I pulled a pair of binoculars from the tote bag I carry and tried to zero in on The Swine. The coffee shop, which was imaginatively called the Coffee House, had a plate-glass window in the front, but he had chosen to position himself somewhere else in the establishment. I made a head gesture toward Maxie, who didn’t notice because she was trying to tickle a baby who clearly didn’t know she was there.

  Oliver, on the other hand, was showing something approaching interest in the ghost behind him. His eyes followed her finger as she attempted to tickle Molly. Molly did not react at all, but Oliver laughed loudly.

  “What’s funny?” Jeannie asked him.

  “The lady.”

  I figured I’d cover up for him, although I’ll admit sometimes I wonder why it’s necessary. Oliver had shown signs of seeing the ghosts before, but was never as clear about it as he was being now. “He’s not visible from here,” I said to Jeannie. “Can you get closer?”

  She gestured with her right hand. “Do you see another parking space?”

  It was true: Even on a weekday morning in winter, you can’t find a place to park in a town on the Jersey Shore. The place was packed to the gills and I had only three guests at home and a mortgage payment due in a week.

  I chose not to focus on that issue and did another sweep of the coffee shop for The Swine. He appeared after a moment, carrying a large mug toward a table. There was a woman next to him—of course—whose skirt was showing off her legs even in this weather, but it wasn’t clear whether she was with Steven. “I wish we had somebody inside,” I said, hoping Maxie would take the bait.

  She had noticed Oliver’s attention and was now trying to engage him in a game of peekaboo, something so two weeks ago for him (literally) that it was frankly embarrassing she’d even make the attempt.

  “Well, he’ll notice either of us and I don’t think Oliver is old enough to order a latte just yet,” Jeannie answered.

  “Maybe I can just get out of the van and get closer enough that I can see inside better,” I suggested.

  “Yeah, because a person out in the street in twenty-degree weather watching a coffee shop with binoculars isn’t the least bit conspicuous,” my best friend pointed out.

  “Fine. Be logical.”

  Maxie was now contenting herself with moving her hand up and down like a flapping bird and reveling in Oliver’s gaze following it wherever it went. She was giggling like a two-year-old herself while the actual toddler was wearing a serious expression, watching her with rapt concentration.

  Just then The Swine showed up in the front window again, this time with his obviously borrowed leather jacket zipped up. He was heading for the door.

  The woman whose legs I’d caught a glimpse of before—and which he had no doubt caught more than a glimpse of himself—was walking out with him. “Wait,” I told Jeannie, as if she had indicated she was going to do anything but that. “He’s on the move.”

  Molly chose that moment to wake up and start moving toward the crying stage. Babies are very good at that, and especially proficient at being inconvenient. Jeannie turned around to look at her daughter.

  “Aw, you okay, pumpkin?” she cooed. “Just wake up?” She caught a glimpse of Oliver, his head going up and down following Maxie’s finger. “What’s with you, little boy?” she asked.

  “The lady,” he repeated.

  Jeannie looked at him with an expression she usually reserves for me. “Uh-huh,” she said.

  I barely caught any of that because I was keeping my enhanced gaze on The Swine. He had just reached the door to the Coffee House and was about to walk outside. He pulled on a pair of gloves and was definitely talking to Legs McShowoff next to him. Should I have been this judgmental about my ex the day after I got engaged to another man? A question for a quieter moment.

  “If they stay together we can follow them,” I said to Jeannie.

  But of course that was not in the cards. Steven opened the door, let his high-heeled friend out ahead of him and then stepped out into the bracing air. Molly was working up to a full cry, but Jeannie, ever stalwart, held on to the steering wheel waiting for instructions.

  “Okay, now, Molly,” she said. I didn’t know what that meant, but Molly, upon hearing her name, calmed a little.

  Meanwhile, Steven was giving his leggy friend a kiss on the cheek and they were separating, walking in exactly opposite directions. Just what I didn’t want. I opened the passenger door of the minivan and Molly, hit by a burst of frigid air, started to cry again.

  “I’m going to follow the woman,” I told Jeannie. “The Swine is headed for his car, I’ll bet. You follow him and then text me and let me know where he goes and what he does.” I got out of the van.

  “What if he goes to six different places now?” Jeannie wanted to know.

  I watched Ms. Legs as she headed up the street. No time to wait.

  “Just stick with him,” I said. “Make a note of everywhere he stops and anybody he talks to.” I closed the door of the minivan just as Jeannie started to pull away.

  The woman wasn’t all that far away, but I still had to walk pretty swiftly to stay a reasonable distance behind her. If she got into a car I’d lose her.

  Wait. I just lost my ride home, too. I’d have to call Mom or Josh.

  “Which one are we following?” Maxie, who could have done this job herself, had naturally waited for me to get out of the only warm vehicle to which I had current access to phase through the wall of the van and join me. I figured Ollie had started crying in Jeannie’s minivan and she didn’t know why.

  I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out the Bluetooth devic
e I use to look like I’m having a conversation with a living person. You’d be amazed how it keeps me from being committed to a mental institution. “Now you’re helping?” I asked Maxie. “Where were you when I needed you?”

  “When did you need me?” It was perhaps the best question she’d ever asked me.

  “I could have stayed in the van and you could have followed this woman,” I said. “I’m freezing and don’t have a ride home. I got out of the van and now here you are.”

  Maxie, now to my left, had three separate people pass through her as she floated through. She nodded. “Yeah. I was wondering why you did that.”

  There was no point to arguing and besides, Gams McStilts was turning a corner. We were about fifty yards behind. “Go up and make sure she doesn’t get into a car or duck into a store someplace,” I told Maxie. “We need to keep her in sight.”

  For once she didn’t ask questions and zoomed ahead to the corner, which she reached about a half minute before I did. When I got there, Maxie was just in front of me. The blonde we were following was fixing the heel on her shoe (yeah, she was really trying to get guys to look at her legs) by leaning her foot on the base of a lamppost. “She’s been doing that pretty much the whole time,” Maxie reported.

  “What’s the matter with her shoe?” I asked.

  “Nothing I can see.”

  Uh-oh. “She’s onto us,” I said.

  “What’s the us stuff? She can’t see me.”

  I ignored that because . . . what was the point, and decided to keep walking as if I were in a hurry to get to my incredibly important destination, which I was now hoping had a hot chocolate included in it. I power-walked up the street until I was about six feet from Stretch Mc— Oh, you get the idea. She had long legs.

  “Why are you following me?” she asked as soon as I was abreast with her.

  I didn’t even have the wherewithal to act as if she must be talking to someone else. “What do you mean?” I shot back, sharp as a tack. An old tack. One that had been pushed into solid brick.

  The woman put down her foot and turned to face me. She was tall, but not basketball-player tall. The four-inch heels were adding to the illusion. So she could look down at me with a gaze that was intended to drive fear deep into my heart.

  I felt nothing. It was too cold.

  “I mean, you’ve been right behind me since I left the coffee shop and you stopped when you turned the corner and saw me standing here. You were trying to decide what to do. So you’re here. You caught me. What do you want?”

  “I don’t want anything. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I looked quickly at Maxie, who was rolling her eyes.

  “She’s not going to believe you,” she said.

  “I don’t believe you,” the woman said.

  “See?” Maxie. Ever helpful.

  “Why not?” I demanded. I didn’t actually care about the answer to the question, but it bought me time to think. Which I wasn’t doing, but the time was there. It’s a process.

  “Because you’re not walking away now,” the blonde told me. “You don’t want me to get away. So who sent you?”

  Short of breaking down in tears, something I would never do in front of someone who had just had coffee with The Swine, I had no other option. I pulled the PI license out of my tote bag. “I’m a private investigator,” I said. “I’m looking into a murder.” Let her think she was a suspect. Let her be the one to break down in tears on a public street.

  “Seriously?” the blonde asked. “You want me to believe you’re a detective?”

  “The state of New Jersey believes it. I don’t care whether you do. You can do what you like, but I’m trying to find out who killed a man, and I think you have a connection. Would you like to talk about it? I’m not a cop, so you’re in no danger of being arrested.”

  The woman pursed her lips, trying to decide something. “Okay,” she said. “What do you want to know?” She wasn’t questioning anything about there being a murder, which was sort of interesting.

  “I’d really like to know if there’s a warm space where we can continue this conversation,” I answered.

  “Well, I just had coffee. What do you have in mind?”

  “Me having coffee,” I said.

  “Good one,” Maxie said. Maxie is a huge help in situations like this.

  Blond Woman rolled her eyes. “Fiiiiiiiine,” she moaned. “Can we at least go somewhere else?”

  We ended up in a Dunkin’ Donuts three blocks away, which was three blocks more than I wanted to walk but was the best possible option. The wind had picked up a little, never good news in a New Jersey winter, and was blowing directly into our faces, which was a serious annoyance for everyone but Maxie, who kept floating ahead of us wondering aloud what was keeping two healthy adult women from keeping pace.

  I ordered a hot chocolate but eschewed the whipped cream because, hey, there was a wedding somewhere in my future. I had priorities. Blond Woman, who told me her name was Susannah Nesbit, sat opposite me at the table, aggressively not having anything.

  Maxie enjoys nothing more than rearranging the donuts on the racks behind the counter, but she was controlling herself as much as I’d ever seen her do, which was commendable in a twisted sort of way. She did keep glancing at the racks as she hovered over us, listening in on the conversation.

  Before we began I got a text message from Paul. Ghosts can’t be heard over phone lines, but he had the capacity to press buttons and I’d gotten him a rudimentary phone for exactly this purpose. The text read, “No luck contacting DuBois. Ask Lt. McE about what caliber gun.”

  Great. Now I had to talk to McElone again, but only after I somehow found a ride home. Neither of those was the pressing issue at this moment.

  “You met a man in the coffee shop just now,” I told Susannah, who probably knew that already. “How did you know him?”

  “Steven?” She seemed not in the least concerned about giving away the name of the man I’d just mentioned in connection with a murder investigation. I was starting to like her. “He’s a friend of a friend.”

  “Who’s the friend?” I asked, wondering which friend I meant. I mean, was the friend of the friend or the friend him- or herself? This was getting confusing.

  “Actually he’s my friend’s son,” Susannah said. “Harry Rendell.”

  The Swine’s father was setting him up with random incredibly leggy women in coffeehouses? “How do you know Mr. Rendell?” I asked.

  “Which one?” Susannah and Maxie said that one in unison, except just one of them knew it.

  “Harry,” I said.

  “Oh, I know Harry from way back,” Susannah said, alone this time. “He’s a pal of my dad’s from the Elks, or something.” That didn’t tell me much.

  “Why did he want you to meet his son?” I asked. Okay, so I was getting married to a guy whom I’d met through my father at Josh’s grandfather’s store when we were twelve, but that was a whole different story. Wasn’t it?

  “Harry said Steven might be able to help me out with an investment plan,” she said. “Steven is a financial adviser.”

  Oh, is that what we’re calling it these days? “And so you met in the coffee shop to talk business?”

  Susannah smiled vaguely and looked away.

  “It ain’t about business anymore,” Maxie noted.

  Another text from Paul: “No luck finding DuBois on Ghosternet.” That wasn’t helpful.

  “You’re dating him?” I asked Susannah, although I felt sure Maxie was right.

  “We hit it off when we met the first time,” she said, voice not quite defensive but flirting with it.

  Steven had been in the state for two days. “When did you meet for the first time?” I asked.

  “Oh, a couple of months ago. I see him whenever he’s in town.”

  Tha
t took a moment to sink in. “You met him a couple of months ago and you see him whenever he’s in town?” I heard my voice rising but couldn’t do anything to stop it. Susannah looked startled and Maxie looked amused. “How often has he been in town over the past couple of months?”

  Susannah’s eyes were wide and she leaned back, away from me. It took her a moment to respond and when she did, her voice was low and tentative. “Three times?” she said, as if there were a correct answer to the math problem on the board and she was hoping she’d gotten it right.

  “Son of a—” I had to get myself under control. I took a deep cleansing breath. I remembered that—and only that—from Lamaze training. And then I’d had a C-section. “Okay.” So The Swine had been in New Jersey three times in the past two months or so and had never let his daughter know he was here. He’d paid for airfares and possibly hotels and was now three months behind in child support. That train of thought wasn’t helping me concentrate on the murder of Maurice DuBois, which seemed somehow less significant right at the moment.

  “Let me start again,” I suggested to Susannah. “You met this man two months ago and you’ve seen him three times since then.” And yet he was not staying with her on this trip, which in Swine terms was unexpectedly ethical. “Why did he want to meet today?”

  Just then a text came in from Jeannie. “I think he might have a girlfriend.” This was just getting better and better. I did not respond.

  “I wasn’t expecting to hear from him, but Steven said he had to make an emergency trip in to see his daughter.” Her voice dropped to a theatrical whisper. “You know, his ex-wife almost never lets him see her.”