Spouse on Haunted Hill

by E. J. Copperman

  “What’s the compromise?” he asked.

  “You go first.” I sat back and folded my arms. He knew I wasn’t going to budge off that position and he was smart enough not to go through the motions of trying to persuade me.

  “I don’t have a cousin Richie and you know that,” he said. He was stalling, so I sat and waited. Liss, still intent on me and not paying attention visually to her father, could see what I was doing and let the silence stand. “So whoever told you that was clearly mistaken or lying. Now please tell me who it was so I can set that person straight.”

  “You mean the person I spoke to today hasn’t called you yet asking about the conversation?” I countered. Something about the best defense equals good offense and other sports axioms I don’t care about.

  That really seemed to perplex The Swine. “I haven’t heard from anyone today,” he said, suddenly fidgeting with his sleeves. “Maybe my phone is dead.”

  “You got my text well enough,” I said.

  “Maybe there’s a voice mail I haven’t checked. Who should I be looking for in my contacts?”

  I sighed audibly. That was for effect. I stood up from my barstool and put my hands on my hips in a gesture of frustration. “After all these years, Steven, isn’t it time for you to talk honestly to me and Liss? Just once? You’re up to your neck in this one and we are actually trying to help you. How about telling us the truth so we can deal with it? Did you kill Maurice DuBois?”

  Melissa drew in a sharp intake of breath. She didn’t expect me to be that direct. That surprised me; I thought she would have anticipated exactly the tactic I would use even if she didn’t know her father’s moves nearly as well.

  “No,” he said, but his face was oddly jolly. He was still hiding something; it was his favorite thing. “It wasn’t physically possible for me to have done that, and your Lieutenant McElone knows that, which is why she let me go.”

  “So what’s this Cousin Richie thing? Who were you meeting with at your parents’ house yesterday? At the movie theater today? Was it him?”

  I’ll give this to my ex-husband: He doesn’t show you his panic. He clearly didn’t have a response and didn’t want to come clean because that’s against his religion or something, so he did what I had indeed predicted before he arrived. He looked profoundly insulted.

  “I don’t have to put up with this kind of browbeating,” he said. He marched to the kitchen door and walked out of the house, heading for his car in the driveway on the north side. I didn’t even get the chance to ask him what kind of browbeating he would have to put up with; that’s how fast he was.

  Paul, equally quick on the uptake, pulled the cell phone I’d given him for messages out of his pocket and tossed it to Everett, who was already heading for the north wall. “Use this to text anything relevant,” Paul said.

  “Yes, sir,” Everett answered as he phased through the wall, giving him a head start on Steven. He’d make it to the car first and wouldn’t have to worry about incidentals like keys and doors. Or the arctic winds.

  “You were right,” Melissa said. “He went running as soon as he had to answer a question. Good work, Mom.”

  This wasn’t turning out to be such a bad day after all.

  Nineteen

  Bobby Bertowski was a short man. Not munchkin short, but below average height. This was not especially important, but Bobby seemed to think it had some bearing on everything that had happened in his whole life.

  “That’s what got me,” he told Melissa and me in his apartment in Avon-By-The-Sea, pronounced like the people who used to come to your door and try to sell you skin cream. He had said it was “Aa-von,” and was now regaling us with tales of shortness. “If I’d been three inches taller, I could have been a big wheel like Steven.”

  I wasn’t really interested in debating the size of my ex-husband’s wheel, but Paul had suggested we see Bobby, reasoning that “He’s the only other person we know for sure your ex-husband has sought out since he arrived here.”

  At the moment we hadn’t even really been discussing Bobby or his perceived lack of height. But once I had mentioned that I was Steven’s ex-wife and Melissa had identified herself as his daughter, somehow the subject had arisen. So to speak.

  If Liss had not been in the room, I might have suggested that perhaps The Swine was not quite the wolf of Wall Street that Bobby might have thought. I asked what he did for a living.

  “I manage an Enterprise Rent-A-Car in Eatontown,” he answered, and while that seemed like an adequate job if not a thrill-packed one, Bobby said it as if he was confessing a terrible secret that I should certainly know should be kept confidential.

  “That sounds nice,” Melissa said. I didn’t think she was being ironic.

  Bobby huffed but did not contradict her. I didn’t see how his shortness or his low (if you want to put it that way) station in life was relevant to what had been going on with Steven, so I tried again—this was the third time—to steer the conversation back in its intended direction.

  “So, when Steven came here the other night, did he say why he needed a place to stay?” I asked. It seemed the right way to dip a toe in the water.

  But Bobby looked at me as if I’d asked him how many arms he had. “I would think you’d know,” he said. “I thought you threw him out of the house.”

  Okay, maybe that was the wrong toe. “I meant, did he tell you why he was here in New Jersey, and what kind of problems he was having?” I would have asked why Steven hadn’t informed his daughter he’d been here at least three times in the past two months, but I had avoided telling Melissa that part.

  Bobby stood up without a clear purpose and started to sort of wander around his living room, which was spare but neat enough. There was the inevitable TV, which in this case did not dominate the space because it wasn’t that big (this was no doubt a theme) and the love seat on which Melissa and I were sitting. Bobby had been in an overstuffed armchair that at least didn’t have a drink holder in its arm, but now he was seemingly desperate to pose leaning against a fireplace mantel. The problem was, he had no fireplace and therefore no corresponding mantel. So he leaned against a fake swordfish mounted on a piece of fake wood. The effect was not especially evocative.

  “Why don’t you ask him yourself?” he said, his face a vision of simulated thought.

  “I have. Now I’m asking you. I need to know, specifically, if he has met with anyone while he’s been staying here. I need to know if he’s been discussing any business deals that went wrong and what he might be doing about them.”

  “Is this a divorce thing?” Bobby asked.

  Melissa squared her shoulders. “No, it’s not about their divorce,” she told Bobby. “My dad has gotten into a lot of trouble and my mom is a private investigator. We’re trying to help him. So you should know that anything you tell us is only going to be used to make things better for him and that nobody—including my dad—will ever know where we got any information you give us.”

  That girl was good.

  Bobby absorbed all she’d told him and did exactly what I would not have expected of him: He stopped treating her like a child and took her seriously. Points for Bobby. “He hasn’t met with anybody here that I know about,” he said, talking directly to Melissa. “Of course, I work during the day, even on Saturdays, so I haven’t been around all the time. He might have seen somebody while I was out.”

  Knowing a good thing when I saw it, I let Liss take over the questioning. “Did he tell you anything about a business deal he was working on?” she asked.

  “He said there was something called SafT that I could invest in if I wanted to,” Bobby told her. “But I don’t have that much squirreled away. I couldn’t give him anything.” It was more a lamentation than a statement; clearly Bobby had seen Steven’s cockamamie software start-up as his ticket to the big time.

  “How do you know my
dad?” Liss asked, trying to draw him out of the mood he was displaying. Her tone was friendly and curious. Mine had been, I was beginning to realize, sort of accusatory when I started the conversation with Bobby. I was getting the master class in questioning that I might have expected from Paul, but I was getting it from my thirteen-year-old daughter. I couldn’t decide whether to be ashamed or proud.

  “We went to high school together,” Bobby said, moving past the nonfishing trophy and migrating to a trunk on the floor that was supposed to look like something a pirate would bring back with booty in it. Instead it looked like something you’d buy at Kmart. He put his foot up on it like Captain Morgan and looked more like Angelina Jolie showing off her high-slit dress at the Oscars. “He kind of took me under his wing. I was his wingman.” He seemed to have just hit on that thought, and it pleased him. “When he got a new girlfriend, I’d go along to act as lookout.”

  Time for me to step in before Steven’s daughter had to hear more of that. “Did Steven say anything about people looking for him?” I asked Bobby. “What to do if anybody asked, something like that?”

  “In high school? I was just looking out for her parents, mostly.”

  It took every ounce of willpower I owned to avoid rolling my eyes. “No, Bobby. Not in high school. Since he’s been staying here. Did he say anything about people coming to look for him, or give you instructions on what to tell them?”

  I could practically see the gears turning in Bobby’s mind. Should he tell us something Steven had expressly informed him was absolutely not for public consumption? Would he be a wingman betraying his best pal or a guy saving the day and moving up in status? Was it better to—

  “Please,” Melissa said.

  Bobby looked up. His eyes met Liss’s and for once he didn’t look away or walk around his living room looking for something to pose near. That was a good thing, since there was precious little living room left and I was afraid he’d try to lean on me.

  “He said there were going to be people looking for him, but they never came,” Bobby said. “He said I shouldn’t lie to them about where he was, but that he wasn’t ever going to tell me where he was going, so if they came at a time he wasn’t here, I really wouldn’t know what to say. But there was one guy I was always supposed to let in and who I should text Steven if he ever came. That guy seemed to be central to whatever was going on.”

  Finally a promising lead. I’d have to compliment Melissa on her excellent interrogation skills. “Who was that?” I asked Bobby.

  “Steven said his name was Maurice DuBois.”

  * * *

  Lieutenant McElone had stated in no uncertain terms that I should not have anything to do with Steven’s situation, and for once I was in no mood to let her know I hadn’t done as she’d, you know, ordered. So I did the next best thing and went to see Phyllis.

  Melissa was more than familiar with the Harbor Haven Chronicle offices, since Phyllis is a dear friend and I’d consulted—that’s the word I like to use—with her on pretty much every investigation I’ve ever undertaken. I served as a paper delivery girl for Phyllis when I was exactly the age Liss was now, and my daughter wasted no time in pointing that out.

  Melissa sat casually on a pile of old newspapers in one corner, which led to thoughts (mine) of having to have her parka dry-cleaned. She looked the Chronicle publisher in the eye and said, “Hey, Phyllis. I turned thirteen two weeks ago. Am I old enough to deliver papers for you now?”

  Phyllis smiled, but it was a sad smile. “Afraid I don’t actually have the need for that service anymore, honey,” she answered. “I have only fifty subscribers who get the hard copy these days. You wouldn’t make enough to justify the air in your bike tires.” Most of the Chronicle’s current readers found it online, where Phyllis sold advertising and actually made more money per view than she used to per copy. Very little in the way of printing costs these days. It had taken a while, but Phyllis was not one to stick with the old ways just because they’re the old ways. She wanted to keep the business alive. “I’ll tell you what, though,” she added before Liss’s disappointed expression could register. “I’m going to need an assistant editor here pretty soon. I can’t do this all myself. Would you be interested in that?”

  My daughter’s face did the quickest change from frustrated to elated I’d ever seen. “Sure!” she said. “When can I start?” You’ll notice she didn’t ask what the job paid, and neither of them had consulted with me to see if it was all right.

  “Well.” Phyllis’s eyes had a slight twinkle of mischief. “The state of New Jersey won’t let a person get working papers until she’s fourteen, so only one more year until you can start training to take over the whole operation from me when I retire. What do you think?”

  Melissa looked skeptical, like she’d been set up. “You knew I couldn’t work for another year. Are you just putting me off?” She doesn’t kid around, my daughter. Except when she does.

  “No! I think you’d make a great publisher, but I have to abide by the laws of the state and so does your mom if she wants to keep both her licenses.” That’s innkeeper and private investigator. One pays more than the other. Because I’m pretty sure I’ve never been paid as a PI. Most of my clients were dead people.

  Liss looked at me. “Are you in on this?”

  I held up my hands defensively. “First I’m hearing about it, but I’m happy someone is consulting with me about your new career.”

  Liss narrowed her eyes and looked sideways at Phyllis. “Can I let you know?” she asked.

  “I’ll hold the job open until you’re fourteen. How’s that?” She held out a hand.

  Melissa took it. “Deal.”

  “Great,” I said. “Now that the publishing empire is secure again, can I find out about what I asked?”

  Phyllis put on a pair of half-glasses and picked up a paper from one of the many piles on her desk, her filing cabinets, her shelves and the floor in her office. “The identification from fingerprint matches at the FBI are confirmed,” she said. “The guy with the bullets in him at Hanrahan’s is Maurice DuBois. There’s no way your ex is still hearing from him.”

  “Can there be two Maurice DuBoises?” Melissa asked in wonder.

  A text arrived from Paul’s phone, which meant it was from Everett. “He’s stopping at a strip mall in Brick Township. Getting slice of pizza. No contact.” I texted back to follow The Swine inside and see what happened. Seconds later came “Yes, ma’am.”

  Before we left the house Maxie had delivered an extremely early report on her initial Internet research, and the only definite result had been the fact that a local news anchor in New York City was named Maurice DuBois. He was definitely not the man shot in the alley, but that was all we knew.

  “There are, but probably not involved with your father,” I told her. “What’s more likely is that someone else is using this guy’s name, but what would be the motive for doing that? Obviously someone disliked this DuBois enough to kill him. Why become the guy you shot?”

  “Could be he’s the one who killed DuBois and figures nobody else is that mad at him,” Phyllis suggested. “There must be some value in the name. If he has good enough fake IDs or the real ones with his face on them, he can have access to insurance policies, bank accounts, credit accounts and properties owned, and that’s just for starters.”

  “What about his wallet?” I asked, pointing to the paper she held. “Does it say?”

  New text from Everett: “Stopping in Asbury Park.” That was quick, and then I realized his first text had been sent a half hour ago and I’d just seen it. The pizza must have been to go. I saw no need to tell Everett anything else.

  “Nothing missing,” Phyllis said after scanning the sheet. “All ID was intact, which led to the fingerprint search confirming it was DuBois. There was even two hundred and sixty dollars in cash and nobody touched that.”

&nbs
p; “In an alley outside Hanrahan’s?” The place didn’t necessarily have the most genteel reputation in town. “You’d think they’d steal his money just out of habit.”

  “Well, we never thought this was a robbery,” Melissa pointed out. “We figured he got shot because of some business deal that went bad, didn’t we?”

  I didn’t want to point out that her father was involved in just such a business deal with Lou Maroni, so I simply nodded. Phyllis took off her reading glasses and twisted her mouth to one side, thinking.

  “The wallet was in his inside coat pocket,” she reported. That didn’t seem especially curious. “He was lying on his right side in the alley and the wallet was in his inside pocket, on the left side. His right arm was up, extended over his head, but his left was down.”

  She was getting at something. “And?” I asked. It speeds up the process.

  “I wonder if he was right-handed,” Phyllis said. “Because if he was, he might have been aiming his own gun when he was shot.”

  Melissa looked sideways at Phyllis. “Did they find a gun next to him?” she asked.

  “No. That doesn’t mean he didn’t have one.”

  “Was he wearing a holster?” I asked.

  “Not according to this.”

  “What are we talking about?”

  “Two possibilities,” Phyllis said, somehow finding her office chair amid the clutter and sitting on it. “Either the killer took his gun or somehow DuBois was shot with his own gun.”

  “Three possibilities,” I said. “DuBois didn’t have a gun and I’ll ask again, what are we talking about?”

  The phone buzzed again and the text came from Everett with the address at which The Swine was stopping in Asbury Park. I stopped, read it twice, shook my head and looked at Melissa. “Come on,” I said. “We have to go.”