The Thrill of the Haunt

by E. J. Copperman

  Maxie looked Phyllis up and down. “What good is she going to do?”

  Liss knew better than to look back reprovingly at her, but her eyebrows lowered. She’d talk to Maxie later. And Melissa was one of the few people to whom Maxie might actually listen.

  “I didn’t say I’m not looking into it,” Phyllis corrected me, a sly smile trying to disguise itself on her lips. “I asked what you wanted to know. You have a client?” Phyllis is one of the few people who treats my PI license seriously, not like a funny little hobby I picked up along the way.

  “I have a gaggle of clients,” I said, the irritation sneaking into my voice. All right, invading my voice frontally. “Kerin Murphy and the assembled membership of her odd fan club have taken an unexplained interest in Everett’s death, and they think—you’ll love this—that a ghost killed him, so I’m the person to investigate.”

  Of course, Phyllis has heard all the ghost-lady talk around town, and she even knows about my arrangement with Senior Plus. She has chosen not to ask me about it, because she is a journalist (Phyllis spent twenty years with the New York Daily News) and doesn’t believe anything she can’t definitively prove. I love Phyllis. “Well, I guess that makes sense, if your brain is as twisted as Kerin Murphy’s,” she said. “That woman is a walking high colonic.”

  “What’s a high colonic?” Melissa asked.

  “You don’t want to know,” I said. She let that go, which is one of the many reasons I also adore my daughter.

  “What can you tell me about the murder that the cops won’t?” I asked Phyllis.

  Phyllis thought about it. She has a “friend” in the county medical examiner’s office, and the less said about how she gets her information from him, the better. “I hear the stab wound wasn’t a stab wound,” she said. Before I could react, she added, “It was a lot of very small stab wounds.”

  “Very small?” I wasn’t expecting that. “How small?”

  “Well, not like a nail file or something. It was a knife, but either not a big one or the person using it wasn’t especially strong.”

  That got the wheels turning in my head. “So it’s possible he was stabbed somewhere else and went to the Fuel Pit to recover but bled out instead,” I suggested. As always when discussing such things, I quickly looked at Melissa to see if she was freaked out by the conversation, but she’s a veteran now and was merely concentrating.

  Phyllis tipped her head to the side a bit to indicate “maybe.” “There was no blood found leading into the restroom,” she said. “I think it’s really unlikely that whoever it was cleaned up after themselves on the way out.”

  Okay, so I’m not Sherlock Holmes. “Anything else I ought to know?” I asked. When in doubt, put the burden of the conversation on the other person. In other words, punt.

  “I don’t know what you’ve been told,” Phyllis said. “Lieutenant McElone probably gave you the same plain vanilla report she gave me when I called her for a quote yesterday. But there is something I found out while writing Everett’s obituary.”

  “An obituary for a homeless guy?” Maxie asked. “Who does that?”

  “Phyllis,” Melissa said. Phyllis turned her head to look at Liss, who remembered that Maxie was not in Phyllis’s conversation, and covered by asking, “What did you find out?”

  “Well, you know about Everett’s family, right?” Phyllis, like many reporters, got into the news business with one purpose in mind—getting to find out stuff before everybody else and then telling them about it to show off how smart she is. Phyllis is very smart, so she gets to do that a lot, and it’s obvious the thrill of it has never left her.

  “Yeah,” I said, just to show I was smart, too. “He had a father in South Carolina and a sister in Montana, right?” I looked at her.

  “And an ex-wife. He was married to a woman who was stationed with him in the Army.”

  “When did they get divorced?” I asked.

  “Six years after they both got out,” she answered. “His sister said Everett was trying to find work and failing, and his wife wasn’t interested in sticking around to watch him become, well, what we all knew him as.”

  “Don’t tell me, let me guess,” I said. “It was an acrimonious divorce.”

  “I have no way of knowing yet,” Phyllis told me. “But how many divorces have you heard of that were sweet and adorable?”

  “Not yours,” Maxie said, despite not having been around for my divorce. I wanted to give her a look that reminded her the daughter of that marriage was in the car with us, but Maxie caught herself and said, “Your divorce was probably just civil, right?”

  “Not many,” I answered Phyllis, hoping as usual that Maxie would just go away. She didn’t, but she kept quiet this time.

  “It’s not much of anything yet, but you never know,” Phyllis said. She looked at Melissa. “You sure you’re not ready for a route yet?”

  “She’s sure,” I jumped in. I had been thirteen when I had the route, and Melissa would be, too, assuming the Chronicle wasn’t entirely an online publication by then. “What’s the ex-wife’s name?”

  “Brenda Leskanik,” Phyllis said without hesitation or notes. “Formerly Specialist Brenda Leskanik.”

  “I’ll do some Internet research,” I said, looking at Maxie, who would actually do it. “I’ll see what I can find out.”

  “So will I,” Phyllis assured me.

  Ten

  “This is a lovely town,” Libby Hill said. “But it’s not quite a real shore town, is it?”

  That was puzzling, since Harbor Haven is right on the beach and more than two-thirds of our economy is centered around the tourist trade, so I asked, “What do you mean, Libby?”

  I was spending a little time with the non-Cybill guests—Tom and Libby Hill, Harry and Beth Rosen—in the den following the late-afternoon spook show. Soon the guests would be heading out in search of dinner while I took remedial cooking classes from my mother in anticipation of three dinner guests, at least one of whom was a really good kisser. And if you think it was odd that I was kicking people out of my house to eat while my mother showed Melissa and me how to cook dinner for three other people, well, you haven’t spent that much time around my house.

  Melissa was upstairs getting her homework out of the way (after complaining that she could be of more use helping in the investigation, although she didn’t specify how or which one), and Maxie had been tasked with finding out what she could about any of Everett Sandheim’s surviving family members, including Brenda Leskanik, the ex.

  “What do you mean it’s not a real shore town, Libby?” I asked again.

  “Well, there’s no boardwalk or rides or anything like that,” she answered. Libby didn’t sound disappointed so much as mildly surprised.

  “Things have changed here since the storm,” I told her. “We’re still very much in the rebuilding phase.” It’s hard to describe what the Jersey Shore looks like now, and worse, it’s getting harder to remember what it used to look like. The storm ripped through this area with a malicious vengeance, destroying people’s homes, their businesses, their lives. The storm pushed sand two feet deep on city streets, and water levels reached the second floor of some buildings. The Seaside Heights roller coaster, a staple for decades, had been entirely washed out to sea. We’re still trying to figure out how to bring the tourist trade back beyond the curiosity factor—some people have to see the state of the devastation.

  People are weird.

  “That’s not really what I was getting at, dear,” Libby said. “It’s not that I’m desperate for an amusement pier. This is a darling town, and I like it, don’t get me wrong. But,” she leaned over and said confidentially, “if it wasn’t for the ghosts, it would be just like home.” She winked. “I told someone in town today where I was staying, and she referred to you as the ghost lady.” Libby made a little chuckle. “I thought that was adorable, don’t you?”

  “Adorable isn’t the word,” I said, doing my best to maintain a smil
e. “Thanks for passing that along.” I resisted—with some difficulty—the impulse to find out who had been bandying the ghost-lady stuff around in Harbor Haven, but quickly came to the conclusion that it didn’t matter. It could have been anyone. Except Phyllis.

  “You’re not really going to let Cybill get rid of them, are you?” Libby asked. “The ghosts?”

  Oh, brother. “Is she saying that again?” I asked. “I’ve told her specifically it’s not something I want to happen here.” Note to self: Lock Cybill in her room. Too drastic?

  “She muttered something about you not understanding the danger,” Libby told me. “There isn’t any real danger, is there?”

  “Absolutely not,” I said, watching Maxie float from the library into the former game room without so much as a glance at me; she was irritated, which is her natural state. “Will you excuse me, please?” The number of people annoyed with me was growing, and I didn’t want to add Libby to the list.

  I walked past the as-yet-to-be-determined-purpose room, where I’d earlier conferred with Paul, albeit briefly, before he’d had to go rattle window dressings and “fly” Melissa around the room, which was harrowing for Melissa’s mother (that’s me) to watch every time he did it.

  “It sounds like the Sandheim case has a lot of possibilities,” Paul had said, pacing a couple of feet off the floor.

  “Possibilities?” I asked. “You want to turn it into a musical? What do you mean, possibilities?”

  “I mean there are a lot of different ways the investigation can go, a number of avenues we can pursue. That’s very promising.”

  “What avenues? The only thing I can think to do is get Maxie to find out about Everett’s family,” I admitted.

  Paul stopped pacing and hovered in the center of the room, which looked disturbingly empty. I hoped Tony would have some encouraging suggestions on a use for the place. This whole just-gut-it-and-see-what-happens strategy was now seeming quite ill-advised.

  “Take out your notepad,” Paul said, so I retrieved it from my tote bag. When he saw that I had, he continued, “First, you’re going to have to go to the scene of the crime.”

  “You want me to go to the men’s room at a gas station?” I asked.

  “There’s no substitute for on-site experience,” Paul said, repeating an axiom he’d beaten me over the head with before.

  “What am I looking for?” I didn’t want to think about what I’d find, even if there was no evidence of Everett’s murder in the restroom.

  “You’ll know when you find it,” Paul said.

  “You never wrote fortune cookies professionally, did you?”

  He ignored that remark, something he’s become extremely good at doing since we met, particularly when Maxie and I were conversing (arguing) or when Josh was around. Paul’s more tolerant of Josh than he’s been of some other men I’ve known (such as my ex, but he had a point there) since I moved into the Victorian, but if you ask me—and even if you don’t—Paul has some jealousy issues where my dating life is concerned. He doesn’t say anything, but his silences can be deafening. On the other hand, Maxie tends to either get a crush on guys I date or pull pranks on them to encourage them to leave. She had already mentioned that she thought Josh was cute, but she hadn’t made things fly by his face or tried to pull his shirt up from behind him.

  And you wonder why I don’t tell Josh about the ghosts in the house.

  “There’s no way I can tell you what to look for, because I can’t know what the scene looks like,” Paul explained. “Take your phone or a real camera, and get pictures that I can look at when you get back. But look for anything that seems unusual or incongruous.”

  “You might be surprised, but I’ve spent very little time in men’s restrooms,” I told him. “I might miss something ‘incongruous.’ ”

  Paul smiled. “Aside from the odd piece of equipment, I don’t think you’ll find it all that different from what you’re used to,” he said. “But I’ll look at the pictures in case there’s some secret thing only men will understand.” He has a sly wit. That wasn’t an example, but he does.

  “Okay, M,” I said. “What else am I assigned to do?”

  Paul’s face got serious (its usual state) again, and he thought. “Find out if there was a will.” He held up a hand. “I know, Everett was homeless and not exactly wealthy, but he still might have filed something before he got that way. See if his old Army records include anything.”

  “His life was different in those years,” I reminded Paul. “He had a wife, for one thing.”

  He nodded. “Yes. That will be an interesting thread to explore. Once Maxie gives us some results, we’ll know which direction to take it. In any event, we certainly want to know where Everett’s ex-wife is living now and whether they were in contact.”

  I saluted. “Okay, boss,” I said. “Now, do I need the cyanide pills for this one, or will the service revolver to the temple do the trick if I’m captured?”

  “You’re hilarious,” he said without smiling and vanished into the floor.

  It always makes me feel better to talk to Paul about these things. Most of what he tells me would probably occur to me independently but not until much later. And hearing it from someone who at least acts like he knows what he’s doing is very reassuring.

  I continued on to the kitchen, where my mother was already setting her stage. Mom has a real theatrical streak, and given that she was about to show off in front of her granddaughter, she was indulging it to unprecedented extremes. She had cleaned every countertop in the kitchen to a positive gleam (despite the fact that my complete lack of desire to cook meant they were virtually never made dirty). She had spread out ingredients for the massive lasagna she intended to make—pasta, ground beef, tomatoes, parmesan cheese for grating, ricotta cheese not for grating, and I couldn’t tell what else—in the exact order she would use them, and I’m pretty sure lined up perfectly as well. I didn’t have a level handy to check.

  Mom was, honest to goodness, sharpening a knife when I walked in, and Melissa, who apparently had finished her homework to the point that she could tell me so with a straight face, was watching her raptly.

  “Put some salt in the water when you cook pasta,” she was telling Liss. “Most people don’t because they think it’s bad for them, and their pasta doesn’t cook evenly.” Most people I assumed, included all the people in the room who were me.

  “What’s with the knife sharpening, Mom?” I asked as I walked in. “What part of lasagna needs to be chopped?”

  Mom, her spotlight slightly dimmed when Melissa appeared to be considering my questions, shook her head slightly at my ignorance and reclaimed center stage. “You can’t just serve everyone a lasagna, Alison,” she instructed. Any moment and her voice would enter a Julia Child–like upper register. “We will be having a roast chicken, as well.”

  I hadn’t seen any such chicken in any stage of preparation, but I kept my mouth shut, reminding myself that I had, literally, asked for this. “Sorry,” I said. “What’d I miss that might be on the final?”

  Mom proceeded to hit the rewind button and start from the beginning, and to my surprise, Melissa did not look the least bit annoyed at me for causing the reiteration. I pulled over a barstool from the center island, where we usually eat the dinner I’ve “prepared” (by way of calling for its delivery) and folded my hands in my lap. I’d be the best little girl in class, not counting my daughter.

  For the next twenty minutes, I went through basic training on lasagna (it turned out that the roast chicken—which had been prepared with lemon and parsley, in case anyone ever asks—had just gone into the oven). There were, in fact, questions along the way, but I was so attentive that I didn’t even have to take notes. Of course, I’d also turned on the voice recorder in my tote bag so I could refer back to Mom’s lecture if I was ever foolish enough to try doing this myself.

  “Cooking isn’t really that hard at all,” Mom concluded eventually, placing the lasagna in the o
ven and letting out the aroma of the roast chicken. “Even if you’re not inclined to try things on your own, you can always just follow the instructions in a good cookbook, and if you do exactly what you’re told, you can come up with a very good result.”

  I’m not sure how much of this was intended to be a life lesson rather than a cooking symposium, but I was mostly getting hungry. Luckily, the back door opened then and Jeannie trundled herself, her husband and their eight-month-old son, Oliver, into my kitchen, sniffed the air and said, “Mrs. Kerby, you’ve outdone yourself!”

  My best friend, ladies and gentlemen.

  Melissa immediately got up to try and pry Oliver from Jeannie’s arms, but the car seat into which he was still buckled was an impediment, as was Jeannie’s reluctance ever to let anybody—including Tony—other than herself see to her son’s needs. Things had loosened up a little since Jeannie had gone back to work, but when she was “on duty,” it would take a crowbar and a pretty strong back to get Oliver away. Still, Liss is determined and resourceful. Shortly thereafter, Josh arrived. He gets to the house later than everyone else because he has to close the store, then go home and change into what he calls paint-free clothing before heading out.

  Over the past few months we had become a congenial group, but one that was still in the process of defining itself (in part because one half of the group didn’t know that the other half existed). It didn’t get any easier when I took Tony and Josh to the game room—which Josh had pondered with me a few times before—where Maxie and Dad were already discussing possibilities. To my horror, Dad seemed to be taking Maxie seriously. Had I no confederates in this house anymore?

  “It’s the right size and configuration,” my father was saying, pushing his hat—a sharp Frank Sinatra style that Brooklyn hipsters think is their own—back on his head. “It’s a possibility.”

  The worst part was I couldn’t say anything to Dad or Maxie, because Josh was there. Tony would have understood, Jeannie would have ignored me, and everyone else was in on the ghost thing.