The Thrill of the Haunt

by E. J. Copperman

  “Uh-huh.” Maxie made no sign of moving. “I’m still thinking it should be you.”

  “And I’m fairly stuck in my idea that you’re the girl for the job,” I said.

  One of the neighbors across the street opened her front door and looked out. She was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt bearing the legend “Marist College,” but she didn’t walk all the way out of her house. She’d obviously noticed something going on at Joyce’s—probably heard the sound of Dave’s car screeching away—and now was watching the stranger across the street talk to herself in the middle of the sidewalk.

  Going on a stakeout with a ghost can be awkward. Usually I carry a Bluetooth headset for such times to make people think I’m having a power conversation, but I’d left it in the car.

  “Let’s go in together,” I suggested to Maxie, moving my lips as little as possible.

  “Okay,” Maxie responded. “You go first.”

  I wanted to glare at her, but Marist College was watching, and that would make me look even more crazy, if such a thing was possible. I used my favorite motivational technique for difficult tasks—imagining my ex-husband telling me I couldn’t do it—and started walking toward Joyce’s place without so much as turning my head to look at Maxie.

  Funny, it hadn’t seemed this far away when we were driving by. Now every step seemed to move the door back just a little bit. Not that I was complaining; getting there, in this case, would probably be all the fun.

  The door was still wide open. I walked up the three brick steps to the threshold and drew a breath. Then I knocked loudly on the door frame and called inside. “Ms. Kinsler? We saw a man run out. Is everything okay?”

  The sad fact was, I knew before I walked inside that everything definitely was not okay. Call it ESP or whatever you like; maybe now I can sense when things are wrong (not that I’d exhibited such a talent in the past, but things develop. After all, I hadn’t always been able to see ghosts).

  I called out one more time with the same message, then saw Maxie go past me into the house. I followed her immediately. Call me juvenile, but the idea that Maxie would be able to say she’d gone in first was now a motivation.

  Once inside, I saw Maxie head up into the ceiling to the second floor, and I decided I’d search this level.

  It was fairly clear that Joyce hadn’t been living here long—there was very little furniture in the living room, just a coffee table and a small love seat, but a huge brand-new flat-screen TV was mounted on the wall. There were still some boxes marked “books” and “linens” in one corner of the room. She hadn’t moved all the way in yet.

  Dave hadn’t stayed inside very long, so whatever had alarmed him to the point of panicked flight probably wasn’t far from where I was standing, if it were down here. Against my better judgment, which was to run outside as fast as Dave had and drive the Volvo back home, leaving Maxie to hoof it from Eatontown to Harbor Haven, I decided to head for the kitchen.

  It wasn’t a large room. It held a small breakfast table a little to the right of center, and a stove/oven and refrigerator at the far side. And there were more cartons, marked “dishes” and just “kitchen,” stacked next to the fridge. The room had been designed by its previous owner to look like an old family kitchen done in modern materials, with laminate wood flooring, granite countertops (of course), and a ceiling fan with one lightbulb burned out and the other two shining. There were exposed beams in the ceiling.

  From the main crossbeam hung a long, thick extension cord that had been slung over the center of the beam. And hanging from the cord by the neck was a woman whom I assumed to be Joyce Kinsler. I gasped, tried very hard to hold down the lunch I hadn’t eaten yet, and realized in a split second that there was no longer a reason to worry about someone hearing me talk.

  “MAXIE!!!”

  Fourteen

  Detective Michael Sprayne of the Eatontown Police Department, who looked to be in his mid-forties and was refreshingly unrumpled, walked out of Joyce Kinsler’s town house and sat down next to me on the stoop.

  “What made you walk into the house?” he asked, without any kind of social niceties.

  To be fair, Sprayne had allowed me to leave the house after making me go back in—I’d called 911 from the stoop after hightailing it out as soon as Maxie had swooped through the ceiling (and coincidentally through Joyce’s feet). We’d both been fairly unnerved—we screamed a bit—and didn’t look at the body much beyond a passing glance before I dialed 911. Once he arrived, Sprayne had seen the look on my face and after one or two questions at the scene of the crime, had asked if I wanted some air, which I unequivocally did. Now he was going to do his follow-up where the air was.

  “I saw a man running out, and the door flew open and stayed open,” I said. I figured it was best not to admit too much up front. Some cops are hostile to PIs (even if I knew I wasn’t a real PI), and I didn’t know yet if this guy was one of those.

  Sprayne let a little air out through his nose and shook his head slightly. “I’m going to give you another chance, and keep in mind that I’ve run your name through the system.”

  “This one’s not bad,” Maxie said. I thought Sprayne looked a little shopworn, but everyone’s entitled to an opinion. Maxie hovered over his head and stared at the iPad on which he was taking notes. “He knows you have a PI license,” she added.

  Aha. So he’d wanted to give me a chance to come clean before I crossed a line into illegality. I appreciated that. Perhaps he fell into the okay-with-PIs category. I nodded at Sprayne to acknowledge his courtesy. “I’m a private investigator, and I was following a man who came to this address. He was inside for less than five minutes before he came running out looking terrified and drove away.”

  “That’s better,” the detective said. “Let’s try and keep the answers on this level of honesty from here on out. What’s the guy’s name?”

  “The guy’s name?” I asked. Suddenly I was back at the restaurant the night before, stalling by asking questions instead of answering them.

  “The guy you were following,” Sprayne said tolerantly. “The one who went into and out of Joyce Kinsler’s house so fast. What’s his name?”

  “He’s not that great,” Maxie said. That was little help.

  He was a cop, and I had no reason not to tell him, but I hesitated. “Do I have to answer that one?” I asked.

  “You answer questions with questions, have you noticed that?”

  “Do I?”

  Sprayne did not smile, but he didn’t appear to be angry either. “Yes, you have to answer. This is the investigation of a death, possibly by suicide, but you never know. If someone was here besides you, I need to question him. So I’ll ask you again, and I’d like the answer in a declarative sentence, please. What was the man’s name?”

  “David Boffice,” I reported dutifully.

  “You were tailing him?” Sprayne asked.

  Tailing. That was so Sam Spade. “Yeah, I was tailing him, Copper. Wanted to put a shadow on him so I could see if he was up to some hanky-panky, see?” I’d gone for Sam Spade, but it came out more Edward G. Robinson. Was that progress?

  “Who are you, Elliot Ness?” Maxie asked. She floated over and looked at Sprayne’s iPad again. “He’s looking up the questionnaire you filled out when you got the innkeeper’s license. He knows about the house, and he knows you have a daughter. He probably knows how much you weigh.” That was distressing, but I fought off the frown I wanted to send her way.

  “Are you nervous?” Sprayne said. My suppressed frown must have come across as an expression of anxiety.

  “I just saw a woman hanged from her kitchen ceiling with an extension cord,” I told him. “I might be a tad on edge, yes.”

  Again, a small nod from Sprayne. “Who is your client?” he asked. “And please don’t answer by saying, ‘My client?’ because that would just be rude.”

  Confidentiality is important to a PI because clients don’t like their names being bandied about.
Divulging a client’s name can result in your losing any potential cases you might otherwise have been given. Luckily, I could care less about that. “Helen Boffice,” I said immediately.

  “David’s wife?”

  I nodded. “She thought he might be cheating on her and wanted me to follow him and catch him in the act, so to speak.”

  “And Joyce Kinsler?” Sprayne tilted his head in the direction of indoors.

  “She was the woman Helen suspected was stealin’ her man,” I told him.

  “And what did you find out?” Sprayne prompted.

  “That Dave Boffice likes Nathan’s hot dogs and sometimes visits his mother-in-law at lunchtime,” I told him truthfully.

  It took him a moment, but he seemed to get what I was saying. “But today he came here.” Sprayne wasn’t stupid, and he wasn’t a stiff. “You didn’t have a personal stake, did you? Maybe a thing with Dave Boffice?”

  My face probably flushed with anger. “No, as a matter of fact I’m dating the owner of a paint store,” I said. “Where do you come off with a crack like that?”

  “Wanted to see your reaction,” Sprayne answered. “Don’t take it personally.”

  “It was personal. How can I not take it personally?”

  “I sincerely apologize, okay?” Maybe he even meant it.

  I didn’t answer.

  “You should dump Josh and go out with this guy,” Maxie suggested, probably just to annoy me. I gave her an irritated look and then pointedly looked at the wedding ring on Sprayne’s left hand, for her benefit. If Sprayne caught that look, he didn’t say anything. No doubt so he could better embellish it later when he told his wife about the crazy lady he’d interviewed at the scene of the suicide.

  “Dave Boffice,” Sprayne said again. “This was his first time here that you saw?”

  “Yes,” I told him. “This was the first time I’d seen Dave come here, and the first time I’ve ever been here.” No need letting him think I was a suspect. In a suicide.

  “So this Helen Boffice was pretty mad?” Sprayne asked me. “Wanted to get pictures of her hubby in the act so she could divorce him and take all his money?” It’s hard to be subtle about asking if you think someone is capable of violence. Especially when using the word hubby.

  “No, actually she wanted to get the pictures so she could blackmail him into being an obedient husband for the rest of his life,” I said honestly. “Weird but true. They seem to have a somewhat competitive marriage.”

  “And I thought mine was tough,” he muttered.

  “Ooh,” Maxie said. “Unhappily married.” I refrained from giving her a look that would kill because what would be the point?

  “Based on what Helen told me, they’re both very career-driven,” I said. “I’ve never spoken to Dave.”

  “You get a license plate on the car he was driving?”

  There are times I’m actually embarrassed by being a lousy investigator. “I really should have, shouldn’t I?” I said.

  “Forget it. We can run the records. What kind of car was it?”

  “Nissan Altima. Metallic Slate. 2010 or ’11, definitely since the redesign. Charcoal cloth interior. No detailing, just plain vanilla.” I got that from Maxie, who was reading off Sprayne’s iPad. He was checking to see if I knew my business.

  Sprayne stared at me a moment, then wrote all that down. “Clearly you weren’t paying very close attention,” he said.

  “You always this hilarious?” I asked.

  “My wife thinks so.”

  Maxie looked disappointed. I wasn’t.

  There was no point in asking Sprayne for any information on Joyce Kinsler’s death because I was his key source on the incident, and I hadn’t been especially helpful.

  To be honest, the whole thing had shaken me pretty badly. I’d put on my best sassy demeanor with Sprayne to hide my near total anxiety. In the car on the way home, I ignored Maxie, and the instant I got into the house and satisfied myself that the guests were either out or in the backyard (Cybill was performing something that resembled yoga or sumo; I couldn’t tell which, but it required a mat), I sought out Paul, who wasn’t hard to seek out.

  He was already in the kitchen, hiding from the guests, waiting for me to arrive, and pacing in the air. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see him wearing a trench coat and smoking a cigarette, but Paul hadn’t even smoked when he was alive. Now he probably figured he should have tried it; what would have been the harm?

  Maxie had gotten inside before me and apparently explained the situation, because Paul’s first words were, “Are you all right?” Paul, bless him, never holds a grudge.

  I took a beer out of the fridge and opened it, then sat down on one of the barstools by the center island I had installed when we moved in. “I’m okay,” I said. “You’d think I’d be a wreck.”

  “It’ll hit you later,” he told me. Always helpful.

  Maxie came down from the ceiling. “Melissa’s not in her room,” she said anxiously.

  I blinked. “I know,” I told her. “She’s still at school.”

  Maxie stopped, head down and feet still on another floor. “Really? It’s not three o’clock yet?”

  Paul and I stared at her. “No.”

  She seemed frazzled. Maybe something could actually get to her, and she was just covering. She shook her head as if to clear it, then grinned an evil grin. “Another guy was hitting on her,” she told Paul. “A cop.”

  Paul’s face got even more serious, if such a thing was possible. “The detective on the case was flirting with you?” he asked. He was probably trying to calculate how that might affect the investigation. Or he was jealous.

  “He was not hitting on me,” I said. “He was interrogating me. And anyway, I’m not interested.”

  “No? How come you haven’t called Josh and told him you found a dead body yet?”

  Okay, so that was a good question. I had thought of calling him right after I’d gotten off the phone with 911 to report Joyce’s death, but the memory of his chilliness last night—probably with good reason—had left me unsure of how reassuring he would be.

  “It’s not that,” I told Maxie.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Alison’s romantic life is irrelevant,” Paul reminded us. I felt there was no need to rub it in but stayed silent. “What’s important is the way Joyce Kinsler died. Do you think she committed suicide?”

  “The woman was strung up with an extension cord like a noose,” I said. “I seriously doubt she died of natural causes.”

  Paul shook his head. “Of course not. The question is whether she did it to herself.”

  I can’t say it hadn’t occurred to me, but hearing Paul express the thought aloud gave me a little jolt. “You think someone killed Joyce?” I breathed.

  Paul regarded me. “What have I always told you?”

  I recited like Melissa did when she was in second grade, in a singsong voice that indicated rote memorization without any shred of comprehension. “ ‘An investigator never makes an assumption without facts but always keeps all possibilities open.’ ”

  Paul nodded. “So is it possible, based on what you saw, that someone killed Joyce Kinsler?” he asked.

  I didn’t want to conjure up that mental image again, but I wasn’t being given a choice. I tried, against the emotional tide, to recall exactly what the crime scene had looked like, but it was hard. I’m not used to seeing dead bodies. I’m just used to seeing dead spirits. There’s a huge difference.

  “It was a fairly normal-sized kitchen,” I said, closing my eyes to visualize the scene more precisely. “Entrance from the living room and double glass doors leading out to a back deck. There were exposed beams running across the ceiling that were supposed to look like oak but were probably stained pine. Joyce was almost exactly in the center of the room, hanging from the main support beam, maybe a foot, foot and a half off the floor.” I opened my eyes and looked at Paul.

  “Was there any blood on the floor or
anywhere else?” he asked. “Any signs of a struggle?”

  I considered carefully. “No. Nothing I saw. Everything looked exactly right, except Joyce without her feet on the ground.”

  “Interesting,” Paul said.

  “What’s interesting?”

  “Nothing was out of place.” Paul paced some more. “She was hanging in the middle of the room.”

  “I’m pretty sure I said that.”

  “What did she jump off of?” Paul stopped and looked at me. “If she set up the hanging to commit suicide, she’d stand on something, fix the cord around her neck after throwing it over the beam, and then jump off whatever she stood on. If there was nothing out of place, I assume that means there was no overturned chair, no platform that would have been under her feet.”

  I thought back to the image in my brain again. “No. Nothing. The table and the countertops were too far away.”

  “Did you see a note anywhere?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Interesting,” Paul repeated.

  “Do you think you can find her on the Ghosternet?” I asked.

  Paul looked dubious. “It’s probably too soon; she probably hasn’t gone through whatever Maxie and I did when we found ourselves still here.” He pointed a finger at me. “Don’t forget; she might not show up as a ghost at all.” People don’t, not always.

  There was a knock at the kitchen door, and I heard Beth Rosen’s voice peep through. Sometimes, because I inform the guests that the kitchen isn’t open for meals, they think they can’t come in at all, and I don’t really discourage that impression because it gives me a safe haven to talk to the non-living members of the household. “Alison?” she asked quietly. “Are you in there?”

  I walked to the door and opened it toward me. “Hi, Beth,” I told her. As far as she could tell, there was no one in the kitchen but me. “Come on in.”

  She walked in and looked around. I worried for a moment that she’d heard me talking to Paul, but she was a Senior Plus guest so was at least aware that there were supposed to be ghosts in the house. “How can I help you?” I asked. You talk like that in the hospitality business.